The Sultan's Virgin Bride. Sarah Morgan

      Still coming to terms with the fact that his first ever proposal of marriage had met with a decidedly unenthusiastic response, Tariq lounged in his seat in brooding silence, waiting for the fashion show to begin.

      It was typical, he mused with growing tension, that she should refuse to turn down an opportunity to flaunt herself in public. It was one of the reasons that their relationship had floundered in the first place. He’d been able to see too much of the mother in the girl. The exact details of Sylvia Tyndall’s early death had been kept out of the press, but her incessant wild partying had supported the rumours that her death had been linked with drugs or alcohol or possibly a mixture of the two.

      If anything, Farrah appeared to have grown even more like her mother over the years.

      His long fingers drummed a slow, steady rhythm on the table as he pondered their encounter on the terrace.

      All traces of the innocent girl he’d met on the beach had gone. But why should that surprise him? The young girl who’d captivated him so completely had been nothing more than an illusion. At that particular point in his life he’d been jaded and unsettled and he’d been ensnared by her fresh, unspoiled enthusiasm for life. He’d enjoyed her sense of humour and unguarded response to him. She’d appeared to be refreshingly unaware of her own breathtaking beauty. He’d found her to be modest and even a little shy. Uninterested in material things or in glamorous social gatherings.

      But events had proved him wrong on so many counts.

      Everything had changed from the moment they’d moved from the desert to his palace.

      Gone had been the respectable mode of dress and the caring attitude. In its place a woman who’d appeared to care for nothing except her appearance. A woman who’d gone to enormous efforts to shock those around her. A woman who’d wanted to do nothing but party.

      In a sense that had made her easier to deal with because he’d been dealing with women like her for almost all of his life. Women who played games. Women who traded beauty for other, more tangible, benefits, from extravagant gifts to an excellent marriage.

      He skimmed a glance over the women who were now strutting down the catwalk, but only to ensure that none of them was Farrah.

      He knew her well enough to realize that his request that she abandon the fashion show would be met by defiance but, even so, her entrance, made even more dramatic by the use of spotlights and pumping rock music, took him by surprise.

      Her golden hair flowed long and loose over her shoulders and was the only thing that kept the dramatic swimming costume even vaguely decent.

      There was a collective murmur of appreciation from the men in the room and by his side Hasim Akbar made a strangled sound. In contrast, Tariq sat still, the flicker of a muscle in his cheek the only indication of his soaring stress levels.

      The music pounded in a hypnotic rhythm that was unashamedly sexual and she started to walk in time to the beat, her movements graceful and seductive. It shouldn’t have been possible to walk on the heels she was wearing but she made it look natural, as if she’d been born with high, slender spikes attached to her feet.

      The swimsuit was cleverly cut to expose her long, long legs, her narrow waist and the tempting thrust of her breasts. A diaphanous wrap floated around her body, giving the illusion that she was walking through mist.

      She was a vision of feminine perfection, every man’s fantasy, and Tariq felt sharp claws of lust drag through his loins.

      A temporary marriage came with definite benefits, he conceded. Not only would he gain ownership of the shares that were crucial for the future of his country, but he would have Farrah Tyndall naked and at his disposal for forty days and forty nights. As newly-weds he could justifiably keep her trapped in his bed and then he would divorce her before she had the opportunity to embarrass him the way she was embarrassing him now.

      On the opposite side of the catwalk a man half rose to his feet, a look of naked longing in his eyes.

      Devoured by ever increasing tension, Tariq discovered a hitherto untapped possessive streak deep within himself.

      She was inviting male attention, he thought grimly, and she was doing it to taunt him. It was clear to him that she was still sulking over his rejection five years previously.

      He lounged in his chair, simmering with ever increasing anger as he watched what he perceived to be a deliberate attempt to provoke him.

      But, instead of making him stride from the room, her intentionally provocative display merely served to reconcile him finally to the concept of marriage.

      He was determined to make her his.

      He should have done it five years ago, he mused in brooding silence, but instead he’d respected her innocence. He’d valued her purity. Had taken his time, the better to savour the moment when he would finally make her his.

      Clearly his restraint had been wasted since she appeared to place no such value on herself.

      She reached the end of the catwalk, dropped a hip in a pose deliberately designed to inflame and finally she directed her gaze in his direction. Green eyes locked on his in blatant challenge.

      Try and stop me, her gaze said, and Tariq rose to his feet in a fluid movement, determined to do exactly that.

      Anger roared inside him like a wild, untamed beast and he stepped onto the catwalk, ignoring the astonished scramble of his security team as they attempted to intercept him.

      Without uttering a word, he swung her into his arms and strode out of the ballroom without glancing left or right. He was boiling and angry and he realized that he hadn’t known the true meaning of the word possessive until that moment.

      ‘Tariq—’ Her voice was a shocked breathless pant as she pushed at his shoulders. ‘What are you doing?’

      Her words irritated him because they drew attention to the fact that for the first time in his life he’d acted without thought. He didn’t know what he was doing. His actions had nothing to do with reason and everything to do with some dark, primitive need to remove her from the line of sight of every man in the room. If it had been within his power, he would have removed her from their minds and fantasies too, but the man in him knew that it was already too late for that. She’d ensured herself a place in every erotic dream.

      The thought made him tighten his grip in raw, naked jealousy and she wriggled.

      ‘Put me down!’

      He was sorely tempted to do just that. Every part of him that mattered was in contact with smooth, warm female flesh—female flesh that squirmed in protest against certain vital parts of his body. Something dark and primitive broke loose and anger flared inside him.

      Anger at her for deliberately provoking him.

      Anger at himself for responding in such a predictable fashion.

      Always, in her company, he found himself facing parts of himself that he didn’t want to acknowledge, Tariq thought with grim honesty.

      ‘You chose to invite attention, laeela—’ he tried to ignore the low, throbbing ache that threatened to test his legendary self-control ‘—and now you have it.’ He strode through the opulent foyer, through revolving doors and out to the street where his car awaited his return.

      She weighed virtually nothing, he thought,