Anxiety welled up as she thought of Hannah, fraying the langour she had succumbed to in Zageo’s soothing embrace. He was playing with her hair, lifting up the long tresses and letting them trail around his fingers, and as though he sensed her change of mood, he suddenly bunched her hair in his hand, slightly tugging to grab her attention.
‘They are alive,’ he said.
‘What?’ His statement seemed surreal, as though he had just read her mind.
‘Your sister, her husband and daughters…they are alive. Do not be imagining them dead because it is not so,’ he gruffly declared.
Adrenaline shot through Emily’s sluggish veins. She bolted up to scan his eyes for truth, breaking his embrace and planting her own arms on either side of his head to lean over him in his current supine position. ‘How do you know?’ she demanded.
One black eyebrow arched in mocking challenge. ‘You question my knowledge?’
She huffed with impatience. ‘Not your knowledge, Zageo. I’m asking how you came by it.’
‘Given that your sister had not arrived at the inn, as you had expected, I left instructions that her whereabouts be traced while we were out today,’ he answered matter-of-factly. ‘When we returned from Stone Town…’
‘Are they under house arrest as Hannah feared?’ Emily pressed, filled with an urgency to know what problems her sister was facing.
‘Yes. But the point I am making, my dear Emily, is—’ he ran a finger over her lips to silence any further intemperate outburst ‘—they are alive. And I shall now take every step I can to guarantee their future safety.’
Relief poured through her. Trading herself for this outcome had been worthwhile. No matter how big a sacrifice of her own self it might become, she would not regret making it. Some positive action would be taken to help Hannah.
‘What do you plan to do?’ she queried eagerly.
‘Enough!’ He surged up, catching her off-guard and rolling her onto her back, swiftly reestablishing his domination. The fingers that had been teasing her lips now stroked her jawline as though testing it for defiance. His dark eyes gleamed with a ruthless desire to re-acquaint her with the trade she’d made. ‘You will trust me to negotiate your sister’s freedom as best I can. How I do it is not your business. It is your business to please me, is it not?’
Had she?
Doubts whirled, attacking her natural self-confidence.
Was he satisfied with what he’d had of her so far?
Before tonight her sexual experience had been limited to one man—a man who’d had no other woman but herself. Her heart stampeded into thumping with panic as she thought of the high-living, sophisticated Veronique. She didn’t know how to compete.
‘You’ll have to tell me what you want me to do,’ she pleaded, frightened of being inadequate.
‘Oh, I will,’ he promised, smiling some deeply sensual and private satisfaction.
And he did.
Emily didn’t mind doing any of it.
The happy knowledge that Hannah and her family were alive bubbled at the back of her mind, but in the forefront of it was the amazing truth that being intimately entangled with Sheikh Zageo bin Sultan Al Farrahn was making her feel more vibrantly alive than she had ever felt in her life.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ON MONDAY they flew to Kenya.
‘But it’s in the opposite direction to Zimbabwe,’ Emily had protested.
An instant flash of anger had answered her. ‘Do you doubt that I will deliver on my promise?’
‘It just doesn’t seem logical to travel there,’ she had temporised warily. ‘If you’d explain…’
‘The negotiations to secure the safety of your sister’s family will take time. We must move through diplomatic channels. While this is proceeding, there is little point in my not keeping to my own schedule. And you will accompany me—’ his eyes had stabbed a challenge to her commitment ‘—as agreed.’
Again there was no choice but to go his way.
And as usual, it turned out that his way gave Emily an immense amount of amazing pleasure and it wasn’t all exclusively connected to the intense sexual passion he could and did repeatedly stir.
The hotel he was checking on in Kenya was unlike any hotel she had ever seen. It was, in fact, a safari resort, and the rooms were designed to look like a series of mud huts nestled cunningly around a hillside overlooking the Serengetti Plain. Inside they provided every luxury a traveller might want while the decor made fascinating use of the brightly colourful beading and fabrics much loved by the Masai tribe.
Best of all was the magnificent vista from every window—great herds of wildebeest grazing their way across the vast rolling plain which was dotted here and there by the highly distinctive acacia trees with their wide flat tops. It was also a surprising delight to see so many species of wild animals just roaming free, totally ignoring the intrusion by mankind.
When she and Zageo were taken out in one of the special safari vans, they might have been in an invisible spaceship for all the notice the animals took of them. A pride of lions, resting in the long grass by one of the tracks, didn’t even turn their heads to look at the vehicle. In another place, a cheetah was teaching her three young cubs to hunt with absolutely no distraction from her mission, despite a number of vans circling to give their passengers a view of the action. Real life in Africa, Emily kept thinking, feeling very privileged to see it firsthand.
It had far more impact than viewing a film, though it wasn’t always a pleasant one. It gave Emily the shudders seeing a flock of vultures waiting to feed on a fresh kill—horrible birds with their big bloated bodies and vicious looking beaks. On the other side of the spectrum were the giraffes—fascinating to watch a group of them amble along with a slow, stately grace, automatically evoking a smile.
On each of their trips out—different vehicles, different drivers—Emily was seated in the body of the van where a large section of the roof was lifted so passengers could stand up and take photographs. Zageo sat beside the driver, chatting to him about his life and work, observing how the safari session was handled—radio communication between the vans giving information about sightings so the drivers could change course, if necessary, to get to the scene as fast as they could.
Emily came to realise he didn’t just check on the top-level management of his hotels. Nothing escaped his attention. He even stopped to talk to the employees who swept the paths to the rooms and it was not done in an autocratic manner. He accorded each person the same respect, none higher than another, and was clearly regarded with respect in return.