you would never have become a model had you known that you were already financially secure.’
Saffy blinked in surprise at that suggestion. ‘I doubt that. Had I known about the fund, I would have refused to accept it. We were married for such a short time that I didn’t feel that you owed me anything.’
‘You were my wife and my responsibility. I felt differently,’ Zahir disagreed with unblemished cool.
‘If you’d still had a large financial stake in my future, I wouldn’t have felt free to put our marriage behind me,’ Saffy admitted with quiet dignity as she began moving back to the door with obvious intent. ‘But since I didn’t know about the fund, it hardly matters now. I’m just relieved you’ve managed to sort it out. Now, if that’s all you have to say—’
‘No, it’s not all. I have something else I wish to discuss.’
Saffy froze in her tracks and slowly turned back to him. ‘If it’s anything to do with the recent past, it’s unwelcome and I don’t want to hear it.’
Zahir regarded her with glittering dark golden eyes. ‘Tough,’ he told her. ‘I’m here and you’ll listen.’
‘Look, that kind of attitude may go down well in Maraban but it leaves me cold!’
‘But I don’t…leave you cold,’ he affixed as if she might be in some doubt as to his meaning.
A flush of pink washed from her long slender throat up in a wave of burning mortification, for to have him throw that in her face was an affront of no mean order. ‘I’m not listening, Zahir… I’m going to show you out. I want you to leave.’
Instead he stalked towards her like a prowling jungle cat cornering a prey. ‘No, you don’t. You’re being stubborn. You don’t like the tables being turned but you put this ball into my court—’
‘No, I didn’t!’ Saffy exclaimed in angry vexation.
‘You came to me willingly—’
‘I said I wasn’t going to talk about this!’ Saffy flung back at him furiously.
Zahir sent the door behind her crashing shut with an imperious shove of one strong hand. ‘I have a proposition I want you to consider—’
‘No…no.’ Saffy whipped up her hands to press them against her ears in desperate defiance. ‘I’m not listening. You’ve got nothing to say that I could want to hear.’
Zahir grabbed her hands and yanked them down, retaining a firm hold on her wrists. ‘I’ve already bought you an apartment here in London. You’ll move out of this one into it and I will visit you there whenever I am free…’
As simple shock winged through Saffy in a tidal wave her hands went limp in his grasp and she stared up at him wide-eyed with astonishment and no small amount of incredulity. ‘An apartment? What on earth are you suggesting?’
‘That you leave your current lover and become mine,’ Zahir spelt out with barely leashed ferocity. ‘I don’t want you here with him. I don’t care what arrangement you have. I will only come to you if you are mine alone!’
Saffy blinked rapidly, processing his words in disbelief. ‘You’re insane. Five years ago, you divorced me and cast me off like an old shoe you’d outgrown!’ she condemned rawly. ‘And now you’re asking me to be your mistress?’
Brilliant dark eyes narrowed and he freed her hands. ‘That’s an emotive label and rather outdated.’
‘And yet you’ve got the nerve to suggest such a demeaning relationship might suit me?’ Saffy hissed at him furiously.
‘Yes, I have the nerve,’ Zahir declared in a driven undertone, his accent very thick. ‘I want you to the edge of madness but I won’t share you with other men.’
‘My goodness,’ Saffy said in a sharp and brittle voice. ‘Was I that good in the tent?’
‘Stop it,’ Zahir urged harshly, stroking a stern finger across her parted lips, leaving a tingle in the wake of his warning. ‘Don’t reduce us both to that level with that tongue of yours. There is no sin in us indulging ourselves in pleasure. Who would it harm? We would be discreet. I would spend as much time with you as I can find to spare.’
But Saffy was still stunned by what he was proposing. A mistress? A kept woman in the background of his life, a dirty secret? Her? He had to be kidding. Her pride and independence would never allow her to accept such a relationship. Of course, how could he know that? At eighteen she had been loving, clingy and needy and that was probably how he still saw her. Back then marriage and a man she loved had been the zenith of her ambitions. But the more she thought of it the insult of what he was prepared to offer her in the present cut very deep indeed and she could not credit that he would believe even for a second that she could agree to be any man’s secret mistress!
‘It really is time that you go,’ Saffy snapped, throwing her head back, damp golden hair rippling back from her taut cheekbones. ‘You’ve said what you wanted to say and my answer is no. No, no, no! I like my life just the way it is.’
‘Look at me and tell me you don’t want me,’ Zahir growled.
And she looked and lingered on those lean, darkly handsome features and lost, blue eyes fearlessly clashing with smouldering gold, and then it was as if a knot were unfurling faster and faster inside her, unleashing a disturbing blast of emotions and responses that shook her inside out. But even then in the midst of that gathering storm she knew that no way would she ever sink low enough to become his mistress. Yes, she wanted him, but no, she would never take what he was offering because the price was too high.
Saffy parted her lips. ‘I don’t want you enough for that…’
Zahir glowered down at her. ‘Liar.’
Saffy tossed her head. ‘You can’t bully me into giving you the answer you want—’
‘I don’t bully you. I have never bullied you,’ Zahir countered wrathfully.
‘You’ve very domineering.’
‘You like it,’ he told her with a roughened edge to his voice, lush black lashes low over his gaze as he watched the tip of her tongue snake out to moisten her lower lip.
‘I like my men civilised,’ Saffy shot back scornfully.
‘But you still want me,’ Zahir framed with hungry intensity.
‘As I said…not enough to become your personal, private slut,’ she spelt out succinctly, but her breathing pattern was fracturing, her tension so great as he came closer that it was like a tightening band constraining her lungs.
‘Prove it,’ he said, backing her up against the wall, winding long brown fingers into her golden hair to anchor her in place, and drew her head up.
Saffy trembled, pink flying into her cheeks. ‘No kissing, no anything,’ she warned him. ‘I won’t let you do this to me—’
And being Zahir, who had a lot in common with an express train when he was set on a goal, he simply ignored her, bending his head, nuzzling her throat, licking a delicate path along her collarbone with such erotic skill that the pulse there went crazy. Her hands knotted into fists at her side to prevent herself from touching him even while the lips he had so far ignored tingled and burned for attention.
‘And how dare you offer me that option?’ Saffy continued heatedly, her rancour on that point unforgotten.
‘He who does not dare loses,’ Zahir traded with assurance, welding his hard, demanding mouth to hers in an explosion of passion that sent her heart racing and the blood pumping insanely fast through her veins.
‘What the heck are you playing at?’ she gasped strickenly, appalled by the insidious weakness spreading through her lower limbs and the glow of heat and yearning firing up low in her pelvis.