Bride Behind The Desert Veil (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Marchetti Dynasty, Book 3)

inviting and cool and she felt hot and constricted. Panicky.
She let the turban that had been wound around her head and face to protect her from the sand drop to the ground. She started to take off her clothes, knowing she was safely alone because no one ever came here. It was too close to the palace to be a stopping point for travellers. And the Sheikh—her future husband—had arrived just before she’d left, with an entourage. Not that she’d hung around to see him.
She undid the buttons on her shirt and it fell down her arms with a soft whoosh. The cooling evening air made her skin prickle. She undid her bra, let that fall too. She opened the button on her soft leather trousers—trousers that her father would never approve of as they were not feminine. Which was precisely why Liyah loved them. Apart from the ease of movement they gave her.
She shimmied them over her hips and then down her legs, stepping out of them. She pulled down her underwear.
Now she was naked.
Her horse whinnied softly. The sky was a dark bruised lavender, filling with stars. A crescent moon was rising. A swell of emotion made her chest tight. Would she ever be back here again? She loved this place. It was where she felt most at peace. Cantering over the sand with her bird high in the sky above her. Wild. Free.
Liyah stepped into the water, still warm after the day’s intense heat. It glided over her skin like silk as she walked in up to her waist and then dived deep, where the depths were cooler and darker.
Only when her lungs were about to burst did she kick her way back up and break the surface, sucking in deep gulps of air. It took a second for her ears to clear before she heard a man’s voice.
‘What the hell were you doing? I was about to rescue you.’
At the sound of the voice Liyah whirled around in the water to face the shore. Shock at the sight of the very tall, broad and dark stranger almost made her sink under the surface again.
His hands were on his hips and he stood in the shallows, the end of his long white robe drifting in the water. He had short, thick dark hair. His jaw was stubbled. But even through her shock Liyah could see that he was breathtakingly handsome. And powerful.
His eyes looked dark too. High cheekbones. A firm mouth. Currently in a disapproving line.
That line of disapproval snapped Liyah out of her shock. She’d had enough disapproval to last a lifetime. Her peace had been invaded. Her last night of solitude.
‘I don’t need rescuing.’ A thought occurred to her and an acute sense of exposure made her ask, ‘How long have you been there?’
‘Long enough.’ He sounded grim. ‘You need to come out.’
Indignation filled her at his autocratic tone, reminding her of how little autonomy she had over her own life. ‘I don’t need to do anything, actually.’
‘You’re going to stay there all night? You’ll freeze.’
It was true. The scorching desert temperatures fell precipitously at night. Liyah could already feel the chill of the water creeping into her bones.
‘I can’t come out. I don’t have any clothes on.’ Strangely, she didn’t feel unsafe, even though this man was a complete stranger.
‘I know.’
Liyah stopped treading water. ‘You did spy on me.’
Yet, strangely again, the thought of him watching her strip and dive into the water wasn’t making her feel indignant. It was making her feel...aware.
In the dusky half-light Liyah couldn’t be entirely sure she wasn’t dreaming. She could have sworn there had been no one else here when she’d arrived, but then, she hadn’t exactly checked her surroundings thoroughly.
When she looked over the man’s shoulder now, she could make out the shape of a tent amongst the trees on the far side of the oasis. And a horse. It whinnied softly and her horse answered.
‘You’re camping here?’
‘For the night, yes.’
His voice was deep. Deep enough to reverberate in the pit of her belly. He had an accent she couldn’t place. Mid-Atlantic, but with a hint of something else—something foreign. But also familiar to here. An intriguing mix. Yet she knew she’d never seen him before. He was a total stranger.
She should ask who he was, but for some reason the words wouldn’t form on her tongue.
And he was right: she couldn’t stay treading water all night.
‘I need something to wear.’ Her own clothes were scattered along the shoreline, but instead of going to pick them up the man reached behind his head and pulled off his robe.
Liyah’s breath caught in her solar plexus when his bare chest was revealed. Massive and tightly muscled, with dark hair curling over his pectorals and a dark line dissecting his abdominals to disappear under the loosely fitting trousers that hung low on his lean hips.
‘Here, take this.’
He held his robe outstretched to her from the shore. She swam towards the shallows until she could feel the ground beneath her feet. The water lapped around her shoulders.
She could see that the bottoms of his trousers were in the water. ‘Your trousers are getting wet.’
‘They’ll dry.’
Again, Liyah wondered if she was in a dream. But no dream she’d ever had came close to this. She started to walk forward, feeling the resistance of the water against her body.
The waterline dropped lower, now just covering her breasts. Liyah stopped. She expected the man to turn around, to show some respect. But he didn’t. He’d already watched her. Albeit from behind.
Again, it didn’t make her feel violated in any way—it excited her.
If she was being rational for a second, excited was the last thing she should be feeling. Scared. Wary. Insulted. Indignant. Those were the things she should be feeling. Yet she wasn’t.
She should also be asking him to turn around. But, again, the words wouldn’t form in her mouth. She was filled with a fire that made her feel rebellious and reckless. Surely