The Call of the Desert Read Free

digs all over the world.”
    Past merged into present and Julia found that she was holding out her hand in an automatic response to the introduction. She was now facing Kaden, and much as she’d have loved to avert her gaze he took up a lot of space, completely arresting in a dark suit with a snowy-white shirt open at the neck, making him stand out from the men in the crowd who were more formally dressed. He looked darker, and infinitely more dangerous than any other man there.
    There was no such thing as sliding towards middle age with a receding hairline and expanding gut for him. He oozed virility, vitality, and a heady, earthy sexual magnetism far more powerful than she remembered. There was not a hint of softness about him, or his face. He was all lean angles. The blade of his slightly crooked nose highlighted a sense of danger and a man in his vigorous prime. She remembered the day he’d got that injury, while playing his country’s brutal national game.
    Her heart squeezed as she recalled that moment and saw the new harshness stamping the lines of his face. She wondered how long it had been there. Her eyes slid down helplessly … his mouth hadn’t changed. It was as sensual as she remembered, with its full lower lip and the slightly thinner, albeit beautifully shaped upper lip. She’d used to love tracing that line with her finger. Heat flared in her belly.
And with her tongue
. It was a mouth which held within it the power to inspire a need in the most cynical of women to make this man
hers
.
    The strength of that need washed through Julia, and dismay gripped her. She couldn’t still want this man—not after all these years. Her hand hovered in mid-air asthe moment stretched out between them. He was looking at her as intently as she was looking at him, but it was no consolation. There was no polite spark of recognition, only an extreme air of tension. He knew her, but clearly did not relish meeting her again.
    Julia realised that just as his big hand enveloped her much smaller one, and a million and one sensations exploded throughout her body.
    Far too innately civilised to be deliberately rude and ignore Julia’s hand, as he perversely longed to do, Kaden reached out to take it. He instinctively gritted his jaw against the inevitable physical contact but it was no good. At the first touch of his fingers to that small, soft hand he wanted to slide his thumb with sensual intent along the gap between her thumb and forefinger in a lover’s caress. He wanted to curl his fingers around her palm and feel every delicate bone.
    He wanted to relearn this woman in an erotic way that was so forceful it set off a maelstrom of biblical proportions inside him. And somewhere in his head he wondered when had just shaking a woman’s hand ever precipitated such an onslaught of need.
    A voice answered him: about twelve years ago, in the searing heat of the afternoon sun amongst dusty relics, when this same woman had stood before him with a shy smile on her face, her hand in his. And, much to his chagrin, Kaden felt his intention to walk away and forget he’d seen her again dissolve in a rush of lust.

CHAPTER TWO
    A MINOR earthquake was taking place within Julia’s body, and Kaden seemed loath to let her hand go—about as reluctant as she was for him to let it go. The realisation shamed her, and yet to her horror she couldn’t seem to muster up the energy to extricate her hand from his. She noticed the look in his eyes change to something ambiguous, and every cell in her blood jumped and fizzed in reaction.
    An emotion which felt awfully poignant and
yearning
was threatening. She struggled to remember where she was, and with whom, but it was almost impossible. The reality that it was
Kaden
in front of her was too much to take in. All she could do was react.
    As suddenly as Julia had registered the changed intensity in Kaden’s gaze locked onto hers it was gone, and his eyes moved to take in their companions. Julia had