The Call of the Desert by Abby Green Read Free Book Online

her that question.
    Eventually, when she felt as if she had some measure of control, she glanced at him. He was standing with one shoulder propped nonchalantly against the wall, looking at her from under hooded lids. With one hand in his pocket, the glass held loosely in the other, he could have stepped straight out of a fashion magazine.
    He looked dark and dangerous, and Julia gulped—because she felt that sense of danger reverberate within her and ignite a fire. She tried to ignore the sensation, telling herself it was overactive hormones mixed in with too many evocative memories and the loaded situation they were now in. She looked back out of the window with an effort. She felt hot and tingly all over, her belly heavy with desire.
    “I … we just grew apart.” She shook her head. “It seemed like a good idea, but it never really worked. And our difficulty with having children was the last straw. There wasn’t enough to keep us together. I’m gladthere were no children. It wouldn’t have been the right environment to bring them into.”
    Julia had never told Kaden that she was adopted, or about her own visceral feelings on the subject of having children. She’d never told anyone. It was too bound up in painful emotions for her. And perhaps she hadn’t told him for a reason—because on some level she’d been afraid of his judgement, and that what they shared hadn’t been real. She’d been right to be afraid.
    She was aware of tension emanating from Kaden and didn’t want to look at him, afraid he might see the emotion she felt she couldn’t hide. Her face always gave her away. He was the one who had told her that as he’d held her face in his hands one day …
    Suddenly from out of the still ominously cloudy sky came a jagged flash of lightning. Julia jumped so violently that liquid sloshed out of her glass. Immediately shocked and embarrassed by her overreaction, she stepped back. “I’m sorry …”
    Kaden was there in an instant. He took the glass out of her hand, placing it down on the table alongside his own. He was back in front of her before she could steel herself not to react. His dark eyes looked her up and down and then rested on her chest. As if mesmerised, Julia followed his gaze to see where some of the drink had landed on her shirt, right over one breast, and now the material was clinging to the rounded slope.
    Panicky, Julia stepped back, “I’ll get a cloth … I don’t want Samia’s shirt to get ruined.”
    A big hand snaked out and caught her upper arm. “Leave it.”
    Kaden’s voice was unbearably harsh, and in that instant the air between became even heavier and morecharged. As if the tension and atmosphere between them was directly affecting the weather, a huge booming roll of thunder sounded outside.
    Julia flinched, eyes glued to Kaden’s with some kind of sick fascination. Faintly she said, “I thought the storm was over.”
    With a move so smooth she didn’t even feel it happening Kaden put his hands on her arms and pulled her closer. Their bodies were almost touching.
    “I think the storm is just beginning.”
    For a second confusion made Julia’s head foggy. She didn’t seem to be able to separate out his words, or even understand what Kaden was saying. And then she realised, when she saw how hot his gaze had become and how it moved down to her mouth. Desire was stamped onto the stark lines of his face and Julia’s heart beat fast in response. Because it was a look that had haunted her dreams for ever.
    Desperately trying to fight the urge to succumb to the waves of need beating through her veins, she shook her head and tensed, trying to pull back out of Kaden’s grip. His hands just tightened.
    “Kaden,
no
. I shouldn’t be here … we shouldn’t have met again.”
    “But we did meet. And you’re here now.”
    Julia asserted stiff ly, “I didn’t agree to come here for this.”
    Kaden shook his head, and a tiny harsh smile touched his mouth. “From the