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the acidic flavour. ‘Wajid will have organised protection for you.’
    As a wave of dizziness ran over Ruby she blinked and took a deep breath to clear her head. ‘I’m feeling dizzy…it’s probably nerves. I don’t like small planes.’
    â€˜You’ll be fine,’ Raja reassured her.
    Ruby’s head was starting to feel too heavy for her neck and she propped her chin on the upturned palm of her hand.
    â€˜Are you feeling all right?’ Raja asked as her head lowered.
    â€˜Just very, very tired,’ she framed, her hands gripping the arms of her seat while the plane raced down the runway and rose into the air, the craft juddering while the engines roared.
    â€˜Not up to a wedding night?’ Raja could not resist teasing her in an effort to take her mind off her nerves.
    At that crack Ruby’s head lifted and she turned to look at him. The plane was mercifully airborne.
    The pupils of her eyes had shrunk to tiny pinpoints and Raja stared. ‘Have you taken medication?’ he asked her abruptly.
    â€˜No.’ Ruby heard her voice slur. All of a sudden her tongue felt too big and clumsy for her mouth. ‘Why?’
    Raja could feel his own head reeling. ‘There must have been something in that drink!’ he exclaimed in disbelief, thrusting his hands down to rise out of the seat in one powerful movement.
    â€˜What…you…mean?’ Ruby mumbled, her cheek sliding down onto her shoulder, her lashes drooping.
    Raja staggered in the aisle and stretched out a hand to the door that led into the cockpit. But it was locked. Blinking rapidly, he shook his fuzzy head and hammered on the door, his arm dropping heavily down by his side again. Everything felt as if it were happening to him in slow motion. His legs crumpled beneath him and he fell on his knees, a bout of frustrated incredulous rage roaring up inside him and threatening to consume him. Ruby was slumped unconscious in her seat, her face hidden by her hair and he was in no state to protect her.
    Â 
    Ruby opened her eyes to darkness and strange sounds. Something was flapping and creaking and shecould smell leather along with the faint aromatic hint of coffee. She was totally disorientated. Add in a pounding headache and the reality that her teeth were chattering with cold and she was absolutely miserable. She began slowly to shift her stiff, aching limbs and sit up. She was fully dressed but for her shoes and the ground was hard as a rock beneath her.
    â€˜What…where am I?’ she mumbled thickly, the inside of her mouth as dry as a bone.
    â€˜Ruby?’ It was Raja’s deep accented drawl and she stiffened nervously at the awareness of movement and rustling in the darkness.
    A match was struck and an oil lamp hanging on a tent pole cast illumination on the shadowy interior and the man towering over her. She blinked rapidly, relief engulfing her when she recognised Raja’s powerful physique. Adjusting to the flickering light, her eyes clung to his hard bronzed features. In shocking defiance of the cold biting into her bones he was bare chested, well-defined hair-roughened pectorals flexing above the corrugated musculature of his abdomen. He was wearing only boxer shorts.
    â€˜My goodness, what happened to us?’ Ruby demanded starkly, shivering violently as the chill of the air settled deeper into her clammy flesh. ‘What are we doing in a tent?’
    Raja crouched down on a level with her, long, strong thighs splayed. His stunning bone structure, composed of razor-sharp cheekbones, slashing angles and forbidding hollows, momentarily paralysed her and she simplystared, mesmerised by a glorious masculine perfection only enhanced by a dark haze of stubble.
    â€˜We were kidnapped and dumped out in the Ashuri desert. We have no phones, no way of communicating our whereabouts—’
    â€˜K-kidnapped?’ Ruby stammered through rattling teeth. ‘Why on earth