The Soldier in Room 286 Read online

  ***

  Salim sat in the dark and decadent Chatsfield bar, his back to the velvet-covered wall out of habit to be able to observe all around him. The decor suited his mood perfectly, which was getting darker and darker as the clock ticked and there was still no sign of her. He’d realised far too late that he didn’t even know her name, only that she was Bruce Jordan’s daughter.

  He checked his watch and saw that he’d been sitting there for almost an hour. Disgusted with himself forwaiting for a woman like some cow-eyed youth, Salim threw back the rest of his whiskey and put the glass down. He’d been aware of a lone woman at a nearby table sending him sultry looks and what irked him now was that he wasn’t even interested in checking her out.

  He wanted her. The golden-eyed stranger who had relaxed so visibly when he’d handed her camera back, almost as if it were a child. The women who’d moved with supple grace as she’d drawn a young girl out of herself to act the role of a woman beyond her years.

  Salim stood up, a sense of disappointment acrid in his gut. He was about to put down money for the drink when the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he looked to the door.

  And there she was. Relief mixed with triumph was a heady rush along with a spiking of arousal, sharp and intense. Merde. He hadn’t had it this bad in a long time, if ever.

  As if sensing his look from across the bar, her head turned towards him and he couldn’t breathe. Her hair was down, long and wild. Her dress was gold, silk, wrapped around her body showing the curve of her hips and breasts. Those slim legs were bare all the way down to nude high-heels. Her hands clutched a bag.

  Salim stood still as he tracked her slightly hesitant walk towards him. She was a complete stranger - but he knew that if he didn’t have her before the night was out, he might die.

  ***

  He was still here. Nat refused to acknowledge that the feeling rushing through her was relief. She forced her legs to move and made her way to where he was, in a corner of the bar. He wasn’t moving. Again that preternatural stillness caught at her forcibly. Along with the sheer reality of how gorgeous he was.

  When she came close he put out a hand and Nat looked at it. It was big, long fingers. The heat in her lower body sizzled even more. She put out her hand too, but instead of shaking it, he took it and lifted it up and lowered his head.

  His face lowered closer and his eyes locked on hers. Nat’s heart was thumping so hard now she felt light-headed. For a long moment he did nothing and it was as if he was sending her some kind of silent subliminal message. And then his mouth brushed the back of her hand, fleeting and yet hot enough to send a shard of pure sensation right to the pulse between her legs. Lord.

  He let her go and straightened up, indicating for her to take a seat. ‘Thank you for joining me.’

  Nat sat down, aware that her legs were wobbly, and watched him take a seat on the other side of the small, intimate table.

  She admitted a little sheepishly, ‘I thought you might be gone.’

  His mouth tipped up in a wry smile, ‘I almost was.’

  The hint of a smile made him look younger, less brooding. A waiter interrupted them and Nat took a breath, ordering a white wine. As he conversed with the waiter, Nat took him in. He wore a black suit, which even her eye could tell was bespoke as it lovingly hugged powerful muscles. A crisp white shirt emphasised how dark he was.

  And then the waiter was gone and he was looking at her again.

  She put down her bag, aware she was clutching it like some kind of terrified virgin. A spurt of panic as to what he might think of her capitulation made her say, ‘Look, I’m just here for a drink, ok? I’m not…up for anything else.’

  He arched a brow and that smile played around his mouth again. ‘I believe I just asked you for dinner, and as much as I can’t deny that I haven’t thought about taking you to bed…I will respect your boundaries, of course.’

  Nat’s face burned. What he said was all at once so blatantly honest and yet courteous. As if he was from another time. He wanted her. The flames licked higher.

  ‘And,’ he was adding now, ‘As I don’t even know your name, maybe we should start there, hm?’

  Nat got the distinct impression that he was no mere model turned actor. She smiled, a part of her relaxing for the first time since she’d walked in. ‘I’m Nat. Nat Jordan.’

  ‘And I’m Salim Segal.’

  The waiter arrived and put down their drinks. When he was gone Salim raised his glass, ‘To meeting you, Nat Jordan.’

  She lightly tipped her glass off his. ‘You too.’

  Sipping at the cool fresh wine, she put down the glass and had to admit, ‘Soemone told me who you were, earlier. After you’d left.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Once again, not the self-involved response of a person in the media glare. It was as if he was waiting for her reaction. Interesting.

  Feeling awkward now she said, ‘I believe you have a film coming out? And you’re a model?’

  His face seemed to harden as he admitted with clear irritation, ‘I’ve been answering those questions all day in a million different ways. Would you mind if we didn’t talk about it?’

  Nat’s mouth opened and shut again. And her eyes must have widened because he drawled, ‘What? You’d heard I was a model and an actor and you expected to find me either gazing at my own reflection or asking you out so I could talk about myself ad nauseum?’

  She flushed and lifted her glass to hide behind. When she looked at him again he was staring at her and she had to shrug a little and admit, ‘I wasn’t sure what to expect…but I know what my experience of models has been and they’re usually-‘

  ‘A bunch of vacuous clothes-horses?’

  Nat’s mouth twitched. ‘Now that’s not fair, they’re not all like that. For instance our model today, Lenka, she’s studying to be a neuroscientist in Moscow.’

  He leaned forward and growled softly, ‘I don’t want to talk about Lenka, or models, or films.’

  He sat back and took a sip from his glass. He held it in his hand and something about the delicacy of the glass in his big hand made a light sweat break out all over her skin. She suddenly felt self-conscious in her wrap dress. Aware of how it could gape slightly at the front, showing more than she liked. She resisted the urge to tug it together.

  Was it her imagination or was his gaze on her there? Hot.

  But then he was asking, ‘Nat…what’s it short for?’

  Her name on his tongue made little sparks skate across her skin, raising it to goosebumps. She’d never thought of herself as a particularly sexual person but right now it seemed to be all she could think about. What it would be like to feel his mouth on hers, his tongue…that body pressing her down, spreading her legs to take him-she blurted out before she lost it completely, ‘It’s short for Natalja. My mother was Russian, my parents met when my father was covering elections there.’

  ‘I heard you talking Russian today.’

  Nat felt hot to think of him observing her work. ‘I used to speak it with my mother. My father would be away…for long periods of time.’

  He leant forward again. ‘I came across your father’s work when I was twenty, in a gallery in Paris. It was seeing his images that inspired me to join the army. He died not long after I joined, I was sorry to hear of his death.’

  Nat struggled to take this in, not liking how her chest got tight to hear him mention her father as a personal influence. It…bound them in a way that made her wish he was just some dizzy model interested only in talking about fashion. And then she thought about what he said. ‘You were in the army?’

  He nodded. But just then someone coughed discreetly nearby and Nat looked up, a little dazed, to see the hotel manager, Cavello. He glanced at her with not a little surprise and bowed deferentially towards Salim. ‘Mr Segal, your table is ready in the restaurant, would you like us to hold it, or…?’

  Nat looked at Salim. His name conjured up dark exotic things. Like him
. He spoke to her, ‘I’d very much like it if you’d accompany me to dinner.’ He smiled, ‘If those boundaries of yours will allow.’

  Those treacherous boundaries were disappearing like ice melting into water. She could no more walk away from this man now, than she could stop breathing.

  ‘Ok, I’d like that.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘So, tell me more about yourself, Natalja. Have you always worked in fashion?’

  Nat shook her head, hiding a frisson of pleasure to hear him call her that. Only her mother had ever used her full name. She felt drunk on the sumptuous surroundings, delicious food and wine. And on the man who lounged as indolently as a jungle cat on the other side of the table. Almost as if mere solid furniture couldn’t contain him. Her hands played semi-nervously with the stem of her wine glass. ‘No. I’ve only been working in fashion for the last three years or so. Before that…I’d followed in my father’s footsteps.’ She grimaced self-deprecatingly, ‘Without half of his talent or acclaim I’m afraid.’

  Salim’s eyebrows snapped together and she could feel him tense. It had an effect on her body, making awareness skitter over her skin. Awareness? She mocked herself, awareness was too ineffectual a word for what she was feeling. Down and dirty lust. That was more appropriate.

  ‘You worked in war zones?’

  She nodded and forced herself to look at him, dimly aware that there were only a few people left in the restaurant. ‘Yes. I worked in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and most recently in the Middle East.’

  ‘Why did you leave it behind?’

  Nat fought back the reflex of pain whenever she thought of that time and looked at him. ‘I got injured…I was shot.’

  She heard his intake of breath, a hiss between his teeth and it made her heart flip-flop unsteadily. As if he cared?! Quickly, to cover up how his reaction made her feel, she said, ‘I was incredibly lucky, it was just a flesh wound, my thigh. But it was a wake-up call. My father had died in similar circumstances and I think I realised in that moment that I was somehow searching for him, trying to maintain a connection. The truth is that I never loved that world as much as he did. It terrified me.’

  ‘You were close to him?’ Salim’s voice was hypnotic.

  Nat nodded, battling down the surge of emotion to think of her tall gorgeous father, lifting her high in the air and hugging her close enough to hurt. No wonder he’d hugged her close, he’d known the risks he took.

  ‘Very close. And my mother…she fell apart when he died. She couldn’t cope. He’d taken her out of a small town in Russia and he was her world. Six months after he died, she killed herself.’

  Salim just looked at her, those dark dark eyes like bottomless wells. Simply but with obvious empathy he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  And she knew that he knew, because she sensed the same deep well of tragedy within him.

  ‘Your father would be proud of you.’

  Nat huffed a tremulous laugh. ‘Really? For taking pictures of a nineteen year-old girl in a dress worth thousands of dollars?’

  He shook his head minutely, ‘Because you had the balls to get out before that world consumed you.’

  His words went straight to her gut. Nat looked at him. She’d never revealed so much in such a short space of time, to a relative stranger. And no-one had ever got her like this before.

  She cocked her head slightly. ‘What about you - what army were you in? The French one?’

  Now it was Salim’s turn to laugh quietly. Hestared into his glass of wine for a moment before catching her eye again. She almost shivered at the hardness she glimpsed in those depths.

  ‘I was in the French army no-one likes to mention. The Foreign Legion.’

  Nat sucked in a breath. The Legionnaires were legendary for their brutal training regime, their fearlessness and their incredible loyalty to each other. And their mystique that was riven with equal parts controversy and myth.

  ‘How did you end up there?’

  He took a sip of wine, for all the world a civilised man, but Nat could see the blunt edges not far beneath the surface.

  ‘I grew up in the banlieu, the suburbs of Paris. My father was Algerian, my mother French, there are six of us in my family, there wasn’t much time for looking out for us individually. I’d been dyslexic in school and was never diagnosed, so grew up being labelled stupid. I was running with a gang, up to no good. Petty crimes that were about to get much worse. I saw your father’s photos in a window of a gallery, and for the first time I felt a sense of purpose. I knew about the Legion…and so I went straight to the recruiting office in Paris and that was it, for ten years.’

  Nat reeled. This man wasn’t stupid. Not remotely.

  ‘Did you have another name, in the Legion?’

  Salim smiled and it knocked the breath out of her belly.

  ‘The guys called me Steven Seagal, after the actor, a play on my own name. And the ribbing I still get, especially now, is worse than any 30km forced run under the African midday sun that I ever endured.’

  Nat let out a laugh at his rueful admission. ‘And how did you go from that to this?’

  He toyed with his glass, his eyes hooded. ‘When I left I was spotted on a street one day, they were looking for models…’ he made a self-deprecating face, ‘Who looked like men. I couldn’t believe how easy the work was. It was a world away from where I’d come from, the other end of the spectrum. But perversely, I think its very silliness and superficiality helped me to readjust to living again.’

  He looked at her and shrugged minutely, ‘And the acting…I like it. I took another name, another persona, while I was in the Legion, so it’s not that hard to play someone else.’

  Nat absorbed this insight, she could empathise with that need to pretend to be someone else. She’d tried to be someone she wasn’t for her father’s memory. ‘Do you still see some of the men you served with?’

  Salim nodded and finished his wine. ‘One of my closest friends is from the family who own this hotel actually. Marco Rossi as he was in the army - Antonio Chatsfield as he is really. We were in the parachute regiment together. I’m in London to promote the movie, but also because I’m going to invest in his security business and offer my expertise. We’re meeting tomorrow to discuss it.’

  His mouth tipped up on one side, ‘Let’s just say that movies and modeling are easy, fun, but not exactly…fulfilling.’

  Nat was impressed. The parachute regiment of the Legion was one of the most elite forces of trained soldiers in the world. And then she thought of what he’d just said and felt a little breathless. ‘What kind of fulfilment are you looking for?’

  Salim leaned forward, eyes glinting. ‘Right now?’

  Nat nodded.

  ‘Right now I’d really like to take you dancing.’

  Visions of a dance-floor and feeling his body pressed against hers sprang into Nat’s over-heated brain. She wanted to go dancing with this beautiful man, in this city, tonight. And forget about whatever tomorrow might bring. If her father’s legacy had taught her anything it was that life was short and you had to seize it when you could.

  Feeling giddy with lust, desire and a general intoxication with this extraordinary man, she stood up from her seat, feeling the movement of her dress against hot skin, making her nipples peak against the material. She saw his eyes drop there and almost groaned out loud.

  Softly, huskily she said, ‘What are you waiting for then?’

  ***

  The throbbing insistent beat of the music seemed to have merged with the beat of Salim’s pulse. He cut a swathe through the crowd, caught some double-takes, lustful glances, but was only aware of Nat’s small hand in his as he guided her through the club to the dance-floor.

  Never had he been so intensely aware of a woman. All through dinner, he’d noticed every tiny movement she’d made - twirling her hair around a finger; self-consciously tugging at her ear lobe; biting her lip; fingers cupping the stem of her glass; which had automatically ma
de him imagine how it might feel to have them touch him like that, feathering up and down the aching straining erection he’d battled to contain. It had been a delicious torture.

  Just when they got to the heaving dance-floor, the music changed to a slow sexy beat. Salim turned and looked at Nat for an infinitesimal moment. Golden green eyes locked onto black, and for the first time Salim felt some of her lightness reach out to touch the depths of his darkness, transforming it into something lighter. Impossibly.

  It was too loud to speak. But they didn’t need words. He felt as if he’d known her for millenia. He tugged her into him, the crush of the other bodies making it easy to tug her even closer. She came willingly, her soft curves melting against him like parts of a jigsaw sliding into place. It sent his head into a spin. Was he losing it? Finally? The control he’d wielded over his tangled tortured past loosening, so it could finally reach out to claim him?

  But no. As he folded Nat into his arms and felt hers reach around his neck, bringing her even closer, Salim knew this was different. This felt like he was moving away from that darkness.

  And then he stopped thinking. Because he couldn’t anymore. Because all he could feel was the thrust of Nat’s soft full breasts against his chest, and her belly pressing against his arousal, each movement making it harder, ache a little more.

  He slid one hand down over the slippery silk of her dress and cupped her bottom, its firm lushness making him groan. She pulled her head back and looked up at him and Salim drowned in her beauty.

  His mouth was on hers, crushing her sweet softness, feeling the touch of her tongue against his. And he knew that if he didn’t get them out of there right now, he’d be stripping her bare and pushing her against the nearest hard surface before anyone could stop him.

  He drew back even though every cell in his body protested. It took a long moment for her eyes to open and when they did they were darkened with the same need he felt.

  He muttered roughly with uncharacteristic inarticulateness, ‘I want you.’

  For a moment he tensed, thinking she might say no. He was already howling inwardly in rejection of that. But then she just said, ‘yes,’ and Salim clung onto the shreds of whatever control he had left to take her hand and lead her off the dance floor.