‘Shut up,’ he said roughly.
But his harsh words were not matched by the exquisite lightness of his touch, and she couldn’t help the gasp of pleasure which was torn from her lips. Her eyelids fluttered to a close as she felt the silkiness of his hair brushing against her thighs. Her lips dried as the tip of his tongue flickered against her heated flesh and she groaned.
She felt helpless beneath him—and for a moment the feeling was so intense that she felt a sudden jolt of fear. She tried to wriggle away but he wouldn’t let her. He was imprisoning her hips with the grasp of his hands while he worked some kind of sweet torture with his tongue. And surely if she wanted him to stop, she shouldn’t be urging him on by uttering his name. Nor clutching at his shoulders with greedy and frantic hands.
She could feel her orgasm building and then suddenly it happened violently, almost without warning. Her fingers dug into his hair as she began to buck beneath him and just when it should have been over, it wasn’t over at all.
Because Gabe was climbing on top of her and straddling her—entering her with one hard, slick stroke which seemed to impale her. Gabe was moving inside her, and she was crying out his name again and tears were trickling down her cheeks—and what on earth was that all about? She wiped them away before he could see them.
Automatically, she clung to him as he shuddered inside her, his golden-dark head coming to rest on her shoulder and his ragged breath warm against her skin. She found herself thinking that one of life’s paradoxes was that intense pleasure always made you aware of your own capacity for intense pain. And wasn’t that what had scared her? The certainty that pain was lurking just around the corner and she wasn’t sure why.
She closed her eyes and it seemed a long while before he spoke, and when he did his words were muffled against her neck.
‘I suppose you’re now going to demand some sort of apology.’
She turned her head to face him. She saw his thick lashes flutter open and caught a glimpse of the darkness which still lingered in his eyes. ‘I’m not sure that making a woman moan with pleasure warrants an apology,’ she said.
His face tightened as he withdrew from her and rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling and the dancing light which was reflected back from the river outside. He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Maybe it does if that pleasure comes from anger. Or if sex becomes a demonstration of power, rather than desire.’
She didn’t need to ask what had made him angry because she knew. Her questions had irritated a man who liked to keep his past hidden. A man who recoiled from real intimacy in the same way that people snatched their hands away from the lick of a flame and she still didn’t know why.
Maybe she should just accept that she was wasting her time. Leila’s hand crept to her still-flat stomach. Shouldn’t she be thinking about her baby’s needs and the practicalities of her current life, rather than trying to get close to a man who was determined not to let her?
But something made her reach out her hand and to lay it softly over the thud of his heart. ‘Well, whatever your motivation was, we both enjoyed it—unless I’m very much mistaken.’
At this he turned his head, and his grey eyes were thoughtful as he studied her. ‘Sometimes you surprise me, Leila.’
‘Do I?’
‘More frequently than I would ever have anticipated.’ He stroked his hand over the curve of her hips. ‘You know, we ought to think what you’re going to do next week.’
‘Next week?’ She drew her head back and looked at him. ‘Why—what’s happening next week?’
‘I’m going back to work. Remember?’ He kissed the curve of her jaw. ‘Honeymoons don’t last for ever and I do have to work to pay the bills, you know.’
Suddenly she felt unsettled. Displaced. ‘And in the meantime, I’m going to be here on my own all day,’ she said slowly.
His grey eyes were suddenly watchful. ‘Not necessarily. I can speak to some of my directors, if you like. Introduce you to their wives so you can get to know them. Some of them work outside the home, but plenty of them are around during the day—some with young children.’
Her heart suddenly heavy, Leila nodded. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful and, yes, it would be good to meet women whose company she might soon welcome once her own baby arrived.
But Gabe’s words made her feel like an irrelevance. As if she had no real identity of her own. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister and, now, someone’s wife.
Well, she did exist as a relevant person in her own right and maybe she needed to show Gabe that—as well as to prove it to herself. Back in Qurhah, she had yearned for both personal and professional freedom and surely this was her golden opportunity to grab them.
‘I don’t want to just kill time while I wait for the baby to be born,’ she said. ‘I want a job.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘A job?’
‘Oh, come on, Gabe. Don’t look so shocked. Wasn’t that what I wanted the first time I ever met you?’ She lifted her hand and touched the dark-gold of his hair. ‘You thought my photos were good when I first showed them to you. You told me so—and I’d like to think you meant it. Wouldn’t your company have work for someone with talent?’
‘No,’ he said.
Flat refusal was something Leila was used to, but it was no less infuriating when it was delivered so emphatically by her husband. She felt the hot rush of rebellion in her veins. ‘I’m not asking you to pull any strings for me,’ she said fiercely. ‘Just show my work to someone in your company—anonymously, of course—and let them be the judge.’
‘No,’ he said again.
‘You can’t keep saying no!’
‘I can say any damned thing I please. You’re asking me for a job, Leila—remember? And I’m telling you that you can’t have one. That’s the way it works when you’re an employer.’
She stared at him mulishly and thought that, at times, Gabe’s attitude could be as severe as her brother’s. ‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘I’d like to know exactly what it is you’re objecting to. The accusations of nepotism, which won’t stand up if I get the job on my own merits? Or is it something else—something you’re not telling me?’
Gabe got off the sofa and began to walk towards the bedroom, shaking his head as if denying her question consideration. She thought that he was going to leave the room without answering when he suddenly turned back and it was only then that she realised that he was completely naked. And completely aroused. Again.
‘It’s your proximity I’m having a problem with,’ he declared heatedly, wondering how she managed to get under his skin time and time again. ‘I’ll have to be with you the whole damned time, won’t I? In the car. In the canteen—’
‘Standing by the water cooler?’ Her mouth twitched. ‘Or does some minion bring you water on a silver tray in a crystal glass?’
‘We’re talking about my life—not yours, princess!’ he iced back. ‘And how can someone judge your work when you don’t have it? You haven’t even brought your portfolio with you, have you? You left it in Qurhah.’
‘Yes, I did. But I have all the images on a USB stick,’ she said sweetly. ‘So that won’t be a problem.’
Gabe made a stifled sound of fury as he walked away towards the bathroom, wishing for the first time ever that he had a door to slam. But he had chosen the apartment because there were no doors. Because one room flowed straight into the next, each characterised by a disproportionate amount of light and space. He had chosen it because it was the antithesis of the places he’d inhabited during his childhood—and now the very determined Princess Leila Scheherazade was making him want to lock himself away. She was invading his space even more than she had already done. And there didn’t seem to be a damned thing he could do to stop it.
He would have someone show her portfolio to Alastair McDavid—at Zeitgeist’s
in-house photographic studio. And he would just have to hope that Alastair found her work good—if not quite good enough.
He turned on the shower and his mouth hardened as the punishing jets of icy water began to rain down on him. Because something told him that his hopes were futile and that Leila would soon have her exquisite foot in yet another door.
CHAPTER NINE
THE PANORAMIC VIEW outside his penthouse office gave him a moment’s respite before Gabe refocused his gaze on the woman who was sitting at the other side of his desk.
Of course his hopes had been futile. And of course Leila got the job she’d secretly been lusting after. Leaning back in his swivel chair, he looked into the excited sparkle of his wife’s blue eyes. Though maybe that was an understatement. She hadn’t just ‘got’ the job, she had walked it—completely winning over Alastair McDavid, who had described her photos as ‘breathtaking’ and had suggested to Gabe that they employ her as soon as possible.
Gabe drummed his fingertips on the polished surface of his desk and attempted to speak to her in the same tone he would use to any other employee. But it wasn’t easy. The trouble was that he’d never wanted to kiss another employee before. Or to lock the door and remove her clothes as quickly as possible. The X-rated fantasies which were running through his mind were very distracting, and his mouth felt as dry as city pavement in the summer. ‘At work, I am your boss,’ he said coolly. ‘Not your husband or your lover. And I don’t want you ever to forget that.’
‘I won’t.’
‘While you are here, you will have nothing to do with the Qurhah campaign.’
‘But—’
‘No buts, Leila. I’m telling you no—and I mean it. It will only complicate matters. People working on the account might feel inhibited dealing with you—a woman who just happens to be a princess of the principality. Their creativity could be inhibited and that is something I won’t tolerate.’ He subjected her to a steady look, glad of the large and inhibiting space between them. ‘Is that clear?’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do say so. And—barring some sort of emergency—you will not come to my office again unless you are invited to do so. While you are here at Zeitgeist, you will receive no deferential treatment—not from me, nor from anyone else. You are simply one of the four hundred people I employ. Got that?’
‘I think I’m getting the general idea, Gabe.’
Gabe couldn’t fail to notice the sardonic note in her voice, just as he couldn’t fail to notice the small smile of triumph she was trying to bite back, having got her way as he had guessed all along she would. And maybe he should just try to be more accepting about the way things had turned out. Alastair McDavid was no fool—and he’d said that Leila had an extraordinarily good eye and that her photos were pretty near perfect. Her talent was in no doubt—and, since her work had been submitted anonymously, nobody could accuse him of nepotism.
But Gabe was feeling uncomfortable on all kinds of levels. For the first time ever his personal life had entered the workplace and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. Despite years of occasional temptation and countless invitations, he’d never dated an employee or a client before. He had seen for himself the dangers inherent in that. There had never been some hapless female sobbing her eyes out in the women’s washroom because of something he’d done. He’d never been subjected to awkward silences when he walked into boardroom meetings, or one of the Zeitgeist dining rooms.
The less people knew about him, the better, and he had worked hard to keep it that way. He was never anything less than professional with his workforce, even though he joined in with ‘dress-down Friday’ every week and drank champagne in the basement bar next door whenever a new deal was signed. People called him Gabe and, although he was friendly with everyone from the janitor to the company directors, he maintained that crucial personal distance.
But Leila was different.
She looked different.
She sounded different.
She was distracting—not just to him but to any other man with a pulse, it seemed. He had driven her to work this morning—her first morning—and witnessed the almost comical reaction of one of his directors. The man had been so busy staring at her that he had almost driven his car straight into a wall.
Her endless legs had been encased in denim as she’d climbed out of Gabe’s low sports car, with one thick, ebony plait dangling down over one shoulder. In her blue shirt and jeans, she was dressed no differently from any of his other employees, yet she had an indefinable head-turning quality which marked her out from everyone else. Was that because she’d been brought up as a princess? Because she had royal blood from an ancient dynasty pulsing through her veins, which gave her an innate and almost haughty bearing? When he looked at her, didn’t he feel a thrill of something like pride to think that such a woman as this was carrying his child? Hadn’t he lain there in bed last night just watching her while she slept, thinking how tender she could be, and didn’t he sometimes find himself wanting to kiss her for absolutely no reason?
Yet he knew those kinds of thoughts were fraught with danger. They tempted him into blotting out the bitter truth. They ran the risk of allowing himself to believe that he was capable of the same emotions as other men. And he was not.
He frowned, still having difficulty getting his head round the fact that she was sitting in his office as if she had every right to be there. ‘Anything you want to ask me?’ he questioned, picking up a pencil and drawing an explosion of small stars on the ‘ideas’ notepad he always kept open on his desk.
‘Do people know I’m pregnant?’
He looked up and narrowed his eyes. ‘Why would they?’
‘Of course. Why would they?’ she repeated, and he thought he heard a trace of indignation in her voice. ‘Heaven forbid that you might have told somebody.’
‘You think that this is something I should boast about, Leila? That an obviously unplanned pregnancy has resulted in an old-fashioned shotgun marriage? It hasn’t exactly sent my reputation shooting up into the stratosphere.’ He gave a dry laugh. ‘Up until now, I’d always done a fairly good job of exhibiting forethought and control.’
Pushing back her chair, she stood up, her face suddenly paling beneath the glow of her olive skin. ‘You b-bastard,’ she whispered. ‘You complete and utter bastard.
He’d never heard her use a profanity before. And he’d never seen a look of such unbridled rage on her face before. In an instant he was also on his feet. ‘That didn’t come out the way it was supposed to.’
‘And how was it supposed to come out?’ She bit her lip. ‘You mean you didn’t intend to make me sound like some desperate woman determined to get her hooks into you?’
‘I was just pointing out that usually I don’t mix my personal life with my business life,’ he said, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration.
‘I think you’ve made that abundantly clear,’ said Leila. ‘So if you’ve finished with your unique take on character assassination cunningly designed as a pep talk, perhaps I could go and start work?’
For once Gabe felt wrong-footed. He saw the hurt look on her face and the stupid thing was that he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to break every one of his own rules and pull her into his arms. He wanted to lose himself in her, the way he always lost himself whenever they made love. But he fought the feeling, telling himself that emotional dependence was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He knew that. He knew there were some things in life you could never rely on and that was one of them.
But guilt nagged at him as he saw the stony expression on her face as she turned and walked towards the door. ‘Leila?’
She turned around. ‘What?’
‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
Her smile was wry. ‘But you did say it, Gabe. That’s the trouble. You did.’<
br />
Shutting his office door behind her, Leila was still simmering as she walked into the adjoining office to find Alice waiting for her and with an effort she forced herself to calm down. Because what she was not going to do was crumble. She could be strong—she knew that. And she needed to be strong—because she was starting to realise that she couldn’t rely on Gabe to be there for her.
Oh, he might have put a ring on her finger and made her his wife, but she couldn’t quite rid herself of the nagging doubt that this marriage would endure—baby or not.
Pushing her troubled thoughts away, she smiled at Alice. ‘Gabe says you’re to show me around the Zeitgeist building,’ she said. ‘Though judging by the size of it, I think I might need a compass to find my way around the place.’
Alice laughed. ‘Oh, you’ll soon get used to it. Come on, I’ll show you the canteen first—that’s probably the most important bit. And after that, I’ll take you down to the photographic studios.’
Leila quickly learnt that paid employment had all kinds of advantages, the main one being that it didn’t give you much opportunity to mope around yearning for what you didn’t have.
Overnight, her first real job had begun and, although she was fulfilling a lifetime ambition just by having a job, she found it a bit of a shock. She’d grown up in a culture which encompassed both opulence and denial, but she had never set foot in the workplace before. She was unprepared for the sheer exhaustion of being on her feet all day and for being woken by the alarm clock every morning. Quickly, she discovered that dressing at leisure was very different from having to be ready to start work in the studio at eight-thirty. Her lazy honeymoon mornings of slow lovemaking were replaced by frantic clockwatching as she rushed for the shower and grappled with her long hair.
‘You don’t have to do this, you know,’ said Gabe one morning as they sat at some red lights with Leila hastily applying a sweep of mascara to her long lashes.
‘What? Wear make-up?’
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