by Lynne Graham
In the meantime, all she could freely do was glory in the sheer physical beauty of Raj, his wonderful broad-shouldered, lean-hipped and long-legged physique that magnetically glued her attention to him, the dark deep-set eyes that were silver starlight when he stared up at her, his perfect golden features taut. Heaven knew, he was gorgeous and it was little wonder she was obsessed, she conceded ruefully. He had broken through her barriers, made her experience feelings she had never known she could feel, but he hadn’t intended to do that and now she was stuck with the rules according to Raj, which had about as much give in them as steel bars.
‘My father believes you could be my perfect for ever wife. He’s hoping for more than a pretend marriage from us and obviously he’s doomed to disappointment,’ Raj extended drily.
‘Oh...’ Deprived of speech by that piece of bluntness and stung by the assurance that she was safe for ever from being asked to entertain the idea of something other than a pretend marriage, Zoe sped on into the bedroom.
There was so much she didn’t know about Raj, she reflected. All she had were the bare bones of his background and the fact that his first love had cheated on him. At least, she was assuming that Nabila had been his first love but, really, what did she know? Little more than was available on the Marabanian website about the royal family. And ignorance was not bliss. Raj had frozen and backed off the instant she’d asked about his mother. Nabila wasn’t the only no-go zone; his mother clearly was as well. Zoe heaved a sigh as she showered, wondering what had made Raj quite so complex and reserved.
Raj glanced up from his laptop as Zoe reappeared downstairs, clad in some kind of pastel floaty dress that bared most of her shoulders and a slender length of shapely leg. Not even the most severe critic could have deemed the outfit provocative, but her pert little breasts shifted as she completed the last step and he went instantly hard, cursing his libido and the fierce desire he was holding back that was becoming harder and harder to contain. Most probably he would need her covered from head to toe not to be affected, he conceded wryly, and what good would that do when he had already seen her virtually naked and could summon up that mental image even faster? He clenched his teeth together, hating the sense of weakness she inflicted. It was weak to want what he knew he shouldn’t have. He prided himself on being stronger and more intelligent than that.
Nabila had been enough of a mistake to scar a man for life, a warning that his judgement wasn’t infallible, that people lied and cheated to get what they wanted or merely to make a good impression and cover up the less presentable parts of their character. But, at least, he no longer carried resentment where Nabila was concerned, he reflected absently. Time had healed his bitterness and maturity had taught him more about human nature. Even so, the very prospect of having to deal with Nabila in any form, most particularly in a professional capacity in the company of others, was deeply distasteful to him. It was even more offensive to him that Nabila had dared to approach his wife and introduce herself. That had been brazen and, although he knew that Nabila could be utterly brazen and calculating, he could not begin to understand why she had made such an inappropriate move.
‘Wow...look at the food!’ Zoe whispered in wonderment as she glimpsed the array of dishes spread across the low table in front of him. ‘You should’ve started without me.’
‘I do have some manners,’ Raj told her huskily, amusement glimmering in his shrewd gaze.
‘I never said you didn’t,’ she muttered in some embarrassment, lifting a plate to serve herself and watching him follow suit. ‘But I did take ages in the shower.’
Raj could have done without that visual of her tiny, delicately curved body streaming with water. ‘I had a shower before we left the palace.’
‘I didn’t have time and it was so warm in that car even with the air conditioning.’ She sighed. ‘So, I’m about to ask you to be straight with me on certain issues because if you aren’t I could slip up and say something embarrassing to the wrong person,’ she pointed out, trotting out the excuse she had come up with in the shower to make Raj talk about what he didn’t want to talk about. ‘Who was your mother?’
Raj tensed and swallowed hard. ‘She was a nobody in the eyes of most. Ayshah and my father’s second wife, Fairoz, were both royal princesses from neighbouring kingdoms and my father married them to make political alliances when he was in his early twenties. Since he did his duty in the marital line you can understand why he expected me to be willing to do the same eight years ago.’
‘Yes, but he grew up during a very unsettled period of Maraban’s history when there was constant war and strife. It was different for you because you didn’t live through any of those wars or periods of deprivation,’ Zoe told him calmly, her retentive memory of what she had read about Maraban’s history ensuring that she had a clear picture of past events. ‘Now tell me about your mother and why she was nobody in the eyes of others.’
‘She was a commoner, a nurse. My father had heart surgery in his fifties and she looked after him in hospital.’
Zoe smiled in approval. ‘So, it was a romance?’
‘Well, no, for most of my life I assumed he simply took my mother as a third wife in the last-ditch hope that a much younger woman could give him a child,’ Raj confided with a twist of his full sensual mouth. ‘That was the perceived reality. It never occurred to me that he had fallen in love with her until he admitted that to me only a few days ago. Now I am shamed by my prejudice but, in my own defence, my mother was a very unhappy wife and I remember that too well.’
‘Why was she unhappy?’ Zoe pressed.
‘Picture the situation, Zoe,’ Raj urged with rueful emphasis. ‘Two childless older wives of many years were suddenly challenged by a much younger new arrival and they didn’t like it. They didn’t think my mother was fit to breathe the same air as their husband and when she quickly fell pregnant, as they had failed to do, their resentment and jealousy turned to loathing. They bullied her cruelly and treated her like dirt. My father likes a quiet life in his household and he did not interfere between his wives. He ignored the problems.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured, registering that Raj must have been old enough to understand how his mother was being abused and that his troubled relationship with his father and Ayshah probably dated from that period.
‘By the time I was nine years old, she was so depressed that she took her own life with an overdose. It happened here in the old original house. Perhaps that is also why my father had it demolished,’ he admitted in a driven undertone. ‘There, now you know the whole unhappy story of my childhood.’
Zoe reached for him, her small fingers spreading to grip his much larger hand in a natural gesture of sympathy, finger pads smoothing over the sleek brown skin. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ she whispered. ‘I wouldn’t have pushed so hard if I’d known it was a tragedy.’
‘She was a wonderful, loving mother but it was many years before I could forgive her for leaving me,’ Raj confessed in a rueful undertone.
‘I have no memory of either of my parents. I was only a baby when they died in a car crash,’ Zoe told him with regret. ‘Cherish the memories you have, try and build a bridge with your father. Everybody needs family, Raj.’
‘I prefer not to need anyone. Independence, in so far as it is possible, is safer. Do you want something sweet to finish?’ Raj enquired in casual addition. ‘There is a fridge hidden in that cupboard over there. The maid filled it with desserts.’
Listening to him, Zoe had lost much of her appetite, but she scrambled upright and fetched the desserts to serve, knowing that Raj would welcome that distraction. It seemed that she always, always put her foot in it with him. She should have been more patient, should have waited until he was willing to talk, instead of forcing the issue. Beating herself up for her nosiness soon led to her faking a yawn and saying she was going up to bed.
Raj worked on his
laptop for an hour, giving Zoe time to fall asleep. He mounted the stairs as quietly as he knew how and then he saw her, lying on the bed in something diaphanous, the pool of light surrounding her veiling her entire body in soft gold. She looked up from her book, green eyes wide, little shoulders tensing, petite breasts pushing against the finest cotton to define the pointed tips and that was the moment that Raj finally lost the battle. Hunger surged through him with such power it virtually wiped out conscious thought. She was there, she was where he wanted her to be and, in that moment, she was irresistible.
Zoe was fiercely disconcerted when Raj simply stalked like a prowling jungle cat across the room and bent down to snatch her up into his arms. ‘Raj?’ she exclaimed uncertainly, all the breath from her body stolen by that action.
‘I want you... I burn for you,’ he breathed rawly. ‘Tell me to put you down and I will walk away. I will not try to railroad you into anything you don’t want.’
Zoe stared up into his silvered eyes and her entire body clenched while her heart pounded in her ears. ‘I want you too,’ she admitted breathlessly, barely able to credit that she had the nerve to admit that and yet if he could admit it, why shouldn’t she?
As he cradled her in his arms, a faint shudder of relief racked his lean, powerful frame and he claimed her parted lips with so much passion he took her by storm. Head swimming, mouth swollen, she plunged her fingers into his silky black hair, revelling in the crisp luxuriance of his curls and holding him to her. There was no sense of fear, no sense of threat and she rejoiced in that freedom, pushing up into the heat of him as he brought her down on the bed. She yanked at his shirt as he reached for her nightdress, their combined movements ending up in a tangle.
‘We’re behaving like teenagers!’ Raj rasped in disbelief, gazing down, nonetheless, at her flushed and lovely face with ferocious satisfaction. He had never craved anything as much as he craved her hands on his body and he leant back from her to pull his shirt up over his head and discard it.
Zoe looked up at him, secretly thinking that she was behaving like a teenager because her experience of men was probably about that level. She truly was a case of arrested development, cut off from normality at the age of twelve when everything to do with men and sex had frightened her into closing down that side of her nature. Now she wondered if she should warn him that she was a virgin, but wasn’t there a strong chance that her inexperience would turn him off? Or, at least, make him pause to consider whether they should be having sex in the first place? She didn’t want Raj to stop and ESP warned her that if cautious, logical Raj got in charge again, her desire to have sex for the first time could be thwarted.
Raj, however, chased away all her apprehensive thoughts simply by taking his shirt off. As he leant back over her to toss it away, his abdominal muscles flexed like steel girders and she gazed up at his superb bronzed torso with helpless appreciation. Heat flowered low in her pelvis, making her press her thighs together on the resulting ache. Exhilaration flooded her at the knowledge that she was finally feeling what other women felt when they desired intimacy with a man.
‘I thought you didn’t like sex,’ Raj breathed in a driven undertone.
And then I met you.
But she wasn’t going to frighten him off by telling him that, was she?
‘It’s time I tried again,’ she muttered obliquely.
‘I will endeavour not to disappoint you,’ Raj growled, his lips ghosting in a whisper of a caress across her collarbone that made her shiver, lean brown hands tugging up the nightdress inch by inch, fingertips lightly glossing over her slender thighs and finally her narrow ribcage. The butterflies fluttering in her belly took flight.
The nightdress fell away and Zoe sat up to embark on his jeans. It might be her first time but she wasn’t about to lie there like some petrified Victorian virgin and let him do everything, she told herself squarely. Her hands were shaking so much though that she could hardly get the zip down and he closed a steadying hand over hers, pressing her fingers against him before arching his hips to snake lithely out of his jeans. His boxers went with them and she stared at the evidence of his arousal and then, dry-mouthed, reached out to stroke him, her heart already racing as though she had run a marathon.
The instant she touched him, Raj tugged her up against him with a hungry groan and crushed her mouth under his again, his tongue prying apart her lips and skating across the roof of her mouth before colliding with hers. Another burst of heat shot through her, tightening her muscles, and she shifted closer still, wanting the hard heat of him plastered to every inch of her. He was so passionate and she loved that passion, could feel it surging through his lean, powerful body to meet her own.
He laid her back and shaped her breasts with sensuous hands, smoothing, massaging, moulding, before dipping his head to catch a straining pink nipple in his mouth and swirl his tongue round the throbbing peak until her spine arched and a stifled gasp was torn from her. She was much more sensitive there than she had ever realised and little tingling thrills began to dart through her, trickling down into her pelvis to create a hot liquid pool between her thighs.
Her hips arched up of their own volition, her body controlling her responses, and all the time the nagging craving at the heart of her was building to an unbearable level and she was making little impatient sounds she couldn’t quell. When he finally touched her where she most needed to be touched, her body jackknifed and a wild flood of sensation seized hold of her, provoking a cry from her lips. It was her very first climax and the sheer intensity of it took her by surprise.
Raj smiled down at her and kissed her even more hungrily. ‘You are so receptive,’ he husked.
Lying there dazed by the experience, Zoe reached up to explore him, palms spreading across his chest, captivated by the strength and heat of him before sliding lower to encounter a restraining hand.
‘Not now,’ Raj grated out. ‘I’m too aroused and I need to be inside you. Are you protected?’
For a split second she didn’t know what he was talking about and then comprehension sank in and she shook her head in an urgent negative. With a groan, Raj sprang off the bed naked and dug into his luggage, spilling out everything on the floor in wild disarray and then leafing through the tumbled garments to retrieve a wallet and extract a foil packet.
‘I only have a few. I will need to buy more. I have not been with anyone recently and we must be careful.’
Warmed by his admission that he had had no recent lovers, Zoe frowned.
‘Careful?’ she queried.
Surprised by the question, Raj glanced at her. ‘In our situation, a pregnancy would be a disaster...not that it’s very likely. Look how many years it took my father to produce a child!’ he urged wryly. ‘For all I know a low sperm count runs in the royal genes.’
‘But contraception is pretty much foolproof these days...surely?’ Zoe pressed.
‘Nothing’s foolproof in that line. Accidents and surprises still happen,’ Raj pointed out, coming back down on the bed with a smouldering look of hungry urgency silvering his stunning eyes. ‘But it will not happen to us.’
Zoe reddened, disconcerted to find herself in the very act of picturing a little boy or girl with his spectacular dark eyes. Some day in the future, she promised herself, and most definitely she would become a mother with someone she had yet to meet. Raj would just be an experience she recalled with warmth, she told herself; nothing more, nothing less was due to the man who had rescued her from her fears.
She stretched up, winding her arms round his neck to draw him down to her and she kissed him, enjoying that freedom and that new confidence to do as she liked, and it all came from the reassuring, delightful discovery that Raj appeared to want her every bit as much as she wanted him.
He tugged at her lower lip with the edge of his teeth, sent his mouth travelling down the elegant line of her slender neck and that fast conver
sation was forgotten as another cycle of arousal claimed her. Her temperature rose, a fevered energy gripping her limbs as her heartbeat quickened and her breathing fractured.
Excitement quivered up from her pelvis when she felt him surge between her thighs, sliding into her inch by inch, sending the most exquisitely unexpected sensations sizzling through her.
‘You’re very small and tight,’ Raj ground out breathlessly.
And then with a final shift of his lean hips he forged his passage and her whole body jerked with the pain of it and she cried out.
Raj stilled. ‘What’s wrong?’
Mortified that she had made a fuss, Zoe grimaced. ‘It hurt more than I was expecting. It’s my first time.’
As shock clenched Raj’s lean, darkly handsome features and he began to withdraw from her, Zoe grabbed his shoulders. ‘No, don’t you dare stop now!’ she told him. ‘I’ve been waiting such a long time to experience this.’
The deed was already done, Raj rationalised, but anger was roaring through his taut body and it was only with difficulty that he swallowed it back because he didn’t want to risk hurting her any more...even if she had chosen to have sex with him as though he was an adventurous new experience much like a day out behind the wheel of a supercar, he reflected wrathfully.
‘Raj, please...don’t make a fuss,’ Zoe urged, studying him with huge green eyes that pleaded.
And Raj did what every nerve ending in his body urged him to do and surged deeper into the welcome of her, a low growl of sensual pleasure wrenched from him. And from that point on, no further encouragement was required. A wondrous warmth began to rise low in her pelvis, building on the visceral ache for fulfilment, making her fingernails dig into his long smooth back as excitement seized her and held her fast. The feel of him over her, inside her, all around her sent rippling tremors of joy spiralling through her and when she hit the heights again, it was explosive.