by Lynne Graham
Polly was for once open-mouthed and speechless.
His fingers released her ankle only as he gracefully came down on the bed to trap her squirming body in place. ‘Are you not to scream at this point?’ he provoked. ‘Then I see your dilemma. The evil ravisher is supposed to inspire you only with revulsion. I hate to discredit your performance when you have so pronounced a talent for drama, but to date it has not been a performance that convinces.’
His taunts enraged her. Her eyes were molten emerald. Her hand flashed up and was apprehended by fingers with the grip of steel. ‘No,’ Raschid said succinctly as if he was teaching a very basic lesson to a rebellious child.
Tears of anger and chagrin mingled in her eyes, but anger had supremacy. If the blow had connected it would have been the first violent act of a lifetime. On the other hand, when she was still in the elemental hold of a desire to commit murder she could not be expected to feel ashamed for failing. ‘You hateful brute!’ she snapped.
His teeth grazed the fingertips of the hand he had imprisoned. The tip of his tongue roamed a tantalising passage down into the centre of her palm where his warm lips circled sensuously. ‘We have been married almost a month. I’ve been very patient.’
‘You haven’t even asked how I feel!’ Polly was shaking and yet her limbs were reed-taut. The erotic seduction of that lazy caress sparked a clenched tight excitement in the pit of her stomach.
‘Lively?’ he mocked. ‘I do not think that your energy level is under dispute.’
‘This is disgusting!’ she hurled contemptuously.
Eyes a mere glimmer of dense blue gleamed. Raschid bit her forefinger in teasing punishment. ‘A man might have to suspend you by the heels over a dry well to receive the truth, but fortunately for you I am infinitely more subtle.’ He rolled over, capturing her to the lean, bronze muscularity of his body, one firm hand anchored into the tangle of her hair. ‘I think you have spent a long time asleep, Polly, and it is I who will wake you up,’ he emphasised, and the purpose marking his compellingly masculine features was no longer even superficially indulgent.
‘I can’t stop you, can I?’ she flashed.
‘But you don’t want me to stop,’ he gibed, his hand smoothly gliding down to divest her of the swimsuit.
He bent his head over the tender flesh he had earlier caressed. His tousled hair was midnight-black against her pale skin. Tormented by the sight, Polly shut her eyes. His tongue lashed the sensitive peaks, his fingers shaping the rounded globes with a gentleness that was her undoing. Then his lips closed there, teasing her into a mindless delirium. His mouth against her breast was an indescribable pleasure, engulfing her in instantaneous heat. Before very long her awareness encompassed only the satin texture of his skin, the rich silk of his hair and the feverish excitement which drove out all rational thought. By then her lips needed no coaxing to meet his, nor her arms any encouragement to hold him.
His hand stroked over her stomach and gently to the very heart of her. It was an intimacy beyond anything she had ever imagined. She twisted against him, instinctively arching in wanton invitation to that intimate exploration. Tiny sounds broke unwittingly from her throat. Tremors of delight surged over her, growing stronger by the second.
Spontaneously she pressed her lips to the smoothness of his shoulder. With an inarticulate little cry she drank in the scent of the sandalwood which clung evocatively to his skin. His tormenting mouth teased at her throat as she writhed out of control. Sensation heaped upon sensation in an ever-climbing spiral of desire until an agonising ache mounted an unbearable tension in her limbs. Her nails dug involuntarily, pleadingly into the corded muscles of his back.
‘Give yourself to me,’ he commanded hoarsely.
She raised her lips and he rewarded her obedience with a wild hunger that melted her into honeyed fluidity. He parted her thighs with his and urged her up to receive him. She responded blindly. He entered her without hesitation, and the pain of that alien intrusion partly diminished the frenzy of need that ruled her. But he carried her remorselessly through that barrier, checking her cry of denial with the brand of his mouth. Under the rhythmic stroke of his possession she reached that higher plane she had strained towards in an explosion of ecstasy and fell into that intense, drowning pleasure as if she had been waiting for that moment all her life. Raschid attained that same plateau in silence, only the rough rasp of his breathing and the heavy thud of his heart against her breast betraying him.
He studied her slumbrously, both gravity and a glint of light-hearted indulgence mingling in his shamelessly steady scrutiny. Then he pressed a kiss to her damp temples. ‘You please me,’ he murmured quietly.
Hard on the heels of dizzy satisfaction came the jolting return to sentience. Those three little words which he lazily bestowed acted on Polly like a clarion call. In that first smarting encounter with self-loathing, she pulled away, only to be deprived of the point by Raschid’s abrupt move to accomplish the same feat.
As he left the bed, she clawed the sheet over her nakedness. He was a pagan golden outline in the late afternoon shadows. She pushed her hot face into a cool pillow and the world was still whirling round her. Incredulity and embarrassment held her. He had accurately forecast her surrender, her—why didn’t she face it?—her enjoyment. Her own weakness seemed to tower above her in a monolith of shame. Dear heaven, she had lost all control. She had held nothing back.
The mattress gave beside her. ‘Polly…my bed is not a burrow and you are not a small furry creature. Sit up.’
She noticed the way in which her bed had suddenly become his bed. Turning reluctantly back, she was bedazzled by the breathtaking river of diamonds and emeralds sparkling white and green fire against his tanned hand. Dumbfounded, she stared.
‘I chose it for you in New York.’ The metallic coldness of the exquisite necklace chilled her skin, his fingertips light beneath her hair as he fastened the clasp.
A phone call would have been cheaper. Clearing her clogged vocal cords, she whispered, ‘It’s fantastic!’
‘There are earrings and a bracelet to match,’ he said offhandedly.
Rewarded for her capitulation as a favoured concubine might have been a century earlier, Polly was nauseated. Her eyes gritted up. Suspicion loomed large. What had Raschid got up to in New York? If she had dared she would have slung it back and suggested that he keep the sparklers for his next mistress.
She wound herself in the sheet, trailing it off the bed, and escaped into the bathroom. In the mirror she looked the same, and yet she would never be the same again. Her fingers rested on the jewels shining with blinding brilliance and shakily she took the necklace off. Desire had stolen her wits. But she had wanted him—oh, how she had wanted him! Angry, bitter, frightened or unhappy, it made no difference. Still she wanted him. What had he done to her? What craziness came over her when he touched her? Buried in the welter of her frantic thoughts, she stepped beneath the cooling gush of the shower. A minute later strong arms encircled her from behind.
‘Raschid?’ she yelped.
‘I can safely promise you that you will not share a shower with anyone else.’
‘I don’t want to share one with you either!’ she blazed back in sudden fury. ‘Are you telling me that there’s a water shortage?’
‘Polly,’ he implored unsteadily, ‘don’t make me laugh.’
He kissed her breathless. Her centre of gravity went spinning off into infinity and her hands laced into his wet hair. Later she didn’t remember leaving the shower. Raschid tumbled her down and took her wildly on the soft, deep carpet. She clung to him in a storm of passion, every inhibition banished by more and more and even more of that mindless, self-seeking pleasure. In the aftermath the recessed downlighters on the ceiling above shone down on her like so many accusing eyes. Proprietorial fingers were roaming over her sweat-slicked skin with a tenderness at variance with the sensual savagery he had introduced her to.
It was a dream she wanted censored, a d
ream she wanted to wake up from to discover that she was not, after all, this woman. But she was—she was this woman, defenceless in a man’s grasp, bewitched by a magnetic sexual spell into betraying every principle she had ever believed in.
CHAPTER SIX
‘SMILE!’ A blunt fingertip playfully scored the tremulous curve of her lower lip.
Snaking free, Polly snatched up a fleecy towel. ‘I have to endure everything else, but I don’t have to smile!’
Raschid tugged her back with an indolently powerful hand. ‘Repeat that.’
Her teeth set together in thwarted frustration.
‘Yes, you suffer with such masochistic fervour,’ he murmured silkily. ‘I cannot wonder at your sudden silence.’
Released, she stalked back into the bedroom to straighten the bed. Listening to the beat of the shower on the tiles, she slid back beneath the sheet. The very bedding bore his scent—evocative, intimate, inescapable. Like an addict Polly breathed it in until she realised what she was doing, and then she wanted to cry. Thinking about Berah, who had reputedly wept the Volga dry, she quickly stifled the feeble urge.
Some time later Raschid inched back the sheet and flipped her over with cool hands. He extracted a lingering kiss before she could rescue her breath to object. ‘I can’t stay,’ he admitted. ‘I have a report to give to my father. I’m dining with him. I will try not to be late.’
‘Take all night,’ she suggested thinly. ‘I’m amazed that I was sandwiched into your busy itinerary.’
He laughed softly, his brilliant eyes untamed in their vitality. ‘For some things, there is always time.’
Impervious to her mutinous fury, he considerately covered her up again. Angrily she sat up, anchoring the sheet beneath her arms. ‘I think I’m entitled to a room of my own. There’s a dozen available.’
‘But then I would be put to the inconvenience of fetching you.’ Calmly he finished dressing, attaching a curved dagger, an ornate silver khanjar, to his belt. Straightening, he flipped the edges of his flowing gold-bordered black cloak back over his shoulders. The snap and crackle in the atmosphere appeared to leave him untouched.
‘I hate you for this!’ Abruptly Polly let loose her pent-up rage and frustration. ‘I’ve never hated anyone in my life, but I hate you!’ Her attack throbbed with feeling.
‘A category all to myself? I am honoured, and I do understand. It was very selfish of me not to consider your feelings and make it a brutal rape.’ Raschid flashed her a glittering glance of sheer masculine provocation and taking advantage of her thunderstruck silence, he pointed out equably, ‘You’ll be safe in the shower now,’ before he departed.
The minute he walked out of the door Polly believed he forgot her existence, just as he had contrived to forget it for the past two weeks. He treated her like a partner in a casual affair. She didn’t feel like a wife. How could she? He didn’t behave like a husband. But he had warned her how it would be in advance. He had warned her that love and sentiment would play no part in their alliance. And she had accepted those terms—mutely, unthink-ingly, her head buried in the sand.
The instant he left the room, the stimulus of anger mysteriously ebbed away. Behind it lurked a great well of unbearable loneliness. She had made a devil’s bargain. It was costing her more than her freedom. It was stealing away all peace of mind, all pride. She needed those pretences he had disdained. What she could not stand was that he should contentedly remain utterly detached from her. It was the ultimate rejection.
It was late when he returned. Polly didn’t hear him enter the lounge. He moved like a night-prowling cat. Looking up, she saw him, darkly stilled just inside the pool of light shed by the lamp to one side of her. Her pulses quickened, her breath catching in her mouth. She told herself it was fright.
‘Some unexpected guests arrived,’ he imparted. ‘It would have been impolite for me to leave sooner.’
Polly gave a shrug. Her earlier emotionalism had hardened into a cold and bitter implacability. ‘You don’t need to explain yourself to me.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I consider it simple courtesy to do so.’
It was Polly who went pink. She gathered up the letter she had been writing, intending to remove herself. Raschid moved a staying hand and sank down on the seat opposite. ‘I was most disturbed to learn that you did not leave the palace during my absence. You had only to order a car.’
‘Until recently I didn’t feel up to much.’
‘Surely you might have enjoyed a drive? You are not living in the Bastille,’ he said drily. ‘It isn’t good for you to be shut up after your illness.’
Polly leapt with grim satisfaction into reply. ‘Nobody told me that I could order a car, and where would I have gone? Jumani?’ she enquired. ‘I don’t have any money.’
Faint colour barred his cheekbones. ‘I should have thought of these things. You have reason to complain.’
‘I wasn’t complaining, I was merely stating facts.’
‘I should have phoned you. You could have reminded me.’ He sighed. ‘As a rule I am not lacking in manners.’
Incensed by the information that he regarded a couple of phone calls to his wife as a duty courtesy, Polly stiffened. ‘It’s all right, I didn’t really notice.’
Unanticipated humour lightened his features. ‘I feel duly punished now, Polly. For a deliberate omission not to be noticed is a just reward.’
The force of that unchoreographed charisma of his nearly splintered through her cold front. She wanted to smile back. The acknowledgement unnerved her. His attraction was a hundred times more powerful because he seemed quite unaware of it. She could not help comparing him with Asif, whose charm was boyishly calculated and gilded by unhidden conceit. Raschid’s sophistication was not Asif’s. Raschid might be cultured and cynical, but he would never possess his brother’s studied air of bored languor. His vibrancy, shielded by that cool austerity, beckoned to Polly with the burning heat of a fire on a winter’s day.
‘Tomorrow I will take you into Jumani. There are furniture warehouses there.’ He surveyed the shadowy room and the cosy corner Polly had incongruously set up for her comfort with grim disfavour. ‘I have never entertained here. I have never even used this room before.’
It was so wretchedly typical of Raschid to reappear the very epitome of well-bred and reasonable behaviour. Gone was the passionate lover, who had taken her by storm and ruthlessly rejoiced in conquest. An odd little shiver, indecently reminiscent of anticipation in reverse, assailed her. Hurriedly she got up. ‘Fine. I’m going to bed now, unless you have some objections.’
He eyed her set face unreadably. ‘Go to bed if you wish. I have work to do.’
From the door she glanced back. He was motionless by the window, a solitary dark figure in splendid isolation. He didn’t need her, he didn’t need anybody. But still that view of him unawares tugged wilfully at her heartstrings. She couldn’t sleep. It was one in the morning and he was working. Even if he had slept during the flight, time zones played havoc with anybody’s system. Polly curled up in a damp heap round a pillow.
Furniture, she reflected incredulously. He talked about her refurnishing when a divide the width of the universe stretched between them. Did he think that all he had to do to keep her in contented subjection was throw a king’s ransom in jewellery at her and let her spend a fortune on a home which was not her home and never would be? Did he think that that would miraculously convert her to her lot? Could he really believe that she valued herself so low?
Around dawn she discovered that she was wrapped round Raschid instead of the pillow. There was not a lot of excuse for that in a bed six feet wide. As she began gingerly to detach herself, he turned over and anchored her to his lithe, brown body, murmuring something indistinct in Arabic and then her name. He kissed her, and her toes curled shamelessly. While she was trying to uncurl them, he darted his tongue hungrily into the moist recesses of her mouth and what her toes were doing receded in immediate importance for a ve
ry long time.
He sauntered fully dressed to the foot of the bed. Polly’s heartbeat tipped against her breastbone. ‘What time is it?’ she whispered.
‘Almost half-past six.’
‘Is that all?’ Gratefully her eyelids dropped again.
‘It’s the coolest part of the day. Later it will be too hot for you. I always go riding in the morning. You can join me. That is not a pleasure you have to do without here. Have you inspected the stables yet?’
She didn’t want to look at him. As memories touched wilfully and cruelly on her all she wanted to do was curl up and die, preferably without an audience. ‘I’m not a very good rider.’
‘That’s not important.’ But he couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.
‘Apart from that, I’m not in the mood to go riding,’ she muttered. ‘Enjoy yourself.’
‘You are not making this any easier for either of us,’ he breathed. ‘You are being childish.’
‘It’s funny how I’m always being childish when I disagree with you or obtrude as an individual,’ Polly said bitterly from the depths of the bed.
Her tiredness put to flight, she tossed for a while before getting up. She was being foolish. She was driving a further wedge between them. Twenty minutes later she arrived breathlessly in the domed porch, just in time to see Raschid swinging himself up into the saddle of a magnificent black thoroughbred. The stallion’s sleek lines were pure Arabian, beauty and stamina superbly matched. Feeling she was too late and fearful of a cool welcome, for in all likelihood the invitation had been spurred by politeness alone, Polly didn’t advertise her presence.
‘How very wifely!’
Startled, she spun. Asif grinned at her. ‘Marzouk and Raschid are very impressive. Aren’t you joining him?’
She flushed. ‘No.’
‘He prefers to ride alone.’ Then he groaned. ‘But now that you are here, naturally that will change.’
‘I’m not much of a rider. I don’t think I’d hamper him with my company.’ She forced a smile, glad she hadn’t rushed outside to publish her change of heart.