The Desert Bride

by Lynne Graham

  ‘I am not a hypocrite. I would not demand from you a standard which I cannot claim for myself. And, in the temper you have put me in, it is probably fortunate that you are not untouched,’ Razul told her with controlled savagery as he impatiently began to unbutton his shirt.

  A golden wedge of muscular chest sprinkled with curling black hair appeared between the parted edges of the shirt. Bethany turned away, her heart suddenly thumping madly inside her chest, her colour high as she dug her arms into the robe he had derided. ‘If you’re staying here,’ she informed him in a voice empty of all expression, deliberately chosen to deflate any expectations that he might have, ‘I shall be sleeping elsewhere.’

  Without warning a pair of powerful arms closed round her from behind. ‘No.’

  ‘Please remove your hands from me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Razul—’

  ‘I am done with being a gentleman,’ he asserted, hauling her back into the hard heat of his tall, powerful body.

  ‘If you don’t let me go I will walk out of here tomorrow,’ Bethany swore shakily, hot tears suddenly lashing her strained eyes as the evocative scent of him washed over her, but with every ounce of her remaining self-discipline she struggled not to surrender to her own weakness. ‘And when I get home again I swear I will talk to the Press!’

  In response to the worst threat that she could think of making, Razul went satisfyingly rigid. ‘You would not do that—’

  ‘I would!’ she lied frantically, her throat closing over. ‘And why not? Didn’t you say you were prepared for a diplomatic incident? Well, I’ll give you one!’

  Razul slid his hands down to her hips and snatched her off her feet in one dauntingly strong movement. ‘Then tomorrow you go nowhere!’ He headed for the door and wrenched it open before she could even catch her breath. ‘Nor any other day!’

  ‘What the heck are you doing?’ Bethany gasped, thoroughly disconcerted by the tempest of fury that she had unleashed.

  He strode off down the dark corridor.

  ‘Razul...put me down!’ Bethany ordered.

  He kept a tight grip on her as he took a set of stairs at speed.

  ‘Razul—’

  ‘Close your mouth!’

  ‘I’ll scream!’

  ‘Why not? In every tight corner you scream. Other people talk, you scream.’

  ‘I just don’t want to get any more involved with you...can’t you understand that?’ Bethany suddenly demanded in a voice an octave higher. ‘I don’t want to be married...I don’t want an affair either! I just wish I had never met you!’

  ‘Coward,’ Razul jeered, thrusting wide some sort of a door with holes in it.

  There was a metallic clang as it swung shut. ‘How dare you call me a coward?’

  ‘You have a streak of yellow down your backbone so wide I could find you in the dark!’ Razul flashed back.

  ‘It’s not cowardice, it’s common sense!’ Bethany retaliated in outrage.

  ‘And your cowardice took you all the way to Canada the last time...but not this time,’ Razul informed her from between clenched teeth. ‘As my wife you will have as much freedom as a criminal on parole, and you can thank my father for that. He never recovered from the humiliation of my mother’s desertion. The female members of my family are the only women in Datar who cannot leave the country without a visa signed in triplicate by their husbands or fathers! To think that I should live to be grateful for such a medieval law!’

  His mother’s desertion? His mother had walked out on his father? Before she died? Well, obviously before she died, a dry little voice pointed out. Bethany cleared her swimming head of the irrelevancy. ‘Put me down!’ she demanded again.

  Astonishingly he did so, only for it to become clear that that had been his intention in any case, for, a split second later, lights illuminated their surroundings. Bethany stole a dazed glance over the exotic splendour of the vast room they stood in. A simply huge bed hung with elaborate hangings stood in state on a marble dais. Her attention wandered over to the vibrant colours of the swirling murals.

  She tilted her head, the better to interpret those pictures, and then flags of scarlet burned her cheeks. The act of love between a man and a woman was depicted in a series of graphic but highly artistic illustrations which she was severely embarrassed to look at in Razul’s presence.

  ‘For an anthropologist you are astonishingly prudish.’ Razul surveyed her as though be had just learnt something fascinating about her.

  ‘Where are we?’ she enquired uncomfortably.

  ‘My harm...did I not promise to bring you here?’ Razul sliced back softly. ‘Truly I honour you, for no European has ever seen these rooms.’

  ‘And exactly why have you brought me down here?’ Bethany snapped, infuriated by her inability to foresee what Razul might do next.

  ‘Until you faithfully promise me that you will remain until the end of the summer, I will keep you here.’

  Bethany turned to fix shattered green eyes on him, and any desire to ask him if he was serious was quashed by the unyielding set of his strong features. She swallowed hard and staunchly reminded herself that this had not been one of the most ego-boosting days of Razul’s gilded royal existence, and, on those grounds, she was generously prepared to make certain allowances for his temper. ‘That is a quite barbaric concept but I am convinced—’

  ‘But surely only what you would expect from me?’ Razul cut in grimly. ‘As this day dawned you called me a barbarian and it is true that you unleash that side of my nature.’

  ‘Only in the middle of an argument,’ Bethany protested breathlessly.

  ‘No...in argument with you I have subdued my natural instincts,’ Razul told her, with a harsh laugh. ‘I have quelled my temper, bitten my tongue and restrained my passion on your behalf. In an effort to gain your trust I have withstood the most base insults ever offered to me and I have forgiven you over and over again. I have also tolerated screams, tantrums and an attack of cold feet which would have driven most men to commit murder! But I tell you now that I will do it no more...my generosity is at an end.’

  That sounded incredibly threatening. With difficulty, her colour high, Bethany cleared her throat in the claustrophobic silence. ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I will not lie down to be walked on by any woman!’ Razul spat out at her with ringing bitterness. ‘So, if that is what it takes for a liberated woman to accept a man, you will never find me acceptable!’

  ‘I wasn’t aware that I was—’ she began in bewilderment.

  ‘From now on I will be true to my own instincts,’ he interrupted. Fierce emotion had clenched his facial muscles taut. ‘I was conceived in the heal of the desert sun and I was born a true son of the sands, for I have nothing of my mother in me. No ice runs in my veins, no cool calculation controls my need for you. I know what I want. I know what I feel. I want to lock you up and hold you in purdah as my forefathers kept their women for their eyes alone. You make me feel like that!’

  Glittering golden eyes scorched into hers with such ferocious intensity that she took a clumsy step backwards. ‘Less than fifty years ago we would not have had this problem. I would have claimed you and taken you to my bed the same day I first saw you. I would have suppressed your rights with immeasurable pleasure! You would have known then that you belonged to me heart and soul. You would have been honoured to bear my ring on your finger—’

  ‘You wouldn’t have lived long enough to put it there!’ Bethany asserted in a shattered rush of defiance, her emerald-green eyes spitting sudden fire.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No! ’

  Razul unleashed a slow, burning smile of sheer sensual threat and strolled fluidly closer. ‘Then prove to me that you are not a coward. Prove to me that the same desire that flames in me does not flame in you... Come here, lie in my arms...reject me then,’ he challenged.

  ‘No bloody way!’ Bethany gasped with heartfelt sincerity.

 
‘Chicken,’ Razul derided softly, stalking her across the depth of the room with the innate expertise of a natural predator.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘STAY away from me!’ Bethany shrieked as she found herself backed up against the bed.

  Razul stilled six feet from her and began to remove his clothing with slow, measured cool. ‘You will not say that to me again. It is yourself that you fear, not me. Surrender may injure your pride but you will gain from the experience. A woman who denies her own womanhood is not complete—’

  ‘I’ve never heard so much rubbish in my life!’ Bethany watched his clothes dropping to the floor with her heart in her mouth and an unfamiliar clenched sensation gripping her stomach. She shivered violently. ‘Don’t you dare come near me!’

  ‘Truly it takes a man among men to face such a wedding night.’ Razul threw aside his shirt with an alarming air of purpose. ‘But you will find that I am equal to the challenge,’ he swore. ‘And I have not descended to the intolerable humiliation of doing women’s work to ingratiate myself into your bed as my predecessor did!’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Bethany mumbled dazedly, only half her mind functioning, as a superb golden torso straight out of her most embarrassing and secret fantasies emerged in reality. Her helplessly mesmerised gaze locked onto broad shoulders, powerful pectoral muscles and the pelt of black hair hazing his broad chest which dipped down over a flat, taut stomach into a silky furrow...and? Looking away was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

  ‘That grovelling excuse for a man you allowed into your home and bed three years ago!’ Razul gritted with a flash of white teeth. ‘I heard the jokes about him. Your housewife, they called him, and laughed about how he cleaned your apartment and cooked your food and waited on you hand and foot...’

  For a split second Bethany focused on what he was talking about. Danny’s cooking had been out of this world, but his constant need to tidy up around her had in the end driven her batty because she had begun to feel like a lodger in her own home. Evidently Razul had missed out entirely on the one fact that had made Danny an acceptable temporary guest...his sexual orientation.

  ‘But that...that...’ She made the mistake of looking back at Razul, and what she had been going to say went clean out of her head again. Her startled gaze fell on narrow hips, long, lean, darkly haired thighs, and the shockingly visible thrust of male arousal displayed by the black briefs which he was in the very act of removing. Bethany froze and closed her eyes but somehow just a fraction too late, her innate shyness suddenly coming into unexpected conflict with a lowering surge of positively adolescent curiosity, which was duly punished. Dear heaven, she reflected dazedly, planting a hand to steady herself on the edge of the bed as her legs gave way, were all men that....?

  ‘I will not emasculate myself to curry favour with you,’ Razul informed her with wrathful intensity. ‘But I will give you pleasure such as you have never known before in that bed, and we will see then which you prefer...man or wimp.’

  Wimp, she decided helplessly, deeply shaken by her first view of a rampantly aroused male, and yet, on another level, quite beyond her comprehension, she felt all hot and sort of quivery deep down inside. Her fingers clenched convulsively into the bedspread beneath her as she fought for a window of reason in the blankness of her mind.

  ‘I realise you’re angry with me...’

  ‘Release in the wondrous glory of your body will dispel all anger,’ Razul said thickly, suddenly right there in front of her, determined hands peeling the robe from her shoulders, trailing it off and tossing it aside before she even knew what he was doing. ‘And be assured that when the dawn breaks you will still be in my arms, as befits my bride.’

  Before she could even part her lips, Razul gathered her up into his strong arms, but he threw back the bedspread and laid her down in that bed with surprising gentleness. Instantly she crossed her arms over her breasts, horribly self-conscious about the scanty nature of her attire. As Razul gazed down at her from beneath dense black lashes that were longer than her own her heartbeat went haywire, her breath catching in her throat. Absolutely overpowered by that molten gold appraisal, she lay there, held strangely still and captive by a feeling much more powerful than any she had ever experienced.

  A slight frown-line drew his winged brows together. He stroked a forefinger mockingly over the back of one of her hands. ‘Why do you seek to hide yourself from me?’

  Bethany lowered her eyelids. It took an enormous effort of will to close him out but it helped, it really did help, to get her brain back again. Her teeth ground together as she became even more rigid. ‘I don’t want this...’

  ‘Have I frightened you?’

  ‘Of course not...I am just trying to be the voice of reason here!’ she gasped, whipped on the raw by the suggestion.

  ‘Close your mouth again,’ Razul suggested very gently. ‘But open your eyes...’

  That could well be fatal. It terrified her that he might know that too...that when she looked at him she had the resistance of a sex-starved teeny-bopper, and that the simple knowledge that he was lying beside her without a stitch of clothing on was quite sufficient to reduce her normal composure to the consistency of jelly. ‘Don’t take this any further,’ she advised shakily.

  ‘What did this man do to you?’ Razul demanded with sudden, growling ferocity.

  Involuntarily her lashes flew up in astonishment, trapping her into searing contact with his blazing gold eyes.

  ‘You are terrified... If this man has hurt you I will seek him out and kill him with my bare hands!’ Razul seethed with naked violence.

  ‘I am not terrified,’ Bethany protested, her pride stung. ‘I am simply trying to prevent you from doing something we will both regret!’

  Razul leant over her like a tiger about to spring, black fury engraved on his strong features. ‘What did this man do to you?’ he demanded again.

  ‘Nothing, you bloody idiot!’ Bethany screeched back at him, losing all patience. ‘He was gay!’

  Razul stilled, his ebony lashes dropping low. ‘Gay?’ he whispered in a dazed tone.

  ‘Right... Now that we have that complication out of the way, is it possible that you could think of the ramifications of consummating this ridiculous marriage?’

  ‘Gay...’ Razul said again.

  ‘A man who does not feel attracted to women,’ Bethany supplied bitingly in her desperation.

  With a deeply disturbing air of relaxation Razul settled fluidly back down on his side and propped his chin on the heel of one shapely hand to survey her furiously flushed face and her still tightly crossed arms. The compressed line of his mouth abruptly slashed into a shimmering smile of unholy brilliance. ‘Truly I am a bloody idiot...’

  ‘What are you smirking at?’ Bethany hissed as she began to sit up.

  A strong hand reached out and met her shoulder to press her inexorably back down again. ‘Would you like me to switch the lights out? Would you feel less shy?’ Razul murmured wickedly.

  Her teeth clenched. ‘I am not shy! I am merely attempting to save us both from a dreadful !mistake...if you would only listen to me.’

  ‘I listen...’ He smiled again.

  That smile literally clutched her with icy fingers of dread...it made her heart pound insanely. ‘We have both agreed that this marriage was a mistake...right?’

  ‘Wrong—’

  ‘And in the light of that mutual agreement... What do you mean wrong?’ Bethany grasped his word belatedly, her voice petering out to an unsteady halt.

  Huge green eyes were entrapped by scorching gold ones. She stopped breathing, and without warning every inch of her taut body was poised on the edge of a sensual anticipation so intense that it made her head swim.

  Razul murmured something in Arabic and slowly lowered his dark head, brushing his mouth softly across the tremulous curve of hers. She quivered violently as he let the tip of his tongue intrude between her lips, and she could feel the desperate force of her own cravin
g threatening to break through and sweep away all rational . thought. It petrified her. She lifted a hand and pressed it against his shoulder, felt the heat of his satin-smooth skin at the same time as he gathered her close, spearing his fingers into the tumbled fall of her vibrant hair.

  Her heartbeat hit another terrifying peak as the heat of him enfolded her and the pressure of his firm mouth became inexorably more insistent. He employed his tongue in a glancing foray deep into the tender interior that she would have denied him, and her muscles jerked, a burst of shuddering pleasure catching her up in its tormenting grasp and making every sense scream with sudden frustration.

  Her hands sank into the glossy thickness of his hair, holding him to her as the pulsebeat of desire thrummed her every tensed muscle. What are you doing? a voice shrieked somewhere in the depths of her blitzed brain, but she was powerless against that voice as the dam wall of her own resistance cracked, unleashing all the hunger that she had suppressed for so long. An incoherent moan sounded low in her throat as he turned up the heat in that ruthless kiss and with erotic mastery emulated a far more intimate possession. Her temperature rocketed, driven sky-high. Hot, drowning pleasure gripped her.

  ‘Razul...’ she mumbled thickly as he released her reddened mouth.

  With a shimmering smile he brought her hands down from his hair and pressed his lips gently to the centre of each palm. Her dazed eyes clung to his as he brushed the narrow straps of silk from her taut shoulders, and she made a sudden movement of panic as reality threatened to break through the spell that he had cast over her.

  But he crushed her mouth under his again and the hunger came back in a blinding wave that drove all before it. When she surfaced, like a novice swimmer who had dived too deep, her breasts were bare, rising full and swollen with shamelessly engorged pink nipples. Razul closed a restraining hand over hers as she attempted to cover herself from his heated appraisal.

  ‘Do not be ashamed... rejoice in your beauty as I do,’ he urged huskily. ‘Your hair holds the glory of the dawn and your skin the pristine glow of a white camellia.’