The Desert Bride

by Lynne Graham

  As she lay there, feeling her whole body strain towards him, her breath caught in her throat.

  ‘Pure...without flaw.’ Razul curved reverent fingers to one quivering mound, and her stomach clenched and her teeth gritted, her eyes closing on the bite of intolerable sensation as his thumb rubbed across an achingly sensitive nipple.

  He cupped her breasts, shaped them, explored them with expert hands and then dropped his dark head to engulf a straining pink bud in the heat of his mouth, letting her feel the graze of his teeth and the sensual stroke of his tongue. Her heart hammered, all control torn from her as her back arched, a fevered moan wrenched from her as a current of electric excitement coursed through her. All of a sudden she was burning alive on a rack of tormenting pleasure and sinking ever deeper into its thrall.

  She couldn’t stay still. Her nails dug into the smooth sheet beneath her and then fluttered instinctively up to him, biting into his shoulders, snaking up into his hair, until, with a stifled groan, he took her mouth again with a passionate urgency that consumed her, a strong thigh sliding between hers as his fingers splayed across the quivering muscles of her stomach.

  He bent his head to her breasts again, covering her already fevered flesh with hot, hungry kisses. He moved and wrenched at the silk barrier wrapped round her slender hips, smoothing a caressing hand along the silken stretch of one thigh, tracing the length of that trembling limb to the tangle of fiery curls which shielded the very heart of her. A shocked sound parted her lips as he found the source of the most unbearable ache of all.

  He leant over her, one hand clenched in her tumbled hair as her head moved restively back and forth on the pillow. Her eyes flew wide, glazed with passion. He looked down at her like a lithe dark conqueror, his glittering golden eyes locking with hers as he pressed his knuckles skilfully to the most agonisingly sensitive spot in her entire thrumming body and murmured roughly, ‘Now tell me that you did not imagine this the very first time you laid eyes on me. Tell me that you did not see yourself lying under me, your body on fire for my possession...’

  A kind of appalled awareness flooded Bethany, memory dragging her back two years in the blink of an eyelid. She remembered time stopping dead as he’d walked towards her, devouring her with that burning gaze as if she were already his, as if he only had to look to possess, as if all her life she had been waiting for that one moment...and for him. And she had had a vision—an instantaneous, utterly wanton vision—of him throwing her down on a bed in the heat of passion and forcing her with every erotic inducement in his repertoire to surrender to his sexual dominance. That image had been so shattering, so intense and so utterly terrifying that it had taken her an entire twenty-four hours to recover from the encounter.

  ‘I... I—’ she gasped.

  ‘One look and you wanted me—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Instantly, desperately, unforgettably,’ Razul gritted, scorching her with his savage golden gaze. ‘You felt what you had never felt before. A sexual recognition so powerful, so consuming that we both saw the same thing—’

  Her lashes fluttered on suddenly wild and furious eyes. ‘No—’

  He moved an expert hand, like a torturer bent on interrogation, and she cried out loud, unable to stifle that helpless moan of intolerable pleasure or to prevent the immediate jerk of her unbearably responsive body. ‘Admit it,’ he intoned with a feral flash of white teeth and the kind of awesome tenacity which terrified her.

  ‘You bastard!’ she sobbed in an explosion of frustration and emotional stress. ‘All right...all right...yes...yes...yes!’

  Having triumphed, Razul dealt her a sizzling smile in reward for her surrender and lowered his lean, hard length to hers again. He pressed his mouth hotly to the tiny pulse flickering madly above her collar-bone. ‘You are my woman—’

  ‘No—’ she panted in despair.

  ‘And if I had lifted you up and kissed you breathless instead of trying to communicate in my very poor English you would have fallen at my feet—’

  ‘No!’ she moaned in anguish, furious with him—so furious that she was on the brink of explosion but she couldn’t harness that energy into attack, couldn’t control the shivering, tormented reaction of her body and the clawing need that he had mercilessly kept at boiling point.

  ‘Yes.’ With a husky laugh he ran the tip of his tongue down the valley between her heaving breasts then smoothly changed direction to encircle the engorged peaks that he had already caressed to throbbing sensitivity. He made her gasp and writhe while he sent his fingers travelling teasingly along the smooth stretch of one inner thigh, charting every tiny clenching muscle and following them to the very heart of her.

  Her hips jerked wildly under the onslaught of that exploring hand. It felt as if every atom of her fevered being was centred there, and every caress drove her a little bit crazier until she was clutching frantically at him, finding his provocative mouth again for herself, desperate for any contact she could get, desperate for the agony of hunger attacking her to be assuaged.

  ‘I will try not to hurt you,’ Razul murmured raggedly.

  ‘But you are very tight and it has been so long for me...’

  He had driven her to such a pitch of excitement that she was completely out of control. Nothing mattered, nothing impinged on her fevered state but the devouring need for that intolerably aching emptiness to be filled. He slid between her parted thighs and raised her up to him with strong hands, and the hot, hard surge of his manhood thrust against her softness. She gasped and stiffened, lashes flying up on fearful eyes.

  ‘Don’t tense,’ he grated rawly as he sought an entry to the moist welcome he had prepared for himself.

  ‘Please...’ And she meant to say ‘don’t’, but her lips wouldn’t form the word. She was so excited, so unbearably aroused that the first thrust of his slow invasion wiped out her ability to talk or think.

  He arched lithely over her, the hair on his chest abrading her taut nipples, and ravished her mouth before he plunged home into the very heart of her, and the sharp pain froze her in shocked rejection. As she cried out he released her lips and stared down at her, his golden features clenched by the strain of the control that he was imposing on his own fierce desire, but his eyes were as vibrant as flames as they swept over her with possessive pride. ‘Now you are truly mine, aziz,’ he intoned with savage satisfaction.

  On the outer edge of pain she was sucked back down into a well of hot sexual excitement. The feel of him inside her, stretching her, filling her, was so intolerably intimate and pleasurable that she whimpered deep in her throat. In reaction he shifted again, penetrating deep with a groan of answering hunger. And then the last scrap of self-awareness fell away from her as he began to move in her, possessing her with long, powerful strokes that enforced his dominance and her surrender.

  She was overwhelmed by her own shattering response, caught up in his stormy rhythm, her breathing fractured, her pulses rising to screaming pitch as her heart slammed against her ribcage with his every fluid movement.

  The primal drive to satisfaction took over, making every skin-cell sing as he drove her to a frenzied climax of savage passion. Her body jerked like a rag doll’s as the explosion of heat started deep down inside her and then splintered through all of her, devastating her, blinding her, deafening her, leaving her stunned by sheer pleasure. And, as she wrapped her arms tightly, instinctively round him and clung through the quivering aftershocks, the most shattering truth of all came to her while all her defences were down... You love him; you’ve always loved him.

  It was like falling into a great black hole without warning. Reality hit Bethany hard. Nothing had ever shaken her as deeply as that head-on collision with the seething emotions that she had fought and denied to the last ditch.

  She loved him but she had repeatedly assured herself that she was only suffering from a foolish infatuation, but foolish infatuations did not last this length of time nor cause such continual pain and conflict. Razu
l was everything she shouldn’t want in a man when she had never wanted a man in the first place. She should have hated him on sight! And she had tried to hate him—oh, yes, she had tried—but she had failed so completely that she bad refused to face her own failure.

  She was still fathoms-deep in shock as Razul rolled over onto a cool spot in the vast bed, carrying her indolently with him. In the thick silence, imprisoned in the circle of his arms, she listened to the soft rasp of his breathing and the still accelerated thump of his heart and trembled, convinced that if she tried to get up her legs would fold under her, equally convinced that if she made a single evasive move he would haul her back to him like a rebellious child, because now she knew and he knew who was really in control...and that reality was like a hot iron searing her sensitive flesh. Love had got inside her and made a nonsense of her efforts to protect herself.

  But how could she have known that he would use that wanton sexual hunger of hers as a weapon against her? She should have known, she told herself painfully as she recalled the controlled dark fury and outrage which her rejection of her wedding ring had provoked. Razul had decided to put her in her place and, lo and behold...and this was not a surprise...her place was flat on her back in his bed. And she saw now that there had been absolutely no way that Razul would have allowed her to sleep alone, not after the way she had behaved, not when this had been what he had wanted from her all along.

  Her eyes stung fiercely. For the first time in her adult life she felt weak and inadequate. She had never needed anybody since childhood, had never allowed herself to need anybody, but Razul had made her need him. He had got beneath her skin and blown her every defence sky-high.

  ‘Forgive me for hurting you,’ Razul sighed.

  Her teeth ground together as she recalled his primal satisfaction at that instant of sexual possession. She attempted to shift out of the incredible intimacy of his embrace. His arms tightened. Her eyes flashed and she lifted her head. ‘You enjoyed it,’ she condemned.

  He tautened, paled and dealt her a look of such sudden flashing fury that her stomach turned over. ‘I did not enjoy hurting you,’ he countered in fierce rebuttal. ‘But I took natural pleasure and pride in your purity. I have never lain with a virgin before. I did not expect to find you innocent, and that you should give me such a gift on our wedding night meant a great deal to me. I will not apologise for that.’

  ‘I wish I’d slept with a hundred men!’ Bethany snapped, her colour high.

  ‘But you didn’t,’ Razul murmured with a slumbrous satisfaction that he did not even bother to try and conceal. ‘You waited for me.’

  ‘I did not wait for you!’ she blazed.

  ‘The question is academic now. Why, after the joy we have shared, are you again attempting to fight with me?’ he enquired almost teasingly.

  He was so gorgeous. Black hair, golden skin, stunning eyes and a mouth as wicked as it was innately sensual. Suddenly it hurt to look at him and feel the instant leap of her own possessive pleasure in him. She was in torment, emotions surging tempestuously inside her. Love at first sight. She had never believed in it and yet it had happened to her. She had fallen head over heels in love with him the first time she’d seen him and she should have known it—she should have known it long ago!

  She had been in agony for him at that college dinner when he hadn’t been sure of what cutlery to use, and at each course he had watched her covertly and she had made something of a show of picking up the right utensils purely for his benefit. And when she had found it quite impossible to shoot him down in flames until the bitter end, because she was so painfully conscious of that fierce pride of his, she should have known then that Prince Razul al Rashidai Harun had a hold on her far stronger than any infatuation.

  She could have wept now for her own blind stupidity. Had she acknowledged her own feelings, she was bitterly convinced that she would have had the strength to get on that helicopter.

  ‘Bethany...’ he prompted, shifting lithely beneath her.

  She quivered, abruptly registering the hard thrust of

  his masculinity against her thigh. That shook her. She knew all about the mechanics of sex but she hadn’t believed that he could be aroused again this quickly.

  ‘And now you go silent.’ A caressing hand curved to her sensitive jawbone. He smiled at her—the sort of megawatt-brilliant smile which clenched her heart and sent every alarm bell jangling. ‘And you look so worried but also very sexy.’

  He ran a fingertip lightly along the lower lip swollen by his passionate kisses, and she collided mesmerically with smouldering green eyes, felt her pulses leap. With his thumb he prised her lips apart and softly invaded the tender interior, and in shamed disbelief she felt a surge of heat quicken between her thighs.

  ‘Forget the world outside these walls,’ Razul instructed huskily. ‘This is our world and nothing can threaten you here.’

  Nothing but him. The acknowledgement pierced her deep. ‘Razul... ’

  He leant closer and allowed his tongue to penetrate just once between her parted lips in a darting, highly erotic assault which made her every skin-cell tingle. ‘I want you again.’

  ‘N-no!’ she gasped strickenly, snaking away from him as if she had been threatened with violence.

  He tugged her back to him with easy strength. ‘Would I hurt you?’

  A tide of scarlet washed over her cheeks as she connected with the concern in that clear, candid gaze. ‘Yes...’ she lied shakily.

  ‘There are many ways of making love—’

  ‘And I don’t want to know about them!’ Bethany asserted feverishly, on the edge of panic.

  Razul angled a highly amused smile at her. ‘But you will. Come on...we will go for a swim—’

  ‘A swim?’ she echoed, in a daze.

  ‘If I am to restrain my hunger for you, aziz, the equivalent of a cold shower becomes a necessity.’

  ‘Oh...go ahead,’ she said with helpless enthusiasm.

  He threw back his handsome dark head and laughed uproariously. Before she could ask him what he found so funny, he sprang out of bed and swept her up into his arms in one powerful motion. ‘We share everything from this night on,’ he assured her.

  ‘I do not need a cold shower.’

  ‘But you deserve one, aziz. Were it not for my recollection of the ecstasy you found in my arms, I would now feel most deficient as a lover.’

  ‘You’re a perfect ten. Don’t worry about it,’ Bethany bit out acidly. ‘Now will you please put me down? I am not one of those women who go all weak at the knees at the superiority of male muscle-power!’

  He lifted her higher and ravished her tender mouth in a hot, hungry surge that left her dizzy and wildly disorientated. ‘Now that does make you go weak at the knees,’ he told her without skipping a beat, lashings of raw amusement in the wolfish grin curving his firm mouth. ‘A perfect ten?’ he mused. ‘But who do you compare me with? Did you fantasise about me as well?’

  ‘I have never had a—’

  ‘What a little liar you are...stubborn, aggressive, sharp-tongued... It is as well I did not marry you in the hope of honeyed sweetness and flattery.’

  ‘You married me to get me into bed!’ Bethany spat back at him.

  ‘But I didn’t have to.’ He smoothly disconcerted her with that cool rejoinder. ‘I could have taken you to my bed in England but I chose not to put your powers of self-restraint to the test... You should be grateful—’

  ‘Grateful?’ she gasped, with clenched fists.

  He gave her a sardonic glance. ‘You would have failed the test. I could have taken you the first time I kissed you.’

  Enraged, Bethany took a swing at him and a split second later her overheated body was plunged into cold water. Spluttering and splashing and gasping in shock, she recoiled against the tiled wall of the pool for support and clawed her dripping hair out of her eyes.

  ‘I will not allow you to strike me. While you are my wife you will treat me with respect
.’

  In the moonlight he was a dark golden silhouette, standing barely waist-deep in the lapping water. ‘While you are my wife’, she registered furiously. Always the time limit—not that that mattered a damn to her, for loving him did not close her eyes to the impossibility of a more lasting relationship between them. On the other hand, she bitterly resented his arrogance in believing that he could take what suited him from the institution of marriage and deviously cast aside what did not.

  ‘Not only do I not believe in marriage, I do not feel like your wife and I do not want to be your wife,’ she spelt out hotly. ‘I do not feel honoured...I feel used. Those ceremonies were a mockery and you needn’t think that putting a ring on my finger blinds me to that fact.’

  Razul moved towards her. ‘So you feel used,’ he grated rawly. ‘But then what can tenderness mean to you? Only something more to despoil as you seek to despoil everything we share, with your narrow, closed little mind and your selfish, smug sense of superiority!’

  Her whole body had turned icy cold and the angry colour had drained from her cheeks. ‘I do not feel superior,’ she whispered strickenly, devastated by the dark fury that she had unleashed.

  ‘But you give me your body and nothing else. It seems I am not worthy of anything more. If our marriage truly means nothing to you, I was wrong to make you put that ring on again.’ He caught her to him, splayed her fingers and wrenched off the slender band. He sent it spinning into the water in a gesture of vehement repudiation. ‘It will lie there for eternity, for you would have to come to me on your knees for me to allow you to wear it again!’

  It was crazy, but the minute he took that ring from her she wanted it back with a passion as strong as his repudiation. Narrow-minded, selfish, smug, she recited inwardly, her throat thickening with tears. Was that really how he saw her? That hurt; that really hurt.

  ‘But I need no ring on your finger to licence me to enjoy what is already mine.’ Before she could even guess his intention, Razul planted firm hands on her hips and lifted her up out of the water onto the edge of the pool.