by Penny Jordan
Mariella had had enough.
‘How can you deny your own flesh and blood?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘I can’t imagine how any woman could ever desire you, never mind—’
Before she could say ‘Tanya’ he had cut her off as he asked with cutting brutality, ‘Indeed? Then, what may I ask, are these?’
Mariella felt the breath wheeze from her lungs like air squeezed from a pair of bellows as he held up in front of her her own sketches.
Chagrin, embarrassment, guilt and anger fused into one burning, searing jolt of emotional intensity had her lunging frantically towards him, intent on snatching her betraying sketches from him. But Xavier was withholding them from her, holding them out of her reach with one hand whilst he fended her attempt to repossess them with the other.
Furiously Mariella redoubled her efforts, flinging herself at him, and trying to shake off his hard grip of her wrist as she did so.
‘Give those back to me. They are mine,’ she insisted breathlessly.
As she tried to reach up for them she overbalanced slightly, her fingers curling into his arm, her fingernails accidentally raising livid weals on his olive skin.
‘Why, you little...’
Shocked as much by her own inadvertent action as his reaction to it, Mariella went stiff with disbelief as he suddenly dropped the sketches and grabbed hold of her waist with both hands.
‘Other men might have been willing to let you get away with such behaviour, but I most certainly do not intend to!’ She could hear Xavier grating at her as he gave her a small, angry shake.
Mariella could feel the edge of the bed behind her as she turned and twisted, frantically trying to break free, but Xavier was refusing to let her go and suddenly she was lying on the bed, with Xavier arching over her, pinning her down.
He was angry with her, Mariella recognised as she stared into the lava-grey heat of his eyes, but her senses were telling her something else as well and a savage little quiver then ran unmistakably through her own body as she realised that something else had nothing whatsoever to do with fear.
Xavier wanted her! Mariella could sense, feel it, breathe it in the sudden tension that filled the air, engulfing, locking them both in a place out of time.
This was fate, Xavier decided recklessly, a golden opportunity given to him to prove to his cousin beyond any shadow of a doubt that this woman was not worthy of his love, but, strangely, as he lowered his mouth to Mariella’s it wasn’t his duty towards his cousin that was filling his thoughts, driving him with an intense ferocity that a part of him recognised was more dangerous than anything he had previously experienced.
This was wrong, desperately wrong, the very worst kind of betrayal, Mariella acknowledged as her whole body was savaged by a mixture of anguish and hunger.
Xavier’s mouth burned hers, its possession every bit as harsh and demanding as she had expected, barely cloaking a hunger that scorched right through her body to her fingertips.
Helplessly her mouth responded to the savage demand of his, her body quivering as his tongue probed her closed lips demanding entry. Somehow, some time she had lifted her hands to his body so that she was gripping his shoulders. To push him away, or to draw him closer?
His teeth tugged ruthlessly at her bottom lip and her resistance ebbed away, like the inner tears of shame and guilt she was silently crying inside for her inability to resist giving in to flames of her own desire as they licked and darted inside her, burning down her pathetically weak defences. Without knowing how she knew, she knew that this man, this moment was something a part of her had been waiting for, for a very long time. Even the merciless intent of his sensual need was something that a part of her was fiercely responsive to.
Her eyes, magnificent in their emotional intensity, shimmered from turquoise to dark blue-green. Xavier was mesmerised by them, caught in their brilliance. How could such cool colours glow so hotly? But not nearly so hotly as his own body.
Without knowing what she was doing, Mariella raked the taut flesh of his arm—deliberately this time—her body galvanised by deep, urgent shudders as his kiss possessed her mouth, his tongue thrusting into its warm softness.
Mariella tried to deny what she was feeling, pulling frantically away from Xavier, in a desperate attempt to escape and to save them both from the very worst kind of betrayal, but having shared her surrender Xavier refused to let her go, pinning her to the bed with the weight of his body hot and heavy on hers, making her melt, making her ache, making her writhe in helpless supplication and moan into his mouth, a tiny keening sound lost beneath the greater sounds of their bodies moving on the bed. The rustle and rasp of fabric against flesh, of two people both revealing their hunger in the accelerated sound of their breathing, and the frantic thud of their heartbeats.
Xavier’s mouth grazed her skin, exploring the curve of her jaw, the soft vulnerability of her throat as she automatically arched her whole body. The hot, fevered feel of his mouth against her flesh made her arch even more, shuddering in agonised pleasure.
Just a few kisses, that was all it was... And yet she felt as possessed by him, as aching for him as though he had touched her far more intimately and for far, far longer. The desire she was feeling was so acute, so very nearly unbearable, that Mariella dared not allow herself to imagine how she was going to feel when he did touch her more intimately. And yet at the same time she knew that if he didn’t—
When his hand covered her breast she cried out, unable to stop herself, and felt his responding groan shudder through his body. She could hear herself making small, whimpering sounds of distress as she tugged at his clothes, her own body consumed by a need to be completely bare to his touch, to be open to him...
And yet when he had finally removed them and she was naked, a sense of panic that was wholly primitive and instinctive ripped through her, causing her to go to cover her naked breasts protectively with her own hands. But Xavier was too quick for her, his fingers snapping round her wrists, pinioning her hands to either side of her head as he knelt over her.
Mariella felt the heavy thread of her own hungry desire. She just had time to see the molten glitter of Xavier’s answering hunger before he looked down at her exposed breasts. A sinful desire slid hotly through her veins, her face burning as she watched him absorbing the taut swell of her breasts as her nipples tightened and darkened, openly inciting the need she could hear and feel in his indrawn breath, even before he lowered his head to her body.
The feeling of him slowly circling first one and then the other nipple with the moist heat of his tongue, whilst she lay powerless beneath him, should surely have inflamed her angry independence instead of sending such a sheet of white-hot sensuality pouring through her that her belly automatically concaved under its pressure whilst her sex ached and swelled.
Mariella closed her eyes. Behind her closed eyelids she could see him as she had done in the oasis, just as she wanted to see him again now, she recognised as her body began to shudder. Slow, deep, galvanic surges of desire that ripped rhythmically through her, her body moving to the suckle of his mouth against her breast.
She could feel his knee parting her thighs her body already aching for the aroused feel of him, hot, heavy, masculine as he urgently moved against her.
* * *
HE WAS LOSING himself, drowning in the way she was making him feel, his self-control in danger of being burned away to nothing. Just the sight of her swollen breasts, their nipples tight and aroused from his laving of them, made him ache to possess her, to complete and fill her, to complete himself within her.
The moment Xavier released her wrists, Mariella tugged impatiently at his clothes, answering her demanding need for him. Immediately Xavier helped her, guiding her hands over buttons and zips and then flesh itself as she moaned her pleasure against the hot skin of his throat when her fingertips finally tangled with
the soft, silky hair she had ached to touch earlier.
His body, packed hard with muscle, was excitingly alien and overpoweringly male. His impatience to be a part of her made her gasp and shudder as he kissed her throat, her shoulder and then her mouth, whilst he wrapped her tightly in his arms so that they were lying intimately, naked body to naked body.
The feel of him pressing against her. Hot and hard, aroused, his movement against her urgently explicit, was more than she could withstand.
Eagerly she coiled herself around him, opening herself to him, crying out as she felt him enter her, each movement powerful and sure, strong and urgent.
Already her own body was responding to his movement, her muscles clinging to him. Sensually stroking him and savouring each thrust, she could feel him strengthening inside her, filling her to completion, picking up the rhythm of her body and carrying...driving them both with it.
‘Never mind the child he has given you, has my cousin given you this? Has he made you feel like this when he holds you? When he possesses you? When he loves you? Was this how it was between you when you made Fleur together?’
Mariella’s whole body stiffened.
‘Did you give yourself to him as easily as you did to me? And how many others have there been?’
With a fierce cry, she pulled away from him, her brain barely able to take in what he was saying, her body and emotions in such deep shock that removing herself from him made her feel as though she were physically dying.
The shock of her rejection tore at Xavier’s guts. He wanted to drag her back into his arms, where surely she belonged, to roll her into the bed beneath him and to fill her with himself, to make her admit that no other man had ever or could ever give her or share with her what he could. But most of all he wanted to fill her with the life force that would ultimately be his child. A part of him recognised that there was no more elemental drive than this, to fill a woman’s body with one’s child in order to drive out her commitment to another man and the child he had already given her. The barbaric intensity of his own emotions shocked him. He had done what he had done for Khalid’s sake, to protect him, he reminded himself, and to reinforce that fact he told her, ‘It’s a little too late for that now! You have already proved to me just what you are, and once Khalid learns how willing you were to give yourself to me he will quickly realise how right I was to counsel him against you.’
He had taken her to bed for that? Because of that? So that he could denounce her to another man?
In the outer room Fleur suddenly started to cry. Dragging on her clothes, Mariella hurried in to her, picking her up and holding her tightly as though just holding her could somehow staunch the huge wound inside her that was haemorrhaging her life force. She was shaking from head to foot with reaction, both from what had happened and from what she had just learned.
Fleur was not Xavier’s child! Xavier’s cousin was Fleur’s father! But Xavier believed that she was Fleur’s mother. And because of that he had taken her to bed, out of a cold-hearted, despicable, damnable desire to prove to his cousin that she was a...a wanton who would give herself to any man!
Fate had been doubly kind to her, she told herself staunchly: firstly in ensuring that she had not betrayed her sister, and secondly in giving her incontrovertible proof of just what manner of man Xavier was!
CHAPTER SIX
AS SHE stepped inside the welcome familiarity of her Beach Club bungalow, Mariella allowed herself to expel a shaky sigh of relief. Her first since she had left the oasis!
Now that she was safely here, perhaps she could allow herself to put the events of the last forty-eight hours firmly behind her. Lock them away in a very deep sealed drawer marked, ‘Forget for ever.’
But how could she forget, how could any human being forget an act as deliberately and cold-bloodedly cruel and damaging as the one Xavier had perpetrated against her?
If she herself had been a different kind of woman she might have taken a grim sense of distorted pleasure in knowing that, for all he might try to deny it, Xavier had physically wanted her. In knowing it and in throwing that knowledge back at him! Instinctively she knew that he would be humiliated by it, and if any man deserved to be humiliated it was Xavier!
Just thinking about him was enough to have Mariella’s hands curling into small, passionately angry fists. As her heart drove against her ribs in sledgehammer blows. How could he possibly not have recognised that she would never, ever, ever under any circumstances betray her love, and that if she had been another man’s lover nothing he could have done would have tempted her to want him? Hadn’t her body itself proclaimed to him the unlikeliness, the impossibility of her being Fleur’s mother and any man’s intimate lover?
But believing that he had been Tanya’s lover hadn’t stopped her, had it?
She would carry that shame and guilt with her to her deathbed, Mariella acknowledged.
The message light on the bungalow’s communications system was flashing, indicating that she had received several telephone calls, all from the prince’s personal assistant, she discovered when she went to check them. Before answering them, the first thing she intended to do now that she was safely back at the hotel was ring her sister and double check that she had not misunderstood Xavier—he was not Tanya’s lover or Fleur’s father!
And once she had that confirmation safely in her possession, then Xavier would be history!
* * *
IT TOOK HER several attempts to get through to Tanya, who eventually answered the phone sounding breathless and flustered.
‘I’m sorry, Ella,’ she apologised quickly. ‘But things are really hectic here and... Look, I can’t really talk right now. Is Fleur okay?’
‘Fleur is fine. She’s cut her first tooth, but, Tanya, there’s something I’ve got to know,’ Mariella told her, firmly overriding her attempts to end the call.
‘I must know Fleur’s father’s name, Tanya. It’s desperately important!’
‘Why? What’s happened? Ella, I can’t tell you...’
Hearing the panic in her sister’s voice, Mariella took a deep breath. ‘All right! But if you won’t tell me who he is, Tanya, then please at least tell me that his first name isn’t Xavier...’
‘Who?’ Tanya’s outraged shriek almost hurt her eardrums. ‘Xavier? You mean that horrid cousin of Khalid’s? Of course he isn’t Fleur’s father. I hate him... He’s the one responsible for parting me and Khalid! He sent Khalid away! He doesn’t think that I’m good enough for him! Anyway...how do you know about Xavier, Ella? He’s an arrogant, overbearing, old-fashioned, moralistic beast, who lives in the Dark Ages! Look, Ella, I’ve got to go... Love to Fleur and lots of kisses.’
She ended the call before Mariella could stop her, leaving her gripping the receiver tensely.
But at least she had confirmed that Xavier was not Fleur’s father.
Determinedly Mariella made herself turn her attention to her messages.
The prince had now returned to Zuran and wanted her to get in touch with his personal assistant.
* * *
‘DON’T WORRY,’ THE prince’s personal assistant reassured Mariella when she rang him a few minutes later to explain why she had not returned his calls.
‘It is just that the prince is hosting a charity breakfast tomorrow morning at the stables and he wanted to invite you as his guest. His Highness is very enthusiastic about his project of having the horses painted, but of course this is something you will be having formal discussions with him about at a later date. The breakfast is a prestigious dressy event, although we do ask all our guests not to wear strong perfumes, as this can affect the horses.’
‘It sounds wonderful,’ Mariella responded. ‘However, there is one small problem. I have brought my four-month-old niece to Zuran with me, as the prince knows. I am looking after her for my si
ster, and—’
‘That is no problem at all,’ the PA came back promptly. ‘Crèche facilities are being provided with fully trained nannies in attendance. A car will be sent to collect both you and the baby, of course.’
Mariella had previously attended several glitzy society events at the invitation of her clients, including one particularly elegant trip to France for their main race of the season at Longchamps—a gift from a client, which she had repaid with a ‘surprise’ sketch of his four-year-old daughter on her pony, and, recalling the sophistication and glamour of the outfits worn by the Middle Eastern contingent on that occasion, she suspected that she was going to have to go shopping.
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER, sitting sipping coffee in the exclusive Zuran Designer Shopping Centre, Mariella smiled ruefully to herself as she contemplated her assorted collection of shiny shopping bags.
The largest one bore the name, not of some famous designer, but of an exclusive babywear store. Unable to choose between two equally delicious little outfits for Fleur, Mariella had ended up buying her niece both.
She had been rather less indulgent on her own account, opting only to buy a hat—an outrageously feminine and eye-catching model hat, mind you!—a pair of ridiculously spindly heeled but totally irresistible sandals, which just happened to be the exact shade of turquoise-blue of the silk dress she had decided to wear to the charity breakfast, and a handbag in the same colour, which quite incredibly had the design of a galloping horse picked out on it in sequins and beads.
And best of all she had managed not to think about Xavier at all...well, almost not at all! And when she had thought about him it had been to reiterate to herself just what a total pig he was, and how lucky she was that all she had done was give in to a now unthinkable and totally out of character, momentary madness, which would never, ever be repeated. After all, there was no danger of her ever allowing herself to become emotionally vulnerable to any man—not with her father’s behaviour to remind her of the danger of falling in love—never mind a man who had condemned himself in the way that Xavier had!