A Whisper of Disgrace

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘Unzip me,’ he whispered.

  His words broke into her dreamy thoughts and Rosa’s lashes flew open to meet the opaque smoulder in his eyes. But there was no softness in them—nothing but hard-edged desire. Her gaze flickered to his groin and her nerve failed her.

  ‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

  ‘Why not?’ He frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Rosa bit her lip and felt the sharp indentation of her teeth. A million things were wrong and, stupidly, the one which seemed to bother her most was the fact that he hadn’t even kissed her. She realised that she had just had her first orgasm but Kulal had made it happen with all the cold-bloodedness of a scientist performing an experiment in a laboratory. She might want to learn all about sex but she hadn’t intended her first real lesson to take place on an aircraft, and she certainly didn’t want to be treated like some sort of faceless puppet.

  She felt like someone who’d never skated before being put on an ice rink and told to dance. The other night when she’d been drinking, she’d been filled with an unfamiliar bravado as she had flung herself at him. Even the next morning, she’d still been disorientated enough to make an uninhibited pass at him. But now that the moment of truth had arrived, she was scared.

  So why not tell him? Why not be upfront with him? Surely even someone as hard-hearted as Kulal might be gentle if he realised the true depth of her inexperience.

  She drew in a deep breath and let the words out slowly. ‘I’m a virgin.’

  ‘Sure. And I’m Peter Pan,’ he murmured, guiding her hand towards his groin.

  ‘No,’ she said weakly as she snatched her fingers away. ‘I’m serious.’

  He drew back from her and she couldn’t quite make out the expression on his face. Surely that wasn’t boredom she could read there?

  ‘So am I, habeebi, so am I. So why don’t we leave the role play until our appetites have grown a little more jaded? I know the fantasies which turn women on and we can do the “innocent virgin being ravished by the big, bad sheikh” to your heart’s content, but for this first time, shall we just stick to what nature intended and adjourn to the bedroom?’

  Rosa stared at him as his harsh words registered themselves in her befuddled brain. He didn’t believe her! He didn’t believe she’d never had sex with a man!

  A wave of shame washed over her. Why should he believe her, after the way she’d behaved? He had signed up for a woman who shimmied around in a revealing dress, not an overprotected Sicilian girl who’d never felt the intimate caress of a man’s hands on her body until now. And mightn’t he be disappointed if he knew how naive she was?

  Her mind began to race. This was supposed to be a marriage of convenience, for her convenience as much as his, but it wouldn’t be very convenient for him if his new wife was a hopeless novice, would it? Maybe it would be better if he discovered the truth on their wedding night—when it was too late to turn around and tell her he’d changed his mind about marriage?

  She tugged her dress back down.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.

  She met his incredulous look, trying to imagine what a more experienced woman might say in such a situation. ‘You’re planning to have sex with me?’

  ‘What do you think—that I want to discuss the state of the world’s economy?’ He glared at her. ‘Of course I’m planning on having sex with you. Isn’t that what you’ve been practically begging me to do since we first met?’

  Rosa pursed her lips together, although she conceded that he did have a point. ‘You want this to be our first time together?’ she questioned. ‘When any number of your crew could walk in and discover us?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he snapped. ‘My crew have strict instructions not to disturb me whenever I have a woman on board. No one will dare to come in.’

  Rosa felt sick. Was he setting out to humiliate her, as she had seen men humiliate women so often before? ‘You make a habit of having sex on this plane, do you?’

  ‘No, Rosa, you’re the first,’ he drawled sarcastically. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think that as your fiancée, I should be shown a little respect.’

  ‘Having sex with you doesn’t show a lack of respect.’

  She shook her head, because how could you shake off a lifetime’s indoctrination in a couple of minutes? ‘And what if I told you that it would make me feel cheap?’

  He leaned back and surveyed her, one finger slowly tapping his lip. ‘But acting cheap didn’t particularly bother you when I made you come just a few minutes ago, did it?’ He saw her blush with what looked like intense embarrassment but he did not heed it, his own intense frustration making him want to drive his argument home. ‘Nor did you seem to feel cheap the other night, when you shamelessly flaunted your body at the club for all to see.’

  She swallowed. ‘I was drunk.’

  ‘And do you make a habit of getting drunk? Is this something I should know?’

  She met the accusation in his eyes and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t make a habit of it,’ she said quietly. ‘In fact, I’ve never been drunk before that night.’

  His gaze grew thoughtful. ‘So something led you to drink from the champagne bottle, like a workman slaking his thirst in the heat of the midday sun? Something which disturbed you enough to behave in a way which you say was uncharacteristic?’

  His perception was appealing and Rosa wondered how much to tell him. She’d never been close enough to a man to even think about admitting what was on her mind before, though come to think of it, she hadn’t known real intimacy with anyone. Her relationship with her mother had always been strained—and her two brothers would have run a mile if she’d started talking to them about feelings. They were Corretti men and they did that Corretti thing of buttoning up all their emotions—that was, if they even had any emotions.

  Rosa had never known what it was like to speak from the heart, and as she looked into Kulal’s cool black eyes she wondered if she could trust him enough to dare.

  Yet what did she have to lose?

  ‘I had just discovered something about my family,’ she said.

  Kulal forced himself to look interested in what she was about to say, even if the last thing he was interested in was talking about her family. But he had learnt much about women during an extensive career spent seducing them, and had discovered that a little patience shown at the beginning paid dividends in the long run. He injected just the right amount of curiosity into his voice. ‘And what might that have been?’

  Rosa hesitated, knowing that she risked making her mother sound like some sort of slut if she told him the truth—and that women were inevitably compared to their mothers. But she had to remember that she wasn’t trying to impress him. It didn’t matter what he thought of her, not when her place in his life was so temporary.

  Even so, she felt the painful twist of her heart as she said the words out loud and the bitter memories came flooding back. ‘I discovered that my father was not really my father.’

  Kulal shrugged. ‘I imagine that must have been disturbing.’

  ‘Yes, Kulal, it was disturbing,’ she said drily.

  ‘But you must realise that such a situation as yours is not terribly unusual. Don’t they say that one in twenty-five children in the west are brought up by a man who is not their biological father?’

  She blinked, because the last thing she had expected from him was a careless kind of acceptance. ‘How strange that you should know something like that.’

  ‘Not strange at all.’ He shrugged. ‘I happen to be something of an expert on these matters, since I’ve been the subject of several paternity claims.’

  Her eyes opened wide and she felt the sudden anxious beat of her heart. ‘You mean, you’ve got … children?’

  He gave a short laugh, because she might as well have asked him if he had ever taken a trip to the moon. ‘No, Rosa, I do not have any children—though one of the downsides to being a sheikh is that women
have tried in the past to get themselves impregnated, in order to secure themselves a place in my life.’

  Rosa stared at him in horrified fascination. He came out with the most outrageously chauvinistic statements—worse than her own brothers’ at times—and yet somehow he managed to get away with it. Was that because his sophisticated exterior didn’t necessarily reflect the true man underneath?

  Because on the surface he might look like a modern playboy, with his sleek designer suit and his private jet, but beneath all the trappings he was nothing short of primitive. He was powerful and wealthy, yet he certainly wasn’t predictable. His matter-of-fact response to her admission about her paternity had surprised her, and had removed some of the emotional sting from its tail—something she hadn’t thought possible. And wasn’t part of her grateful to him for that? Just as she was grateful for the almost effortless way he had just given her an orgasm.

  Her cheeks grew pink as she remembered the way she’d let him touch her and the way that had made her feel. She couldn’t carry on feeling daunted by his sexuality, could she? Despite what she suspected was a very selfish nature, he had just proved to be the most generous of lovers. And surely she should be generous back. How difficult could it be to give a man pleasure? Why not get it over with, so that it was out of the way and that she wouldn’t have to dread it any more?

  She lifted her hand to his face, letting her fingers slide over his sensual mouth, and even that brief touch felt electric. As she let her hand drift to the unopened neck of his silk shirt, she could see the suspicion which narrowed his eyes and her words of explanation came out in a breathy rush. ‘Maybe I’ve changed my mind,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe we could make love after all—if you say that your staff would be sure to leave us alone.’

  There was a split-second pause. A moment when she saw anger and frustration darken his face, before he swiftly removed her hand from his neck.

  ‘You think you can play with me, as a cat would a mouse?’ he demanded. ‘That I am a man who can be picked up and put down? Are you nothing more than a tease, Rosa?’

  ‘No!’ she protested. ‘I never meant to tease you. I was nervous, that’s all—but I think I’m over that now.’

  ‘Well, that’s too bad,’ he responded acidly, shifting his aching body away from her. Maybe it was time he showed her who she was dealing with—that he was not the kind of man to tolerate a spoiled little girl’s sexual games. His smile was cold. ‘It’s not going to happen. At least, not right now. The flight to Paris only takes fifty minutes and I’m afraid we’ve wasted most of them talking.’

  Rosa felt her heart clench. Wasted them? When she’d opened up to him like she’d never done to anyone else? When she’d let him touch her body as nobody had ever touched it before. When she’d decided that maybe she could trust him enough to tell him the truth about her parentage, only now it seemed that he was throwing it all back in her face. When would she ever learn that the only person she could really trust was herself?

  ‘How silly of me,’ she said lightly.

  ‘Very silly,’ he agreed, though the tremble of her lips made him briefly wonder whether it was worth telling the pilot to circle the plane so that he could indeed seduce her. Wouldn’t ridding himself of this terrible ache make such an indulgent breach worthwhile?

  And yet, hadn’t he been partially responsible for this very unsatisfactory turn of events? He had been leaning forward, about to kiss her, when he had been arrested by the look on her face as he had touched her so intimately. He had never seen a reaction so instant nor so rapturous and hadn’t he just watched her with a kind of dazed voyeurism, instead of undressing her and starting to make love to her?

  He shifted his body as he decided against a delayed landing. Maybe it was better this way. The fantasies he had been building about his feisty little Sicilian should be enjoyed in slow time—not in some rushed explosion of need in the rather limited confines of an aircraft.

  He snapped shut his seat belt and subjected her to a cool stare. ‘In life, I find that timing is everything. Maybe that’s something you should bear in mind for the future, Rosa.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  KULAL’S BREATH CAUGHT in his throat as Rosa entered the Damask reception room of the Zahrastanian Embassy, looking like a vision in her bridal finery. He stared at her, finding it hard to reconcile the pole-dancing temptress with the woman walking slowly towards him. By necessity, the white gown she wore was modest, covering her entire body so that only her hands and her neck were left bare. Her dark hair was coiled on top of her head and the lace-trimmed veil was held in place by a priceless diamond-and-ruby tiara from the Al-Dimashqi collection.

  Inexplicably, he felt the sudden twist of his heart, for she looked … His gaze drifted over her and he gave a small shake of his head. She looked beautiful. More beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen and he wondered if his senses were inevitably heightened by the significance of the ceremony which was about to take place.

  They had been apart ever since his car had dropped her off at the Plaza Athénée Hotel yesterday, after a tense and silent journey from the airport. He had spent the night alone at his own apartment, simmering with a sexual frustration which was completely new to him. Naked, he had tossed and turned in his vast bed while the events of that bizarre flight to Paris had taunted him. Rosa had refused to have sex with him, and had then inexplicably changed her mind, just before coming in to land. He had never met such a capricious woman before!

  The wedding had been scheduled—without fanfare—to take place within hours of their arriving in the French capital because he didn’t want the world’s press to get wind of it. Inevitably, word would get out sooner or later and then the palace’s slick PR machine could whirr into action. But someone must have talked—the way they always did—which had meant that he’d been forced to clear a path through the waiting photographers who’d been standing outside the embassy when he had arrived earlier.

  But now his bride was here and any lingering misgivings he might have been harbouring were dissolved by that tentative look she was slanting at him from behind the misty cover of her veil. How well she played the part, he thought approvingly. That faux shyness was remarkably convincing and he knew that the embassy officials would approve of her demure appearance.

  ‘Rosa,’ he said as he stepped forward and raised her hand to his lips.

  Rosa could feel his warm breath on her fingertips and the tantalising promise of his touch only added to her general feeling of disorientation. Even discounting the fact that she was standing in an exquisite bridal gown in the middle of the Zahrastanian Embassy, the man she had agreed to marry now looked like a stranger. Today, his playboy reputation and urbane appearance were nothing but distant memories. The immaculately cut suit had been replaced by a flowing garment of white silk and his hair was covered with a headdress of the same colour, held in place by an intricately knotted band of golden thread. He looked dark and indomitable, and the starkness of his robes seemed to emphasise the chiselled contours of his face.

  Rosa swallowed down a feeling of nerves. ‘The place is swarming with press,’ she said.

  Kulal shrugged. ‘Weddings are news, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Particularly a wedding involving a sheikh who was recently engaged to someone else and particularly if he’s marrying a woman from a notorious family,’ she answered drily. Rosa stared down at the sparkle of her brand-new ruby-and-diamond ring, which had been hastily despatched to her hotel by motorcycle courier late last night. She supposed there might have been less romantic ways for a man to give a woman an engagement ring, but right now she couldn’t think of one. She looked up into his face and once again she couldn’t help herself from being stirred by his proud, dark beauty. ‘I can’t imagine how my family are going to react when they find out what I’ve done.’

  ‘They’re going to have to accept it because they’ll have no choice. And you’ll no longer have to fear their influence, Rosa, since from now on you will
come under my protection.’

  Protection. It was a word which meant different things to different people, but it had particular resonance for someone from Sicily and Rosa gave him an ironic smile. ‘One cage exchanged for another, you mean?’ she questioned lightly, glancing up at the high, moulded ceilings of the exquisite embassy room. ‘Even if this cage is considerably more gilded than the one I knew at home.’

  ‘You seem to forget that this marriage is nothing but a temporary arrangement,’ he said softly. ‘One which has been manufactured to satisfy our critics. It’s not as if it’s going to be a lifetime commitment.’

  Kulal’s words nagged at her conscience throughout the short service which followed and Rosa thought about the woman he’d previously been engaged to. Had she heard about this wedding and was she lying and sobbing her heart out on some faraway pillow, thinking about the man who got away?

  And then, rather more selfishly, Rosa thought about herself, knowing that she was here on false pretences, in more ways than one. She held out her hand so that Kulal could slip on the glittering diamond wedding band, knowing that he’d be expecting great things from her in the bedroom and she wondered how he was going to react when he discovered the truth. What was he going to say when he discovered that the only thing she knew about sex was that amazing orgasm she’d had on the plane?

  ‘You may now kiss the bride,’ said the celebrant.

  Rosa stared up into the gleam of Kulal’s eyes and held her breath as she waited, but the swift, almost perfunctory graze of his mouth over hers left her feeling oddly rejected.

  Her disappointment was so great that she summoned up the courage to rise up on tiptoe to put her lips close to his ear. ‘That wasn’t much of a kiss.’

  ‘I agree that it was briefer than any kiss I have ever given any woman, but I fear that once I start kissing you, I may not be able to stop.’ He linked his fingers in hers and gave them a squeeze, putting his lips to her ear so that nobody else could hear. ‘And perhaps it would be inappropriate for me to ruck up that pretty dress and take you unceremoniously against the wall, which is what I feel like doing.’