A Whisper of Disgrace

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘Going is the last thing I want,’ she said, and knew she hadn’t imagined the long breath which escaped from his lips.

  ‘Then what do you want?’

  She took the edge of the linen sheet and began to pleat it between her fingers, because that was easier than looking into those piercing black eyes. She recognised that she wasn’t ready to go it alone—at least, not yet. Not when the world outside Sicily still seemed such a big and frightening place. Wasn’t the whole point of this bizarre marriage that Kulal could give her something which nobody else could? Not just the money which was going to buy her independence, but a sexual education which had only just begun. And why should anything be allowed to spoil the best thing that had ever happened to her?

  Looking up, she pushed the heavy fall of hair back from her face and the movement caused her heavy breasts to sway. She saw him shift a little and her attention was caught by the growing erection between his thighs and in that moment she felt shy and powerful, all at the same time. ‘I want you to teach me everything you know.’

  He stared at her, knowing that he should distance himself from her and yet how could he when she looked so damned gorgeous? How could he force her to leave when he wanted her so much that he felt he could explode with need? He could smell the lingering scent of sex on the air and could feel the erratic beat of his heart as he leaned forward and bent his lips to her neck. ‘Anything specific you have in mind?’ he questioned unevenly. ‘The history of Zahrastan, maybe? Or the new energy proposals I’m setting out next week?’

  She tipped her head back. ‘About pleasure,’ she whispered through dry lips. ‘Teach me everything you know about pleasure. I’ll be your wife and one day I will walk out of your life. But in the meantime …’

  ‘What?

  She wriggled again, more impatiently this time. ‘Please?’

  He drew back to see the sudden rush of colour to her cheeks and something made him want to show her who was in charge. To show her that, ultimately, he was the one who called all the shots. And perhaps the first lesson she needed to learn was how to articulate her own desires, instead of expecting him to second-guess them. Because only that way would she ever be truly independent. ‘Please, what?’ he prompted softly.

  Rosa met the dark gleam of his eyes, and swallowed. ‘Please will you do it to me again?’

  CHAPTER NINE

  KULAL STROKED HIS fingertips over the silken curtain of dark hair which lay spread all over the pillow and felt the inevitable hardening of his body.

  ‘I know you’re awake, Rosa,’ he said softly. ‘So why don’t you open your eyes and kiss me?’

  Rosa stirred as the sheikh’s voice penetrated her dreamy thoughts and, obediently, she let her eyelashes flutter open. He was lying next to her, propped up on one elbow—deliciously naked and gloriously virile, studying her body as if it was the most beautiful body he’d ever seen, which was what he had told her in the early hours of this morning as he had pulled her hungrily into his arms. Each morning she woke up to a similarly appreciative reaction, but it still took some getting used to.

  She pushed the blanket of mussed hair away from her face and yawned. ‘But I might have been asleep,’ she objected.

  He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘It’s nearly midday.’

  ‘And it’s Saturday. Or are you saying that it’s impossible for someone to be asleep if it’s nearly lunchtime?’

  ‘I knew you weren’t asleep because you’ve been wriggling that delicious bottom—’ he smiled as his arm snaked around her waist and he turned her around, so that his erection was pressing hard against her belly ‘—against me for the past half-hour. So it was a toss between going for a cold shower, or seeing if I might be able to get you to do something more interesting than sleeping.’

  She leaned forward, brushing her mouth against his and feeling the instant shimmer of lust which flamed over her skin. ‘You can always get me to do that,’ she said, her voice sounding almost shy as he cupped her buttocks to pull her closer. But wasn’t it insane to feel shy, when in the few short weeks since their marriage Kulal had stripped her bare in just about every way there was?

  He had taught her so much. He had shown her that sex was something to be enjoyed and savoured, not something furtive and shameful. In short, he had liberated her from a lot of her own hang-ups and all she was trying to do now was avoid getting too dependent on a man who was never intended to be anything other than a temporary fixture. ‘In fact, you can get me to do just about anything,’ she finished softly, and saw his eyes darken.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘And I’d be happy with pretty much anything you’d care to do to me right now.’

  ‘Oh, Kulal.’

  ‘Oh, Rosa,’ he murmured back, and lowered his head to kiss her. He thought that her lips felt cool and tasted of the peppermint tea she’d brought back to bed when they’d first woken. Her arms tightened around him and the desire he felt grew stronger—his heart beating out a crazy rhythm as he pushed one hard thigh against the fleshy softness of hers. He thought how perfect she was in his arms, how their lovemaking just got better and better and pretty much took his breath away every time. And he thought how their honeymoon had surprised him in all kinds of ways.

  At first, they had barely left the apartment—with only the occasional trip to a theatre or a restaurant punctuating their lazy days and long nights of sexual exploration. For the first time in his life he had cleared his diary and turned off his phone—because he never took a holiday. Never. He told himself that it would be a useful experiment to see if his charitable foundation could function well without him, but deep down he knew that wasn’t the real reason. The truth was that he didn’t want to leave Rosa’s side. He couldn’t get enough of her; he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her. And when they had ventured out, he had felt like a tourist in his adopted city. She’d made him do things he would normally never have dreamt of doing, like climbing as far as it was possible up the Eiffel Tower—with his bodyguards trailing behind them. And when he had remonstrated that he did not wish to join in with other sightseers, she had halted his objections simply by kissing him.

  ‘You’re never too cool to see the whole of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower,’ she’d giggled against his lips. And later that week they had taken a riverboat down the Seine and she had looked up the name of all the bridges in her guidebook and recited them to him. They’d sat and drunk coffee incognito at the famous Café de Flore and made two similarly unrecorded trips to the theatre. In fact, they’d managed to avoid a single press photographer capturing any honeymoon images and to Kulal this had felt like a small triumph—especially when he’d realised that she actually hadn’t been interested in being photographed with him.

  He’d even taken her shopping—something he’d never done before, although he’d picked up plenty of inflated bills in his time. But with Rosa it was different. She didn’t seem bothered about the cost of things and he enjoyed dressing his new wife with clothes which befitted a princess. Just as he enjoyed buying—and removing—the outrageous scraps of silken underwear which could barely contain her luscious curves.

  He still couldn’t get his head around it. What was the appeal of lying next to her and just watching her—as if the sight of the slow inhalation and exhalation of her breath was the single most fascinating spectacle in the world? Usually he absented himself pretty early, because he didn’t like women hanging around him in the morning. He liked his space and his privacy. He liked the feeling of being alone—the way he’d always been.

  But not with Rosa—and he was still trying to work out why.

  Was it because she gave herself to him so completely? Because she was all his and only his—like a newly minted coin which had been held by no other person? With her, he felt primeval. Something possessive and powerful gripped him whenever he held her, something which battered at his senses like a raging storm. Perhaps that was the ancient power of the marriage vows—that no matter how carelessly the words
had been spoken, they still managed to convey a profound significance to the couple involved.

  He moved his head down between her thighs, hearing her breathless little gasp of anticipation as he began to lick her. He revelled in the taste of her sweet-sharp stickiness and the way that his fingers sank into her soft hips—just as he revelled in her orgasm as she bucked helplessly beneath his tongue. He stayed there for a while, his lips pressed hard against her until at last she grew still and then he moved over her, and into her. He closed his eyes as he lost himself in her slick heat. Allowed the urgent rhythm to spiral them both up to a place so high that the slow and incredible fall back to earth left him breathless, and spent.

  He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes it was to the smell of strong coffee and the sight of Rosa sitting on the window seat in a silken robe the colour of claret, with the glory of Paris framing her like an Impressionist painting.

  ‘I’ve made you some coffee,’ she said.

  ‘I can smell it.’ He sat up as she placed it on the table beside the bed. ‘You make the best coffee in the world.’

  ‘This is true,’ she said seriously. ‘Because I’m Sicilian and we do the best of everything.’ But as Rosa lifted the pot to pour her own coffee, she was aware of how hollow her words sounded. She used to revel in her Sicilian roots and identity, with the fierce pride which had been drummed into her ever since she could remember. Being born and raised on the beautiful Mediterranean island had always given her a feeling of belonging. She’d felt part of her family and also part of the bigger island community, which had always existed there. But not any more. Her mother’s betrayal seemed to have had even wider-reaching repercussions than she’d originally anticipated. Not only had her relationships within the family been dramatically altered, but a wall of silence seemed to have descended since Rosa’s dramatic flight from her homeland.

  ‘Have you heard anything from your family?’ he questioned softly.

  Had he read her thoughts, or had her wistfulness shown on her face? She didn’t want to show him she was hurt because she was trying very hard not to be. But it did hurt that neither of her brothers had been in touch, even though she’d emailed them her new phone number and told them she was now married and living in Paris.

  ‘I’ve heard from Lia,’ she said slowly. ‘She’s the half-sister I never knew I had. The one I insulted after my mother had dropped her bombshell. I wrote and apologised for the way I lashed out at her and she was so sweet. She said she understood. She also said she’d always wanted a sister—she just hadn’t been expecting to find one quite so dramatically! But I guess we’ll never get to know each other now.’

  Kulal frowned. ‘There’s nothing stopping you going back to Sicily, you know—if you wanted to speak to them face to face,’ he said. ‘I could take you there, if it would help.’

  Rosa shook her head. And have everyone cluster round and want to find out about her glamorous new husband? She wasn’t that good an actress and somehow she couldn’t bear the pity she’d have to endure when her family discovered the truth of why they’d married. ‘I told you—I can’t imagine me ever wanting to go back. There’s no place for me there now. The person I used to be doesn’t exist any more.’

  Because the new Rosa was now a princess, even if it was only a very temporary role. She didn’t get to wear a crown but she got to share the bed of a man who was a real-life prince. A desert sheikh—a man who couldn’t seem to get enough of her … and much as she revelled in his attention, she knew it was getting dangerous. She’d been feeling that for days now. It happened every time she opened her eyes and saw him lying next to her and it continued throughout the day. She hugged the memory of their lovemaking to her like a delicious present. She’d never felt so contented—nor ecstatic—in her whole life and she knew that it would be madness to allow her feelings for Kulal to grow.

  But how did you stop yourself feeling something when your heart was determined to do the opposite? She picked up her cup and sipped her coffee. She could not afford to get too attached to her husband, because one day they were going to split. She knew that. She’d signed that damned pre-nup, hadn’t she? The one which offered her a massively generous amount of money, in exchange for a ‘clean break’ settlement? She just needed to train herself to get used to that bald fact and to maintain some kind of emotional distance.

  She tried telling herself she was okay with it, when Kulal announced that their honeymoon was over and that he was planning to return to work at his foundation the following Monday. But the reality was that she’d wanted to cling to him and beg him not to go and that feeling had scared her more than her very real dilemma—about how to usefully spend her days while he was working.

  ‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do all day in Paris, with you back at the office full-time,’ she said.

  He glittered her a smile. ‘Do more of what you did in Sicily. You were a lady of leisure there, weren’t you?’

  Rosa didn’t let her smile slip, even though it wasn’t the most flattering way to describe her former life. It was true she hadn’t had a career, though she’d been awarded a respectable languages degree from the University of Palermo. But it had been difficult to find a job which hadn’t been vetoed by her controlling family. She’d done bits of interpreting work whenever she could, but opportunities were scarce. So she’d ended up with a part-time administrative job at the university where she’d studied—and it had felt a bit like stepping back in time. As if she hadn’t progressed much beyond the student she’d once been.

  ‘I wasn’t exactly a lady of leisure,’ she defended. ‘I did have a part-time job—’

  ‘Well, there’s no need for you to have a part-time job now,’ he said, a touch impatiently. ‘Just enjoy your days and let me pick up the bill.’

  Rosa tried not to feel offended by his dismissive words just as she tried to throw herself into her new life as a stay-at-home Parisian wife. She explored more of Paris and the many attractions it had to offer. She walked everywhere—always tailed by the ubiquitous bodyguard—and began to gain the confidence which came from learning the geography of a once-strange city. In the mornings she took in a gallery or an exhibition, and in the afternoons she went to see a film and her once-fluent French began to improve as a consequence.

  But she got a distinct sense that she was simply filling in time, that she was becoming like many of the other rich expatriates who counted away their hours with culture. She began to look forward to Kulal’s homecoming with more enthusiasm than she told herself was wise. He didn’t want an eager woman throwing herself at him like an underexercised puppy whenever he came home from work, did he? He wanted a woman who’d had an interesting day, because surely that way she’d be more interesting herself.

  One evening, he came back late from the office and went straight into the shower, and when he walked into the bedroom, Rosa was sitting in front of the dressing table in her bra and pants, blow drying her hair.

  ‘You haven’t forgotten we’re out to dinner tonight?’ he questioned, momentarily distracted by the sight of the lace-covered globes of her breasts.

  ‘No, of course I haven’t.’ She put the hairdryer down and watched his reflection as he began to rub a towel over his damp body. ‘We’re seeing someone from a TV company, am I right?’

  ‘You are. Actually, the executive producer of one of France’s most successful independent companies, who wants to make a documentary about Zahrastan.’

  She met his eyes in the mirror. ‘Maybe that’s a good thing—to place it in the minds of the public.’ She leaned forward and slicked some lipstick over her mouth. ‘I’d never heard of Zahrastan until I met you.’

  ‘Precisely.’ Roughly, he rubbed at his hair. ‘We need to let the world see that we’re not some big, bad oppressive dictatorship. The biggest problem was persuading my brother to allow a foreign crew to enter the country in order to film.’

  ‘And he was agreeable?’

  Kulal la
ughed. ‘Oddly enough, he was very agreeable—since he’s notoriously prickly about foreign opinion. But I think he’s decided that Zahrastan has to be seen as embracing the modern world.’

  ‘And do you.’ She hesitated, because since that first night, when he’d poured out the blame and guilt he’d felt about his mother’s death, he’d barely mentioned his brother. In fact, the frankness of that night had not been repeated, even though she had tentatively tried to get him to open up on more than one occasion. But he had blocked her moves with the skill of a seasoned chess player. She got the feeling that he had allowed her to see a rare chink in his armour and had no intention of repeating it and it frustrated the hell out of her. Because wasn’t it natural to want to chip away at that armour and see more of the real man beneath? Didn’t that kind of intimacy feel just as profound—maybe even more profound—as anything which they shared during sex? She sucked in a breath as she watched him pull on a white shirt. ‘Do you talk to your brother much?’

  He raised his eyebrows, as if she had somehow overstepped the mark. ‘Obviously we’ve spoken about the film crew. How else would I know his feelings on the subject?’

  The faint sarcasm which edged his words was new but Rosa wasn’t going to give up, because this was the first opportunity she’d had in ages. ‘I don’t mean about that. I mean, about … about what happened to your mother.’

  She saw him stiffen before his eyes suddenly became cool and watchful. Like a snake’s eyes, she found herself thinking as a little flutter of trepidation whispered over her skin.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I just thought—’

  ‘Well, don’t,’ he snapped. ‘Because there’s nothing left to say on the subject, Rosa. I thought we’d already decided that.’

  His words were steely—they sounded like a metal door being slammed—but Rosa wasn’t going to give up. She knew the danger of locking away painful things. You locked them away and they festered and then one day they all came bubbling out in a horrible mess. Wasn’t that what her own mother had done? ‘I just get the feeling that there’s so much between you which isn’t resolved. That maybe—’