by Lynne Graham
CHAPTER NINE
ELLA AGONISED FOR what remained of the afternoon over the thorny question of whether or not she had the right to ask Zarif awkward questions.
It was a matter of decency, she told herself. She wasn’t prepared to have sex with a male who might still intend to engage in encounters with other women at the first opportunity. The sick feeling in her stomach was disgust at that suspicion, nothing more personal. She was not hurt or jealous. To experience either reaction, she would have to be in love with Zarif and only the most stupid woman in the world would have fallen in love with a man who only wanted her body in his bed for a year. And she was, most assuredly, not stupid. Zarif had never had deeper feelings for her and what you didn’t have, you could hardly miss. In fact, a sexual affair conducted on the lines of the utmost practicality and honesty was much less dangerous than one wrapped in honeyed lies and pretences.
Thus bolstered by a fine head of superior steam interlaced with deep abiding shame at her brother’s threats, Ella sat down to dinner with Zarif and simply placed her phone in front of him, opened up so that Jason’s texts could easily be read. ‘You said we should be honest with each other, so I thought you should see this.’
In smouldering silence, Zarif studied the screen, beautiful wilful mouth twisting with derision, but Ella also noticed the hint of pallor that had paled his golden skin and the tension that steadily entered his big powerful frame.
‘I will deal with this. Don’t respond,’ he instructed smoothly. ‘But I think Jason will find it a great challenge to sell another story about either of us. My legal team has already demonstrated my zeal with regard to protecting your reputation in the British courts this week. The tabloid that printed that sleazy article on our wedding day will be printing a retraction and I am suing them for millions.’
Ella stuffed a lettuce leaf into her dry mouth and waited but that, it seemed, was that. Zarif mentioned how unexpectedly well Halim was doing on his new drug treatment and informed her that he had decided to extend their current accommodation into the suites on either side to give them more space. He then told her with a warm smile of amusement that her appearance in the council chambers that morning had made the headlines in the evening paper.
Indeed they had reached the dessert course of fresh fruit and cheese when Ella mastered her growing incredulity at his shocking ability to avoid the obvious and said dulcetly, ‘And that’s it? You’ve said all you intend to say about Jason’s allegations?’
Dark golden eyes set with stunning effect below winged ebony brows and a lush cloak of blacker than black lashes gazed in serene challenge back at her. ‘I answer to no one on the score of my private life,’ he declared smooth as velvet.
Temper bubbled up through Ella’s stiffening frame. ‘You answer to me!’ she contradicted without hesitation.
‘And why would you assume that?’ Zarif enquired in the mildest of tones, his handsome features taut with proud assurance and steadfast cool.
Ella thrust back her chair and stood up, her eyes electric blue with steadily mounting rage. ‘Because you married me.’
‘But it is not a conventional marriage. It is more one of convenience for both of us.’
Ella whirled round to face him so fast that her hair slapped against her cheeks. ‘I will not sleep with a man who is planning to sleep with other women!’
Zarif left the table at an infuriatingly leisurely pace and strolled forward. ‘Then you have no possible cause for concern. You are presently the only woman in my life or my bed.’
‘Couldn’t you just have told me that upfront?’ Ella almost screeched at him in vexation. ‘And ditched the macho need to tell me that I have no right to question your behaviour?’
‘My past is none of your business,’ Zarif stated on a note of distinct challenge. ‘You go beyond your boundaries when you try to question me.’
‘Do I indeed?’ Ella hurled back, trembling with rage. ‘Then maybe you should’ve spelt out those boundaries before we got married!’
‘A clear oversight for which I apologise,’ Zarif murmured as smoothly as ever.
‘There are times when I hate you!’ Ella launched at him full volume, her hands clenching into fists of frustration by her side.
‘I will not stand here while you shout at me,’ Zarif told her grimly, lean, strong face hard as iron as he strode towards the door.
‘If you run away sooner than answer my perfectly reasonable questions, I will see it as an act of extreme masculine cowardice,’ Ella informed him with fiery vehemence.
Temperamentally incapable of ignoring a charge of that magnitude, Zarif froze two steps from the door before swinging almost violently back round to survey her with glittering golden eyes of sheer fury. ‘How dare you?’
‘I dare because I want answers,’ Ella admitted grittily.
‘Even if you’re not entitled to them?’
‘The way I see it, I was entitled to answers the instant we shared a bed,’ Ella replied with a toss of her head. ‘Do you have an apartment in Dubai?’
Zarif considered the question for several burning seconds and compressed his lips. ‘I do. Have I kept women there? I have but it is presently empty,’ he concluded curtly.
‘And is it going to stay empty for the duration of our marriage?’ Ella prompted, more than a little relieved that he had chosen to respond.
‘For as long as you are with me,’ Zarif confirmed in a low-pitched growl, his brooding rancour over her persistence unhidden in the stubborn set of his jaw line and the angled-back height of his proud dark head.
A touch mollified, Ella nodded. ‘But you did keep women there?’ she could not resist asking, her curiosity thrusting to the fore naked and embarrassing in its strength.
‘One at a time,’ Zarif divulged, lean, strong face set hard. ‘I have needs like any other man. I will not apologise for that.’
Ella studied him with a sinking heart, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. ‘Tell me, how did I escape an invite to occupy the apartment in Dubai?’
Zarif vented a harsh laugh. ‘I wanted to see more of you—an ambition that is presently ebbing fast.’
Ella felt the bite of that derisive dismissal like a knife piercing her breast. This was her lover talking down to her as if she was nothing, nobody, virtual mud below his royal feet. This was not the respect he had promised her. ‘On both sides,’ she stressed tightly. ‘But it’s perfectly obvious to me that all I am is your mistress within marriage.’
‘If that is true,’ Zarif countered with a raw edge to his deep dark drawl, ‘then go and wait for me in bed and put on something sexy before you go there because I am in the mood to play and dispel the memory of this distasteful scene.’
‘You can go take a running jump into the nearest sand dune!’ Ella launched back at him in outraged disbelief.
The door opened on the servants entering to clear the table. Zarif was rigid and the silence smouldered and crackled like an invisible fire. His stunning eyes were a ferocious golden blaze of unashamed fury.
‘Or not,’ Ella framed, just a little unnerved by the unholy temper she could see him restraining for she had never, ever seen him lose it.
‘A word?’ With an imperious signal of one lean brown hand, Zarif virtually ordered her out into the corridor where he lowered his arrogant dark head to say, ‘Three years ago I asked you to marry me and you said no. Do not expect to enjoy the same privileges that I would have offered you then,’ he advised grimly. ‘That time is past.’
He was a bad loser, Ella translated, a little shiver of foreboding travelling down her taut spine. ‘I think I liked you better back then.’
‘But not enough to marry me.’
You stupid, stupid man, I loved you! she almost screamed after him as he strode off, shoulders back, military carriage obvious in every angle of
his bearing. She went out to the gardens to walk at a fast pace. She had to do something to expel the billows of rage still shrieking around inside her in need of an exit. The two guards following her down every path taxed her patience as she could not imagine that any possible ill could befall her in a literal fortress surrounded by high walls and enough armed men to fight a war. Her temper under control again, she opted for a long bath and an early night.
She could not stop thinking about the apartment in Dubai where Zarif had clearly been entertained by a steady procession of women. Sexually sophisticated women, who would think nothing of putting on adventurous lingerie to titillate him. Women who probably did exactly what he told them every time because they were eager to please and be rewarded for their obedience. Shallow, superficial affairs, she decided heavily. Yet Zarif, as proven by his deep attachment to his first wife, was capable of so much more.
Only he didn’t want more, particularly not with Ella, who had once turned him down. He wanted only convenient sex, and her wedding ring simply put a stamp of respectability on the arrangement. In reality, however, she was as much of a whore as the women he had kept in the Dubai apartment, she reflected wretchedly. She might think that she did not have a submissive bone in her body but she had pretty much done exactly as she was told from the minute she agreed to marry him. And why had she agreed? For the cold, hard cash that had put her parents’ lives back on the rails. Consequently, she had no right to feel superior in any way to Zarif’s mistresses. He had recognised that at heart she was just the same as his other sexual partners and willing to do whatever it took if the reward was great enough, so how could she ask for respect?
Zarif came to bed late and stayed on his own side of the bed while Ella pretended to be asleep. She was ashamed of the facts he had forced her to face and deeply unhappy at the position she had put herself in because she could see no escape hatch. In the morning Zarif was gone and that was the start of a very lonely three weeks during which Ella scarcely saw him. He breakfasted before she got out of bed, which relieved her as during the third week she realised that she seemed to be suffering from a lingering tummy bug, which she blamed on her new diet. She was nauseous several mornings and actually sick on a couple of occasions but was fine the rest of the time.
Unaware of those early morning travails, Zarif occasionally appeared for lunch, during which time he would make perfectly polite conversation, which chilled her. He went back to dining nightly with Halim. One morning he announced without any self-consciousness that he was flying out to a meeting in Dubai. She lay sleepless in bed that night, wondering if he had betrayed her trust because, while he was not sleeping with her, she did not think she could afford to assume that he would not seek relief with someone else. She kept busy during the days, reading and bathing in the giant deserted swimming pool in the basement that had once housed the harem. She also embarked on lessons in Arabic and wandered aimlessly round the shopping malls, rarely buying anything but frequently photographed.
During the second week, Zarif’s uncle came unexpectedly to her rescue by asking her through the medium of Hamid if she would like to preside over the official opening of a new school. Realising that a positive response would be expected of her, she agreed and then fretted about what to say and do at the event until Hamid offered her his wife, Soraya, as an advisor.
Soraya gave her invaluable help. The other woman helped her write a short speech, taught her to say it word perfect in Arabic and even advised her on what to wear. Ella made the visit, inwardly quaking with nerves, but soon relaxed at the friendly response she received and she loved chatting with the children, who wanted to practise their English on her. She managed to smile for the photographers and was feeling both proud and defiant by the time she returned to the old palace.
‘You did well today at the school,’ Zarif startled her by saying when he was undressing for bed. ‘Everyone was impressed.’
The sudden break of his icy reserve disconcerted her. ‘I didn’t know you were aware of it.’
‘Who do you think suggested it to Halim?’
Ella flushed and felt foolish. She watched his silhouette, which was starkly apparent in the moonlight piercing the drapes. As he dropped the towel he wore round his hips she glimpsed the long thick length of his erection and stared before hastily shutting her eyes tight. Perhaps he hadn’t had his needs met in Dubai, after all. But then she hadn’t had her needs met either, she thought impatiently, pressing the swollen tenderness of her breasts into the mattress and clamping her thighs tight shut on the ache stirring there.
It was all his wretched fault, Ella decided angrily. She had managed fine without sex until Zarif appeared on her horizon like a battleship bent on a seek-and-destroy mission. Now the scent of his cologne, the memory of their lovemaking or even the sounds he made getting ready for bed lit a fire of treacherous longing in her pelvis. She told herself that it was good to know that he was suffering too and that his self-control was little better than her own. But she still cursed the fact that he had refused to let her occupy a room of her own. And then she thought, Why should he have it all his own way?
In a movement that startled Zarif she flung back the sheet and flipped over to study him. His long, lean, aroused body lay extended for her perusal and the fire inside her leapt higher, a surge of wetness moistening her feminine core. Before she could even think about what she was doing she pressed her mouth to the smooth, muscular expanse of his bronzed stomach. The salty taste of his skin went to her head like wine and the way he jerked in surprise sent a wicked smile of amusement across her mouth.
One hand resting on a hair-roughened thigh, she trailed the tip of her tongue along the length of his bold shaft and felt every muscle in his body snap taut. She traced his hard, velvet-smooth contours with lingering enjoyment, a sense of power flooding her when he laced his fingers into her hair and arched his hips up to her in ready acquiescence. As she sucked him deep he groaned out loud and she wanted to punch the air at finally smashing through the icy deadlock barrier of his reserve. Long fingers caressed her scalp.
Zarif was in shock but incredibly turned on by her unexpected sensual assault. Once or twice he winced when she grazed him with her teeth and then suddenly he smiled triumphantly at her down-bent head, guessing that he was very probably the first man in her life to benefit from her attention. As the intensity rose he gently tugged at her hair. ‘No more, habibti,’ he husked. ‘I want to finish inside you...’
A little uncertainly, Ella lifted her head and he sat up so fast and claimed her mouth in a searing kiss that she felt dizzy but unbelievably eager for him to continue.
‘I’ve been such a fool,’ Zarif groaned, flattening her to the mattress with more haste than finesse and sliding between her slender thighs with barely contained eagerness. ‘I’m too proud, too used to winning every argument. Azel never argued with me, never confronted me.’
‘That was bad for you,’ Ella breathed on the back of a long dragged-out gasp as he pushed up her hips and plunged into her with a stirring groan of appreciative hunger that she felt down to her toes.
‘You’re good for me,’ Zarif intoned hoarsely, circling his hips to longer enjoy the hot, tight, wet depth of her welcome. He shifted into a series of fast, deep thrusts that drove all prospect of dialogue from her head.
Every mad skip of her heartbeat and every impelling plunge of his possession was breathlessly, insanely exciting. He laboured long and hard over her yearning body and she came in a great pulsating surge of release, his name breaking from her lips as he shuddered over her.
They lay still, wrapped tightly together, both of them struggling for breath.
‘You had a right to ask those questions,’ he conceded wryly. ‘But although I should stop the tasteless comparisons, Azel never asked and I’m not accustomed to full and frank discussions of that nature.’
Stunned by his sudden loquaciousn
ess on the forbidden topic of Azel, Ella lay as still as a mouse facing up to a cat. ‘She never asked you if you were faithful to her?’
‘She was probably aware that I had been told I didn’t have to be faithful when I agreed to marry her. Her parents would have prepared her for that eventuality. They left nothing to chance. We were pawns in a much bigger game. Halim might not have got the throne but his consolation was that his daughter would become my queen.’ Zarif sighed.
‘Was she ambitious for that status?’ Ella whispered.
‘No. She genuinely loved me,’ Zarif conceded, rolling back from her to throw himself into a cooler spot on the bed. He stretched out a hand though and enclosed hers. Suddenly the future no longer seemed so threatening and uncertain. The silence stretched and it was a strangely soothing silence. Ella slid slowly into a deep sleep, more relaxed and happier than she had been in weeks.
* * *
‘You mean, this is not the first time?’ Zarif exclaimed, unfurling his cell phone to contact Halim’s doctor and furious that he had been left out of the loop. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Oh, do go away and stop fussing, Zarif,’ Ella groaned as she endeavoured to freshen up at the sink after a bout of sickness had sent her careening out of bed straight into the bathroom where the very last thing she had wanted was an audience. ‘It’s only a little tummy upset...probably the change of diet. I’m eating so much spice.’
‘I will hire a British cook if this is the result. How often has this happened?’ Zarif demanded, directing a stream of Arabic at the two hovering maids, nodding, compressing his wide sensual mouth as the answers came and confirmed his worst suspicions. His lean, devastatingly handsome face darkened along with his mood.
‘You’re going back to bed,’ Zarif informed Ella, scooping her up and carrying her back into the bedroom where he laid her down with great care.