‘Blame yourself,’ Rafiq murmured, and in the next moment she was pulled back into his lap.
‘Don’t!’ she protested.
‘Scared?’ he drawled. ‘Because you know your defences will not hold through one small kiss? Or is your pulse beating so fast because you are afraid that I won’t kiss you?’
‘No.’
He tested that denial with devastating consequences: the moment her lips clung he removed his own and watched her stare at his mouth like a hungry woman. One of his hands began to stroke her silk-covered thigh, left provokingly exposed by her slippery skirt. She moved against him, breasts searching for contact with his chest, her hips pressing into the cradle of his pelvis where the thrust of his erection was making itself known.
‘You don’t play fair,’ she groaned helplessly.
He just laughed low in his throat, then gave her back his mouth. It stayed this time, seducing with lazy dips of his tongue, while he undid the jacket buttons and removed it altogether. Beneath she wore a creamy white body. One light touch and he knew she was wearing no bra. ‘Interesting,’ he murmured as the hand began to follow the clinging outline of Lycra. When the waistband of her skirt stopped his progress he merely switched attention to the other hand and finished the journey via her thigh.
A single smooth slide between her thighs and he had released the tiny poppers that held the body in place.
‘Oh,’ she whimpered, when he discovered for himself how warm and moist she was. For the next few dizzying minutes she just hung on and let him work his seductive magic. She moved, she stretched, she curled herself around him, she moaned into his hungry mouth. He broke the kiss on a hiss of tension, caught her chin between his teeth and bit, then her throat, then her breasts, first one then the other, sucking at them through the Lycra. She clutched at his neck, his hair, the hair-roughened wrist attached to the tormenting hand. She begged, she pleaded, he growled something and came back to pester her mouth again at the precise moment she was threatening to topple headlong into the kind of orgasm that didn’t belong in this situation.
‘We can’t do this here,’ she whispered anxiously.
With a growl of impatience he pressed his body forward, taking hers with him as he reached for the in-car phone. A few husky words in Arabic and the car was sliding to a standstill. Ten seconds later, Melanie heard the thud of a car door and realised that the driver had left them alone.
Embarrassed heat flooded her cheeks. ‘He will know what we’re doing!’
He was way beyond the point of giving a care. His mouth claimed hers again; his hands claimed her hips. ‘Release me,’ he commanded in a throat-hoarse murmur.
‘I can’t.’
‘You can.’ Capturing one of her hands, he pressed it against himself. He was trembling as badly as she was, and maybe it was those tremors that stopped any more protest. A minute later she was straddling him, her mouth devouring his hot mouth while her body slowly took him in. She had never felt so wickedly wanton, had never thought she could behave like this. She moved while he held her slender hips steady; she copied the movement with her tongue. His breathing was ragged; the car filled with the scent of heat from their bodies. As she began to rise towards the edge, her inner muscles closed so tightly around him that he had to stop kissing her to throw back his dark head and close his eyes.
Pleasure like this could never be repeated, she found herself thinking as his hands reached up to frame her face and black eyelashes lifted to capture her eyes. She drove; he let her. It was a powerful, powerful aphrodisiac. When she leapt she cried out. When he followed he pulled her face into his shoulder and held her there throughout the ragged, pulsing finish until the weakness of exhaustion made her feel boneless.
They did not speak. Not then—not later, when eventually he gently eased himself from her and set her down on the seat at his side. Clothes rustled as shaking fingers replaced them into some semblance of dignity. Melanie kept her head lowered so her hair hid her hot face. She could sense the gravity shrouding Rafiq.
Cool air hit the interior as he let down the window. A minute later the car was moving again. The window remained open, though, circulating the hot air of seduction out of the car.
They turned in through a pair of high gates and began driving down a lane between a tunnel of trees with gnarled naked branches reaching out to tangle across the gap.
The car stopped. Rafiq climbed out and came around to open her door for her. Still without daring to look at him, she arrived at his side like a cracked piece of porcelain, in danger of shattering if anyone so much as spoke.
She found herself standing in front of huge sandstone monolith with tall sash windows and an oak front door. Beyond caring what this place was, she followed Rafiq to the door, which he unlocked with a key then stepped to one side, as if to invite her to precede him. She took a single step—that was all—before he was lifting her up in his big arms.
‘More tradition?’ she mocked shrilly.
‘For once in your life keep your mouth shut,’ he grimly advised her, and stepped over the threshold with his bride. He kicked the door shut again.
She gained a vague impression of oak panelling and iron fretwork, but most of her attention was honed on his taut profile as he proceeded to carry her up a stairway that curved around a panelled wall. They walked through an archway and down a dark red-carpeted corridor, passing more oak doors on their way. When they arrived at the one he was aiming for he opened it, then walked inside.
The room was so dramatically Gothic in design that she half expected to find a headless ghost standing in one of the shadowy corners. A fire burned in the grate of a big fireplace and a tray laid for coffee waited on a low table set between two richly upholstered wine-coloured velvet chairs. But what dominated the room was the huge and heavy oak four-poster bed hung with more wine-red velvet and, of all things, a dark purple throw made of silk.
The scene for a bridal seduction was set right down to the last detail—right down to the two matching black silk robes that lay draped across the foot of the bed. Shame, she thought cynically that they had pre-empted the moment; it had certainly spoiled all of this.
Allowing her feet to slip to a thick purple carpet, Rafiq then turned to close the door. ‘Sit down—pour yourself a drink,’ he invited.
She almost jumped when he spoke to her. She spun on her heel then wished she hadn’t done it when she found herself looking at a man at war with himself. He was yanking his tie loose with impatient fingers; the frown on his face was a definite scowl. Heat bloomed in her cheeks; shame choked her lungs. Turning away, she felt the sting of tears in her eyes.
‘I don’t like what you do to me,’ she breathed out painfully.
‘You surprise me. I had not noticed,’ he drawled.
It was derision of the crushing kind and the worst insult he could have offered her. Moving on legs that did not want to support her, Melanie went to the nearest chair and sank down.
He disappeared through a door near the bed and came back a few minutes later wearing only a long black robe. She glanced at the bed, saw that one robe was now missing. It was so glaringly obvious what he was intending to do next that she wished she had never been born.
But what made it worse was the low soft pulsing taking place between her thighs. She could still feel him there, hard and silken. She could still taste his kisses on her tongue. He took the other chair, saw she hadn’t touched the coffee pot and leant forward to pour it himself.
Silently, he handed a cup to her. With lowered eyes she took it. ‘Thank you,’ she breathed.
He huffed out a laugh. It brought her wary gaze up to clash head-on with his harshly mocking expression. ‘How can you manage to sound so prim when we both know that prim is the last thing that you are?’ he threw at her.
It was like being kicked when she was already down on the floor. ‘I don’t know how you can sit there and speak to me like this when you only married me an hour ago,’ she responded shakily.
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br /> ‘And was seduced by you half an hour later.’
‘You started it!’
‘You finished it!’ he raked back. ‘In the name of Allah I cannot believe I am even sitting here with you! You are poison to a man like me.’
‘Oh.’ She stood up. ‘How dare you say that?’
‘Your step-cousin says I can say what the hell I like to you.’
He looked hard and dark and dangerously foreign. His anger and contempt washed over her in waves. Senses that just should not respond to this man she was seeing stung her with their awful message.
‘I n-need to use the bathroom.’ She turned away dizzily.
‘You need an escape.’
‘I hate you!’ she cried.
He launched to his feet. She dropped her cup and ran towards the door he had used a few minutes ago as a dark coffee stain seeped into her skirt. Slamming the door shut behind her, she expected to find herself standing in a bathroom and instead found her eyes flickering round a room full of clothes. Men’s clothes, women’s clothes—rails and rails of them. It took only a glance at a couple of dresses for her to realise that every female item in here was so new it still wore its label.
Bought for her? She couldn’t be sure. Didn’t even think she wanted to know. They were her size and that was all that she cared about, since she didn’t have anything else to wear and she needed to get out of this stupid wedding outfit that made such a mockery of the word marriage—and which was impregnated with the scent of him!
With trembling fingers she stripped the suit from her body and had just removed the wretched Lycra body when the door opened. She spun, clutching that silly scrap of material to her. ‘Get out!’ she shrieked at him.
With his usual arrogance he ignored the instruction. Instead he tossed something at her. She had to drop the body to catch it. It was the black wrap that matched the one he was wearing. It felt like the final humiliation to have him stand there viewing her through cold opal eyes as she fumbled on the robe over her near nakedness and dragged the two pieces of black silk across her body, tightly knotted the belt.
‘Tell me about Jamie,’ he demanded remorselessly.
He just was not going to give up!
‘Which version would you really like to hear, Rafiq?’ she flashed at him. ‘The one where I admit to going from your arms to his arms with no conscience? Or the one where I tell you just how fickle you were—how easy you were to dupe and how badly you let me down when you dared to believe I could play such calculating games?’
His dark face tightened, big shoulders flexing at her bitterly deriding tone. ‘The truth,’ he gritted. ‘Just tell me the truth!’
The truth? She almost laughed, though she’d never felt less like laughing. She wasn’t that sure that he could take the truth! Did she actually care any more whether his pride was up to weathering the blow she could deliver it?
No, she didn’t, she realised. He had called her poison. Well, maybe it was time he discovered just how poisonous she could be. So she lifted her face and looked at him squarely.
‘The truth is that you were set up,’ she said. ‘Uncle Thomas and Jamie always knew I would inherit from William. William actually paid my uncle money for my keep. Uncle Thomas was greedy; he wanted to get his hands on all of William’s money. But the only way he could do that was if he kept it in the family. He encouraged a romance between Jamie and me. I refused to play. They didn’t like it. Tensions in the house became pretty grim. I decided I needed to get away and started hiring myself out to the local gentry to earn some extra money so I could leave the farm. Which was how I came to meet you.’ She released a short laugh which stung with mockery, for never in a hundred years would a woman like her normally have come into contact with a man like Rafiq. ‘You swept me off my feet and into bed, even asked me to marry you.’
‘And you saw your quick escape from drudgery?’
Her eyes widened on this darkly handsome, beautifully put together man who could harbour such a huge inferiority complex. ‘If I’d known about William’s money it would not have changed anything. Haven’t you noticed yet that I don’t have much use for the stuff?’
‘Unless you want to give it away to your step-cousin.’
He was mixing the past up with the present. ‘Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?’ she demanded.
A muscle in his jaw clenched tightly. He gave a grim nod of his head. ‘I said yes to your proposal,’ she continued tightly. ‘And was then left with the unhappy task of breaking the news to Uncle Thomas and Jamie. They saw their chance of getting their hands on William’s money slipping away, so they decided to do something about it.’
‘I saw you with him in your bedroom.’ His dark eyes were glinting as if he could still see them there. ‘You were standing in your bedroom window, locked in each other arms.’
‘I was locked in his arms!’ Melanie flashed out the distinction.
He didn’t believe her. ‘Brazen,’ he gritted. ‘You were kissing as if you couldn’t get enough of each other!’
He was right; the kiss had been fevered. Jamie had been feverishly trying to seduce her while she had been trying to get away! ‘I was young and a complete fool,’ she admitted cynically. ‘I actually believed that Jamie truly loved me. I was attempting to let him down gently because I believed I was hurting him!’
‘In your bathrobe. It was gaping.’ His eyes were black with accusation.
‘It was not!’ she denied, paused to think about that, then had to offer a small shrug. ‘Maybe a little,’ she conceded. ‘Things were getting a little out of hand, and I—’
‘A little?’ he cut in. ‘Do you believe a little should mean something here?’
The jeering tone of his voice straightened her backbone. She looked into his hard, condemning face and wanted to hit him! ‘Well, you tell me what you think it means, Rafiq,’ she challenged. ‘Or don’t I need to ask?’ It was written on his face! ‘Because you saw me locked in that embrace with Jamie you just had to believe that I must be enjoying it! Didn’t it occur to you for one small second that I might not have had much choice in the matter?’
‘So you were the victim?’ His tone derided her.
‘As much as you were,’ she replied.
‘I know your passions,’ he countered gruffly.
Melanie released a hard laugh. ‘I suppose I should have expected a man from your culture to think like that,’ she murmured bitterly.
‘Meaning?’
‘Primitive!’ she flashed at him. ‘I let you make love to me so, in your primitive view, it therefore goes without saying that I would let any man do that same!’
‘I never said that.’
‘You don’t need to say it when I see it written on your face every time you look at me,’ she denounced. ‘The day I let you into my bed I lost your respect.’
Her shrug said she no longer cared that she had. As she began to walk towards him, Rafiq stiffened in the doorway. He had never seen her look upon him with such open dislike. ‘I was twenty years old,’ she said as she reached him. ‘I let you take something very special from me. It should have meant something to you, but it didn’t or you could not have walked away.’
‘Your own uncle stood beside me as I watched you with Jamie. He told me things I would have been a fool to—’
‘He lied,’ she stated with a cool, quiet simplicity, then brushed past him to go back into the bedroom. Rafiq turned to watch her walk across the room with her shoulders straight and her slender shape shimmering with contempt for him.
The coffee cup still lay on its side on the carpet, a dark stain seeping outwards from its rim. He stood watching as she stooped to pick up the cup then reach for a napkin to mop up the stain. The soft fall of her hair curled around her slender nape and caressed the edges of the black silk robe. He could see her profile, delicate and pure in its smooth lines, even while her lovely mouth still pursed with dislike. Something shifted inside him—not sexual this time, but more a shifti
ng of other desires—a desire to drop his guard and let himself believe what he knew deep down inside was the damning truth.
Because if what she had told him was the truth then it damned him and not Melanie. Because she was right and he had been fickle, easy to dupe. Most damning of all, he had let her down in the worst way a man could let down the woman he professed to love.
Primitive. He almost laughed. For primitive hardly covered the way he had behaved—if she was telling him the truth. At home in Rahman women might not enjoy the same equal rights as their western counterparts, but they did have the right to defend themselves when accused of a crime. He had denied Melanie even this basic right.
And in so doing he had forfeited the love she’d used to feel for him—and seven years of his son’s life. Which left him with what? he had to ask himself. A marriage filled with bitterness and resentment? A wife who would never be a real wife to him unless he could accept her truth and put the past behind him?
Patiently pressing the napkin into the coffee stain, Melanie could feel his silence with every pulse of her heartbeat. She could sense his battle with every frail breath that she took. He had a choice; they both knew it. He must believe her or not believe her. She had no proof she could pull like a rabbit from a magic hat.
There were words, of course—lots more words. Were they worth uttering?
‘They knew what time you were coming to collect me that evening.’ She gave the words a chance. ‘By the time you pulled into the farmyard the whole scene had been set so perfectly that I didn’t really stand a chance. When I was allowed to turn and see you standing there, you were already turning away. I caught the next train to London…’
She paused in what she was doing and let the next ugly scene play inside the privacy of her own head. By the way he moved over, to stand frowning out of the window, so did Rafiq, she suspected.
‘When I arrived back at the farm Uncle Thomas and Jamie were having this big row and I heard enough to know how neatly we had been set up. Jamie admitted his part in it before I walked out of there for good. He felt guilt…’ Because I was so distraught. She did not say it out loud.
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