Some time later—she wasn’t sure how much because time seemed to have slowed and entered a completely different dimension—she came back down to earth. Her fingers had somehow burrowed inside his suit jacket and she was nestled up close to his chest, like an abandoned kitten who’d unexpectedly been given warmth and shelter. As if she’d found her own little portion of paradise. She could hear the beat of his heart against her ear and it felt as though up until that moment she’d only ever been a shadow of the person she was meant to be. As if a whole new Jane had emerged into a world where everything seemed different. She opened her eyes and looked around. The colours in the room looked more intense. The ticking of the grandfather clock sounded like music to her ears. But when she glanced across at him, she saw he was staring at the ceiling, his profile like granite.
‘Zayed?’ she said hesitantly.
He turned his head to look at her but she could read nothing in the blackness of his eyes.
‘Better?’
His words were a shock—no doubt about it—and her intense feelings of pleasure began to shut down. He’d made what had just happened sound like an itch she’d needed to scratch, or a hunger she’d had to feed. Was that how he saw it—as nothing but a very physical response?
And what if he did?
This wasn’t real, she reminded herself fiercely. Did she really want him murmuring meaningless words of affection which would fill her with a hope she had no right to feel? No, she did not. There was nothing wrong with experiencing pleasure for pleasure’s sake and she would match his attitude with a coolness of her own.
Stretching her arms above her head, she knew she wasn’t imagining the watchful flicker in his eyes but now wasn’t the time to give into the stupid urge which was making her long to shower his hawkish face with a million soft, little kisses. Because that was nothing but a hormonal reaction to what had just happened—the logical side of her brain knew that.
‘Much better,’ she agreed.
‘Your first orgasm,’ he observed.
‘Indeed.’
He looked slightly taken aback, as if her reaction wasn’t quite what he’d been expecting. Was that what renewed the sudden spark of fire in his eyes? He turned onto his side, a smile playing at the edges of his lips as he took her hand in his and kissed each finger in turn.
‘Purely in the interests of fairness,’ he continued softly, ‘don’t you think I should teach you how to pleasure me in return?’
It was a question which would have shocked her profoundly just a few short weeks ago, but it shocked her no longer. Jane stared into the gleam of his jet-dark eyes. She wanted a sexual education, yes. She wanted to learn all about her body and what it was capable of and learning had always been the thing she was best at. But for once in her life it was difficult to be objective. Difficult not to give into the desire to trace a finger over his lips and tell him he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.
But she knew that unwanted affection would serve no purpose in this very functional marriage of theirs. Wasn’t it vital to keep emotion out of it? Composing her face into an expression of neutrality, Jane smiled.
‘I think that sounds like a very sensible suggestion,’ she said, in the same kind of voice she might have used if he’d asked her to pull out a reference book from the library.
CHAPTER NINE
IT SHOULD HAVE been enough. More than enough. And yet it was not nearly enough. Zayed found himself feeling intensely frustrated, despite pleasuring and being pleasured by his virginal wife whenever there was a window of opportunity. He taught the earnest Jane everything he knew as well as stuff he’d never tried—because stopping short of actual consummation meant his imagination needed to be engaged as never before. During long and inventive encounters in their marital quarters of the Kafalahian palace, he discovered a whole new definition of sensuality.
He’d never had to hold back like this before, nor to temper his desire. Women were always instantly compliant when they were with him. They always told him they wanted to feel him inside them and the feeling had been mutual. He’d certainly never been made to wait for anything before.
‘Not even when you were a teenager?’ asked Jane curiously.
They were lying on top of the bed, while the desert sun streamed in through the unshuttered windows in great shafts of gold.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Women always gave themselves completely to me, right from the start.’
‘So you never tried frottage before?’
‘Jane,’ he murmured as he remembered the way she’d just been rubbing her fully clothed body against his and his groin hardened as he recalled the intense orgasm which had followed. ‘How can someone as innocent as you talk about frottage so uninhibitedly—and how do you manage to be so damned good at everything you try, when it’s all brand-new to you?’
‘Because I’m an academic,’ she said. ‘Which means I have a need to use the correct terminology for what we’ve been doing. As well as an enquiring and open mind, which enables me to research and excel in the subject of my choice. And that’s what I’ve been doing.’ She stroked her hand over his thigh. ‘Haven’t I?’
‘Jane.’ Zayed closed his eyes and groaned. ‘By all the stars in the night-time heavens, will you please stop?’
Her hand stilled.
‘Is that what you want me to do?’ she whispered.
‘Yes. No. Hell!’ He sucked in a ragged breath because the truth was he didn’t know what he wanted any more. His clever wife had captivated him and kept him guessing, while demonstrating a vivid sexual imagination which took his breath away. Even the intense debate in the international press which had followed the news of his grandfather’s surprising bequest had failed to engage him, because all he could think about was Jane. Jane, who had blossomed beneath his daily tutoring. Jane, who had learned her lessons all too well.
He felt her fingers inch their way a little further and his erection grew almost unbearable. ‘I was planning to go and inspect my new brood mare,’ he growled.
She appeared to give this some consideration for her fingers slowed just long enough to frustrate the hell out of him. ‘Okay,’ she said lightly. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Why wasn’t she begging him to stay? Why was she about to sit up as if to take her leave of him? Why was she so headstrong beneath that calm and sensible exterior?
‘No,’ he growled. ‘Stay. Stay and bring me pleasure.’ He pulled her back towards him and expelled a pent-up breath as her hand resumed its journey, beginning to stroke reflectively at a thigh which had tensed with longing.
She bent her head to brush a kiss over his lips. ‘I thought you might value a little more down time. You’ve been working very hard since we got back from Washington.’
He opened his mouth to say something, but whatever he was about to say was forgotten because by now she was pushing aside his silken robes and not for the first time he cursed the fact he wasn’t wearing western clothes, because at least they provided a kind of natural barrier to these encounters. It was easier to stop a woman when zips and buttons and the unyielding nature of suit trousers got in the way. But when all that lay between you and a determined hand were several filmy layers of robe—what chance did a man have? He felt as if he were being caught inside a silken web, with no immediate means of escape. As if she were binding him tighter with each intricate strand she wove. And wasn’t the truth that sometimes he felt himself resenting it? Hating the fact that she seemed to be so in control of her emotions, when women usually were not?
She began to lick his balls, concentrating on each one with a soft kind of intensity, as if she were working her way through an ice cream and trying to make it last as long as possible. Zayed sucked in a hot breath as he held back another groan, unwilling to distract her from her erotic task. His hands tensed like the claws of a falcon
as the fabric was pushed to his waist and cool air rushed over his groin. Golden-brown hair fanned over his belly as she slid her fingers over his rigid shaft, her eyes glancing up to meet his gaze as slowly she began to lower her lips onto it. He held his breath, terrified she was going to stop, even though he knew she wouldn’t. Each movement of her head took him deeper into her mouth until he felt he was drowning in pleasure. Once again he tried to control his reaction—holding off for as long as possible until a sudden maverick flicker of her tongue was his downfall and his fingers held onto her head as he jerked his seed helplessly inside her mouth.
Afterwards he slumped back, his throat dry and his brow damp with sweat as his heart beat out a primitive tattoo.
‘This is driving me crazy,’ he growled. ‘You are driving me crazy.’
She kissed his bare stomach and looked up. ‘You’re not complaining, are you, Zayed? You’ve just had an orgasm. And a very satisfying orgasm, judging by your reaction.’
‘That isn’t the point.’
‘Really? Then I must be missing something. I thought that was the whole point of sex—other than procreation, of course, and obviously we’re not going there.’ She pushed her mussed hair back from her face. ‘In fact, it might interest you to know that one of your ancestors once wrote in his diary that he preferred members of his harem to administer oral sex because it meant he didn’t have to exert himself in any way—which proved especially valuable in the desert heat, in the days before air-conditioning—’
‘I don’t give a damn what my ancestors said!’
‘No?’ She looked at him, her eyebrows slightly raised, and he was reminded of her expression during those usually frosty encounters when she’d been working at the embassy and he’d been there on official business. His eyes narrowed. What had happened to the woman she’d been then? The woman in the shapeless clothes with her hair scraped back into a tight bun. Had this deeply sensual side always been there—just waiting for a desert sheikh to liberate it? Or would the tall geek from the Foreign Office have managed to produce the same reaction? Zayed felt his body tense.
‘No,’ he bit out. ‘I don’t.’
‘So why are you in such a grumpy mood? What’s your problem?’ she questioned.
She was. She was his problem, and he couldn’t work out why. She was being the best wife she could be in the circumstances—considering he didn’t actually want a wife. She hadn’t tried to rehash all the things he’d confided in her. There had been no more probing questions, nor attempts to delve further into his painful past. She hadn’t preened with pride because she’d been the sole recipient of his confidences. She was discreet, he realised—yet another attribute which had made her so good at her job—but that very discretion was frustrating. He’d told her he didn’t want to talk any more about his past but he’d expected her to at least try.
So that he could rebuff her attempts to get underneath his skin and push her further away from him?
Probably.
The trouble was that she seemed to be binding herself closer without appearing to do anything. He told himself that her appeal lay solely in the fact that she was forbidden to him—and he was a man who had always chased the forbidden. That was what made her so fascinating.
‘Come here,’ he said, lifting her so that she was lying on top of him, belly to belly and groin to groin, and he saw her eyes darken, though a faint frown appeared on her brow.
‘Be careful,’ she said as his fingers slipped beneath her robe.
‘No need to worry,’ he said. ‘You’re wearing panties, aren’t you?’
Her cheeks went pink. ‘You do say the most outrageous things sometimes.’
She was such a delicious contrast, he thought. So prim and the proper and yet underneath it all—she had a wild sexual appetite which only he had untapped. Instantly he could feel himself growing hard again and so, judging by the widening of her eyes, did she. He wondered what she would do if he pushed her panties aside and eased slowly inside her, like two teenagers who could hold back no longer—a state of affairs which had never applied to him because his lovers had always given him exactly what he wanted. But wasn’t that what he felt like now—a teenage boy with little experience, out of his depth in a situation which seemed to have developed a life of its own? He met her gaze and acknowledged the deepening heat which had flared over her cheeks. ‘Wouldn’t it be so easy?’ he questioned. ‘To just do it?’
Wriggling away from his grasp, she quickly got up from the bed and smoothed down her tunic. ‘And then what? All this would have been in vain. The marriage would then have been consummated and we wouldn’t be able to get it annulled.’
‘Nobody would know,’ he continued reflectively. ‘I have looked in the statute books and discovered that non-consummation is unbelievably difficult to prove.’
‘But we would know,’ she said reprovingly and then something seemed to change on her face as she went to stand by the window to gaze out at the desert sky. ‘I think I would find it difficult to live with that level of deceit, Zayed. And we’d be running the risk of perjuring ourselves, which I can’t honestly believe you would be prepared to do.’
He gave a heavy sigh. Why did she always have to be so damned right? ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I guess not.’
Her shoulders were stiff with tension and he found himself wanting to ask what was going on in that head of hers and this frustrated him too, because asking a woman what she was thinking was surely the beginning of the end! ‘Jane?’ he said meditatively.
But Jane wasn’t really listening. She was wondering how much longer she could maintain this façade of pretending she had no real feelings about the man she’d married, of acting as though all this meant nothing. Pretending that she cared about nothing but having orgasms when inside her heart was becoming ensnared by Zayed with each sweet kiss he gave her.
Outside their bedroom window the sky was as blue as the party dress her mother had bought Cleo all those years ago, but inside Jane’s heart felt darker than it had done when she’d unwrapped her own dress to discover it was a dull and sensible navy. Her mother hadn’t intended to be cruel—she had simply been acknowledging the differences between her two daughters, one so pretty and the other so practical. And nothing had really changed. She needed to remember that. She was still practical Jane and beneath all her royal finery she was plain Jane, too. A few dazzling jewels and a title didn’t actually change that.
She had Zayed’s interest now, but it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. He was fascinated by her, yes—even she with her lack of experience could tell that—but only because she remained elusive. She knew that sometimes he watched her when she wasn’t looking, just as she knew he often smiled at some of the things she said—and he wasn’t a man prone to giving many smiles. But he didn’t know the truth, did he? He had no idea she was trying very hard not to be the Jane she had become... The woman who wanted to melt whenever he kissed her. Who hungered to feel him deep inside her, instead of their controlled and ultimately shallow methods of achieving pleasure. Who longed to carry his child with a passion which startled her.
Because somewhere along the way she’d come to know the man beneath the arrogant exterior. To understand him better and to like him. And that liking was in danger of tipping into loving. Loving someone who didn’t want her love—a damaged man who hid his pain well beneath his success and his swagger. There had been no more bad dreams since he’d told her about what had happened to his mother and he’d never mentioned that painful subject again. She couldn’t deny the satisfaction it gave her to think that she might have helped liberate him from some of his demons. But she shouldn’t take that satisfaction and try to turn it into something it could never be.
And wouldn’t Zayed run a million miles if he guessed what her true feelings were? If he realised that some nights she lay awake wondering how she was going to endure the next f
ew months with him, despite the mutual pleasure they gave each other. Terrified that she was going to reveal herself with a candid word or a slip of the tongue. She thought about the country she had hungered all her adult life to see—and how ironic it was that she spent an inordinate amount of time in their bedroom, despite having been given complete access to all the palace artefacts and its magnificent library.
‘Will I get to see Qaiyama before I leave?’ she questioned suddenly.
‘We have months to think about that.’
‘I know we do, but I’d like to go before winter sets in. I’ve heard over the last few years it’s been snowing in the region and cutting off the city.’ She turned to face him. ‘Is that possible, do you think?’
An arrogant smile touched the edges of his lips. ‘Anything is possible for your Sheikh, Jane. You have only to ask.’
She wanted to correct him but for once she didn’t bother. Because these weren’t academic matters she was dealing with—straightforward facts which could be verified or negated. Matters of the heart didn’t conform to any particular set of rules, she was discovering. Of course not everything was possible for Zayed—it wasn’t possible he could ever love her, was it?
They planned their trip for the end of the following week, travelling across the vast reaches of the country by one of the royal aircraft. Before she left, Jane sent an email to David Travers, enquiring tentatively about possible openings within the Foreign Office. Because she had to start looking to her future. She knew that when this was over she couldn’t return to her old job. How would it look to have the newly divorced Sheikha back in her basement office, wading through dusty reams of documents? Apart from anything else, what would happen when Zayed came to visit? Would she have to pretend that they’d been nothing to one another—or, worse still, to remember exactly what they’d done, and how?
She hadn’t received a reply from David by the time they touched down and she forgot all about it in the light of the surprise which was awaiting her. Jane had been expecting to be taken straight to the city, but instead they had landed in the vast emptiness of the desert. She blinked. Well, not completely empty because before her loomed a vast tent—with a group of other, smaller tents in the distance. Against the flaming splendour of the sunset rose a pyramid-shaped roof and through the open flaps of the entrance to the main tent she could see the faint gleam of embellished wall-hangings.
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