Hesitantly, she lifted the other hand, and pressed her fingertips into his tightly sculpted stomach. She ran her palm across each muscular abdominal ridge, gasping in awe at the finely honed strength beneath his olive skin. She dragged her hands over his pecs, to his shoulders, and then back down his back, but pulled away when she reached the top of the bathers. It felt like her fingertips had been burned by a million volts of electricity.
“My turn.” He growled, and knelt down, so that he could start his slow exploration at the delicate curve of her ankles. He ran the tip of his fingers up each leg, pausing when he got to the soft flesh of her inner thigh. He padded a thumb across her most feminine core, but, as she sucked in a deep breath of air, he skated further north, running his hands over her narrow hips, her waist, and up to her breasts. Standing now, he ran his thumbs in small, tight circles around her nipples, feeling them budding beneath his touch. She tipped her head back on a whimper, exposing the slender column of her throat, and he kissed it hungrily, flicking the pulse point at the base of her neck with his tongue.
He wanted to undress her. He needed to see her naked again.
He lifted her easily and pressed her against his chest. She stared at him dazedly. “What are you doing?”
He stared resolutely ahead. He was wondering the same damned thing. What happened to taking it slow? He would need to employ a monstrous amount of will power to get out of this with his honour intact. He shouldered open the door to his own bedroom, and placed her down in the centre. She stared up at him in confusion and he felt a small wave of doubt.
“I’m making sure you don’t catch a cold.” He said, more harshly that he’d intended.
But his words robbed Rebecca of the temporary fog of desire he’d swamped her with. She shook her head and wrapped her arms tightly around her chest. “I’m fine.” She said emphatically. “It’s a balmy evening.”
His expression softened. “You will only learn to be less shy when you are more accustomed to this,” he promised sensuously, latching his thumbs beneath the wide straps of her bathers and flicking them off her shoulders. He pulled gently until her breasts were exposed.
She caught her lip between her teeth as he took one nipple in his mouth, sucking at it until little darts of intense need were shooting outwards from the dusky aureole.
Rebecca thought she was going to collapse with the scorching heat he generated. He lifted his head and smiled at her, such a smile of promised pleasure and mutual lust that she answered it with a grin of her own. She forgot to be self-conscious. She forgot that he was probably just faking an attraction. And she simply felt.
Tariq brought his hands back to the wet material of her bathers and pulled them down her hips, away from her bottom and slid them the length of her legs. Then, he lifted her naked body and carried her through to his luxuriously appointed en suite.
She frowned as he broke their physical connection by placing her in the shower. He took a step back to turn on the taps, and warm water rained down on her from an overhead showerhead. “Allow me,” he murmured quietly, taking a loofah in his hand and adding a gel that smelled like citrus and summer.
She nodded mutely, and Tariq began to lather her body, starting at her back, and working his way downwards. Then, he gave his attention to her stomach, her breasts, and the special place beneath her legs. She leaned back against him as his fingers danced tantalisingly close to the part of her anatomy that she knew he could make sing. But he was careful to avoid a repeat of their wedding night. Rebecca groaned as again, he teased her, brushing a finger across her so lightly she almost didn’t feel it.
And although this was totally new to her, she itched to make him feel what she did. Could she do it? Could she make him want her? Really want her? She spun around in his arms, and her chest was slick with water and the spicy shower gel. “Allow me,” she repeated his words back to her, as she eased the loofah from his grip.
He closed his eyes as she began to sponge his body, carefully washing his chest and stomach. His face was drawn. His cheeks were flushed. Yes. He was definitely feeling something. Trying not to let the uncertainty take over, she followed her instincts and knelt on the mosaic tiled floor of the shower.
“Rebecca...” he breathed warningly. Did she have any idea what her proximity alone did to him?
The look she gave him was one of such innocence that he almost laughed. “Butter wouldn’t melt, huh?” He joked, but he was finding it almost impossible to control his appetite for her. Her hands weren’t at all steady as she slipped his bathing costume down, to reveal his glorious naked self. She gulped. Having never seen the necessary equipment, she was filled with doubt. How in the world was that ever going to... she coloured. This wasn’t about sex. It was about turning the tables on him. He touched her and her whole body felt like it was going to ignite in flames. Could she do the same to him?
She lifted her eyes to his face so that she could watch his reaction as she gently touched his length with her fingers. She wrapped herself around him, marvelling in the strength of his erection. His dark brown eyes flared as she grew more confident, every touch making him jerk a little unsteadily.
“Okay—.” He exclaimed, taking hold of her wrist and pulling her to standing. “Enough.” His words were like ice and she frowned, feeling instantly embarrassed. Had she bored him? He had seemed to enjoy it, but... She turned away from him and he ran a hand through his hair.
“Rebecca,” He breathed out slowly, “that was good.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Just not good enough to want to continue.”
He scanned her face. Surely she couldn’t be left in any doubt of just how much he wanted her? She was inexperienced, but he’d been seconds away from exploding. Only fierce concentration had kept the inevitable at bay for as long as he had.
First in the office downstairs, and now here. He was making a habit of stirring them up and walking away. It wasn’t intentional. Any other woman, any other time, and he wouldn’t have hesitated to carry her to his bed and make love to her all night long. But he’d never had a wife before. And he’d never known Rebecca before. Because she was his wife, and also just because of who she was, he wanted it to mean more than that.
But he couldn’t be near her without wanting to touch her, and he couldn’t touch her without being lit alight by desire. What he needed was a way to get to know her that wasn’t so bloody incendiary. Being alone with her was just not a good idea. Not yet.
He switched off the water and wrapped a fluffy beige towel around her. Despite her height, it seemed to swamp her.
“Go, get dressed,” he started to say, but she turned around to face him, and her face was filled with an unexpected fury.
She was stunningly beautiful, and never more so than when enraged. Entranced, he watched, as her eyes spat at him like ice chips. “You are dismissing me again?” She demanded hotly, clutching the towel to her chest. “What kind of sicko are you? To keep turning me on then switching me off like this? Does it amuse you?”
He shook his head with a small smile. “You amuse me endlessly, Sheikha.” He pulled her into his arms but she squirmed away.
“No!” She shouted. “I’m not some toy that you can blow hot and cold with. Stop playing games with me.” She wrenched open the door to their hidden passage and stormed through it, slamming her own door shut as she entered her room.
He pulled a pair of jeans on and then followed her, his own temper sizzling away at her habit of storming out on him.
She was standing in the middle of her room, being wrapped in a robe by three of her attendants. Monique was amongst them, and he felt a small pang of guilt at having thrown these two women together like that. His eyes didn’t quite meet Monique’s as he only had eyes for his wife.
“Leave us,” he commanded, waving a hand at the attendants.
Wordlessly, they stopped what they were doing and filed from the room. Neither of them noticed the way Monique’s cheeks flamed.
Rebecca th
rew him a look of pure disdain and then fumbled with the ties of her robe. He breathed out angrily and shook his head. “You should not keep walking out on me like that, Rebecca.”
She rolled her eyes. “Does it hurt your pride, Tariq?”
“No.” He said simply.
She made a noise of frustration as she kept trying to fasten her robe. “Why did you send them away? I have no idea how to fasten this blooming thing.” She muttered, giving up finally and clutching the fabric together.
His smile surprised them both. “Let me.” He took hold of the fabric, but instead of tying it together, he slid his hands beneath, linking his arms behind her naked back, still warm from the shower. “Rebecca, please don’t make the mistake of thinking I do not want you. With every fibre of my being, I am as attracted to you as you are to me.”
Her look was sceptical. “It doesn’t seem like it.”
“I could throw you on this bed and take you right now to make my point, if you’d like,” he promised seriously. “But you deserve better than to lose your virginity to someone simply indulging their own needs. I want you to be sure, when we are together, that it is what you truly want. I want you to feel confident. Comfortable. So that there’s no room for regrets. Your innocence is a very special gift, and I don’t want you to ever believe I don’t appreciate it.”
Her heart was pounding at the sweetness of his words. The reassurance that he also wanted her. “Oh.” She sighed, and smiled back at him. “I see.”
“Our situation is unusual.” He said thickly. “You would not even contemplate a relationship with me if it weren’t for the fact your parents and mine forged this contract.”
“And nor would you.” She snapped, her good mood evaporating just as quickly as it had appeared.
“Nor would I? What?”
“Nor would you contemplate a relationship with me,” she said seriously. “I feel sorry for you, that your parents thought I was a woman you could be happy with. A special education teacher from England. You must been miserable when you discovered their selection.”
He dipped his head. He had been, it was true. He had been enjoying his freedoms as a bachelor, and the idea of marriage to a stranger had filled him with unease. But that was before he’d met his bride, and felt the spark of desire. Before he’d seen her trying to better the lives of children who had nothing. Before he realised she was worth a million of any of the woman he’d been with in the past.
“How I felt then is irrelevant. What matters is how we feel now. What we want now.”
“I don’t want to feel like I’m some chore that you’re doing!” She flushed at the implication in her words. “I mean, I don’t want to feel that your wife is simply another royal duty.” She pulled herself up to her full height. “I married you with my eyes wide open. I obviously expected sex would be a part of our relationship.”
“And I would like that very much...”
She made a noise of dissent. “I don’t believe you. I think you’re trying to get your nerve up to sleep with me. Well, as far as I’m concerned, if I’m just going to be another notch on your bedpost, let’s just get it over with.”
Anger speared through him. Resisting the urge to give voice to his feelings, he spoke calmly. “I came to see if you would like to join me for dinner, but I can see what a colossal waste of time it is to try talking to you when you’re in this mood.” He pulled open the heavy door. “When you are prepared to have a mature, adult conversation, then come and find me.”
The door slamming in his wake made Rebecca jump. She collapsed weakly onto the side of her bed. She’d never really fought with anyone in her life. Winona and Greg had made her terrified to defy them, and as a byproduct of their strict form of cruelty, she’d lacked the confidence to argue with anyone else, either. Until now.
CHAPTER SIX
Ballet. It was her secret passion. Secret by necessity, and passion by design. She had no control over the matter.
As a girl, she had danced until her toes bled, and her mother had indulged the fervent hobby of her only child with slavish determination. She’d taken Rebecca to ballet lessons four times a week from the age of three. By the time her parents had died, Rebecca was being courted by The Royal Ballet School. Only Winona hadn’t let her attend the auditions.
“This is just a stupid pipe dream of my sister’s, Rebecca. She was a fool to make you think you could go anywhere with dancing. Look at you. You’re too tall to ever be good at ballet. The day she married into your dad’s hoity toity family she lost touch with reality. You, a ballerina? What a joke.”
Rebecca had not, at that stage, been so totally brow beaten and she had argued, “But the headmistress herself of the RBS thinks I am good. She came to our concert last year and asked me to audition.”
“Lies, fabrications. That’s your mother for you. Always building you up only to let you fail. You can’t do it, Rebecca. Forget about it. And another thing. Your uncle Greg hasn’t worked his arse off just so he can pay tuition fees to a school like that. Get real, girl.”
And that had been the end of it. Rebecca had appeared to shelve her dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer. And when she’d learned that one of her dearest friends from the ballet academy she had attended as a young girl had been paralysed by a fall at school, she had transferred her passion to another field completely.
But ballet was still there. Her secret joy. Her secret love. Long concealed but never forgotten.
Her argument with Tariq had left her with a strange pent up emotion. She’d tossed and turned all night, and when she had slept, it had been lightly and fitfully. At first light, before her attendants had even joined her, she dressed in a pair of black leggings and a fitted black singlet top and had crept from her room. On her first day in the palace, when she’d explored the rooms, she’d found a large empty hall that would be perfect for her needs. It had mirrors along one wall, and a corked floor. She had known instantly that it would serve as a makeshift dance studio.
As she tiptoed out of the private royal residence, a security guard emerged from a groove in the wall. “Your majesty, I am to accompany you today.” He said formally, and Rebecca felt her heart race.
“You scared me!” She exclaimed, bringing a hand to her chest while her breath steadied.
“I apologise,” he murmured.
“This was the King’s idea?” She demanded.
“Yes. New orders for your protection.”
She knew what had brought this on. Her tousle with the servant woman yesterday was no doubt something he didn’t want repeated.
She sighed with exasperation. “Very well. Come along.”
Rebecca shouldn’t take her bad mood out on this man, but she couldn’t help it. She stomped down the long corridor of the palace until she found her makeshift dance space. “Can you wait outside?” She asked once they’d reached the room.
The guard shook his head. “No, madam. I must watch you.”
“Very well.” She said again, and walked into the room. “Please close the door behind you.”
He did as she’d asked.
Well, Tariq might have wanted her to have a security guard, but she doubted her husband would have liked the fact that the man was watching her like a hawk as she stretched and warmed up. He was so used to being under constant scrutiny that he could have had no concept of how intrusive she found it.
She placed her iphone down on the table and turned the volume up as loud as she could. The sound of Giselle immediately soothed her frazzled nerves. After a sleepless night, she finally felt a sense of calm. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. It was the last ballet she had learned, and the role of Giselle was to be her audition piece. She flexed her feet and took her first step. Tentatively at first, after a fortnight’s break from dancing, but then, the movements flooded back and she lost herself in the sweet sensation of dance.
* * *
Tariq had been sure she would follow him.
Or at least th
at she would have come to see him the night before.
Their fight had been stupid. They were both sexually frustrated as hell and it had been easy to snap at each other. But she hadn’t weakened. And now, he scanned her room, she was gone. Already.
He frowned. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock. Where could she have crept off to so early in the morning?
Thanking heavens he’d asked for an extra security detail to shadow her permanently, he pressed the intercom buzzer and asked his personal guard to locate her. The answer surprised him. She was in the rarely used old banqueting hall.
He dressed quickly, into a suit his valet had laid out for him the night before, and shoes that had been shined to a high gloss. He was impatient to see her. To make sure everything between them was okay. Another ‘first’ for him.
What the hell was she doing at this hour, and in the disused hall? It was a fair stroll from their bedrooms and his intrigue increased with each step he took. Perhaps she’d taken her motley band of servant children and formed a temporary school, he thought with a smile. That would be just the kind of thing she would do.
The strains of classical music greeted him as he got closer and his puzzlement increased along with the volume. He quietly turned the handle, and met the eyes of a palace guard. With one hand, he silently dismissed the security agent to the exterior of the room. And then, he saw her. Eyes closed, face painfully beautiful as she experienced the emotion of the powerful ballet Giselle.
She was mid-air, in a pirouette, and he watched, scarcely daring to breathe lest he break her concentration. Emotions darted through him. Admiration. Awe. Desire. And fear, at the difficulty of the move she was in the process of completing.
Her whole body was fluid with a kind of grace he’d never seen before. She was tall, but she was suddenly weightless, and almost flying through the air with step and twist and turn. As she landed and began to spin around and around and around her eyes opened and landed flat on him.
Not by a twitch of her body did she betray that she had seen him, and that his presence affected her. She continued to dance, like a true ballerina, and he watched, openly in awe.
Royal Weddings Page 24