His Queen by Desert Decree Read online

  ‘To engage my sympathies as a means of extracting money from me!’ Azrael gritted in disgust. ‘You should be ashamed—’

  ‘No, you should be ashamed of your nasty, suspicious mind!’ Molly shouted back at him furiously. ‘I don’t need or want your wretched money and I didn’t ask you for any of it either! How dare you accuse me of being a lying gold-digger?’

  ‘Those are your words,’ Azrael deflected, calming now that he had vented his angry disillusionment but decidedly confused by her reaction. ‘Not mine.’

  Molly dealt him a look of supreme scorn. ‘I can read between the lines, Azrael. I’m not stupid and if this is what you really think of me, it makes me wonder what else you have hidden from me—’

  ‘I have hidden nothing from you—’

  ‘One word.’ Molly tossed her coppery head back, ringlets streaming back from her hotly flushed face.

  ‘What word?’ Azrael queried, feeling increasingly lost in the dialogue and unable to understand how that had happened when he was in the right and she was in the wrong.

  ‘Nasira,’ Molly framed with dark satisfaction. ‘Now, are you planning to continue blocking the doorway? Or may I leave the room, Your Majesty?’

  Azrael frowned. ‘What has Nasira to do with us?’

  It wasn’t the guilty reaction Molly had been looking for, indeed even expecting after the argument they had had. ‘You have secrets too,’ she condemned.

  ‘Not about her,’ Azrael breathed in bewilderment. ‘Only about things you wouldn’t want to know about—’

  Molly planted a small hand directly in the centre of his hard muscular chest. ‘Move!’ she told him.

  ‘Why? Where are you going?’

  ‘That’s none of your business—’

  ‘Everything you do is my business...you’re my wife,’ Azrael reminded her without hesitation.

  ‘You have so much to learn about women,’ Molly responded with saccharine sweetness as she yanked his lean, powerful body out of her path and slid behind him to stalk back to the bedroom. ‘But you won’t be learning it from me—’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Azrael demanded rawly, striding after her, dark golden eyes flaming with frustration even as the sway of her curvaceous hips in that dress attracted his grudging attention.

  ‘That when you label a woman a lying gold-digger, she’s not going to be your business or your wife any more!’ Molly completed. ‘I’ve had it up to my throat with Djalia and its freaky King—’

  ‘I am not freaky,’ Azrael enunciated with perfect diction.

  ‘But you’re not the sharpest tool in the box either,’ Molly hazarded with a downright unpleasant glance in his direction. ‘Your own Djalian bodyguards have accompanied me to the care home every day to visit my non-existent grandfather. Did you think of checking with them before you unleashed all this drama on me? No, you did not think.’

  And Azrael was confounded by that statement because he knew it was true. He prided himself on his calm control and logic but both had inexplicably gone missing when he most needed them at his disposal. The belief that Molly had lied to him, made a fool of him and deceived him had eaten him alive and his rarely released temper had taken hold of him. For the first time it occurred to him that he might somehow have got it wrong because Molly was not behaving like a guilty person.

  ‘So, explain to me how your grandfather is dead and yet not dead,’ Azrael demanded quite seriously and with his usual imperious edge.

  ‘It’s not happening. I’m out of here, bag and baggage,’ Molly told him roundly, grabbing up a suitcase and thinking better of it. ‘No, that doesn’t belong to me. None of it does. The clothes in these cases were bought with your money so they are not mine—’

  ‘Stop this...now!’ Azrael thundered at her. ‘You are not leaving me—’

  Glittering green eyes struck his. ‘Watch me,’ she invited, sashaying out of the door again, carrying only her handbag.

  ‘You’re my wife—’

  ‘And you called me a lying gold-digger. I will not stay married to a man who thinks that of me!’ Molly spat back at him in rage.

  ‘If I have made a mistake I will make up for it,’ Azrael swore with touching faith in his own powers of persuasion. ‘But you are not leaving me—’

  ‘I am leaving you,’ Molly repeated with emphasis. ‘And you’re not allowed to make mistakes of that magnitude and be forgiven for them! There is no get-out-of-jail-free card here!’

  ‘I will not allow you to leave me,’ Azrael shot back at her with suppressed savagery, wondering why she was referring to a prison. ‘That option isn’t on the table. You are already my wife—’

  ‘Without my consent...remember?’ Molly reminded him doggedly.

  Azrael voiced a very rude English word and snatched her off her feet. ‘I don’t care. You are not leaving me,’ he repeated stubbornly, ignoring her struggles as he carted her back into their bedroom and planted her down on the bed like a rock being settled firmly back into sand. ‘This is your home now.’

  ‘You can’t force me to stay here against my will and you know you can’t!’ Molly told him defiantly. ‘I’d scream the place down, I’d run away, I’d be a nightmare!’

  ‘Explain your “not dead” grandfather,’ Azrael persisted, lounging back against the door to prevent her from trying to leave again.

  Molly dealt him a hostile appraisal. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘It would be the adult approach.’

  ‘You’re one to talk,’ Molly snapped. ‘You jumped straight to nasty conclusions.’

  ‘My past experiences with women have made me distrustful and cynical.’

  Molly closed her eyes tight, furious at the idea of him ever having been with anyone else. It was a totally unreasonable reaction but that was how she felt: as if he was hers, body and soul. Such a possessive feeling was not something to celebrate just at that moment, she reflected with self-loathing.

  ‘Explain,’ Azrael demanded.

  ‘My grandmother, a widow, married Maurice Devlin when my mother was a baby. My mother’s birth father died before she was born, never mind my birth. Maurice has always been my grandfather and I rarely remember that we’re not related by blood,’ she confided truthfully. ‘He raised my mother as his daughter. When she died he continued to treat me as his grandchild and I’ve always thought of him as family...the only family I have.’

  ‘Thank you. That has clarified the situation,’ Azrael responded with dignity, torn between relief that his worst imaginings were groundless and anger that he, who prided himself on his cool head and judgement, could have put himself so much in the wrong.

  Molly recognised the conflicting emotions chasing across his lean, darkly handsome face and noted the colour rising to accentuate his exotic cheekbones as he accepted the truth of her explanation. She wondered dimly what kind of behaviour his past experiences with women had entailed and crushed a curiosity that she knew would only upset her.

  ‘I am very sorry for my misapprehension,’ Azrael murmured gruffly. ‘I insulted you.’

  He was defensive, wearing his Mr Grumpy expression again and, even aware that she was the injured party, Molly was impressed that he could rise above his pride to apologise. ‘I’m still annoyed with you,’ she admitted.

  Azrael jerked his chin in acknowledgement and studied her with dark intense eyes. ‘I lost my temper—’

  ‘We all do from time to time,’ she parried, fighting an overpowering desire to wrap her arms round his lean, powerful figure and despising herself for it. ‘But I can’t overlook the speed with which you chose to believe the worst of me...that’s a dangerous level of distrust.’

  A very faint spur of panic urged Azrael forward. There was so much he felt that he should be saying but he wasn’t used to saying such things and he didn’t have the words to explain that she brought something into his life he knew he could not bear to lose. He sank down on the side of the bed and used a long-fingered brown hand to cradle her cheekb
one, his thumb tracing the edge of her full, sultry mouth.

  ‘I love the dress,’ he said so inanely that he winced for himself but the soft, warm touch of her skin made concentration impossible. ‘It looks amazing on you.’

  Molly snatched in a startled breath, battling to retain her distance, but the glide of his thumb made her mouth tingle and the compliment could only please.

  ‘The next time you go to London I will accompany you and we will visit your grandfather together,’ Azrael declared.

  Soothed by that statement of intent, Molly came up on her knees on the bed, drawn by his proximity, mesmerised by the black-lashed drama of his dark golden eyes. ‘I’m still furious with you—’ she warned him tartly even while her breath fractured in her throat as the familiar scent of him, husky male spiced with an extra degree of exotic, engulfed her.

  ‘Of course.’ Azrael bent his head and went for the soft pink lure of her ripe lips, the need to connect with her overwhelming every other rational response.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AZRAEL’S MOUTH ENGULFED Molly’s and all the reasons why she shouldn’t allow that, including the prepared speech about why intimacy was a very bad idea, simply melted out of her mind as though they had never existed.

  He was incredibly good at kissing, she thought vaguely, or maybe it was because she was utterly desperate to be kissed. She didn’t know which and she didn’t know if it even mattered because Azrael’s mouth on hers was pure sensual intoxication. She trailed off his kaffiyah to get her hands into his luxuriant black hair and he was very much on board with that approach because he shed his cloak and began to unbutton his tunic while pressing her back against the pillows to savour her lips and let his tongue dance and curl with hers. Sensation awakened there first where with every moist sweep of his tongue her body ratcheted up in tension a little more. Her spine strained to ease the tingling of her nipples and the swelling of her breasts while heat gathered at her feminine core.

  Azrael ran the zip down on the dress and then it got complicated because, when he tried to ease the sleeves down to free her arms, the fabric merely stretched and then sprang back into position. With a strangled laugh of amusement, Molly pushed him back and sat up to wrench the clinging dress down over her arms and let it drop to her waist.

  ‘That was a challenge,’ Azrael acknowledged, dark golden eyes alive with the same amusement. ‘I’m not making a very polished impression here, am I?’

  Molly’s hands framed his lean dark face and that smile tore the breath from her lungs and melted her somewhere deep down inside. ‘You don’t need to be...polished with me,’ she muttered truthfully.

  He gazed down at her as she pushed his black hair back from his cheekbones, his captured attention sliding down over her reddened mouth to the smooth, freckled slope of her full, round breasts encased in blue and white polka dots, and his broad chest swelled as he dragged in a sustaining breath, enthralled by the vision she made.

  ‘I love your breasts,’ he said thickly, sliding his hands beneath her to release the clasp with a dexterity that he was secretly very pleased with.

  And then there she was, all creamy glorious perfection, bountiful and soft and firm at the same time. He rubbed a straining pink nipple, his breath laboured as though he had run up a hill as he kneaded and cupped the plump mounds.

  ‘You’re truly beautiful,’ he told her huskily.

  And for the first time in her life, Molly felt as though she was. Of course it certainly helped to have Azrael looking down at her with a kind of wondering pleasure, as if she were a goddess rather than an ordinary woman. The heat coiled between her thighs ramped up another notch, her nipples tightening into distended buds. He captured one between his lips, laved it with his tongue, let his teeth graze the straining peak and a soundless moan of pleasure escaped her and her spine arched.

  ‘Take your tunic off,’ she whispered shakily.

  He leant back from her and yanked it over his head, too impatient to bother with the remaining buttons, and she had a perfect view of his even more perfect torso. He was all hard, sleek muscle from his wide brown shoulders down to the defined V that ran from his narrow waist down into his pelvis. Muscles from his biceps to his chest to his flat, tight stomach rippled with his every move. In a sudden movement, impatient with the constrictions of his clothing, Azrael sprang off the bed and dropped the tunic before skimming off the loose linen trousers and briefs he wore below.

  And there he all was, sooner than she had expected to see him, and her breath caught in her throat at her first glimpse of his arousal. He bent over her, dragging off the stretchy dress, flipping off her shoes, reaching for the band of her knickers.

  ‘No, you’re going too fast for me,’ Molly warned him, her face tomato red. ‘Slow down. I haven’t done this before...remember?’

  ‘You can’t fault me for enthusiasm, aziz,’ Azrael said playfully. ‘But I will slow down.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said unevenly, taking the opportunity to push back the bedding and slide beneath the concealing cover of the sheet. ‘I’m sorry I’m a bit shy...but I don’t think you have a shy bone in your body.’

  ‘Never thought about it,’ Azrael admitted. ‘I would’ve been punished for being timid or impolite or not doing what it was my obligation to do—’

  ‘Punished?’ Taken aback, Molly leant over him to stare down at him. ‘Who would’ve punished you?’

  ‘Firuz was a very strict stepfather. I was beaten a lot,’ Azrael confided with the calm of someone who appeared to accept that such a childcare approach was perfectly normal.

  ‘But that’s dreadful,’ Molly exclaimed in horror.

  ‘I survived. I can survive any mistreatment,’ Azrael countered with pride. ‘I was brought up to be tough.’

  ‘Would you treat your own children—?’

  ‘No, of course not!’ Azrael studied her with incredulity. ‘Firuz is a tyrant in his own household. I withstood his punishments for my mother’s sake. She would’ve suffered if I had defied him or rebelled. My children will never be beaten,’ he swore vehemently.

  Molly’s eyes stung and she pressed a helpless kiss to a bare brown shoulder. ‘You had the most horrendous childhood.’

  ‘It is the past,’ Azrael reminded her gently. ‘I do not look back.’

  ‘I suppose that’s one way of dealing with it,’ Molly mumbled.

  ‘It is my duty to be strong,’ Azrael pointed out, glittering dark eyes roaming over her troubled face. ‘Why does that upset you?’

  ‘Oh, no reason,’ Molly hastened to assure him chokily.

  A seeking hand smoothed up over a curved hip and settled on a lush pink-tipped breast. ‘You have too much heart, aziz,’ he intoned huskily, sliding half over her to plunge his mouth hungrily down on hers.

  And serious thought along with that conversation vanished then, lost in the rising tide of her physical responses. He sucked the tips of her breasts, contrived to dispose of her last garment without her noticing and smoothed a skilled hand up to the junction of her thighs where she throbbed and pulsed with a fierce craving for more that she barely understood. Azrael shifted down over her, lithe as a jaguar, his skin pure bronze against the white sheet, and his black hair brushed her thigh.

  She had never wanted and had never felt anything like the delicious physical torment that followed. Her fingertips raked the sheet and then plunged into his thick hair. She cried out, teeth gritting, spine arching as the sweet agonising sensations grew in intensity until her lower body was taut with the hot, churning tightness of inner need and hunger. Her body writhed convulsively as she soared to her peak, unleashed waves of pleasure roaring through her in a glorious shot of relief and delight.

  ‘Tell me if I hurt you,’ Azrael told her hoarsely, rising over her, pushing her thighs back when she was already weak and boneless with satiation.

  She felt the push as his bold shaft entered her, eyes widening at the unfamiliar sensation. Her body was primed for him and he groaned wi
th unashamed pleasure over her and the glittering golden satisfaction in his stunning eyes excited her more. His lean hips shifted fluidly between her thighs as he thrust deeper and a sudden sharp little pain made her bite back a cry of discomfort. She hadn’t expected her first taste of intimacy to be an entirely pain-free process and she was determined not to spoil it for either of them as he stretched her with his powerful girth.

  Azrael growled with uninhibited pleasure, luxuriating in the tight wet welcome of her body. Raging impatient need roared through his long, powerful body but he needed to make it the best it could be for her. Rigid with control, he raised himself to glide in and out of her, filling her up with slowly building speed and intensity.

  Molly’s head fell back, her eyes shutting as she fought to contain the wild sensations eddying out from the heated ache and tightness in her pelvis. She could feel the hunger climbing again, rising sharply as he ground down on her and then sank harder and deeper, all grace, all power and impossibly erotic. She panted for breath, flying high on the surge of excitement he had incited, the feverish pound of his possession uniting with her racing heartbeat and suddenly she was there again on the heights, her body out of control as her world exploded into white-hot ecstasy. His magnificent body shuddered as he too reached the same completion.

  Afterwards, cradled in Azrael’s arms, Molly felt as though she was floating in the most sublime contentment she had ever known.

  ‘That was amazing... I want to keep you,’ Azrael husked without the smallest warning.

  ‘What?’ she mumbled uncertainly.

  ‘I don’t want to reconsider our marriage in a few months’ time... I want to keep you,’ Azrael reiterated calmly as though that were the simplest sentiment in the world to express.

  I want to keep you. Very much as if she were a pet or a piece of property, Molly interpreted in astonishment. ‘We didn’t discuss anything like that,’ she reminded him hesitantly.

  ‘There is nothing to discuss,’ Azrael declared, sitting up, so devastatingly handsome in that instant that he literally stole the breath from her straining lungs. ‘We both got so carried away we didn’t even think of using protection.’