An Arabian Courtship Read online

  Enraged by his interpretation of her behaviour, she hissed, ‘I wasn’t trying to make you jealous, and I can’t stand it when you say that I belong to you!’

  ‘It is a fact—why quarrel with it?’ As her eyes fled fearfully to the door, he murmured, ‘The servants won’t enter without my command.’

  ‘How about if I scream?’ she threatened wildly, her body stiffly refusing to yield to the hard lines of his.

  He laughed huskily. ‘They will either think that you are very passionate in my arms or that I am beating you. Neither eventuality will bring them rushing through that door.’

  The predatory kindling of his measuring scrutiny was not lost on her. She was terrified of responding to him, terrified of a self-betrayal she would find impossible to forgive or excuse. All that Raschid deserved was a display of cool contempt and indifference. He tasted her angrily parted lips with urgent brevity.

  She twisted her head away, fighting the leap of her pulses. ‘No!’

  His fingers framed her cheekbone. ‘From the first desire was there between us. A day will come when the very last word you wish to employ with me is no,’ he declared.

  As he captured her mouth again, skilled and unhurried, then ravagingly sweet and insistent, the taut stasis of her body heated to the abrasively masculine lure of his. She could not deny him. Within seconds she was lost to that violent and intense mingling of sensation and emotion which thundered through her veins like the beat of stormy seas. Her slender length in thrall to the incredibly sensual exploration of his hands, she clung to him. His breath rasped in his throat as he released her, sinking back to narrowly observe her drugged eyes and hectically flushed cheeks.

  ‘And truly it is not a word you use when you most need to use it.’ Arrogant mastery burnishing his gaze, his mobile mouth quirked amusedly. ‘Then I shouldn’t begin what I can’t finish. You are not yet convalesced to that degree. But how I wish it were not so!’

  Polly pulled the loosened robe clumsily round her again. Her breasts were achingly full from his caresses, a hot, shivery weakness was tremulously besetting her lower limbs. The incisive imprint of him was still on her like a burning brand.

  ‘Must you look at me as if you have been assaulted against your will?’ Raschid said drily. ‘At least be honest with yourself.’

  Her darkened eyes embittered, she whispered, ‘You’d be surprised how honest I can be with myself. I know how a whore feels now.’

  After an arrested pause, he disconcerted her entirely by flinging back his imperious dark head and laughing with rich appreciation. Indignantly she leapt up—or at least she tried. He spanned her waist with firm hands that imposed restraint. ‘Forgive me. It was not very kind of me to laugh at your exit line,’ he conceded not quite levelly. ‘But sometimes when you intend to be very rude, you are instead very funny. I was supposed to be angry? Shocked?’

  ‘With your experience of that breed of women, I guess not!’ she threw in a tempestuous rage. ‘But I have no plans to join the ranks. If you had any decency at all, you’d leave me alone. Now will you get your rotten, womanising hands off me?’

  An anger that knocked hers into obscurity had wiped the glimmering warmth from his eyes. It dimmed slightly, however, as she hurled the last line at him. ‘It is fortunate that I have become well acquainted with your habit of speaking first and thinking second. But I warn you, some day that tongue of yours will take you too far.’

  ‘You aren’t going to keep me quiet!’ Polly gasped furiously. ‘You don’t want a wife—you never did. We both know that divorce is on the cards. Since you’ve been so refreshingly frank, I’ll return the compliment. I’m not playing the game, Raschid. I’m not sharing your bed because you’ve got nothing better to do when you’re here. Our marriage is a total farce, and if you push me, I won’t fit in with the charade in any way. I’m warning you as well.’

  ‘Don’t threaten me.’ It was velvety soft. ‘Don’t ever threaten me.’

  Prickles of alarm were running up and down her spine while he silently studied her. His hands slid from her. ‘I must confess that I forgot my sister’s foolish words to you,’ he breathed in exasperation.

  What had preoccupied her unceasingly in recent days was the merest triviality to him. Fiercely she stiffened and thrust up her chin. ‘Please don’t insult my intelligence with the lies your loving sister was happy to swallow!’

  ‘You know me so little still?’ The hauteur of his look drove colour into her strained face. ‘I might have believed that you had a better knowledge of my character.’

  How? He was a law unto himself, a parcel of contradictions. He had a mind with more twists than the Hampton Court maze, a mind which a scheming Borgia would have envied. A mind which tied Polly up in knots.

  ‘That woman does not exist in my life,’ he said coolly. ‘I do not pretend to have lived as a celibate, but I would not lie with my wife and then lie with another woman. The concept of that fills me with distaste. I would not be unfaithful within marriage.’

  She could not hold his dispassionate gaze. Her head lowered, her brain seething. He had the nine lives of a cat. By the time you had sprung the trap, he had already removed himself to a place of safety. He had dispensed with his mistress. King Reija had played a winning hand. You had to take your hat off to the old gentleman—he knew his son. Enter Polly, exit blonde Parisienne. Convinced that he fully intended to carry on the affair, Polly had worked herself up into a state of righteous indignation. Ignominiously routed, she now only longed for escape. ‘I’m tired,’ she told him.

  ‘Stay where you are.’

  ‘No, I really feel we’ve done the topic to death,’ she muttered.

  A dark brow lifted. ‘Though it was not greatly on your mind when you were in my arms, was it?’ Raschid hazarded grimly. ‘Surely we may deal together better than this?’

  A tide of burning moisture stung Polly’s sensitive eyelids. She was all mixed up, but she refused to be ashamed of her suspicion. Raschid sought no closer ties with her. She couldn’t be blamed for distrust. Not when it was so humiliatingly obvious that the only role she was to be permitted to play was that of mistress within marriage.

  He released his breath. ‘You do seem tired. This evening has been too great a strain for you.’

  Before she could object he had swept her up in his arms. She felt like a toy about to be stowed back on the appropriate shelf in a cupboard, and forgotten. She didn’t speak when he laid her down on the bed.

  ‘I will phone you while I am away,’ he told her.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ she retorted from the depths of her bitter turmoil. ‘No pretence—remember? And I certainly don’t want the reminders.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  Even if he had slammed the door it would have made her feel better. But Raschid did not sink to childish displays. He was too disciplined, too self-contained to require the outlet. Dinner had been laden with calamity like the wedding and the wedding night. There was no meeting point between them. He wouldn’t permit one. He wouldn’t give an inch on the terms he had dictated at Ladybright.

  With his essential detachment that supplied him with no problems. Polly was different. She couldn’t cope with the knowledge that Raschid expected her to switch her emotions off and let him make love to her. She coped even worse with the awareness that she wanted him, as she had never wanted Chris. The missing ingredient in her response to Chris was all too prominent with Raschid. Sexual attraction.

  As the clear call of the muezzin called the faithful to prayer at dawn, Polly was still lying hollow-eyed and wide awake, desperately attempting to calm the fevered rise and fall of her emotions and understand the angry hurt which lay behind her every response to Raschid.

  * * *

  ‘I’ll lend you something.’ Chassa rifled a unit with an obliging smile. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you had no swimsuit? I must have a dozen.’ She dropped a handful on the bed. ‘I can’t wait until I can wear them again.’

  Gla
ncing at Chassa’s slim figure in which the evidence of her pregnancy was so slight as to be almost imperceptible, Polly smiled. ‘Can’t you wear them now?’

  Chassa wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m always very tired in the first months. It’s unfortunate.’ Her lustrous eyes shadowed. ‘Asif is very active, he loves sports and late nights. I’m not much fun when I’m pregnant, and I shouldn’t complain that he’s out so often. I’m not very attractive like this.’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ Polly protested.

  ‘You are not a man, Polly.’ Chassa would not be consoled. Polly changed into the swimsuit, prudently removing her attention from Chassa’s tense profile.

  Asif might be technically at home, but he was rarely to be found there. In the past fortnight Polly had visited half a dozen times and Chassa had always been alone and grateful for the company. Life with the exuberant Asif was evidently not one of unblemished bliss.

  With every day that filtered tranquilly by, Polly had finally conceded that what she felt for Chris was no more than the fondness of a sister for a brother, a fondness that had once been spiced with the pain of an adolescent and quite innocent crush on a childhood hero. She should have realised the difference long before now. It crossed her mind that she had been a late developer in more ways than one.

  Raschid was due back at the end of the week. Polly hadn’t heard a word from him. It infuriated her that, even absent, he should continue to dominate her thoughts. But what else did she have to think about? An hour learning Arabic every day? Jezra attended an exclusive college in Jumani by day and either entertained friends of her own age group or watched television by night.

  ‘Where are the children?’ asked Polly, following Chassa out through her lounge to the swimming pool in the courtyard beyond. As a rule the two toddlers were outside playing.

  ‘With their nurse. They tired me out this morning. I should have invited you,’ Chassa hesitated. ‘You are very fond of children, aren’t you?’

  Polly laughed. ‘Something of a necessity with three sisters and a baby brother, and your daughters are gorgeous little girls.’

  Slipping down into the inviting depths of the pool, she heaved a blissful sigh. The cool lap of the water was wondrously soothing and after swimming back and forth for a while, she floated, grateful for the sunglasses that cut out the blinding glare of the sun reflecting on the water.

  ‘You are a good friend,’ Chassa remarked out of the blue. ‘You don’t ask questions even when you know that there is something wrong. I am glad of your tact.’

  Polly sealed her lips on a startled comment. The compliment was unearned. She had not suspected that there was anything seriously amiss between Chassa and Asif; all couples had ups and downs. She was really far too bound up in her own anxieties to be that observant. ‘If there’s ever anything I can do…’ she said quietly.

  ‘You are kind, but it will work out,’ Chassa assured her tightly.

  What would work out? Once more Polly had that feeling that someone was assuming that she was more informed than she indeed was. It was extremely frustrating. The reflection led her back to thoughts of Berah, whom she still knew nothing about. Her curiosity was only natural, wasn’t it? Why shouldn’t she pump Chassa? Every time she came here she retreated from the temptation. She cleared her throat. ‘Do you mind if I ask you what Berah was like?’

  Chassa sat up on her lounger. ‘Berah?’ she repeated in surprise.

  ‘Raschid never mentions her, and I don’t like to ask,’ Polly confided truthfully. ‘Did you even know her very well? I realise that she died soon after you married Asif.’

  ‘I met her only on a few occasions. When I was a teenager I spent my summers here while my parents were abroad. It was really so that Asif and I could get to know each other a little,’ Chassa volunteered wryly.

  ‘But Raschid didn’t know Berah before they married, did he?’

  Chassa grimaced. ‘Prince Achmed is very old-fashioned. Berah was brought up very strictly. She was not educated like you or me—her father didn’t approve of educating women.’ She sighed. ‘You ask me what she was like. She was beautiful, feminine but very quiet, not open.’

  ‘Jezra told me that she was often very depressed.’

  Chassa paled. ‘Yes, that is true. She became…slightly unbalanced by her craving for a child. She loved Raschid very much—she idolised him. It was very sad,’ she said uncomfortably, her gentle eyes troubled, ‘but I think that many women have coped with heavier blows. Asif hated her. He said that she changed Raschid forever—I don’t know. I have never known Raschid different from the man he is now…’ Her sleek dark head turned almost with relief at the sound of footsteps.

  Asif strolled out to the poolside, debonair in a fashionable white suit. He was swinging his sunglasses in one hand. When he saw Polly, he struck a theatrical attitude of astonishment. ‘I don’t believe it! It is Polly the illusion. We hear about you, we talk about you, and how often do we see you?’ His grin was ebullient. ‘But since your arrival you have been a rare source of entertainment. On that point I can reassure you.’

  ‘Polly is often here. Why do you say these things?’ Chassa enquired stiffly, studiously avoiding looking anywhere near her extrovert husband. ‘What must she think of you?’

  He laughed. ‘I was joking. I don’t have to treat Polly like a stuffed-shirt guest. She shouldn’t need to be told that I’m delighted to find her here. But if I were you, Polly…’ As he hitched his immaculate pants to hunker down, his tone became one of exaggerated confidentiality, ‘I would vacate the water at speed. You may have noticed that Raschid is not the most liberated of men, and he has this marked tendency to believe that no man can look at you without being inspired by the kind of intimate thoughts which he considers strictly his department. Why else was I barred from paying my respects personally when you were ill? He even objected to me sending you flowers—but I digress…’

  ‘Flowers?’ Polly echoed sickly.

  ‘At this very moment Raschid is probably trying to find you,’ he continued, unconscious of the brick he had dropped. ‘Take it from me, my pool is not where he wants to strike oil.’

  Asif had sent the flowers. She could have sunk in her chagrin. Asif’s droll delivery further slowed up her thinking processes. ‘Raschid’s back?’ she ejaculated sharply. ‘Early?’

  She hauled herself out of the water without bothering to wade to the steps. Chassa tossed her a towelling robe. ‘I’ll send your clothes over later.’

  Polly twisted the moisture out of her hair with a nerveless hand. Raschid was five days early and she hadn’t heard the jet. How the heck could she have missed hearing it? She fled indoors in panic. He had simply taken the hint about the flowers. Her annoyance was out of all proportion to the embarrassing discovery. A cover-up for the discomfiture of learning that Berah sounded as if she had been the perfect wife aside of her surely understandable grief over her childless state? Beautiful, feminine, quiet, adoring. Polly skidded to a breathless halt inside the bedroom. Half-way out of the robe, she froze in dismay when the door opened.

  Crusader-blue eyes flamed over the shapely curves almost indecently defined by the clinging swimsuit. The tightened buds of her nipples were clearly outlined for his appraisal. In a sudden defensive movement, she covered herself again.

  ‘You have been swimming?’

  ‘Yes.’ Scorched by the sensual burn of Raschid’s outright stare, Polly heard her voice emerge stiltedly. ‘I didn’t hear the jet landing.’

  ‘We landed at the airport. I had business in Jumani.’ His hand lifted to the gold agal binding his kaffiyeh. Removing it, he cast both aside, his whole attention relentlessly fixed on her as he crossed the room.

  Silently he peeled the garment’s crumpled edges out of her tight hold and parted them. Slowly he tipped the robe off her taut shoulders to let it fall. Naked desire fired his eyes. A heartbeat later she was in his arms, her stunned protest drowned by the insistent possession of his mouth. Devastated by the smo
uldering charge of that driving kiss, she trembled violently. He rocked her from her head to her toes with the force of his passion. Her response was intuitive, spontaneous. For a timeless space there was nothing but him, and the world had shrunk to the boundaries of that savage embrace.

  Loosening the halter ties at the nape of her neck, his hands impatiently pushed the fabric down to her waist, skimming back up over her narrow ribcage to enclose the tiptilted swell of her breasts. He made a wholly masculine sound of satisfaction. His thumbs drew down over the tumescent nipples he had revealed and her knees buckled, her fingers grabbing at his shoulders for support. His lips broke from hers only as he lifted her and brought her down on the bed.

  Her hands flew up to cover her breasts. The glitter of his eyes marked the gesture as he stepped back and began to undress. ‘Rewarded with this enthusiasm, I may forgive much,’ he breathed huskily. ‘Vocal as you were on our wedding night, you would have proved a willing partner had providence not stricken you with illness.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ she spluttered, her eyes wide with trepidation.

  ‘I will enjoy disproving the claim. I think playing the shrinking martyr threatened by her husband’s lust will be a role you find difficult to maintain when you leave this room again.’ Almost casually Raschid leant forward and closed a hand round the slim ankle snaking back as she attempted to escape over to the far side of the bed. In his vibrant amusement, his slashing smile was pure-bred primitive. ‘But I confess I had not expected you to make this quite so entertaining.’

  Impotently Polly tried to kick. The temper which only surfaced in her with him had taken over. He held her fast, black-lashed eyes of azure glinting with a humour that was more maddening to Polly than anything he had either done or said. ‘How foolish of me not to guess. This is in all probability your fantasy.’

  ‘F-fantasy?’ she parroted, aghast.

  ‘Your cruel Arab husband spreadeagling you by force upon the bed to have his wicked way with you while remaining indifferent to your pleas for mercy,’ he clarified with velvet-dark satire.