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When Rashad in person appeared out of seemingly nowhere and joined her without fanfare and with a seemingly relaxed smile to bid her a good morning, Polly was so disconcerted she almost fell off her chair in shock.
‘My goodness, I was wondering where you were!’ she exclaimed helplessly.
Her attention involuntarily welded to the impressive physique outlined by a white tee shirt that hugged his muscular chest and biceps and faded jeans that outlined his narrow waist and long powerful thighs. In fact, although the sun hadn’t at so early an hour been bothering her, she heated up so much she began to perspire. ‘Last night—’
‘We will not discuss last night,’ Rashad broke in decisively. ‘We were both overtired after the wedding.’
‘Seriously...we’re sweeping the dust under the carpet?’ Polly muttered in astonishment.
Rashad answered her in Arabic, and then with an affirmative yes, the sculpted full line of his eloquent mouth firming, his devastating dark eyes cloaked by his lashes.
A fair brow lifted in growing disbelief. ‘And you think that’s all right?’
‘I think it is better than the alternative,’ Rashad told her truthfully, heaping sugar into his mint tea.
Polly stared down blindly at her own tea. ‘What happened to the man who said dissension could be stimulating?’
‘He learned that that brand of stimulation can be treacherous,’ Rashad countered with level cool.
And that fast, Polly wanted to scream at him again and so powerful was that urge that her teeth chattered together behind her murderously compressed lips. He could set off a seething emotional chain reaction inside her and make her madder than anyone else had ever done and it seriously unsettled her. She sipped at her tea with a stiff-fingered hold on the tiny glass cup and looked out to sea in angry silence, her mouth tightly compressed.
‘You see now we have nothing to talk about because you can’t gloss over a major row and simply pretend it never happened,’ she then pointed out, not feeling the smallest bit generous, especially not after having lain awake for half of the night wondering where he was, how he felt and what he was doing. Evidently if he simply moved on past the dissension without requiring any contribution from her, he had done no such wondering.
‘We did not have a row, we had different opinions.’ Rashad persisted in his peace-keeping mission much as he persisted against all odds to direct challenging meetings staged between enemies and rivals.
Polly almost lunged across the table as she leant abruptly forward, silvery blonde hair rolling across her slim shoulders like a swathe of heavy silk. ‘I want a row!’
Rashad levelled resolute dark eyes on her, raw tension gripping him because he only had to look at that rosy soft mouth of hers to want to back her down on the nearest horizontal surface. Hell, it didn’t even have to be horizontal, he acknowledged, his inventive mind rushing to supply every erotic possibility imaginable. His jeans uncomfortably tight around the groin, he flexed his broad shoulders. ‘You’re not getting one.’
‘Even if I say please?’ Polly pressed helplessly, because she genuinely believed that they had to discuss what had happened to move beyond it.
‘With regret...not even if you beg,’ Rashad spelt out a tinge more harshly. ‘Rows are divisive and risky and we will not have them—’
‘Says the King. But we still need to clear the air,’ she muttered, shaken by an increasing fear that he really did believe such an approach could work.
‘As far as I am concerned the air is already clear and further discussion would be overkill,’ Rashad concluded in a tone of finality as he began to peel a piece of fruit, waving away the manservant who immediately approached him in a keen attempt to save him from the labour of such a petty task.
‘Well, then you can listen,’ Polly told him in desperation.
Rashad tensed at that seemingly new threat, dark eyes flashing gold below lush black velvet lashes as he focused on her. Why was she trying to destroy his calm and enrage him again? He had behaved honourably the night before. He had not argued. He had not threatened. He had walked away. This morning he had not uttered one word of reproach. If he had told her how he really felt about what she had done his anger would’ve blown the roof of the castle off and scared her. Whether he liked it or not, he was what he was, the heir to a ruthless lineage, and his belief that his wife belonged to him ran like a thread of steel through his every reaction even while his intelligence told him that life didn’t work like that any more.
She looked so innocent and so very beautiful and yet she was totally off-the-wall crazy in Rio’s parlance, Rashad acknowledged ruefully. Yet why did he continue to find that strange trait so incredibly attractive? Why, when he was in the worst possible mood, did that trait make him want to smile? He concentrated on his tea, which was less likely to unnerve him than the odd thoughts assailing him without warning. He told himself that he didn’t want to listen, didn’t want further criticism or a greater burden of guilt. After all, he knew who was ultimately at fault. Somehow he had screwed up. If his brand-new bride wasn’t happy, he had to be to blame.
‘And perhaps now that you’ve eaten you could dismiss the staff?’ she added in a disturbing indication that she was likely to become loudly vocal once again.
Rashad signalled the two hovering servants to dismiss them before springing upright with fluid agility and sitting back down on the low wall bounding the castle ramparts.
Polly immediately froze in her seat. ‘No, don’t do that,’ she said anxiously, blue eyes fixed to him in dismay.
‘Don’t do...what?’
‘Don’t sit there with your back turned to a dangerous drop,’ Polly urged.
Rashad studied her in disbelief and then glanced round in a sudden movement that made her gasp to scrutinise the dangerous drop she had complained about. A couple of hundred feet of scrub and rocks sloped gently down towards the beach and he had climbed it many times with a blindfold as a little boy on a dare.
‘Please get up and move away from it,’ Polly whispered unsteadily.
Rashad studied her again, noticing how pale and stiff she had become. ‘It’s not a dangerous drop—’
‘Well, it is to me because I’m terrified of heights and just looking at you sitting there is making me feel sick!’ Polly launched at him at vastly raised volume with only a hint of a frightened squeak, her annoyance at his obstinacy having risen higher still.
Rashad raised calming hands as though he were dealing with a fractious child and rose with exaggerated care to move to the castle wall. OK...point taken.’
Polly flushed to the roots of her hair and slowly breathed again. ‘I just don’t like heights—’
‘I think I’ve got that,’ Rashad confided straight-faced.
‘So, you’re planning to listen now to me?’ Polly enquired stiffly.
Impatience flashed through Rashad and no small amount of frustration at her persistence. Water dripping on stone had a lot in common with his new wife. But he was clever enough to know that listening was an important skill in negotiation and experienced enough to know that marriage encompassed an endless string of compromises and negotiations. ‘I’ll listen but not here. I’ll show you round the castle and you can talk...quietly,’ he added softly, but the dark-eyed imperious appraisal that accompanied it was a visual demand for that audible level. ‘No shouting, no crying, no dramatic gestures.’
‘I don’t do crying and dramatic gestures,’ Polly told him in exasperation.
By nature, Rashad recognised the ironic fact that, of the two of them, he was more volatile and more likely to be dramatic and his handsome mouth quirked at that sardonic acknowledgement. The night before, Polly had been very understated but a rejection was a rejection, no matter how it was delivered, and not a pattern Rashad wanted to find in his wife. He looked at her; in truth he never tired of looking at her and the plea in her shadowed blue eyes would have softened the heart of a killer.
‘OK,’ he agreed grudgingly. ‘But if you embark on another argument—’
‘You’ll lock me up and throw away the key,’ Polly joked.
‘Considering that that is exactly what my ancestors did with their wives, you could be walking a dangerous line with that invitation,’ Rashad murmured, teasing on the surface but fleetingly appalled by how much that concept attracted him when it came to the woman smiling back at him.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u601743d7-3da5-5316-b4c3-1f7b3fd2f2ed)
‘EVERYTHING HERE IS unfamiliar to me. Your lifestyle, the customs, the language,’ Polly murmured quietly as they walked along the battlements past stationed guards to take advantage of the aerial views. ‘When you add you and a new marriage into that, it can occasionally be overwhelming.’
That made remarkably good sense to Rashad, who had been braced to receive a quiet emotional outpouring of regrets and accusations. Relief rising uppermost, he squared his broad shoulders and breathed in deep. ‘I can understand that.’
‘And I’ve barely seen you since the day I agreed to marry you. I realise that with your schedule you had no choice but it made me feel insecure.’
Rashad was downright impressed by what he was hearing, it never having occurred to him that a woman in a relationship with him could speak her mind so plainly and unemotionally. In silence he jerked his chin in acknowledgement of the second point.
‘Yesterday was a very challenging day for both of us.’ Polly’s voice shook a little when Rashad settled an arm to her back to steady her on the uneven stones beneath their feet, long fingers spreading against her spine to send a ridiculous little frisson of physical awareness travelling through her all too susceptible body.
‘It was...’
‘I’ve never been in a serious relationship before...’
Rashad stopped dead. ‘Never?’ he questioned in disbelief. ‘But you are twenty-five years old.’
Polly explained about her grandmother’s long, slow decline into full-blown dementia and the heavy cost that had extracted from her freedom while her sister was away at university. ‘So, if I’m a little inexperienced in relationships, you’ll have to make allowances on that score,’ she told him tautly.
A frown line was slowly building between Rashad’s ebony brows. His fingers smoothed lightly up and down her spine as if to encourage her to keep on talking as he stared down at the top of her pale blonde head, far more engaged in what she was telling him than she would have believed.
Polly could feel the heat of embarrassment rising into her cheeks in a wave. Gooseflesh was forming on her arms, the hairs at the back of her neck prickling while the warm hand at her spine had tensed and stilled. ‘And I think that may be why I sort of freaked out last night because I was a bit nervous...of course I was...and you hadn’t made me feel safe or special or anything really!’ Conscious her voice was rising in spite of her efforts to control it, Polly looked up at Rashad in dismay and discomfiture.
And for the very first time, Rashad understood his bride without words and he felt like the biggest idiot ever born because he had been guilty of making sweeping assumptions without any grounds on which to do so. It had not once crossed his mind that Polly might be less experienced than he was. Indeed he had even worried just a little that he might not be adventurous enough or sophisticated enough to please her. With a sidewise glance at the guards studiously staring out at the desert and the beach, Rashad bent down, scooped his surprised bride up into his arms and carried her indoors. Doors were helpfully wrenched open ahead of him by the staff as he strode back to their bedroom.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Polly exclaimed when he had finally tumbled her down in a heap on the giant bed in which she had slept alone the night before.
‘Giving us privacy,’ Rashad advanced with a sudden smile of amusement that sent her heart racing. ‘I don’t wish to offend you but I had made the assumption that you would have enjoyed at least a few lovers before me—’
‘And why the heck would you assume that?’ Polly demanded with spirit.
‘Your values are more liberal. Here, although young adults now tend to choose their own partners, it is still the norm for women to be virgins when they marry. That would be more unusual in your society.’
‘I suppose so,’ Polly conceded reluctantly because she knew her sister fell into the same ‘unusual’ category, Ellie having admitted that she had yet to meet a man who could tempt her into wanting to cross that sexual boundary. ‘But my sister and I were both brought up in a very strict home. My grandmother believed that both I and Ellie were illegitimate and until she fell ill she policed our every move because she was afraid that we would repeat what she saw as our mother’s mistakes and come home pregnant and unmarried.’
‘I know very little about your background.’ Rashad settled fluidly down on the edge of the bed in a relaxed movement. ‘Even your grandfather warned me against having unrealistic expectations of you—’
Polly flushed scarlet. ‘My...grandfather? Please tell me you’re joking—’
‘There was no discussion, Polly, but I guessed what he meant. He merely wished to protect you from the risk of me being naïve in that line. I am not naïve,’ Rashad completed with wry emphasis. ‘But Hakim and I have naturally never discussed anything that intimate, so he could have formed no idea of my attitude in advance.’
In receipt of that explanation, her mortification ebbed. It was evident that her grandparents had made the same assumption and she couldn’t find it in her heart to fault her grandfather for trying to shield her from the threat of Rashad’s disappointment.
‘You’re not that old-fashioned,’ she commented with a helpless little giggle. ‘But obviously Grandad is.’
‘I spent several years studying at Oxford University and that was an enlightening experience being a mature student,’ he told her wryly.
‘Must’ve been,’ Polly conceded, picturing Rashad with his film-star good looks and wealth let loose to enjoy a student’s freedom. ‘Was that after your wife passed away?’
His lean, strong face tensed. ‘Of course. I could not have left her behind here to be oppressed by her father.’
Polly frowned. ‘How...oppressed?’
‘In essence my late uncle was a good man but he was also a bully. I say that with respect because without his intervention I would not be alive,’ Rashad admitted levelly. ‘On several occasions during Arak’s dictatorship rumours of my continuing existence put a price on my head. I could have been hunted down and killed like an animal but the tribe took me in as one of their own and protected me because my uncle was their sheikh.’
It was the first time he had given her a little window into the sheer turmoil of his formative years and it sobered Polly as nothing else could have done. Certainly it could not have been all rainbows and roses being brought up by a bully, most particularly not if he owed his very life to that same bully, who had coolly married the putative future King of Dharia off to his own daughter at the age of sixteen. Her heart was touched and she pressed her hand briefly against a lean masculine thigh in silent empathy.
‘It seems we do, in spite of all that has happened, have something in common,’ Rashad remarked with a flashing smile of such intense charisma that she couldn’t drag her attention from his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘We were both raised by strict guardians.’
‘Yes,’ Polly conceded feverishly, encountering the dark golden depths of his eyes with a mouth that was running dry and a stomach awash with butterflies as awareness of their proximity kicked in with electrifying effect.
‘I do not want you to be nervous of me, habibti,’ Rashad confided huskily. ‘I promise you that I will never do anything that you do not want.’
‘I... I pretty much want everything!’ Polly confided with a strangled little laugh of self-consciousness because she didn’t feel it was fair to go on acting as if she were a terrified virgin because she was not.
‘Everything...’ Rashad savoured the word and she flushed. ‘I love your honesty.’
And he kissed her, slowly, carefully, nibbling at her lower lip, then tracing it with the tip of his tongue. In fact he turned up the temperature so gradually she was barely aware that one of her hands had crept up to spear into his thick black hair and the other to tighten on a strong shoulder. She wanted more, much more, she acknowledged, her whole body turning warm and languorous in response while the little prickles and tingles of desire were already pinching at her nipples and warming her pelvis.
‘I will make it special,’ Rashad intoned into the scented depths of her tumbling hair, his dark deep drawl roughened by the knowledge that she was giving him her trust.
‘You can’t promise that,’ Polly felt forced to tell him prosaically. ‘If it hurts, it’s not your fault. I’m not that ignorant—’
‘Hush...’ Rashad groaned.
‘No, you stop setting standards,’ Polly warned him playfully, tracing his hard jawline with a gentle forefinger, marvelling at how much closer she felt to him as he pressed her back against the pillows and leant back to flip off her shoes, letting them fall to the tiled floor.
‘I’ve done that all my life—’
‘But not here, now...when it’s only the two of us,’ Polly persisted helplessly.
And for a split second, Rashad contemplated the strangeness of not seeing everything in the light of passing or failing and shouldering the blame, but it was too engrained a habit for him to even imagine. He shook off that alien concept and homed in on his bride instead, studying that ripe rosebud mouth with an amount of hunger that threatened his control.
He kissed her again and the passion he couldn’t conceal burned in that kiss and it thrilled her as much as the hungry thrust of his tongue melding with her own. He was so intense, she thought tenderly, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. He took far too many things far too seriously. Maybe she would be able to make him lighten up a little and relax more. But that solemn thought was quickly engulfed by the intoxicating delight of his demanding mouth crushing hers beneath his own. Little noises she didn’t recognise escaped her throat.
He slid her out of her dress with admirable ease, so deft at the challenge that she was a little surprised to find herself lying there clad only in her lace underwear. All of a sudden she was worried about what he would think of her body, which she knew was kind of average. Breasts neither large nor small but somewhere in between. Hips a little larger than she would have liked, legs and ankles reasonably shapely, she reflected ruefully, shutting her eyes, just lying there, not wanting to beat herself up with such foolish thoughts.
‘Ant jamilat jiddaan... You are so beautiful,’ Rashad told her with fervour, and she dared to open her eyes again.
And yes, it was her body he was scrutinising much as if she were the seventh wonder of the world. Emboldened, Polly arched her spine to make the most of her assets, relishing his admiration while thinking no more about her physical imperfections. Her blue eyes settled on him and she murmured shyly but with determination, ‘You’re still wearing too many clothes.’
His dark golden eyes gleamed with appreciation and he pulled off his tee shirt to reveal a bronzed and indented muscular torso worthy of a centrefold. The tip of her tongue crept out to moisten her dry lips as her gaze crept inexorably down to the revealing bulge at his groin. Apprehension was the last thing on her mind as he unzipped his jeans, showing her the intriguing little dark furrow of hair snaking down over his taut flat stomach. She stopped breathing altogether as he came back to her and fastened his mouth hungrily to hers again, the warmth of his big body against her an unexpected source of pleasure.
He unclasped her bra and cupped a pale pouting breast, long fingers toying with the taut pink tip, rolling it, gently squeezing the distended bud before sucking it into his mouth and teaching her that that part of her body was much more sensitive than she would ever have believed. The tug of his lips on the straining tips of her breasts sent a pulling sensation arrowing down into the heat rising between her thighs. Lying still became a challenge while her hips dug into the mattress beneath her. The hollowed ache at the heart of her increased, making her restless and stoking her craving for more.
‘You’re not letting me touch you,’ Polly muttered in a rush, gripped by the fear that she wasn’t being much of an equal partner. ‘Isn’t this supposed to be a two-way thing?’
‘It is but it would please me most if this first time between us is for you, not for me,’ Rashad countered with assurance.
A little red in the cheeks, Polly abandoned her objections, particularly when he made a point of pinning her flat with another passionate driving kiss and her temperature rocketed up the scale. He tugged off her panties and finally touched her where she most longed to be touched, tracing the delicate skin at the apex of her thighs and concentrating on the tiny nub that seemed to control her every nerve ending.
The pleasure was the most irresistible sensation she had ever known. In an impatient movement Rashad disposed of his jeans and glided down the bed to part her trembling legs. She felt like a sacrifice spread out before him and it heightened her arousal. Before very long he contrived to teach her that what she had deemed to be irresistible pleasure could grow exponentially to an almost unbearable level. And she had never felt her body rage out of her control before until those frantic feverish moments when Rashad thoroughly controlled her with his carnal mouth and skilful fingers. Almost immediately he transformed her keen curiosity into an overpowering demanding need. Her spine arched, her hips rose and jerked and her heart thumped as madly as though she were sprinting. And then stars detonated behind her eyelids and the whole world went into free fall along with her body.
He slid over her and ran his mouth down the sensitive slope of her neck to her shoulder. A compulsive little shiver racked her languorous length. Her lashes lifted on his lean, darkly handsome features and she smiled, a little giddily, a little shyly, recalling how much noise she had made in climax and the way she had clawed at his hair and his shoulders. He brought out the bad girl hiding inside her and she rather thought she liked that, and the shimmering gold satisfaction in his eyes suggested that he did as well.
He nudged against her tender cleft and she tensed, feeling him there, hard and ready. He pushed into her with greater ease than she had expected but then he had prepared her well. Her delicate inner walls stretched to accommodate him and then he shifted his hips and sank deeper, sending a sharp little pang of pain through her that made her grit her teeth.
‘Do you want me to stop?’ Rashad asked thickly.
‘No...’ she wailed in shocked protest as in answer to his movement an exquisite little shimmy of internal friction eddied through her pelvis.
Rashad was fighting to stay in control, struggling to think about anything other than what he was doing. He shifted again, gathering her legs up over his arms, and drove into her hard and fast, rewarded by the gasp of pleasure she emitted. She was very vocal and he loved her lack of inhibition. He gripped her hips and pounded into the hot, wet grip of her glorious body with a growl of savage pleasure.
Polly could only compare the experience to a wild and thrilling roller-coaster ride. A tightening band of tension formed low in her body and the crazy rush of intense sensation heightened as he quickened his pace, changing angle, hammering into her receptive body with delicious confident force. Excitement flooded her as another climax beckoned and she could feel her body surging up to reach it, gloriously out of her control. She hit that peak with a wondering cry and then dropped her head back against the pillows, drained but wonderfully relaxed. Rashad groaned and shuddered and buried his face in her tangled hair.
‘That was amazing,’ she told him cheerfully as soon as she had enough breath to speak, one hand smoothing possessively over his long, sweat-dampened back.
