by Lynne Graham
That the old lady was still going strong while she felt weary embarrassed Zoe. She lumbered upright, feeling like an elephant in her cumbersome layers of clothing, hoping it was cooler outside than it was inside. But that was a false hope, she recognised when the humid air beyond the tent closed in around her and she was forced to trek across the sand in her wildly unsuitable shoes that dug in at every step. A camel was led in front of her and made to lie down. Farida instructed her to climb into the saddle, which, weighted down as she was by fabric and jewellery, was no easy task, but at last the deed was accomplished and the animal scrambled up again and swayed across the sands in the moonlight, accompanied by whoops from the women crowded round her and with the aid of the herdsman with his very modern torch.
‘It is symbolic,’ Farida explained. ‘Queen Ayshah stands in your mother’s place and she is sending you to your bridegroom.’
Zoe rather thought it was more as if she were a parcel to be delivered, although thank heaven, she reflected with a choked giggle, Raj wouldn’t be expecting to unwrap the parcel. She slid more than she dismounted from the camel and picked herself up off the sand, thinking fondly that she was having an even more exciting wedding day than either of her sisters had enjoyed while wondering when her mobile phone would be returned to her so that she could bring her siblings up to date with events.
She almost staggered into the tent lit by lanterns that awaited her and there she froze in consternation. A large bed confronted her and it dawned on her at last that this was her wedding night, which she was expected to spend in close proximity to her new husband. She wasn’t going to get her own tent this time or even her own bed because she was supposed to share the bed. In silence she pulled a face because she hadn’t anticipated that, although she knew that she should’ve done.
After all, her agreement with Raj that their marriage would be platonic was a private matter that neither of them was likely to discuss with anyone beyond their immediate family. Grateful when the women retreated again she sank down on the bottom of the low divan and breathed in deep while she waited for Raj to arrive. My goodness, she was getting so hot. She straightened and walked into the primitive bathroom that had been erected alongside and clearly in haste for their comfort. A mirror sat propped up on a chest and piece by piece she removed the heavy gold jewellery and set it on the chest along with the veil.
At that point she heard shouts and catcalls outside and she scrambled up to return to the main tent just in time to see Raj striding in and covering the door again with obvious relief. ‘Everyone gets overexcited at weddings,’ he said wryly, studying her with fixed intensity.
Colour mantled her cheeks, self-consciousness reclaiming her as she hovered. ‘Perhaps they’re also celebrating the fact that their Prince is home again,’ she suggested.
‘It is possible,’ Raj fielded with quiet assurance.
He wore confidence like invisible armour and she envied him that gift, wondering how he could ever have suffered the ignominy of panic attacks. He had the innate calm of a man comfortable in his own skin yet, from what little she had already learned, his past was littered with drama and disappointment. Yet he had overcome those realities and moved on, much as she wished to do.
‘Do you know where my clothes are? Are they still back at the house I was taken from?’ she asked uncomfortably.
‘I will enquire for you in the morning,’ Raj murmured smoothly.
‘I don’t even have a toothbrush!’ Zoe protested, falling back on trivialities rather than dealing with her insecurities over the situation she was in.
‘I will give you one,’ Raj informed her in a tone of finality.
Zoe swallowed hard on a burst of angry exasperation. Was she supposed to go to bed naked with all her make-up on? It wasn’t his fault that she had been separated from her luggage, she told herself urgently, and she shouldn’t take her ire out on him. Deal with it, she instructed herself, and she went back into the bathroom and removed the ornate kaftan before beginning to undo the buttons of the layers beneath. Arms aching, perspiration dampening her face, she stalked back uneasily into the bedroom. Raj was on his phone, black eyes skimming to her instantly. He cast the phone down and studied her enquiringly.
‘I’m afraid I need your help with all these buttons,’ she framed in considerable embarrassment. ‘I don’t want to tear anything...’
‘No, that would indeed be embarrassing,’ Raj conceded. ‘It would look as though I ripped the shifts off you.’
Breathing fast, Zoe spun round, presenting him with her slender back. ‘I just don’t get why it has all those buttons in an absolutely inaccessible place!’
‘Because you are not supposed to take it off by yourself,’ Raj informed her softly, a faint tremor racking her as she felt the gentle pressure of his fingers against her back as he undid the buttons, because a man had never got quite that close to her before and that he should be undressing her, even though it was at her request, was still a challenge. ‘Your bridegroom is supposed to remove the three shifts slowly and seductively. It is a cultural tradition.’
‘Oh...’ Zoe gasped and then as the ramifications set in, ‘Oh,’ she said again.
‘You will have Ayshah to thank for the shifts because I don’t think most brides bother with this particular tradition these days,’ Raj told her huskily, skimming the first shift down her arms and letting it drop to the rug beneath her bare feet before embarking on the next set of buttons. ‘That is a shame.’
‘Is it? A bridal version of the dance of the seven veils...or whatever?’ Zoe heard herself wittering on nervously, cringing even as the words escaped her.
Raj rolled his eyes and gritted his even white teeth because peeling her out of the silk shifts was testing his self-control. Her skin glimmered through the gossamer-fine tissue like the most lustrous of pearls and that close the sweet scent of her, of roses and almonds, was unbelievably feminine and alluring. Raj tugged down the second shift and let it fall before stepping away, carefully not looking at what would now be an enhanced view of her body because he did not require that encouragement.
Bemused, Zoe spun round, registering that he had stopped and walked away. ‘I don’t want to sleep in this one,’ she muttered uncomfortably. ‘These shifts are precious to your stepmother. They were put on me with a care that implied they were made of solid gold.’
‘She is not my stepmother,’ Raj incised curtly. ‘She is my father’s first wife.’
‘Right... OK,’ Zoe framed, registering that she had hit a tender spot with that designation, but very much out of her depth when it came to labelling or understanding the doubtless complex relations created in a family consisting of more than one wife. ‘But what am I to sleep in?’
Raj was forced to look at her and the image locked him in place. She was so clueless he swallowed hard on impatient words. She might as well have been standing there naked for the thin material hid very little. The pert little swells of her small breasts were obvious, not to mention the intriguing tea-rose colour of her prominent nipples and the pale curls at the apex of her thighs. Raj sucked in a sustaining breath, hot and hard as hell. ‘I will get you something of mine,’ he asserted, rather hoarse in tone, his dark deep voice roughening the vowel sounds.
‘I’m sorry I’m being such a pain,’ Zoe mumbled uneasily as Raj dragged out a leather holdall and opened it to rummage through it.
‘I didn’t bring much because I didn’t think I’d be staying long.’ Raj sighed, finally extracting a T-shirt and a pair of boxers for her use.
Zoe grabbed the garments with alacrity and spun round beside him. ‘Just undo the last ones, please, and I’ll be out of your hair,’ she promised.
Raj suppressed a groan, his attention locking on the sweet curvaceous swell of her bottom. Presented with the delights of her in reality his imagination could take flight with ease and he ached with arousal. He grappled with the
buttons, no longer deft, indeed all fingers and thumbs as he thought of laying her down on the bed and teaching her the consequences of teasing a man. But even as he thought of such a thing, he was grimly amused by it because he knew she was quite unaware of the effect she was having on him and that he would never touch a woman who had stated so clearly that she did not want to be touched. In fact, he had never been with a woman less aware of her seductive power over a man and, while at first he had found that absence of flirtation and flattery refreshing, now, suddenly, he was finding that innocence of hers a huge challenge.
‘Now you can go and take it off and get changed,’ Raj informed her thickly.
Zoe turned back to him, catching the harsh edge to his voice and looking up at him to see the dark glow of his eyes accentuated by the flare of colour over his high cheekbones. ‘Raj...what’s wrong?’ she questioned helplessly.
‘How honest can I be?’ Raj asked.
‘I want you to feel that you can always be honest with me. In fact, that’s very important to me.’
‘Even if it embarrasses you?’ Raj prompted.
‘Even if it embarrasses me,’ Zoe confirmed without hesitation.
‘You are half naked and very beautiful,’ Raj breathed huskily. ‘I have sworn not to touch you but I am still a man and you tempt me. You can still trust me to keep my word but I would be grateful if you...’ He fell silent because Zoe had already backed into the bathroom, her face as startled and as red as fire.
Only ten feet from him, separated only by tent walls, Zoe looked at herself in the last shift and she burned all over with mortification. She’d had no idea quite how sheer the shifts were because at no stage had she seen her reflection in them in the mirror. Half naked seemed like an understatement when she was showing everything she had got! Shame and chagrin enveloped her. He had said she tempted him. Dear heaven, did he think her display had been deliberate? No, surely not. She peeled off the last shift, laid it carefully to one side and stepped into the shower, hoping it would cool her off. She didn’t want to go back into the bedroom and look him in the eye again.
Cold water drenched her and she stood there as long as she could bear it, before, shivering, she got out and grabbed a towel off the pile. He had been frank with her and she was glad of that, she reflected ruefully. If they were to live in close proximity, she would have to be more careful, more aware in a way she had never had to be before. His T-shirt fell past her knees and she put on the boxers, although they struck her as overkill.
‘Zoe?’ Raj murmured quietly.
She peered into the bedroom and he handed her a toiletries bag.
When even her teeth were clean, she had to return to the bedroom but she looked nowhere near him as she crossed to the bed and climbed in straight away.
Raj went for a long cooling shower and tried to remember when he had last had sex. It had been weeks and weeks. He should make more effort in that department, he told himself firmly. Had he formed the habit of regular sex, he was convinced he wouldn’t have been so tempted by Zoe. But then, it had been years since he had enjoyed regular sex, he acknowledged ruefully. These days he had occasional one-night stands and he never spent the night because he had discovered that spending too long with the same woman only encouraged the kind of entanglements and expectations that made him feel trapped. ‘One and done’, he called his routine. He didn’t do relationships, he didn’t do girlfriends, he didn’t do dates. Nabila had sent him flying off such a conventional path.
But Zoe, the wife he could not touch, he was learning to his cost, was a whole new ball game...
Zoe peered out from under the sheet as Raj strode across the tent, his long, lean, powerful body clad only in boxers. Her eyes widened, drawn by the flex of steel-hard muscle across his bronzed torso. He was a work of art, she thought numbly, barely able to accept that such a thought could be hers and that for the first time ever she was admiring the male body, which had until that moment inspired her only with fear. But then Raj was something else, Raj somehow fell into a totally different category and she didn’t understand how that was or even why. Yet he was one of the most masculine men she had ever met. Everything about Raj from his innate poise to the rough stubble now darkening his jaw line and the well-honed strength of his physique screamed male. She closed her eyes tight, blanked her mind and slowly, inexorably fell asleep.
The nightmare that assailed her was an old familiar one. She was sprawled on the floor of an old hut, sneering thugs surrounding her while another cut off her clothes with a terrifyingly sharp knife. She was trapped. Shouting or screaming only earned her another punch and she was already in a great deal of pain because one arm and a leg were broken and, she believed, several ribs. She could barely see out of her swollen eyes but there was nothing wrong with her ears and she could hear every one of the filthy, perverted things they were threatening to do to her. She was petrified, lapsing in and out of consciousness, fighting the sickening effects of concussion...and outside a thunderstorm was crashing and banging like extra evidence that she had been plunged into a living hell.
‘It’s OK...it’s OK,’ a vaguely familiar voice was assuring her and she clung to that voice like a drowning swimmer, letting it pull her fully out of the bad dream.
‘No,’ she croaked in a shaken whisper. ‘I’ll never be OK again.’
Outside the thunder crashed deafeningly loud and she flinched and gasped, registering that there really was a storm outside, just as there had been the night she had almost been gang-raped. ‘I don’t like storms,’ she muttered, clutching at his warm, solid body for support.
‘You were having a nightmare, moaning, shouting for help. I tried to wake you up,’ Raj admitted. ‘But it took a long time to bring you out of it.’
‘The storm confused me, probably woke me in the end... There was a storm in the nightmare too...except it wasn’t really a nightmare, it was something that happened to me...but it’s been years since I dreamt about it,’ Zoe framed shakily. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t need to apologise. We can’t police our dreams,’ Raj dismissed, leaning away from her to light the lantern by the bed.
Her anxious eyes widened at the sight of him because being in bed with a half-naked man felt so very alien to her. And Raj was all male as he stretched, that fantasy V-shape flexing across his lower rock-hard abdomen as he shifted to reach for a glass of water and handed it to her.
Colour rising, Zoe gulped down water as if she were suffering from dehydration. She didn’t like the way her brain was spewing random sexual thoughts at her. It was scary being that close to Raj and wanting to touch him. Touch him? What insanity was attacking her? Since when had she wanted to touch a man? Yet all of a sudden she could imagine touching Raj, smoothing a hand over that satin-smooth golden skin laid down over muscle. She sat up and put the glass down just before another deafening crash of thunder boomed and it sent her careening into the shelter and security he offered like a homing pigeon.
Raj had never before found it a problem to have an armful of fragrant woman in his arms. But when the woman was Zoe, it was a major problem. He had heard her shouting for help and saying, ‘No, please...’ over and over again and a kind of unholy rage had gripped him that someone so small and defenceless had been driven to begging, her fear and desperation palpable. Only it became complicated when she got too close to him and his body reacted against his will. He was so hard he dared not leave the bed for fear that she would notice and get scared that he couldn’t be trusted. But he was not made of stone.
He closed his arms round her, murmuring soothing things in his own language, doing his best to resist urges that he felt should shame him. ‘Were you raped?’ he asked in a roughened undertone.
Zoe flinched, her slender body trembling in his hold, and she looked up at him. ‘No. I was lucky. I was beaten up but I was rescued before it got that far.’
Raj’s level black b
rows lifted. ‘Lucky?’ he derided, not only stunned by what she had told him, but also feeling honoured that she had trustingly bestowed such a terrifying secret on him.
And Zoe laughed and spontaneously smiled. ‘Yes, very lucky. I’m a survivor.’
That glorious, utterly unexpected smile was more than Raj could withstand. Zoe looked up into eyes as bright as liquid starlight and marvelled at the beauty of them. He lowered his head and claimed her soft pink mouth with his.
The thunder boomed beyond the tent. Lightning strafed the ground, lighting up the walls, but Zoe didn’t hear or notice any of that because there was a kind of magic in Raj’s kiss and it was like no kiss she had ever had before. And yes, she had had kisses before, had tried several times at university to get into the spirit without succumbing to the terror of getting out of her depth with some guy who might then get angry and refuse to listen to her protests. When Raj slid his tongue between her parted lips, an insistent heat she had never felt before flared between her thighs. His hands stroked through her hair and she felt her breasts swell and her nipples tighten and tingle. The warmth of his skin and the weight of him against her led to the discovery that her body liked those masculine aspects of him. Even more did she appreciate the aromatic smell of him, an insanely attractive combination of musky male and designer cologne, which tugged at something very basic inside her. His tongue brushed hers and withdrew, leaving her aching for more, every nerve ending on fire.
And then he set her back from him and dragged in a shuddering breath while still looking at her as though she were the only woman in the universe, a gift of his that yanked at her heart strings. ‘I’m sorry,’ he breathed in a raw undertone. ‘I broke my promise not to touch you.’
‘Do you see me running or screaming?’ Zoe demanded, shaken by his sudden withdrawal while her body was still humming and pulsing like an unfamiliar entity.
Raj’s slightly swollen and very sensual mouth compressed, dark eyes glittering with angry regret. ‘I will not make excuses for myself but I assure you that this will not happen again. Go to sleep, Zoe. You are safe.’
