Conquering His Virgin Queen (Harlequin Presents)

by Pippa Roscoe

  Images rushed through Eloise’s mind—blurry, jerky images placed there by numerous videos, captured for posterity by a father who would blackmail his own child. Hatred and despair warred within her.

  ‘He threatened to cut her off, to go to the press and publicly denounce his “druggy wife”. He said that he’d sever her financial support under the guise of cutting off her access to drugs, but that he would really just leave her to the mercy of the health service.

  ‘I didn’t think he’d do it. Ruin his own reputation just to get what he wanted. But he insisted that he’d ride the tidal wave of public opinion as the poor, put-upon husband who had tried to protect his wife’s shame. He would be seen as a man who had done all he could to help his wife, but who couldn’t take the heartbreak of it any more. He was convincing. I’ll give him that.

  ‘I still said no. I went to see my mother. To beg her to leave my father. To come with me, away from it all. I knew that I could provide for us when I got my trust fund, that we just had a few years before then. But she wouldn’t leave him.

  ‘She begged me. Begged me to keep her secret. Begged me to marry you.’

  Her mother’s hysteria that day had been terrible. She had been wailing, begging, pleading, all of it edged with a very real fear of being cut off from the one thing she loved more than herself, more than her daughter. Drugs.

  ‘So I agreed. And I agreed to the gagging order that would prevent me from talking about my mother’s dirty little secret. To keep my mother happy. To get my father what he wanted.’

  Odir took it all in, repositioning this new information over the family who had attended state dinners, shared private meals with his own family. This background information was filling in questions he hadn’t realised he’d asked himself about the tension, the slightly odd behaviour of his mother-in-law. Her father had been relocated to Kuwait after their marriage, and Odir realised that the wedding was the last time he’d seen her father and mother.

  ‘So you wanted to use your trust fund...?’

  ‘Not for my mother. No, she’s still with my father. After I left Farrehed I went to stay with a university friend. She had always been so understanding about my mother. About my family. I hadn’t realised why at the time, but when I arrived in Switzerland I saw she had her own addiction troubles. Her family had cut her off, and to be honest she was in a much worse place than I was.

  ‘I wanted to get her help—the kind of help that my mother had refused—but to do so I needed money. Zurich has an amazing medical centre, specialising in addiction. But by the time Natalia was admitted the damage was done. She needs a kidney transplant, but because of her addictions she’s very low down on the transplant list. In the time I spent at the facility I got to know the staff, and when they were looking for an assistant to the Chief Financial Officer I applied and got the job.’

  Eloise smiled ruefully.

  ‘Yes, your very royal wife has been working as a secretary for the last six months.’ A small laugh escaped her as she shared the oddity of the situation. ‘But tomorrow,’ she continued, and he almost flinched as her hand reached out to touch his arm, ‘tomorrow, when I have access to my trust fund, I can use it to help Natalia. To help the medical centre in Zurich that will most likely close within the year if it doesn’t have a large injection of capital. I was never after money or social standing, Odir...’ Her voice was almost painfully earnest. ‘I just wanted to...’

  ‘Help your mother? Help your friend? After helping my brother?’

  He bit back the curse that came so easily to his tongue. A tongue laced with the taste of bitterness and fury.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he demanded.

  He thought of all the things he could have done to help—all of the ways he could have made it easier for Eloise.

  ‘Because you had a country to run.’

  It hurt that she was right.

  ‘Because I didn’t know if you would even care. In spite of the closeness we had before our wedding, and the tentative relationship we built, I didn’t know if it was strong enough for the truth. And all the while I could never know what my father would do if he found out. If he had made good on the threat of the gagging order then my trust fund would have been gone and I wouldn’t have been able to help anyone. If the truth had come out the promise I made to my mother to protect her, to keep my family’s secret, would have burnt away to nothing. As sad as it sounds, Odir, I never had my father’s love. But to lose my mother’s would have been—’

  He hadn’t realised it, but he’d put his hands up to ward off her words. To prevent them from coming out of her mouth and hitting him like the bullets they were. Because, of all people, he knew what it was to lose a mother’s love. He knew the deep, searing pain that, once felt, changed a heart irrevocably.

  But to lose it by choice—to have someone choose a husband over a child, a secret over the truth—that was a different kind of pain all together. His mother’s death had taken away that love for him, but that had not been a choice she had made.

  ‘Right now, Odir, I’m trusting that you will say nothing of this to anyone, will do nothing—because it will put Natalia at risk. Put my mother at risk.’

  Odir couldn’t stand the weight of Eloise’s gaze, full of expectation and hope, he realised reluctantly. His mind was hurtling over all this information and it was changing his thoughts of her, refocusing the image he had carried with him over the last six months. One that had changed that fateful night he’d found her beneath Jarhan’s kiss.

  Now the memory was reforming into something new. His image of her slight frame, one that he had once thought weak and inconsequential, was now, he realised, of the strongest steel. One that had borne his awful accusations—one that had suffered so much at the hands of the people who were meant to protect her and care for her: her father, her mother...even her husband.

  She had borne so much and never once buckled. She’d done what she had needed to do and he admired that. He respected that. It was a strength that he had not seen in anyone else around him.

  She had trusted him with her secrets. Within him he could feel this new image of her shifting the synapses in his brain, bringing new weight to his feelings for her. And suddenly to have her trust felt like a burden greater than any he’d ever carried before. Not his kingdom, not his people, but this slip of a woman and her trust were threatening to undo him.

  ‘I have money that I would willingly have given you to protect your mother and your friend.’

  ‘But would you have listened to me six months ago? When you thought me someone who could sleep with your brother? Would you have listened to me six hours ago, when you believed me a gold-digger out for a marriage of convenience to a prince?’

  * * *

  His silence spoke volumes, and it hurt her more than Eloise could have anticipated. She turned away, unable and unwilling to bear the weight of it any more, and almost stumbled over the cushioned bench beside the heater that Odir’s guard had lit earlier.

  No, the silence seemed to say to her. They both knew that it would have been impossible before. It had all been such a mess. And all because of their fathers. They might have been very different types of tyrants, but it had still been tyranny.

  Either way, Eloise realised, there was no peace to be had from either man. Odir’s father was dead, and her father would not change. He would not suddenly become a kind man who would sacrifice his own wants for his family. He would not suddenly become a loving man who would protect her mother, or even her. Money, reputation, social standing—that was everything to him. And to admit to his wife’s addiction...it just wouldn’t happen.

  She felt Odir sit down heavily beside her. There they were. Two people stripped of everything—not King nor Queen, not a son, nor a daughter. It was just the two of them, looking out at the distance, lost in their own thoughts under the night sky.

  And she wanted to be lost. She wanted to feel anything other than what was warring within her heart. She hate
d all this talk of the past, all the dirty little secrets that had kept them locked away from each other, making it almost impossible for them to be together.

  She could feel the warmth from his skin across the small distance between them. The scent so uniquely his that she could have recognised it anywhere hit her in waves. She inhaled it, holding it within her lungs, trapping it inside her and refusing to let it go. She wanted it to fill her completely, to block out any thoughts of what had been spoken of, any thoughts of what was to come.

  Her mind hurt from all the plans, all the scheming, all the different possibilities of where this night could have gone and would go now. She wanted him. She needed him to take it all away and fill her with the simplicity of a desire that was already stoking its flames within her.

  The air changed, and she couldn’t tell if it was her fault or his. She could hear her breathing—loud in her mind, full and quick—and struggled to slow it. She fought it because she knew that even just one more touch from Odir would turn those flames into an inferno.

  Never before had she experienced desire like this. Oh, she had wanted him before their marriage—she had lusted after him. But now that she knew where that desire led...now that she knew what could happen between them...it was enough to make her heart explode within her chest.

  ‘Eloise...’

  He spoke her name as if it were a warning. As if it were a promise.

  ‘Make me forget. Just for now, Odir. The morning will come, but not yet. So for now...please.’

  She hated the way her voice begged him. She hated the helplessness it made her feel. She hated that she feared he would refuse her request. It was a fear so much greater than she could ever have imagined.

  Odir shifted on the bench and pulled her back against his chest. He was bewitched by her. Somehow she had done something to him—something that called to his every sense, that dragged him back from dark thoughts and turned him towards an impossible desire. His arousal was quick and hard, and he knew there was no way he could stop the avalanche of need crashing through his body.

  ‘One day, habibti,’ he managed to grind out. ‘One day I will take you to a proper bed. But right now I just can’t.’

  She lay between his legs, her slim pale shoulders just close enough for him to press kisses on skin bare of the black material that gathered around her neck. He thrust his tongue out to taste her, clean and fresh from the shower. There was no perfume, no flavour of anything but her in his mouth, and he wanted more.

  He gathered her hands in front of her and ran his open palms up her toned arms, spreading his thumbs out to feel the swell of her breasts, and she shivered in his hold, pressing down against his erection. He pressed his hips upwards against her. God, she was going to kill him.

  He flattened his palms against the sides of her breasts and pushed, passing the pads of his thumbs over her hard nipples visible through the thin silk fabric, and he thanked every god that anyone had ever prayed to that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  She twisted in his arms, her mouth seeking his, but he pulled his lips away from her reach and almost laughed at the sound of her frustrated growl. Once again she reminded him of a tigress—powerful and feline, her every move a sensual delight—and he was teasing them both.

  He ran his hands across the silk covering the flat of her breastbone, sliding them further to the juncture of her thighs, relishing in the warmth between her legs, gathering the fabric beneath his hands as he pressed down.

  Enough. He wanted his skin on hers. He reached beneath her slender neck and released the halter neck of the dress, baring her breasts to the night sky. In the shadows her pale skin shone like marble, but it held none of the qualities of that cool stone. Eloise was flesh and blood and he wanted it all.

  He caressed her breasts, skin on skin, the heat of his hands against her cooling skin enough to drive him mad—just as mad as he was driving her. She arched her back, thrusting her small but perfect breasts into his palms. Her legs were restless against his and he knew what she was searching for.

  He gathered the skirts up around her waist, felt her long, shapely thighs pressing outwards against his and nearly lost his breath. She wasn’t wearing the thong that he had enjoyed so greatly before, she was naked, and he knew in that instant, just as he had known earlier, that nothing would prevent him from taking her.

  He slid a finger into the blond curls between her thighs and her groan of need floated on the night air. He played with her, his fingers delighting over the small bundle of nerves at her core, her gasps like music to his ears. Again and again her need was a vocal thing, encouraging him further.

  He had never seen a woman like this, glorious and lost within the world of sensation that he was providing. He had never thought that pleasing a woman could be more pleasurable than seeking his own, but he had been wrong. This was truly and singularly the most erotic thing he had ever experienced. His wife—Eloise—was the most stunningly sensual creature, and it was his name on her lips. Over and over again, pleading, begging, needing.

  Her body was taut, every muscle, every line of her poised on the brink of climax, and he had the power to give her that. He withdrew his hand, preventing her from disappearing over the edge, and smiled into her neck as she growled her frustration once again. He revelled in the control he had over her, wanting to take her to the brink again and again, wanting her completely mindless, as she had requested.

  If that made him a bastard, so be it. But then she did something that made him realise, once again, that he should not ever underestimate his wife...

  * * *

  The moment he withdrew his hand Eloise knew that he was playing with her. Not that he wouldn’t make good on his sensual promise—no, she knew that would come to pass. Only he would make her pay for it first.

  Gritting her teeth against the frustration soaring through her, she realised that two could play that game.

  She knew that he liked to hear her—could feel the pleasure that sprang through him with each sound that left her lips. In her heart of hearts she admitted that the sound of her own desire was something that also inflamed her. She might have been a virgin only a few hours ago, but she was a quick study. He had taught her to be.

  She reached beneath her, then paused, wondering—just for a moment—if she could do this...if she was ready to take control over their sensual power-play.

  The way that Odir’s body stilled completely beneath hers was all the answer she needed. With her back still flush against his chest she undid the clasps of his trousers beneath her, her fingers gliding the zip down, and she felt the hardness of his arousal on the backs of her hands.

  He growled, the sound of his voice shockingly deep and powerful in contrast to her own. She felt his hand move back between her legs and she swatted it away. It was his turn now.

  She wrapped her small hand around his hard length and revelled in the silky smoothness of his skin. The weight of him in her palm felt incredible as she gently squeezed, tightening her hold on him. She guided her hand down his length and back up again, and was surprised by the desire to taste him. To take him into her mouth.

  Anticipation fired through her, but she put all thoughts of that aside. That was for another time. She focused on the feel of him, hot and hard, felt his hips flexing just as her own had moments before.

  She smiled as Odir burst into Arabic, his words so quick and fast that she could only grasp the sentiment, the promise of the things he would do to her settling over her skin and into her heart. Wicked things he promised, but the warnings and threats all came to a halt suddenly with the gasp of pure need she felt echoing within her.

  Suddenly he shifted beneath her. She felt his hand wrap around her own, guiding her up and down his length. His pleasure was hers, the erratic beating of his heart matching time beneath her own.

  Then his hands moved again, his palms beneath her bottom lifting her just a little. She moved to grip his strong, powerful thighs, leaning forward to stay on top as he guide
d the head of his penis between her legs and into her from beneath. Her own slick wetness was a shock to her as he pulled her down onto his length and filled her completely. Her breath was expelled from her body as if to make room for him within her.

  Trust, need and desire whipped around them, stronger than any gale force wind, binding them to each other. She pushed forward, feeling the weight of him pressing against her, causing a shock of urgent need, and it was all she could do to hold on as he thrust upwards again and again, strong and sure. One hand came around her chest, moulding her breasts, teasing her nipples, the other was back between her legs, toying with her sensitive flesh, pushing her towards the abyss that waited for her.

  She couldn’t hold all the sensations within her. She dragged in air to lungs so full with passion that she didn’t think she could take any more. She clung desperately to the edge, fearful of losing herself, fearful of everything. Again and again he thrust into her, completely surrounding her, covering every single sensitive point of her body, and inside she was crying out for release.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ he whispered into her ear, his own breathing ragged but his voice steady and confident. ‘I’ve got you. You can let go.’

  For a moment her heart struggled—she didn’t want to trust him—but her body paid no heed to her heart. The command he issued was so sure, the need he mastered so strong, that with one final powerful, incredible thrust he pushed her into an abyss of stars.

  CHAPTER NINE

  August 2nd, 04.00-05.00, Heron Tower

  IT WAS THE chimes from Big Ben at the Houses of Parliament, further down the river, that brought Odir back from his sensual haze with an ice-cold certainty of what was to come. He counted each toll to four and then cursed out loud. He had just as many hours again until the press conference and it left a bitter taste in his mouth, washing away the flavour of pleasure that had been there only seconds before.