by Lynne Graham
‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.
‘What I want to do,’ Razul informed her rawly, pressing her knees apart with his hard thighs as he sank his hands beneath her to hold her in place. ‘If you believe that I have used you, then I might as well commit the sin.’
She sank her unsteady hands into his thick, silky hair, emotions that were at powerful variance with her spoken rejection threatening to tear her in two, until he took her mouth with passionate urgency and with that one act drove every rational thought from her head.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BETHANY shifted in the comfortable bed and shivered convulsively with cold. Her arm was throbbing. She ached all over, she ached in places she hadn’t even known she could ache, but, strangely, she felt drowsily detached from her physical discomforts and her mind was disorientatingly awash with a flood of erotic imagery.
She was remembering the hot, drugging glory of Razul’s mouth on hers, the phenomenal speed at which her treacherously eager body had quickened to melted honey. She was remembering that savage joining as he’d sunk into her over and over again, remorselessly driving her to a pitch of excitement far beyond her wildest fantasies. She was remembering her own wanton ecstasy when he’d chosen to ditch all control and cool...and was shrinking inwardly from the shame of her own weakness.
Yet she was too honest to deny that she had gloried in that sensual intimacy and rejoiced in his hungry need for her and that, most of all, she had loved falling asleep in his arms, knowing that he was there in the night and feeling wonderfully secure in that sense of no longer being alone.
So, it had begun, she sensed wretchedly. This was what love did to you. It levelled your pride and betrayed your principles. It made a sane woman behave insanely. Her mother was an intelligent woman, but intelligence had not once prompted her to break away from her destructive marriage.
No, her mother stayed the course, apparently hooked on the pain and humiliation of possessing a wandering spouse. ‘He’s my husband and I love him,’ she had told her daughter in staunch reproof in the days when Bethany had still been naïve enough to think that she should interfere. Escape to university had been a blessing, and in burying herself in her studies and carving out her career Bethany had gradually let the ties of home wane to their current level of occasional letters.
With a weak hand she tugged at the sheet, trying to warm herself.
Had she really protected herself all these years just to fall flat on her face for a male who was a sexual predator like her father? The kind of man who stoked his inadequate ego with female flattery and surrender, who made an art form out of lying and who was loyal to nothing but his own self-interest. But that wasn’t Razul, she conceded grudgingly, her head aching fit to burst.
It was laughable to think of Razul as inadequate. In the ego line, he was as tough as old boots. He was also fiercely loyal to his family, not to mention being possessed of a nasty habit of brutal candour that was frequently grossly unwelcome to Bethany’s ears. In fact, if there was anything you least wanted to hear about yourself, Razul was most likely to break the bad news, presumably in the hope that you would admit the flaw and work hard to eradicate it.
But not one of those virtues made him any less of a predator, Bethany reminded herself painfully. Indeed, that powerful character made him even more dangerous, for she saw now that it was that innate strength and tenacity of purpose which she found so very attractive. He was the only man who had ever stood up to her, the only man who had ever managed to penetrate her defensive shell...and the only man ever to surprise her by constantly doing the unexpected, refusing to fall into the neat little pigeon-holes into which she had scornfully slotted all men from an early age.
So now she knew why she loved him. But that didn’t blind her to the knowledge that all Razul wanted from her was that wild sexual oblivion which he had introduced her to last night. Only he wasn’t prepared to admit that openly, was he? Presumably, if he did, his own moral scruples would take a battering. Marriage was much more respectable than an affair—which he could not possibly have got away with in Datar—but their marriage was still only a temporary affair.
It was becoming an effort to think, she registered, twisting her head back and forth on the pillow, her mouth as dry as a bone as she fought to concentrate. Her arm gave an unbearable twinge as she moved it, and with an effort, for she felt very weak, she pushed back the sheet and surveyed it with a curiously detached sort of interest. It was swollen and angry-looking, particularly puffy round the plaster covering Fatima’s scratches. Blood poisoning, she decided, and she was probably running a temperature, which explained why she was feeling so cold.
She heard a door open. Had it been locked? She recalled his threat to lock her up and throw away the key and smiled with helpless amusement. She loved his drama, too. Her mind was wandering, she noted with faint irritation—she needed a doctor.
Razul appeared in her field of view, fully dressed in an exquisitely tailored dove-grey suit. In Western mode today. He looked devastatingly handsome but he shimmered a little indistinctly round the edges, as if she was suffering from some form of visual disturbance. She wondered dimly why he was carrying a laden tray complete with flowers, because he had the distinct attitude of someone who didn’t know what to do with it.
‘You are awake...are you hungry?’ he enquired very stiltedly, hovering quite a few feet away and looking staggeringly awkward. ‘I have brought breakfast.’
Doctor, she reminded herself, grateful that Razul would be rock-solid in a crisis.
He cleared his throat in the silence. ‘Naturally you are awaiting an apology.’
Was she? Why was she expecting an apology? She couldn’t imagine, and continued to observe him with glazed green eyes from the depths of the great, shadowy bed.
‘I regret my behaviour last night,’ he delivered, an arc of colour accentuating the strong slant of his cheek-bones and the brilliance of his dark, troubled eyes. ‘I have no excuse to make for myself. I lost control. I lost my temper. I have never done this before.’
She just couldn’t concentrate at all. Doctor, she thought again. ‘I need a doctor,’ she told him weakly.
‘A doctor?’ He frowned uncertainly at her.
She pushed the sheet down from her aching arm. ‘See?’ she pointed out.
The tray dropped with a thunderous crash of smashing china. She blinked in bemusement as Razul suddenly came down on the bed beside her in what could only be described as a flying leap. A flood of volatile Arabic rent the charged silence. He grasped her fingers in a death grip and stared down at her, immobilised by shock. Panic, sheer panic, she registered in astonishment, and then he dug out a mobile phone, but his hand was shaking so badly that he evidently hit the wrong numerals, because he cursed viciously and had to start again. Nor was the call that he eventually managed to make distinguished by any princely form of cool.
‘Sorry to be such a nuisance,’ she sighed in what she hoped was a soothing tone.
He said something in his own language in response, his English obviously failing him. He groaned something in a tone of anguish as he snatched up her nightdress and began to feed her into it. Then he bundled her very gently into first the sheet and then the bedspread and swept her up, wrapped like an Egyptian mummy. About there, she slid into a feverish state of unawareness.
The next time Bethany surfaced she was in a dimly lit room in one of those beds with rails round it and a drip was attached to her arm. She felt terribly hot and uncomfortable, and she didn’t want another thermometer stuck in her mouth and said so loudly. She heard Razul speak and heard a female voice literally snap back at him, which struck her as unusual, and if only it had not been too much effort to do so she might have looked just to see what was going on.
The time after that, she wakened up as if she had been sleeping. Her arm was no longer painful but she felt incredibly drained. The same voices were still talking. She shifted position with a faint mutter over the weakness of
her muscles and opened her eyes. Laila was standing over the bed on one side of her, Razul at the foot, and there was more than a suggestion of acrimony in the air.
‘There you are,’ Laila said with satisfaction to her brother. ‘I told you she was only asleep...as did Mr Khan.’
Bethany frowned in astonishment at Razul. He looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a week and had been sleeping rough. A thick blue-black shadow of stubble covered his aggressive jawline. His eyes were bloodshot, his suit crumpled, his tie missing.
‘How are you feeling?’ he enquired tautly, ignoring his sister.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘Almost two days—’
‘The longest days of my life,’ Laila groaned. ‘Please tell him to go home, Bethany, before I am tempted to commit a crime still punishable by death...an assault on his illustrious person—’
‘You will not speak to me like that!’ Razul bit out, making Bethany flinch.
‘No human being can go that long without sleep and expect to retain a sense of proportion...and what has happened to your sense of humour?’ Laila demanded.
‘You expect me to laugh when my wife has been on the brink of death?’ he asked incredulously.
‘Your wife has not been on the brink of death. She has been quite ill but not seriously ill. Now will you please go home before I am reduced to ignoble strategy? You know as well as I do what will happen if I inform our father of your current state of exhaustion. One tiny hint that his beloved son is not rejoicing in robust health and he’ll order you home.’
‘I am staying with my wife. While she is unwell, this is my place.’
‘Please go home,’ Bethany muttered, feeling horribly guilty for causing dissension between brother and sister, and even more dismayed by the news that Razul had not slept in forty-eight hours.
His facial muscles clenched hard. His dense lashes screened his strained, dark-as-night eyes but she couldn’t help feeling that he was reacting as though she had stabbed a knife into his back. His strong features harshly set, he withdrew a step. ‘If that is your desire...’
As the door closed on his departure Laila groaned, ‘You should have wrapped that up a bit. Now you’ve offended him and it’s my fault. Ahmed would be cringing if he heard me speaking to Razul like that, but for heaven’s sake...I’m twenty years older, I’ve lived most of my life in London and I keep on forgetting that my kid brother will one day be our king. I always had a big mouth,’ she muttered wearily, ‘but he’s been acting like an idiot since you were brought in—’
‘An idiot?’ Bethany echoed weakly.
‘He was in a blind panic. First of all he wanted to take you to London because he wasn’t convinced we could offer a sufficient standard of care. I told him he really would have something to worry about if you had to wait that long for treatment. Then he wanted to fly in specialists. Then one of the junior staff...a young male,’ she stressed witheringly, ‘accidentally came in here, and Razul went through the roof and threatened to take you home if you could not be adequately chaperoned and protected from such an appalling invasion of your privacy. He has not left your bedside for a moment.
‘He has not eaten, he has not slept and there are four guards standing outside that door... Any minute now I expect the arrival of an official food-taster!’
Bethany stared back at Razul’s sister, wide-eyed. ‘Oh, dear...’ she mumbled.
‘Oh, dear, indeed.’ With a rueful smile Laila sank down on a chair. ‘Now, I can understand that he’s been worried sick about you, but I don’t understand why he’s been behaving as though it was his fault that you were ill!’
Bethany dimly remembered that apology. A sudden attack of conscience had undoubtedly prompted his extraordinary behaviour. Her heart sank like a stone. She would have felt wonderful if she could have believed that his behaviour had stemmed solely from genuine concern and worry about her well-being.
‘As if it could be. You had bad luck, that’s all. How did you get those scratches anyway?’
‘Fatima—’
‘Does Razul know that?’ Laila gasped.
Bethany nodded, locked into her own miserable thoughts.
Disconcertingly, Razul’s sister burst out laughing. ‘That piece of news makes everything I have endured worthwhile,’ she declared with renewed energy, and stood up again to press a button on the wall by the bed. ‘Your specialist, Mr Khan, will want to check you over. Are you hungry yet?’
‘No—’
‘Please try to develop an appetite,’ Laila teased. ‘If you don’t, Razul will import your Dubai cook...and then the next thing you know all our rich patrons will expect to do the same. Actually I’m very glad you are here.’
Bethany gaped at her.
‘What Razul does, everyone else does,’ Laila supplied cheerfully. ‘If he had flown you to London for treatment, our reputation as a hospital would have sunk without trace!’ She turned from the door and grinned widely. ‘I am also depending on you to give birth to the first royal baby within these walls, but please let us make a pact to sedate Razul in advance of the big event, because I will surely strangle him if he starts trying to tell me what to do in my delivery room!’
A royal baby? In mute shock Bethany lay very still. Laila was under the impression that this was a real marriage. Of course she was. Why should Razul let his whole family know that she was only a temporary aberration? There was no necessity when he knew that by the end of the summer she would be gone anyway. But his father knew the truth, she suspected. Presumably that was the only reason why he had allowed Razul to marry her in the first place.
Well, King Azmir needn’t worry himself, and Laila was destined to disappointment this time around. Razul hadn’t run any risk of making his new bride pregnant. Even in the midst of wild passion in that pool, now she came to consider the fact, Razul had not taken any chances. He had carried her back to bed and protected them both from any possibility of her becoming pregnant.
And why the heck should that hurt so much? It was only confirmation of what she had known from the start. They had no future together. So why, when Razul employed a little common sense for a change, should that common sense feel like the ultimate rejection? She ought to be delighted that he had not risked such a development. Why was her mind now throwing up embarrassingly twee little pictures of Razul in miniature?
Her nose wrinkled as her eyes burned. She grimaced, furious with herself. A long time ago she had known that the one real drawback of the celibate life that she had planned would be never, ever having a child of her own when she loved children.
As she loved him...hateful creep that he was, she thought bitterly, turning her convulsing face into the pillow and absolutely despising herself for giving way to her emotions. Just to think of Fatima and him together made her stomach heave. The woman was a maniac! And not one single word of criticism had Razul uttered when Bethany had told him who had inflicted those scratches.
Of course, it didn’t matter to him that Bethany had suffered grievously at that woman’s hands. That nasty piece of work with no control over her temper and murderous impulses was very probably going to be the mother of his children.
All of a sudden Bethany wanted to die and leave him so miserable and so tortured by guilt that he would be totally useless as a husband!
‘I understand that you are not eating very much,’ Razul remarked tautly.
‘I’m just not very hungry.’ In the twenty-four hours it had taken him to show up again and visit her, Bethany had sunk deep into her misery, and when he had walked through the door looking as grim and tense as she felt it had been the last straw.
‘I can understand that...’ he breathed in an even tauter undertone. ‘But you must be sensible.’
The silence was oppressive. She turned her face to the wall. He deserved Fatima, she decided wretchedly, trying to hate him, but somehow that only made her own pain bite all the deeper.
‘I made a mistake in bringing you to Datar,’ he
conceded heavily.
Bethany went rigid, and emerged from the tumbled cloud of her veiling hair with a frown.
‘I believed I could make you happy...for a while anyway,’ Razul framed even more tightly, ferocious tension in every lean, hard angle of his features. ‘I know now that that was very arrogant of me...and stupid—unforgivably stupid. I allowed my passions to carry me away. I have never wanted a woman as much as I wanted you. You were my dream... In the name of Allah, I sound like an adolescent boy!’
With a harsh laugh of angry embarrassment he strode restively over to the window. ‘I was naive enough to believe that we could have this special time together and that it would cost you nothing. I had so little time left. I have no freedom of choice. I have to marry and father children. I am thirty. That is quite an age to still be single in my position...’
‘Yes,’ she whispered unsteadily, absolutely ripped apart by a depth of honesty that she had not expected to receive.
‘You were my dream...’ she reflected on a tide of almost unbearable pain; if only she had been. He had exquisite tact. What he was really saying was what she had known all along. She had been his sexual fantasy, the desirable conquest who had refused to be caught, becoming even more highly desired as a result. He had wanted one last fling with a woman who was not of his world—a strong, independent woman who would scarcely fall apart at the seams or make a fuss when it was over—and he had never at any stage contemplated that one last fling turning into anything more meaningful or lasting.
‘If it were not for my family I would have you flown back to England, for that is what you must want now,’ Razul intoned almost jerkily. ‘But for their sake I ask you to stay for a little while longer. The too sudden departure of my bride would cause them severe embarrassment.’
Bethany did not dare look at him. The thought of being transported home immediately filled her with horror. Yet it was cowardly to want to put off the inevitable. ‘This special time together’...why couldn’t she have been the type of woman who could accept that? And suddenly, finally, she understood why she had not accepted it.
