by Penny Jordan
‘Oh, and you’ll never guess what,’ Tanya told her excitedly. ‘I haven’t had the opportunity to tell you yet, but Khalid is insisting on taking me for an extended honeymoon trip. We’re going to take Fleur with us, of course, and then once we get back I suppose we will have to make our home here in Zuran, but Khalid has promised me that we’ll get away as often as we can. He says that we can have our own villa and that I can choose everything myself! Oh, and look at my engagement ring. Isn’t it beautiful?’
‘Very,’ Mariella agreed cordially as she studied the huge solitaire flashing on her sister’s hand.
‘I can’t tell you how happy I am, Ella,’ Tanya breathed ecstatically. ‘And you have looked after my darling baby so well for me. I have missed you so much, my sweet,’ Tanya cooed, blowing kisses to her daughter. ‘Your daddy and I can’t wait to have you all to ourselves.’
As she listened to her sister a small shadow crossed Mariella’s face, but she was determined not to spoil Tanya’s happiness by letting her see how much she was dreading losing Fleur.
‘It all sounds very exciting,’ she responded, forcing a smile as she looked up and saw the expectant look on her sister’s face.
‘When will you be leaving?’
‘Tomorrow! Everything’s already arranged. Khalid just wanted to come to Zuran to tell Xavier about our marriage, and to collect Fleur, of course...’
‘Of course,’ Mariella agreed hollowly.
* * *
‘ELLA, I CAN’T thank you enough for looking after Fleur for me. We’re both really grateful to you, aren’t we, Khalid?’
‘Yes, we are,’ her new brother-in-law agreed.
Mariella was still holding Fleur, not wanting to physically part with her until she absolutely had to, whilst Tanya said her goodbyes to Madame Flavel and Xavier.
Tanya was still behaving very coolly towards Xavier, only speaking to him when she had to do so.
‘Darling, can you take Fleur out to the car?’ she instructed Khalid.
Mariella could feel herself stiffening as Khalid went to take the baby from her, and, whether because of that or because as yet Fleur was not used to her father, as he reached for her the little baby suddenly screwed up her face and started to cry.
Immediately Khalid pulled back from her looking flustered and irritable.
‘Here, let me take her!’
Xavier quietly removed Fleur from Mariella’s arms, before she could object. He smiled down at Fleur and soothed her, whilst she gazed back at him wide-eyed, her tears immediately ceasing.
Out of the corner of her eye Mariella saw that Tanya had started to glower at Xavier, obviously resenting the fact that Fleur was more comfortable with him than with her father, but before she could say anything Khalid was urging her to hurry.
They went out to the car together, Xavier still holding Fleur, Mariella wincing in the blast of hot air.
As soon as she got into the car, Tanya held out her arms to him for Fleur, but to Mariella’s surprise, instead of handing Fleur to Tanya, Xavier gave her to Mariella.
Mariella could feel her eyes burning with emotional tears, her throat closing up as her feelings threatened to overwhelm her. It was almost as though Xavier could sense how she felt and wanted to give her one last precious chance to hold Fleur before she had to part with her.
Bending her head, she kissed her niece and then quickly handed her over to her sister.
When the car taking them to the airport finally pulled away, Mariella could only see it through a blur.
‘Let’s get out of this wind,’ she heard Xavier telling her when the car had finally disappeared from sight.
If he was aware of her tears he was discreet enough not to show it, simply ushering her back to the villa without making any other comment.
However, once they were inside, Mariella took a deep breath and made her voice sound as businesslike as she could as she told him, ‘I’ll make arrangements to leave just as soon as I can arrange somewhere else to stay.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Xavier demanded sharply. ‘Nothing has changed. You are still a single young woman who is a member of my family, and as such your place is still here beneath my roof and my protection! This should be your home whilst you’re in Zuran,’ Xavier told her.
Mariella opened her mouth to argue with him and then closed it again. It was just because she was feeling so upset about losing Fleur that his statement was giving her this odd sense of heady relief, she told herself defensively. It had nothing to do with...any other reason. Nothing at all!
* * *
MARIELLA WAS DREAMING. She was dreaming that she was all alone in an unfamiliar room, lying on a large bed and crying for Fleur, and then suddenly the door opened and Xavier came in. Walking over to the bed, he sat down beside her and reached out for her hand.
‘You are crying for the child,’ he told her softly. ‘But you must not. I shall give you a child of your own to love. Our child!’ As she looked at him he started to touch her, smoothing the covers from her naked body with hands that seemed to know just how to please her. Bending his head, he started to kiss her, a slow, magically tender kiss, which quickly began to burn with the heat of a fierce passion. She could feel her whole body trembling with need and longing! And not just for the child he had promised her, but for Xavier himself!
His hands cupped her breasts, his grey eyes liquid with arousal as he gazed at them, shockingly sensual words of praise falling from his lips as he whispered to her how much he wanted her. He kissed each rosy crest, savouring their shape and sensitivity with his lips and tongue until she was clinging to him, digging her nails into his back as she submitted to her own desire.
Possessively she measured the strong length of his arms with her fingertips, expelling her breath on a shuddering sigh as his tongue rimmed her belly and his hand covered her sex, waiting, aching, wanting. Beneath her hand she could feel him harden as she touched him, torn between wanting to explore him and wanting to feel him deep inside her as he ignited the spark of life that would be their child. But as she reached for him, suddenly he pulled away, abandoning her. Desperately she cried out to him not to leave her, her body chilled and shaking, tears clogging her throat and spilling from her eyes. Abruptly Mariella woke up.
Somehow in her sleep she had pushed away the bedclothes, which was why she was now shivering in the coolness of the air-conditioning. The tears drying stickily on her face and tightening her skin were surely caused by the fact that she was missing Fleur and not because she had been dreaming about Xavier...about loving him and losing him! She would never allow herself to be that much of a fool! But physically she was affected by him, she could not deny that! Fiercely she tried to tense her body against its own betraying ache of longing. Xavier was a man who, even she had to acknowledge, took his responsibilities and his commitments very seriously. A man whose passions...
Stop it, she warned herself frantically. What was she doing thinking like this? Feeling like this?
Wide awake now, she got out of bed, and was halfway toward Fleur’s now empty cot before she realised what she was doing. It was only right that Fleur should be with her parents, but she ached so to be holding her small body. She ached so for a child of her own, she admitted.
* * *
TIREDLY MARIELLA FLEXED the tense, aching muscles in her neck and shoulders as she sat beside the small pool in the women’s courtyard. She had worked relentlessly on the frieze over the last two weeks, driven by a compulsion she hadn’t been able to ignore, and now knew that she would be able to finish the project well ahead of time.
The prince had arrived to inspect her progress just before she had left and she had seen immediately from his expression just how impressed he was by what she was doing.
‘It is magnificent...awe-inspiring,’ he had told her enthusiasti
cally. ‘A truly heart-gripping vision.’
‘I’m glad you like it,’ Mariella had responded prosaically, but inwardly she had been elated.
Elated and too exhausted to eat her dinner, she reminded herself ruefully as she reached up to try and massage some relief into her aching neck, tensing as she saw Xavier walking towards her.
‘I have just come from seeing His Highness,’ he told her. ‘He wanted to show me your work. He is most impressed, and rightly so. It is magnificent!’
His uncharacteristic praise stunned Mariella, who stared at him, her turquoise eyes shadowed and wary.
‘Has your sister been in touch with you yet to reassure you that Fleur is well?’ Xavier continued.
Not trusting herself to speak, Mariella shook her head and then winced as her tense, locked muscles resisted the movement.
Quick to notice her small betraying wince, Xavier demanded immediately, ‘You’re in pain. What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘My muscles are stiff, that’s all,’ Mariella replied.
‘Stiff. Where? Let me see?’
Before she could object he was sitting down next to her, his fingers moving searchingly over her shoulders, expertly finding her locked muscles.
‘Keep still,’ he said when she instinctively tried to pull away. ‘I am not surprised you are in so much pain. You work too hard! Drive yourself too hard. Worry too much about others and allow them to abuse your sense of responsibility towards them!’
Swiftly Mariella turned her head to look at him.
‘You are a fine one to accuse me of that!’ she couldn’t help pointing out.
For a moment they looked at one another in mutual silence. She was learning so much about this man, discovering so many things about him that changed her whole perception of what and who he was.
* * *
HE COULDN’T HAVE been more wrong about Mariella, or misjudged her more unfairly, Xavier acknowledged as he looked down into her eyes. Her sister, in contrast, was exactly what he had expected her to be, and typical of his cousin’s taste in women. The more cynical side of his nature felt that, not only were they suited to one another, but that they also deserved one another in their mutual selfishness and lack of any true emotional depth.
Mariella, on the other hand... He had never met a woman who took her responsibilities more seriously, or who was more fiercely protective of those she loved. When she committed herself to a man she would commit herself to him heart and soul. When she loved a man, she would love him with depth and passion and her love would be for ever...
‘Your sister should have been in touch with you. She must know how much you are missing Fleur,’ he told Mariella abruptly.
Mariella tensed, immediately flying to Tanya’s defence as she told him fiercely, ‘She is Fleur’s mother. She doesn’t have to consult me about...anything. This holiday will give the three of them an opportunity to bond together as a family. Tanya and Khalid are Fleur’s parents and...’
‘I miss Fleur too,’ Xavier stopped her gruffly, his admission astonishing her. ‘And in my opinion she would be much better off here in a secure environment with those who know her best, rather than being dragged to some fashionable resort where she will probably be left in the care of hotel staff whilst her parents spend their time enjoying themselves!’
‘You are being unfair,’ Mariella protested, and then winced as Xavier started to knead the knots out of her muscles, making it impossible for her to move.
‘No. I am being honest,’ he corrected her. ‘And when Khalid returns you may be sure that I shall be making it very plain to him that Fleur needs a secure family environment!’
Xavier would make a wonderful father, Mariella conceded, and then stiffened as she tried to reject the messages that knowledge was giving her! After all, like her, Xavier had no intentions of ever getting married!
‘Your muscles are very badly knotted,’ she heard him telling her brusquely as his thumbs started to probe their way over the tight lumps of pain.
It was heaven having the tension massaged from her body, Mariella acknowledged, and no doubt what he was doing would be even more effective if she wasn’t trying to tense herself against those dangerous sensations that had nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of work-induced muscle ache, and everything to do with Xavier himself.
The longer he touched her, the harder she was finding it to control her sexual reaction to him.
His thumbs stroked along her spine, causing her to shudder openly in response. Immediately his hands stilled.
‘Mariella.’
His voice sounded rough and raw, the sensation of his breath against her skin bringing her out in a rash of sensual goose-bumps. Was she only imagining that she could hear a note of hungry male desire in his voice?
She couldn’t trust herself to speak to him, just as she didn’t dare to turn round, but suddenly he was turning her, holding her, finding her mouth with his own and kissing her with a silent ferocity that made her tremble from head to toe as her body dissolved in a wash of liquid pleasure that ran through her veins, melting any resistance.
The hands that had so clinically massaged her shoulders were now caressing her flesh beneath her loose top in a way that was anything but clinical! A savage, relentless ache began to torment her body. The warm, perfumed night air of the garden was suddenly replaced by the aroused male scent of Xavier’s body and Mariella reacted to it blindly, wrenching her mouth from beneath his and burying her face in the open throat of his robe so that she could breathe it—him—in more deeply, her lips questing for the satin warmth of his skin, her moan of pleasure locked in her throat as she gave her senses their head.
Beneath her lips his flesh felt firm and hot, the muscles of his throat taut, the curve where it met his shoulder tempting her to bite delicately into it. She heard him groan as his hand covered her breast, her nipple swelling eagerly against his palm. She felt the warmth of the night air against her skin as he pushed her simple cotton robe out of the way, her whole body shuddering in agonised pleasure as he cupped her breast and lowered his mouth to her waiting nipple.
The pleasure that surged through her tightened her body into a helpless yearning arc of longing, exposing her slender feminine flesh to his gaze and touch, offering her up to them, Mariella recognised distantly as she shook with hunger for him. Wanting him like this seemed so natural, and right, so inevitable, as though it were something that had been destined to happen.
Lifting her hand, she touched his face, their gazes meeting and locking, silently absorbing one another’s need. The look in his eyes made her body leap in eager heat, the sensation of the slightly rough rasp of his jaw against her palm as he turned his face to kiss it filling her with a thousand erotic images of how it was going to feel, to have him caressing even more sensitive and intimate parts of her body. She was, she realised, trembling violently, as Xavier stroked his hands down her back and lifted her against his body so that she could feel its hard arousal. She ached so badly for the feel of him inside her, for the fulfilment of his possession of her, the completion. His mouth was on her breast, her nipple, caressing it in a way that made her cry out for the hot, deep suckle of a more savage pleasure.
In the moonlight Xavier could see the swollen softness of her mouth and her breast, his breath catching in his lungs as his gaze travelled lower, to where the delicate mound of her sex seemed to push temptingly against the fine cotton of her briefs.
The thought of sliding his hand beneath them and holding her, parting the delicately shaped lips and opening up her moist inner self to his touch, his kiss, sent a shudder of hot need clawing through him. In the privacy of this garden he could show her, share with her, give her the pleasure he could see and feel her body was aching for. But here in his garden, in his villa, where she was under his protection, a member of his family...a woman as off limits as
any of the carefully guarded daughters of his friends.
His hand was already splaying across her sex, his thumb probing tantalizingly.
Hot shafts of molten quivers darted from the point where Xavier’s hand rested so intimately on her to every sensitive nerve ending in her body. Within herself Mariella could feel her own femaleness expanding rhythmically in longing. More than anything else she wanted him there inside her. More than anything else she wanted him...
Her raw sound of shocked protest broke the silence as Xavier suddenly released her.
‘I already owe you one apology for my...my inappropriate behaviour towards you,’ she heard him telling her curtly. ‘Now it seems that I am guilty of repeating that behaviour. It will not...must not happen again!’
As he stood up and turned away from her, Mariella wondered if he was trying to reassure her—or warn her! Her face and then her whole body burned hot with mortified misery.
Her throat was too choked with emotion for her to be able to say anything, but in any case Xavier was already leaving, walking across the garden to the small, almost hidden doorway that led through into his own quarters, and to which only he had the key.
Was she too destined to be a secret garden to which only he held the key?
Fiercely she resisted the dangerous and unwanted thought. It was simply sex that had driven her...a physical need...a perfectly normal response to her own sexuality. There was nothing emotional about what she had felt. Nothing.
* * *
PACING THE FLOOR of his own room, Xavier came to an abrupt decision. Since he couldn’t trust himself to be in the same place as Mariella and not want her, then he needed to put a safe distance between them, and the best way for him to do that would be for him to return to his desert oasis.
CHAPTER TEN
‘IT IS almost a week since he left and still Xavier remains at the oasis.’
Mariella forced herself to concentrate on her work instead of reacting to Madame Flavel’s comments.
