‘You don’t like it?’
She grazed her lips over his, unable to stop herself. Just once, she told herself. She would kiss him just once. But she kissed him again, and again, and then again, and his low laugh of delight made her want to do it some more.
She tried to speak, but her lips were so dry and her head so spinning that the words came out as a parched kind of whisper. ‘It isn’t a question of not liking…’
‘But that’s the only important question, darling. Nothing else is worth asking.’ He drifted his mouth along the line of her jaw. ‘Is it?’
Her head fell back and his lips moved immediately to her neck. Lara shuddered. In her befuddled state of desire his words seemed to make perfect sense, and this was dangerous indeed. Very dangerous.
She should pull away and ask him to take her home. If he wanted her that much then he would be prepared to wait—and wouldn’t that be what any woman in her right mind would do? Wait at least until she had told him the momentous news she had?
So why were her fingertips running over the back of his head as if learning him by touch? Why was she doing nothing to stop him when he ran the flat of his hand down over one breast and then back again, where it lingered, and she could feel it growing tight and hard against him.
Because she couldn’t, that was why.
She lifted her head, which felt as if it was weighted with some heavy metal—like the gold which matched the hot, molten colour of his eyes. Two flares of colour ran along each aristocratic cheekbone, and at that moment he looked like a pure Marabanese, with all the accompanying pride and arrogance that went with that ancestry.
Yet his hard mouth had been softened by her kisses, so that for one second he looked unexpectedly vulnerable. It was like having a curtain twitch and seeing behind it a glimpse of a man you dared not dream existed. A man with softness beneath the hard, polished exterior, making him utterly irresistible. And with something approaching shock Lara realised that she wanted him now, no matter what the consequences.
She remembered the first time she had seen Khalim and had almost melted into a puddle on the floor. Was she just one of those women who were suckers for arrogant and exotic-looking men who seemed to make most normal men look like a pale imitation of the real thing?
Darian sensed her reservations melting away and smiled lazily as he ran his hand down over her stomach, which curved faintly beneath the clinging cream fabric of her dress, and then down further still, until it edged up beneath the thin material. He splayed his fingers with arrogant possession over the space of cool flesh above her stocking top and Lara felt her thighs part, as if no power on earth could have stopped them.
‘You do like it,’ he purred approvingly, and the pad of his thumb stroked the silken flesh there. He felt her squirm, enjoying the look of helpless pleasure which made her lips form a disbelieving little Oh!
She tried one last, futile time. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she protested half-heartedly.
‘Want me to stop?’ This as his fingertips floated tantalisingly close to the moist, filmy barrier of her panties, and she shook her head distractedly.
‘No!’
He kissed her, and his words were muffled against her lips. ‘You just want me to know that you aren’t in the habit of leaping into bed on a first date, is that it?’
Lara felt her cheeks grow hot. ‘Well, I’m not—’
‘And neither am I,’ he murmured silkily. ‘So we’re equal, aren’t we?’
If only he knew!
‘And now that we’ve established that…’ He pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her—only this time he really kissed her, deep, searching seeking kisses, which dissolved away everything but the need to be joined with him.
‘Darian,’ she moaned weakly as he started to unbutton her dress, little by little, bit by bit, lowering his head so that where his fingers led his mouth followed, annointing her skin with gentle kisses which made her squirm with pleasure. He slipped the dress from her shoulders and it slid away unnoticed, so that she was lying there in a tiny cream bra and knickers, her stockings and black leather boots.
Darian sucked in a hot, ragged breath. Women only ever wore undergarments like that if they were expecting to be seduced. This was what she wanted. What she had obviously expected. The heat built up inside him. ‘Undress me,’ he urged. ‘Take my clothes off, Lara.’
But Lara felt almost kittenish in her helplessness. Her fingers fumbled at the buttons of his shirt until he made a low sound that was halfway between a groan and a laugh and tipped her chin up with his fingertip, unbearably excited by the beguiling contrast beween wanton abandon and a kind of sweet shyness.
‘Your hands are shaking,’ he said gravely.
Her whole body was shaking—surely he could see that?
‘Yes.’
He pulled at his shirt with a hunger so sharp he scarcely recognised it. What invisible buttons was she pressing? he wondered distractedly as he yanked it off and impatiently threw it aside.
She saw the tension on his face and managed to undo his belt, but he unzipped his trousers himself, as though not trusting her to do so. Her lips were parched with both fear and excitement as the last of his clothing was removed, and she gave an instinctive sigh as she feasted her eyes on him.
His body was as beautiful as she had known it would be—his skin the colour of deep honey, his limbs long and lean and strong. And he was very, very aroused…
He ran a slow finger over her leather boot and up along her thigh, and felt her shudder in response. ‘Do you want to wrap these round my back?’ he whispered.
It was one of those questions which told her exactly what the score was. A deliberate and studied celebration of sensuality and nothing more than that. But Lara was too much in thrall to back out now—and what reason could she possibly give? That she was afraid he was going to hurt her as no man had ever hurt her before nor would again?
Instead, she reached her arms up to pull him close, and as he lowered his body down onto hers she had the strangest feeling of inevitability—as though this moment had been determined from the first time she had set eyes on him, as though her life would somehow be incomplete without this.
‘Wait!’ he commanded, and reached down to pull a packet of condoms from the pocket of his trousers.
‘I’m…I’m on the Pill,’ she said, her voice shy, which in itself was madness in view of the intimacy of their naked bodies.
Golden eyes glittered. ‘Let’s just be sure, shall we?’ he murmured, and slid one on.
Lara felt heat suffuse her cheeks. He was only being safe and sensible, the way she would have wanted and expected him to be, but it made her feel as if this was just…mechanical instead of special. Part of her wanted to pull her clothes back on and run away, but he had started to kiss her again, and the sweetness of his lips made flight impossible and unwanted.
‘Lara!’ Darian groaned as the hard, flat planes of his body met her moist and giving heat, bending his mouth to hers. Their lips met and fused and a strange warmth filled him. What the hell was she doing? What game was she playing that could have him feeling like this?
All she was doing was holding him in her arms, her hips rising up as if to invite him inside, and suddenly he knew he could wait no longer.
The last of her doubts fled as she felt him tremble because helplessness in such a strong man could be very potent. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, as if she had read his mind. ‘Oh, yes.’ But he was already entering her, plunging deep, deep inside her, and she gasped with delighted pleasure.
He heard the sound she made and felt a wild and exultant kind of joy, steadying himself as he began to move. She moved in harmony with him, and he watched the rapture flower and bloom on her face.
Lara’s breath caught in her throat. It had never been like this. Never. So… Her eyes snapped open and she saw the dark and golden man who moved above her with such sweet and piercing precision. How could she be this close? This soon? This…?
�
��Darian!’ It was a sigh and a cry laced with a sense of wonder.
But he was a silent lover. There was no response at all bar the silken touch of his skin and the feel of him moving inside her—the sudden brilliant gleam from his eyes was the only sign that he had heard her. She had to bite back words of passion, because even though they were joined so intimately there were some things you didn’t do. And telling a man like Darian that you thought he was the most wonderful lover was one of them. And then she was past thought…past caring…
Holding back until he thought it might kill him, he looked down and watched her until the instinctive and frantic arching of her back set him free. He let his seed spill into her with a spasm of pleasure which seemed to go on and on and on, and when it was over he felt as though she had robbed him of something. Taken something from him which he had not been ready to give.
They lay there, spent, in shuddering silence for a moment or two, and a tiny sigh escaped from her lips.
‘Oh, Darian,’ she whispered, and, turning her head, she kissed his shoulder. But he didn’t move, didn’t answer, just lay there like a statue made of flesh and bone and blood—and that was when the doubts came flooding back, startling her out of her post-coital haze, and she closed her eyes in despair.
What had she done?
Lara knew that regret was a waste of time emotion, but it washed over her in a great wave, leaving her shivering and cold in its wake. What in God’s name had she been thinking of? To have sex with a man so quickly—and not just any man—this man. And she still hadn’t asked him the most important question of all.
She licked her dry, parched lips. ‘Darian?’
Darian gazed at the ceiling. Usually he felt restless, not dazed like this. He would jump up, make coffee, perhaps play a little music. Indulge in physical activity which put a distance between him and a woman, and that was the way he liked it. A bout of sensational sex should be seen in context, as nothing more nor less than just that.
But tonight felt different. His limbs didn’t want to move and sleep was tempting his heavy eyes as his heart slowed into a regular pounding beat. It was as if he’d landed in a warm, safe place and didn’t want to leave it.
He fought it, and yawned. He would offer to take her home now. It was always the acid-test—how the woman reacted. Like a cool, emotionally independent woman or like a clinging little girl. The moment you let a woman stay the night she started moving in her toothbrush and leaving pairs of panties around the place—marking her territory. Though when he stopped to think about it he wouldn’t mind the tiny little scraps of nonsense which Lara wore lying anywhere. In fact, he’d preferably like her wearing them, so that he could slowly remove them and…
‘Darian?’ Lara said again, as she felt him begin to harden against her, and she wondered if he could hear the worry in her voice.
‘Mmm?’ He had been about to pull her into his arms again, but something in her question, something in her body language made him tense, and instinctively his features became shuttered. ‘Yes, Lara?’
She sensed just as much as she saw his mental retreat. It was there in the yawn, the way he hadn’t been tender, or kissed the top of her head, or told her that it had been amazing. But there were still things she needed to know. She had allowed herself to be seduced, and in so doing she had momentarily veered off course, but she needed to know one thing above all else.
‘How old are you?’
Darian was rarely surprised by a woman, particularly after he had just had sex with her; women tended to be predictable in their reactions to fast physical intimacy—they either acted as if you were about to start choosing the ring, or they started asking unanswerable questions like, Do you still respect me? But this was the last question he had been expecting.
Was it a Why aren’t you married yet? kind of question? And would other inevitable questions follow—like why had he never settled down before and didn’t he ever want children? The last drop of pleasure evaporated in an instant, like rain splashing onto a sunbaked pavement. ‘Thirty-five. Why?’
She felt the walls close in, and it had nothing to do with the odd, cold note which had entered his voice.
Thirty-five!
Which made him exactly the same age as Khalim. Or, rather, it probably made him older—because surely Khalim’s father would not have had a lover straight after he was married? And the repercussions of that just didn’t bear thinking about.
Suddenly something which had been almost abstract was brought into harsh and painful reality, and she knew that this was a responsibility too much to bear alone.
She had to tell someone, but it could not be Darian.
Not yet.
She ran her fingertips over his chest, her blood running icy-cold in her veins.
‘I think I’d better go home now,’ she said.
He only just resisted a sigh of relief. ‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll get dressed and then I’ll drive you.’
‘I can get a taxi.’
‘I said I’d take you,’ he said, in a tone which broached no argument.
Lara thought that she would have preferred to take a cab, alone with the reality of what a huge mistake she had just made.
Because the fact that he hadn’t tried to talk her out of leaving told its own story.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THERE was a click on the line and Lara waited, as she had been waiting on and off for the past two days—but of course it was never going to be an easy matter to get through to Prince Khalim of Maraban. Despite the fact that phone lines to the mountain kingdom were notoriously unreliable, and the fact that she counted herself as his friend, Lara was pragmatic enough to realise that no one ever really became close to such a powerful and enigmatic figure. Certainly not close enough to just pick the phone up, get connected immediately and say Hi!
And she still hadn’t worked out exactly what she was going to say to him when he finally answered anyway.
‘Hello?’
It was unmistakably Khalim’s voice—deep, with the slightest accent. And—Lara didn’t know whether she was being simply fanciful—didn’t its deepness and richness remind her of Darian’s voice?
‘Khalim?’
‘Hello, Lara.’
He sounded wary, and Lara couldn’t blame him. He was married to her best friend Rose, and loved her with a fierce and unremitting passion, but he had spent his life being propositioned and pursued by countless other women. Why wouldn’t he be suspicious that Lara had decided to contact him in a way which had been specifically meant to exclude Rose?
‘I know you’re probably wondering why on earth I’m ringing you, and I hardly know how to begin.’
He made no helpful sound. There was merely silence from the other end of the phone. It would have been better to tell him this face to face—but he was hardly going to jump on a plane to England on her say-so, just as she was hardly likely to fly to Maraban at a moment’s notice.
‘Khalim, you know I was working at the Embassy while someone was off sick?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Well…well, one morning this…this letter arrived.’ Lara began to speak, scarcely knowing what it was that she said, because the words seemed to come tumbling out of their own accord and she realised just how much she must have bottled it all up. It was incredible, but as the story unfolded it began to sound more real. She told him that she had found Darian, and that she had met him, deliberately and blushingly skating over the graphic details of their meeting.
‘And that’s it, really,’ she finished, and the sense of a burden shared gave her a brief feeling of lightness. ‘I’m sure that this man Darian Wildman is your half-brother.’
There was a short silence. She could imagine Khalim turning the incredible words over and over in his mind, choosing his own answering words carefully, as he always did—because men like Khalim could not risk misinterpretation, not even by friends.
When he spoke there was no emotion in his voice. ‘You cannot b
e certain of this, Lara.’
‘I know. I only know what I’ve found.’ She paused. ‘He…he looks like you.’
This time there was a reaction.
‘But he is half-English, you say?’
‘Yes, he is.’ Lara closed her eyes as she remembered the golden eyes and the dark and tawny body, that autocratic air and undeniable sense of solitude which Khalim always carried about him, which Darian shared. ‘But he is unmistakably related to you,’ she finished softly. ‘I am convinced of that.’
Khalim said something rapid in Marabanese.
‘He could be a clever fraud,’ he bit out. ‘An impostor.’
‘How can he be? He knows nothing of the claim,’ argued Lara. ‘Nor anything of the letter.’
‘You hinted at nothing?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘Why, Lara?’ asked Khalim softly. ‘Why did you say nothing to this man of such a momentous discovery?’
‘Because…because…’ Her words trailed off as she recognised that a kind of betrayal had occurred—but surely an inevitable one? ‘Because my first loyalty is to you.’
‘Thank you,’ he said simply. ‘The question is what we do about it now.’
‘Some people might ignore it. Throw the letter away and pretend it never happened. Carry on just as before.’
‘Could you ignore it, Lara?’
Doubt and uncertainty prevailed. Her body still ached from Darian’s lovemaking, her senses were still full of him, her mind unable to banish the image of his hard, mocking mouth softened by her kisses.
‘If you asked me to, then I suppose—’
‘No!’ He cut into her troubled words. ‘Your hesitation does you credit. I would not ask you to ignore it, nor could I ignore it myself—for the hand of fate is at work here. Predestination,’ he mused. ‘Sometimes friend and sometimes foe, but unable to be ignored or avoided. We cannot pretend something has not happened because something has—and because of it—things are for ever changed.’
‘Y-yes,’ said Lara falteringly, and she felt the strangest feeling of foreboding tiptoeing its way up her spine as she repeated his words. ‘For ever changed.’
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