by Lynne Graham
Slowly, Jaul began to relax. The twins responded to his demonstrations of various toys with smiles and laughter and gurgles and they put everything in their mouths. ‘They’re wonderful,’ he told her quietly.
‘Yes...I think so too,’ Chrissie said with a grin. ‘Most parents think their kids are wonderful.’
It felt like a time out of time for Chrissie, for the presence of the children muted her hostility to Jaul and her tension had ebbed. ‘They need a nap now,’ she announced, scrambling upright intending to leave, a slender figure in jeans and a purple tee.
Jaul hit a button on the wall. ‘There are cots upstairs ready for them. Jane will come.’
Chrissie stiffened. ‘But I was about to go back home...’
‘We have to talk. We might as well do so while our children sleep,’ Jaul retorted smoothly as if it was no big deal.
Chrissie didn’t want to talk to him though. She thought it was much better to let the lawyers handle everything and keep the dissolution of their sadly short little marriage unemotional and impersonal. On the other hand, she didn’t want to be unreasonable and wondered if he was really hoping to see more of the twins after their nap. She climbed the stairs behind Jane, each of them cradling a twin.
An entire nursery had been assembled for the babies’ use and she wasn’t surprised—even a few short weeks living with Jaul had taught her that with sufficient money almost anything could be achieved overnight. Once Tarif and Soraya were settled she walked slowly downstairs again.
Jaul was in the drawing room and a fresh tray of coffee awaited them. Chrissie shot a rueful glance at it. ‘You’re a brave man,’ she commented, thinking of the sugar bowl and jug she had hurled on her previous visit.
‘You couldn’t hit a wall at six paces,’ he teased, a slow grin curling his strong, sensual mouth and chasing the gravity away entirely, giving her an unsettling glimpse of the slightly younger, lighter-hearted Jaul she had married.
‘Aren’t we being civilised?’ Chrissie remarked in turn while she poured the coffee and offered him a cake like the perfect hostess.
‘Perhaps you should put the cup down now,’ Jaul advised, poised straight and tall by the window. ‘Because I don’t want a divorce.’
Her turquoise eyes flew wide and her coffee cup rattled against the saucer she held. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Jaul breathed in very slow and deep, broad chest expanding below the T-shirt. ‘If the children are to take their proper place in the royal family I cannot give you a divorce now,’ he explained tautly. ‘I can get away with producing a wife and children like rabbits out of a hat and people will understand because my father’s prejudice against Western women was well-known. But for the sake of the family and my country I cannot throw in an immediate divorce—’
Without the smallest warning, Chrissie felt ready to scream with vexation because it seemed to her that they were programmed to be at odds with each other. She had lain awake the night before remembering how she had foolishly threatened to make getting a divorce difficult for Jaul and she had seen no sense in taking such a stance. Surely it was wiser for her to agree to a quick divorce and move on with her life? Why the heck would she want to prolong that process and leave herself neither married nor single purely for the sake of causing Jaul some temporary aggravation? In the end she had decided that a quick divorce would be best for both of them, particularly if she was going to have to share the twins with Jaul.
‘I’m sorry,’ Chrissie now said flatly. ‘But I do want a divorce and I can have one whether you like it or not. I’m afraid I don’t owe you or your country anything—’
Jaul shifted a graceful hand in a silencing motion. ‘Perhaps I phrased this in the wrong way. I’m asking you to give our marriage another try—’
Chrissie set down her cup with a jolt and stood up. ‘No,’ she said, refusing to even think about that suggestion. ‘Too much of my life has been screwed up by you and I want my independence back—’
‘Even if it’s at the cost of your children?’
‘That’s not a fair question. I have done everything possible to be a good mother—’
‘Tarif is the heir to my throne. I must take him home with me,’ Jaul murmured very quietly. ‘I do not want to part him from you or his sister but it is my duty to raise my heir—’
Chrissie’s knees wobbled and every ounce of colour had leached from her drawn cheeks. He was talking about taking Tarif back to Marwan as if that were already a done deal. Did that mean he had already established that he had that right? Her stomach dive-bombed and her throat convulsed. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You’re asking me to give our marriage another go because you want the kids, not me—’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Jaul urged with sardonic bite. ‘I wanted you back the moment I laid eyes on you again. You’re like my “fatal attraction” in life and I very much suspect that that works both ways.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Chrissie demanded tempestuously, breasts heaving below her top.
Lustrous dark eyes flickered pure gold. ‘You want me too,’ Jaul framed silkily. ‘You want me so much you’re eaten up with it and I’m the same—’
‘That’s the biggest piece of nonsense I’ve ever heard!’ Chrissie proclaimed furiously.
‘You need me to prove it?’ Jaul launched back at her, dark eyes blazing threat.
‘You couldn’t prove it because it isn’t true!’ Chrissie argued. ‘I’ve moved on way past you...’
‘In what way?’ Jaul demanded.
Her temper was jumping up and down inside her like a screaming child because she had suffered so much because of him and that he should show up again and start laying down the law about his wants, his needs was too much for her to bear.
‘I’ve been with other men,’ she lied with deliberation, knowing how possessive he was, how jealous, how all-consuming his passion could be...and knowing just how to hurt.
‘I expected that,’ Jaul framed in a harsh undertone. ‘You didn’t need to spell it out—’
But Chrissie had watched him pale below his vibrant skin and it made her feel like a total bitch, especially when she was lying, but it seemed so important to her right then to drive a wedge between them, to prove that she was completely free of him and what they had once shared. ‘So, you see, I don’t want you the way I once did.’
Burning bright golden eyes trailed over her from the crown of her head right down to her curling toes and she felt her body react the way it always did around Jaul. Her breasts swelled in a bra that suddenly felt too tight, her nipples pinching taut while lower down she felt hot and moist.
‘And you are one hundred per cent certain of that, are you?’ Jaul seethed as he stalked closer. ‘So certain you won’t even give me a chance?’
Chrissie snatched in a ragged breath. The atmosphere was smouldering like a combustible substance and the tension was suffocating because she recognised that Jaul was on the edge of his hot temper, which when lost was considerably more dangerous than her own. ‘Yes, I’m certain,’ she told him stubbornly.
‘You’re a liar,’ Jaul told her harshly. ‘You’re lying to me—you’re even lying to yourself! We’ve been down this route before—’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’
‘Oh, yes, you do, habibti,’ Jaul contradicted. ‘I’m talking about the months you made me wait for you—’
‘I didn’t ask you to wait—’
‘You turned your back on the attraction between us. You refused to acknowledge it.’
‘Well, I didn’t think you were my kind of person and...oh, yes, didn’t I turn out to be right about that?’ Chrissie boxed back without hesitation.
‘Stop it,’ Jaul grated, locking both arms round her to haul her up against him.
‘No, you get your hands off me...right now!’ Chrissie snapped back angrily. ‘We’re getting a divorce and you’re not allowed to touch me!’
‘You’re still my wif
e.’
‘But you don’t get to touch!’ she warned a split second before his beautiful mouth, warm and wet and rawly sexual, came crashing down on hers in an electrifying collision. His tongue pressed in deep.
For a split second she imagined she saw a shower of sparks because the taste of Jaul’s mouth on hers was as wildly exhilarating as hitching a ride on a rocket ship. Her legs went numb and her body hummed like an engine cranking up after a long time switched off, pulses like static tightening her nipples and warming her pelvis. It happened that fast, that her reaction was so strong it almost blew her away. Her hands slid up his arms, holding him to her, every skin cell in her body alight in a blaze.
She had told herself that it wouldn’t be like that if she touched him again. She had told herself that the response she recalled was the result of infatuation, exaggerated by an imagination reluctant to let go of the sparkly romance that had turned into car-crash viewing. But she had lied, not knowingly, but out of ignorance and wishful hopes because the discovery that Jaul could still deliver a kiss that could set her on fire was downright terrifying.
Struggling to catch her breath, she looked up at him, into eyes dark and glittery as a starry night, and for a split second of madness she wanted to drown there and turn time back in its tracks. Instead, she rested her cheek against a broad shoulder, breathing in the musky, clean scent of him like a hopeless addict. He smelled so good, he smelled so right that it frightened her. She quivered, insanely aware of every line of his long, lean body against hers and the terrible wanting rising inside her like a drug haze she couldn’t possibly fight and win against. ‘Jaul?’
Long brown fingers cupped her cheekbones. ‘Give me your mouth again,’ he husked.
No, that wasn’t going to solve anything and she knew it, but still she tilted her head back like a programmed doll and he kissed her again, longer and deeper, harder and stronger and her senses went spinning off into a fantasy land of rediscovery. It had been so long, far too long since she had even had a kiss and what could be said about a kiss? she scorned inwardly. A kiss was no big deal even with an estranged husband and he was so good at kissing, so wickedly erotic he should have been bottled and sold like precious oil. He lifted her up against him with that easy strength of his that had once thrilled her to the marrow. He hitched her legs round his waist, nuzzled his mouth against her throat where she was, oh, so sensitive, oh, so responsive, and suddenly her whole body was vibrating like a tuning fork, greedily reaching for every sensation and drinking it in.
Her eyes were tightly closed as if what she didn’t see didn’t have to be accounted for. This wasn’t her doing this and letting Jaul carry her upstairs. This wasn’t what she wanted but, oh, dear heaven, how much she wanted him! That mad, frenzied wanting was throbbing and pounding through her as unstoppable as a runaway train. She buried her face in his shoulder in despair at her own weakness.
‘I can’t do this...I can’t,’ she whispered feverishly.
In an awkward movement, Jaul nudged her head up and found her mouth again, briefly, devastatingly. ‘Yes, you can, because in your heart you know I will never hurt you again.’
‘It’s not that simple—’
‘It is as simple as you will allow it to be,’ he growled, his breath fanning her cheek.
But nothing was ever that simple with Jaul, her brain reminded her. Sometimes he was too clever, too devious for her, while she was a straight-down-the-line open and honest person. He pushed a door open and then he kissed her again and carnal heat engulfed her in an irresistible tide, washing away every thought.
She was lying on something soft and yielding and above her Jaul was virtually ripping off his T-shirt, smooth brown pectoral muscles rippling down washboard abs before her eyes. And seeing that beautiful body again was too much temptation all at once because her hands rose of their own volition and smoothed up over that torso from the vee rising out of the loosened waistband of his jeans to the narrow waist and up over the lethal strength etched into the sleek lines of his hard, muscular chest. The heat of him burned her palms and a clutch of longing pulled in her belly. Desire was like an old familiar stranger, controlling her, silencing her, heightening the craving to a dangerous level. She couldn’t have him, she shouldn’t have him, but the hunger was intolerable and more than she could withstand.
He came down to her again, hot and half naked, peeling off her top and then her bra, filling his hands with the pouting mounds of her breasts, fingers grazing her tightly beaded nipples and tugging them before he put his mouth there with hungry urgency. Her back arched, arrows of flaming need slivering through her quivering length to the heart of her. Sweet sensation tugged at her with every suck of his lips, every lash of his tongue, and then he kissed her again and her fingers knotted in his black hair. Tiny little sounds broke in her convulsing throat as he tugged off her panties and traced the swollen flesh between her thighs. A single finger pierced her and she cried out, already so hot, so ready she was wet and oversensitive.
‘Don’t wait,’ she heard herself mumble, wanting, needing, strung on a high of anticipation.
But Jaul never had been a male prone to following instructions in bed and he teased her first, toying with the tiny button of her desire so that she gasped and her hips jerked and her legs flailed and what remained of her control was ruthlessly wrenched from her. He shimmied down the bed and used his mouth and his tongue on her most tender flesh. From that point, she no longer knew what she was doing, was positively enslaved by the wanton hunger beating like an angry drum inside her, pushing her responses higher and higher until her whole body convulsed on a bitingly fierce climax, wave after wave of almost forgotten intense pleasure pounding through her weakened length.
‘That’s one,’ Jaul husked with his unforgettable confidence, dark eyes shimmering gold pools of hunger as what remained of his clothing went sailing across the room. He tore the corner from a small foil pack with his teeth and came down to her, lean brown powerful body arching over hers with balletic grace and all the hard, driving promise of extravagant pleasure she had learned to expect from him.
I’m not doing this, I’m not really doing this, she reasoned crazily with herself, still intoxicated by the physical gratification she had denied herself for too long. The long, slow, torturous glide of him into her damp sheath was irresistible, stretching sensitive tissue before sinking deep in a deliriously energising thrust. She strained up to him and she couldn’t help it because excitement was powering her and he was moving, hard and fast, sending ripples of deliciously dark erotic sensation travelling through her lower limbs. His rhythm was the blinding white heat of passion and she was lost and defenceless against the erotic moves of his lithe, strong body, caught up in the moment and reaching desperately for the highest peak with every sobbing, gasping breath. And then the scorching, blinding heat splintered into ecstasy as potent as an explosive charge and she cried out as the voluptuous, spellbinding pleasure expanded and flooded her with sweet sensation in the aftermath.
Afterwards, Chrissie wasn’t even quite sure where she was because Jaul was still holding her close and that felt both familiar and strange and she didn’t know how to react to it. Instead she lay there like a stick of rock, barely breathing, under attack from a roaring grip of discomfiture. On the very edge of the divorce that she had told him she wanted she had slept with him again. Humiliation engulfed her and powered her into pulling free and rolling over in silence to the other side of the bed.
Powered by no similar onslaught of self-consciousness and regret, Jaul got the message and sprang out of bed. ‘We start again,’ he pronounced with decision as he stretched, his long brown back rippling with muscle in the sunlight.
And somehow the very fact that it was still daylight and that her innocent children were napping somewhere in the huge house made Chrissie feel even more guilty and conflicted than ever. In that turmoil of uneasy emotion she almost didn’t notice the scarring on Jaul’s back as he strode towards what she
assumed to be the bathroom. Striated silvery lines marked his spine and she frowned, momentarily sidestepping her other anxieties to say abruptly, ‘How did you get the scars on your back?’
‘In an accident...car,’ Jaul told her flatly.
As he stood there, naked and brown and gorgeous, his perfect profile turned towards her, she wondered if he had always had the scars and she simply hadn’t noticed them. How observant had she been of his back view? she asked herself wryly, dismissing her momentary concern to let the other feelings of confusion and self-loathing engulf her again.
‘I still want the divorce,’ Chrissie told him stonily.
His strong jawline clenched. ‘We’ll discuss it after I have a shower.’
‘OK.’ Like someone desperate to pull clean linen over a mistake, Chrissie was eager for him to get dressed and leave her free to do the same.
‘There’s another shower off the room next door,’ Jaul remarked tautly. ‘I’ll use it.’
‘Your bodyguards aren’t standing outside the door, are they?’ Chrissie checked.
‘They’ll be downstairs.’ Jaul sent her a perceptive appraisal from grave dark eyes. ‘It is not their business to monitor or discuss my private life and they know it well.’
Chrissie was scarlet to her hairline, could feel her very cheeks throbbing with unwelcome heat. ‘I’ll use the other shower,’ she said quietly.
‘We are married. There is nothing to be embarrassed about,’ Jaul murmured soothingly.
He strode into the bathroom releasing Chrissie from paralysis and she fled from the bed, snatching up clothes, pulling them on any old way before creeping from the room and literally tiptoeing into the bathroom next door to make use of the facilities. But washing didn’t noticeably make her feel any better. She had insisted that she wanted a divorce and then fallen into bed with him again and now he thought he had her exactly where he wanted her. Was that so surprising?
