Society Weddings

by Sharon Kendrick

  She grabbed her underwear and her silky Quador clothes and, feeling his dark eyes still on her body, moved towards the bathroom, where she defiantly turned the key in the door very loudly.

  She showered for a long time, washing every last musky trace of his masculine scent from her body, and then she slipped on the robes, which were coloured palest blue, and went back into the room, expecting—no, hoping—that he would be gone.

  But he had not gone. Of course he hadn’t.

  Some time during her shower he had put his own robes back on, and now he was sprawled, silent and watchful, on one of the long, low couches which lay beneath the window.

  His lashes concealed the expression in his shuttered eyes, and his face had never looked more impossibly remote as he followed her movements.

  Rashid watched her. Her body was completely and decently covered now, but she still exuded an irresistible sensuality. A sensuality which had made him weak as he had never been weak before!

  His mouth tightened. ‘I think you owe me some kind of explanation, Jenna.’

  ‘I owe you nothing!’ she retorted hotly. Not now. She had paid her dues in full.

  A glimmer of humour—the very first she had seen since she had walked into his palace that day—briefly softened the hard, dark eyes. ‘You like to fight with me, don’t you?’ he observed softly.

  She shook her head. ‘No one ever fights with you.’

  ‘You do,’ he contradicted. ‘Jenna.’ His deep voice lingered on the syllables and made it sound like an erotic entreaty. ‘Why did you tell me that you had had a lover when it is now self-evident that there has been no one?’

  Except for you, she thought, with sad bitterness. And in the end she had blown it, so caught up with nerves as he had entered her that she had known no pleasure at all.

  ‘Do you really need to know?’ she asked wearily.

  ‘Yes.’

  She guessed that there was no point in evading this particular issue. What Rashid wanted, Rashid generally got—and why shouldn’t he know the truth?

  ‘It was a last desperate attempt to get out of marrying you,’ she said.

  He frowned as if had misheard her. ‘Desperate?’ he echoed incredulously. ‘You would go to such lengths not to marry me?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She nodded her head, spurred on by a determination that he should know the strength of her resolve. ‘I don’t want to marry you, be your wife. I told you that repeatedly, Rashid but, as usual, you wouldn’t listen! You ordered me over here in spite of my objections. You want your own sweet way and you’re determined to get it—just like you always do!’

  ‘You flatter me, Jenna,’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘No, I don’t—and what is more I never will! Everyone else around here does, and that’s half your trouble!’

  ‘Half my trouble?’ he repeated dangerously. ‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘That you’re arrogant!’ she offered.

  Black brows were raised in imperious question, as if she had just rather stupidly stated the obvious. ‘And?’

  His lazy acknowledgement filled her with the courage to tell him what was really going on in her mind. ‘And I don’t want to marry an arrogant man! I don’t want the kind of marriage you are offering me!’ she declared. She saw him open his mouth to object, but she shook her head and carried on, not caring that no one ever interrupted Rashid! ‘When I get married, I want it to be as an equal!’

  ‘An equal?’ he repeated faintly.

  ‘Yes! It’s an interesting word, isn’t it, Rashid? One which I learnt in America! Go and look it up in the dictionary if you really don’t understand it!’

  ‘I think you forget yourself!’ he said tightly.

  ‘I think not!’ she contradicted, and for a moment her vulnerability and sense of regret were washed away by an overwhelming wave of power! She was no longer bound by an ancient promise to him! She was free to say exactly as she pleased—and maybe some long-overdue home truths wouldn’t go amiss.

  ‘I don’t want the kind of marriage your parents had. All Quador men consider it to be their unquestionable right to…’ She clamped her lips together firmly.

  ‘To what, Jenna?’ he questioned silkily.

  As if he needed telling! She shivered with distaste. ‘To have mistresses!’

  ‘Mistresses?’

  Her pent-up anger and frustration exploded in a fit of temper she hadn’t seen in herself for a long, long time. ‘Oh, please don’t insult my intelligence by playing dumb with me, Rashid!’ she snapped. ‘I’m not stupid, and neither is everyone else! I read the newspapers, you know!’

  He noticed the ragged breathing which was making her delightful breasts rise up and down quite enticingly, and thought fleetingly that if it had been any other woman he might have taken her straight back to bed there and then.

  But then if it had been any other woman he doubted he would have lost all control and left her unsatisfied. A fact which was surely contributing to her magnificent temper—a temper which was making her look fiery and beautiful and almost formidable.

  Neither men nor women lost their temper in front of him, and in this woman the novelty value was proving highly erotic. But enough was enough; she needed to know who was the master.

  ‘Explain yourself!’ he commanded.

  Jenna pursed her lips together. ‘The whole world knows that you have many women,’ she began, and when she saw the slight shrugging of his shoulders her blood pressure threatened to shoot through the ceiling. ‘You see! There you go again! Looking as though it’s something to be proud of!’

  ‘Many men do it,’ he commented quietly. ‘But mostly they don’t have the paparazzi waiting around to capture the moment on film!’

  She sucked in a breath of outrage that was directed as much against her own behaviour as his. How could she have just let him have sex with her like that? How could she?

  ‘Even in yesterday’s newspaper in New York I saw that you had been pictured leaving your friend’s apartment in Paris only the day before!’ she raged. ‘Cutting it a little fine, weren’t you, Rashid? You must have some stamina—to have made love to her and then to come back to repeat the experience with me!’

  He was contemplating giving her an insight into the real extent of his stamina, when he saw the faint glimmer of tears which had turned her eyes into liquid gold and he cursed aloud. What right had he to make any kind of boast in view of what had just happened?

  His voice was as soft as she had ever heard it, and it soothed her as if it were a lullaby. ‘I had not intended to make love to you today!’ he murmured. ‘As my bride, you would have come to me a virgin—and I would have been so much slower with you. So much more gentle! And now I have ruined your first experience of making love.’

  ‘Maybe we both ruined it,’ she argued quietly, and then turned her eyes up to his. ‘Oh, why did you have to follow me here, Rashid? Why didn’t you just leave me alone?’

  Not follow her? Rashid shook his head. His anger and his desire for her had reached a point of total combustion that could not have been denied. He hadn’t asked himself what had guided him so inexorably towards her room because he had been eaten up with a gnawing kind of jealousy which had blinded him to all thought and reason.

  Until he had walked into this bedchamber and seen her wrapped into nothing but a towel. And then a primitive hunger had taken over completely.

  ‘But I could not let you go just like that,’ he declared heatedly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘And let you take your leave of me with those your final words?’ His question was incredulous. ‘That you, as my betrothed, had taken another lover?’

  She bit back the obvious remark that he had not acted like her betrothed for the past few years—that might smack of desperation of a different kind. And, whatever else happened today, Rashid would remember her as having some kind of innate pride.

  ‘But there remains a question, Jenna,’ he continued quietly
. His deep voice sounded reflective, though the hooded black eyes told her precisely nothing of his true feelings. ‘Just what do we do next?’

  She stared at him, then shrugged. ‘As planned,’ she said steadily, ‘I would like a car to take me to my father’s house, please.’

  His lips compressed together and he threw her a look of impatience. ‘As if this had never happened?’

  ‘I think that is probably best, under the circumstances.’

  ‘Best?’ He gave a short, hollow laugh, and then spoke in a low, urgent tone. ‘I think that you must be talking out of the back of your head—as you say in America—if you think that this matter can now be forgotten.’

  There was a steely determination underpinning his voice which made her regard him with wary eyes. ‘Just what do you mean by that, Rashid?’ she whispered.

  ‘I have taken your honour,’ he said simply. ‘Taken it in a way which grieves me bitterly to think of, and there is a price to be paid for that action.’

  A price to be paid. He made it sound as if she were a diamond on sale and up for the highest bidder! ‘Don’t be ridiculous—’

  ‘I am never ridiculous!’ he lashed back, and then drew a deep, laboured breath. ‘Jenna, you were always intended to be my bride, and that situation will still stand. For how can I send you home to your father, knowing what has happened between us?’

  ‘But he need never know!’ she protested, desperate now.

  There was an infinitesimal pause. ‘Not even if there is a baby on the way?’

  Her heart missed a beat. ‘A baby?’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘A baby?’

  ‘Well, of course there could be a baby!’ he exploded impatiently. ‘Did you not learn biology at school? I used no form of contraception—and I assume that, as a virgin, you were not protected either!’

  The repercussions of what they had just done began to seep into her consciousness, like blood falling onto a stone. And it hurt. ‘Do you normally go around taking the risk of impregnating a woman?’ she questioned huskily, but her hands were shaking as she imagined him with other women. ‘Don’t you ever take any responsibility for your lovemaking? Just exactly how many children have you sired—?’

  ‘Jenna!’ he thundered. ‘I have never, ever spilled my seed into a woman before today! The royal blood of Quador cannot be squandered in such a way!’

  ‘Then what was so different about this time?’

  A pulse beat relentlessly at his temple. This he could not answer—except to tell himself that he had been out of control in a way which was completely alien to him and had shown him a side of his nature he had not known existed.

  ‘I have no need to explain my actions to you, Jenna,’ he said softly, his eyes as hard and as bright as diamonds. ‘But I see no need why the marriage should not now go ahead, as planned.’

  ‘Couldn’t we just wait to see if there’s a baby on the way?’ she beseeched him, knowing in her heart that it was useless, for she recognised that steely determination of old. ‘And if there isn’t—then couldn’t we forget the whole thing?’

  He knitted his dark brows together in recognition of her sustained reluctance to be his bride. ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘We cannot.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’

  No one refused him anything. Ever. And whether he got what he wanted by negotiation or coercion—he always won in the end. ‘Perhaps you wish that I should inform your father of what has just occurred?’

  Warning bells threatened to deafen her, and all she could see was the cold ebony light gleaming from his eyes. ‘Rashid! You w-wouldn’t d-do that!’ she breathed.

  ‘Wouldn’t I?’ He smiled, but the smile sent a shiver down her spine. ‘Oh, I would, Jenna—believe me, I would.’ The eyes glittered again. ‘And what do you suspect your father would say if I told him?’

  Jenna flinched. She knew very well what he would say. And feel. For a Quador man, her father was remarkably in touch with his feelings. Unlike this beast of a lion who sat so mockingly before her now! He would be hurt and angry that she had lost her honour before her marriage. He would feel her to be compromised, as indeed she now was. Quador had such black and white views on a subject like this, she thought. Oh, why had she ever agreed to come back?

  ‘He would make me marry you,’ she said woodenly. ‘You know he would.’

  ‘Correction. He would be delighted for you to marry me. It was always what he wanted.’

  She shook her shorn head distractedly. How could her father, her sweet gentle father, possibly have agreed to let his daughter be given to this…this…? ‘Barbarian!’ she spat at him.

  He gave a low laugh. ‘Oh, how I enjoy your protestations and your defiance, Jenna,’ he murmured. ‘Your capitulation will make a worthy prize, and you, my sweet, will make a most stimulating partner!’

  Defensively, she locked her long fingers around her neck. ‘Partner!’ she echoed. ‘I can’t believe you have the nerve to use an expression which describes some kind of sharing!’

  ‘We will share many things,’ he promised. ‘And I will show you how much lovemaking can be enjoyed.’

  She felt sick.

  Sex.

  That was what this was all about. Sex and pride and blood-lines and showing her just why he was considered one of the world’s greatest lovers. Whatever had happened to the mention of love? But more fool her for wishing for the impossible. It had never been anything other than a business arrangement, and one which he had been happy to avoid for as long as possible.

  And when he tired of her, as he inevitably would, what then? For Rashid had known many women in his life—why on earth should he settle for a life of marital fidelity when he was used to variety in the most exotic sense imaginable.

  Could she bear it? She imagined some not-too-distant day when he would go abroad on ‘business’—but in reality would no doubt be seeking out the experienced warmth of Chantal, or women just like her?

  But what else could she do?

  She asked herself what alternative she had, tried to imagine the scenario of thwarting his wishes and risking her father’s wrath. She thought of Nadia, too—and her loving but clandestine relationship with Brad. What if Rashid followed her back to New York, determined to get his own way, and discovered the truth about her sister and her American lover, as doubtless he would?

  He would put a stop to that, as well—she wouldn’t put it past him. And how could she threaten her dear sister’s very obvious happiness because of a bizarre sequence of events which had culminated in her losing her innocence to Rashid?

  She had no choice—she was doomed if she did and doomed if she didn’t. Her fevered mind could not see any alternative to the one which lay so darkly in front her.

  She nodded her head, her face full of resignation, but she did not flinch from his piercing gaze. ‘You may take me as your bride, Rashid,’ she said, with quiet dignity. ‘But you cannot make me a willing partner! And here is something else that might make you change your mind—I will never enjoy sex with you. Never, ever, ever!’

  By the shafts of his silken-clad thighs he clenched his fists with anger, but only for a moment. He must maintain control—at least until after the ceremony. But it wasn’t easy—not with her lips parted in protest and just begging to be kissed.

  Resisting the urge to crush her into his arms and to prove her wrong in the most unequivocal way possible, he stood up and towered over her, like some dark, avenging statue.

  ‘You must know that I like nothing better than a challenge, my impetuous Jenna,’ he said softly. ‘How I will take pleasure in making you take those words back, in having you sigh my name over and over again as you beg for more, and yet more.’

  ‘Never!’ she said again, but that look of dark intent in his eyes was difficult to challenge.

  ‘We shall see,’ came his cool retort. ‘Now, come. Let us go to your father. Let us break the happy news to him.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘YOUR Sheikh awaits you, mistress. The w
edding draws near.’

  The words seemed to come at her from a long way away, and Jenna forced herself back into the present from out of the wistful thoughts which had occupied her mind for much of the last week. And one thought alone had dominated.

  There was to be no baby.

  The discovery had not surprised her, for physically she had not felt any different—and surely she would have felt profoundly and completely different if Rashid’s child had been growing inside her womb?

  But she had been unprepared for the primitive swamping of despondency when she had learned that she would not start her married life as a pregnant woman. At least a baby would have given her some reason for being. Some reason for being married to a man who did not love her.

  She had spent sleepless nights weeping silently into her pillow as she mourned something which all common-sense told her was the best thing which could have happened.

  Yet Rashid, too, had not reacted as she might have expected. There had been none of the expected exultation and relief. She had quietly told him and he had taken the news in silence, his dark eyes hooded, and then he had nodded his dark head.

  ‘It is as destiny wills it,’ he had said, his voice sounding cold and toneless.

  Yet wouldn’t a pregnancy have reassured him that his all-important bloodline would continue? Wasn’t her fertility the most vital aspect of this union?

  ‘Mistress,’ said her lady-in-waiting again. ‘Your Sheikh awaits you.’

  Jenna stared into the floor-length mirror as if scarcely believing the image which was projected back at her.

  She did indeed look fit for a king!

  She wore a heavy gold satin gown, richly and lavishly studded with jewels, which weighed almost as much as she did. Her hair had grown a little in the weeks leading up to the wedding. Rashid had not demanded it—he had not needed to. She had seen the unmistakable glitter of disapproval every time those dark eyes had surveyed her long, bare neck. Quador women wore their hair long—and now that she was the public representative of those women she would have to do the same. And, in truth, she had missed the weight and the silken caress of her waist-length locks.