Society Weddings

by Sharon Kendrick

  Her hand flew to her heart, feeling its wild fluttering as he continued to walk towards the bed. ‘Rashid,’ she said breathlessly, ‘you are up very early.’

  He made a small murmur of dissent. ‘It is almost ten, Jenna—and soon the sun will be high in the sky. We must make haste for the lodge before that happens.’

  She had to know. She had to. ‘Where did you…where did you—?’

  ‘Sleep?’ he interrupted, his dark eyes flashing with cruel humour. ‘Why, I slept on the divan beneath the window, Jenna—for fear of disturbing your sleep.’

  Beneath the silk coverlet her body trembled, her other hand moving towards her breasts. She was still wearing her fancy bridal underwear, she realised, her cheeks growing pink. She must have fallen asleep without remembering to take it off.

  And Rashid had not removed it either—in fact he had not wanted even to share a bed with her. What she had been half-dreading and half-longing for had failed to materialise, and yet the fact gave her not one moment of pleasure. Better that he should have ravished her than treat her this morning with such insulting indifference!

  She forced herself to meet the mocking black light of his eyes. ‘There was room for two, Rashid,’ she said quietly. ‘You didn’t have to sleep over there and be uncomfortable all night.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ he responded coolly. ‘It was not in the least bit uncomfortable.’ He hadn’t achieved much sleep, all the same—but he suspected that it was more than he would have gained if he had subjected himself to the torture of lying beside her sleeping body without touching her.

  ‘Oh. Well, I’m glad you had a good night’s sleep,’ she said, rather woodenly.

  He allowed the faint drift of a smile to glimmer at the corners of his mouth. ‘That wasn’t what I said at all,’ he offered obliquely. ‘But you certainly did, didn’t you?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. I was very tired.’

  Or just eager to lose herself in the safety net of sleep? His mouth tightened. ‘Now get dressed, Jenna, and we will leave as soon as you are ready.’

  She waited until he had left the room and then distractedly showered and put on silk trousers and a slim-fitting matching tunic, which were more suited to travelling along the bumpy roads to the lodge than one of the more formal and elaborate outfits which comprised her trousseau.

  When she went downstairs to where he was breakfasting a sudden dark gleam of approval softened the hard eyes and he motioned for her to come and sit beside him.

  He poured her coffee and handed her a dish of fruit, and his hand suddenly reached out to trace the skin beneath her eyes.

  ‘All those dark shadows gone,’ he observed quietly.

  ‘Yes.’ The shadows beneath her eyes were only being replaced by the shadows in her heart. But the tender gesture disarmed her, and Jenna found herself smiling in response before tucking into the exotic fruits with something approaching her normal appetite.

  He refilled her coffee cup and she found herself relaxing. Yet his consideration and his restraint both charmed and alarmed her. This Rashid was more like the Rashid of old, she thought—and that was dangerous. For he was not the same man at all. The Rashid she had loved had been the ideal fantasy man of her dreams. The perfect man and the perfect lover—forsaking all others and loyal only to her.

  But the true man had been as much of an illusion as her own hard-fought-for independence. And if a man like Rashid had known many pleasures of the flesh—then how long before he was tempted into tasting them again?

  Especially a man who had not even spent his wedding night in the same bed as his wife…

  She pushed her cup away and looked up to find him watching her.

  ‘Shall we leave immediately?’ he questioned softly.

  Jenna nodded. ‘As you wish.’

  Outside stood a gleaming four-wheel drive, and Jenna’s mouth curved into an instinctive smile. ‘No ancient Quador chariot, this,’ she observed.

  ‘You don’t approve?’ he murmured.

  ‘Of course I approve! I know only too well how treacherous the unmade roads can be! It’s just that in America these vehicles are used on suburban school-runs—I’m sure that many of my friends over there would be surprised to learn that it is also the honeymoon car of the Sheikh and his wife!’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘You mean that they wouldn’t think it romantic enough?’ he mused.

  ‘Possibly.’

  His eyes glinted. ‘But comfort can be very romantic, Jenna—as you shall discover for yourself when you let me escort you in air-conditioned splendour!’

  He was right, it was romantic. Beguilingly and misleadingly so.

  Closeted together on the back seat, speeding through the sweetly familiar countryside, it felt almost like old times. They passed places where he had taken her riding as a child, and the past somehow became inextricably bound up in the confusing state of the present.

  The child in her had dreamed of a moment such as this, and yet the woman she had become seemed less certain of anything than the child had been.

  He watched the play of emotions which chased over her face as they drove deeper and deeper into Quador, forcing himself not to take her into his arms and kiss away all the barriers between them. She would come to him or not at all, he reminded himself grimly.

  ‘Will you miss America?’ he asked suddenly.

  She turned to face him. His dark handsome face sent a spear of longing through her, surprised by an unfamiliar look of disquiet there.

  She shrugged her shoulders a little. ‘I thought I would,’ she admitted. ‘But this is home—and home occupies a part of your heart that no other place ever can.’

  ‘That is a good start,’ he mused. ‘For a honeymoon.’

  But what kind of honeymoon? she wondered as the car bumped along an unmade track to the hunting lodge she had not visited for years, and a small sigh escaped from her lips.

  ‘What is it?’ he questioned.

  ‘I—I’d forgotten how beautiful it was,’ she sighed, as the long, low building which stood in the shadow of snow-peaked mountains came into view.

  And he had forgotten how beautiful she was—even with her magnificent hair all shorn off. He had allowed her perfect profile and those high, delicious cheekbones to fade from the forefront of his mind. He had allowed the two of them to become worlds apart. And now surely they were worlds apart?

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ he agreed. ‘Too long since I was here, also.’

  ‘Seriously?’ She squinted her eyes to look at him. ‘But you used to come up here whenever possible!’

  His smile was rueful. ‘You think that extended breaks go hand-in-hand with ruling a country the size of Quador?’

  ‘You don’t delegate?’

  ‘Delegate?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Delegation is a luxury I can seldom afford, Jenna. Being accepted by my people means that my profile always needs to be high.’

  ‘But you are accepted by your people!’ she said, with sudden passion. ‘You know you are, Rashid!’

  He smiled. ‘Careful! That sounded very nearly like a compliment!’

  She laughed back, caught in the dark cross-fire of his eyes. ‘Hold your horses—I wouldn’t go that far!’

  For a moment they shared the compatibility of days gone by, and Rashid felt his heart thunder like the pound of equine hooves. ‘Speaking of horses—are you hungry?’

  Hungry? How could she be hungry for anything other than the taste of his lips on hers once more? She shook her head. ‘No, not a bit. I had a big breakfast. Why?’

  ‘Then shall we ride together, Jenna? As we used to?’

  There was a heartbeat of a pause, but she hid her disappointment. ‘Yes, Sheikh,’ she answered quietly. ‘I would like that.’

  The driver had come round to open the door of the car. ‘Let us go inside and change,’ Rashid said, and his voice had deepened.

  Shown inside by a delighted servant, Jenna felt a peculiar mixture of relief and disappointment to d
iscover that she had been allocated her own separate room, complete with a large divan and a luxurious en suite bathroom. She guessed that Rashid had a mirror image, only larger—and she also guessed that this meant that they could spend nights apart should they wish. She told herself that royal custom decreed it, that it had always been so and that she must just accept it.

  And wasn’t it easier to slither into her jodhpurs and a long-sleeved white shirt without those mocking black eyes fixed on her—reminding her that in every way that mattered this was not a real marriage.

  But all her anxieties and fears were washed away when Rashid led her into the stables and she was confronted by the sight of the Arab mare whose golden-brown and gleaming skin did, as Rashid had once commented, so cleverly mimic her own.

  For a moment she was speechless, and then she turned to him, her eyes wide and brimming with tears which were not just about the horse. ‘Pasha!’ she whispered. ‘Can it really be so?’

  ‘Of course.’ His voice was very soft, but his heart beat strangely as he saw the luminous amber gaze she directed at him. ‘Did you think that once you had left for America I would let your father sell her to a stranger?’

  Jenna put her arms around the horse and pressed her face close to its warm neck, breathing in the scent of a long-forgotten youth. ‘Why, Rashid?’

  ‘Because the horse belongs to you, Jenna, and always shall.’ His voice deepened into a sultry caress. ‘Just as you shall always belong to me.’

  She thought that the words sounded more like a stamp of possession than any declaration of affection, but at least he wasn’t seducing her with false promises. Still with her arm draped around the horse’s neck, she stared into the irresistible dark glitter of his eyes. She didn’t want to be only half a wife, she realised.

  His words to her came filtering painfully back. He would not beg her, and if she came to him it must be as one who was willing.

  Should that moment be now?

  But the eyes of the bodyguards who stood discreetly in the shadows of the stables were upon them, and Rashid would not approve of a display of feelings in front of his staff.

  Instead, unaided, she swung herself up into the saddle and flashed him a smile of challenge.

  ‘Race you, then,’ she said.

  And with a small exultant laugh he mounted his own night-dark stallion with the grace of the born horseman. ‘Done,’ he murmured, and trotted out of the stable before she had time to gather her reins.

  ‘Cheat!’ she called after him, but her cry was lost on the desert wind. And suddenly nothing else mattered other than the pounding movement and graceful strength of the animal beneath her. The sand flew up in fine clouds from beneath Pasha’s hooves and Jenna gave a whoop of sheer, unadulterated pleasure as she raced to catch her Sheikh up.

  With the purity of the desert spread out before them, they rode for hours, but always within sight of the mounted bodyguards. Every now and then Rashid made them stop to drink from cool flagons of water, the sweat sheening their skin as they greedily tipped the liquid into their parched throats.

  ‘You look happy now,’ observed Rashid. Achingly, he noted a drop of water which had trickled down from her mouth and now fell with an enticing splat onto the shirt which clung to her breasts, and the heat which invaded his veins was hotter than the desert sun.

  Not completely happy. But happier. She passed the flagon back to him. ‘So do you,’ she said softly.

  ‘It’s easy to be happy when you are unencumbered by the burdens of state,’ he said wryly, with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

  ‘If you’re trying to tell me that you’d be more contented as a nomad, living out here all the time—then I would challenge you, Rashid!’

  She challenged him in more ways than she would ever know. He shook his head. ‘That isn’t what I’m saying—I’m just making the observation that a man is the sum of many parts, and that the carefree part of me can rarely be allowed to break free.’

  It was odd that he had used that word. Carefree. Hadn’t she thought the same thing about the doves which had been released on their wedding day?

  ‘Well, it’s free enough now,’ she observed mischievously. ‘So why not make the most of it?’ And she galloped off to the sound of his soft laughter.

  The sun was sinking in the sky by the time they returned to the lodge, and the mountains had grown mysteriously darker in shades of deepest blue and green.

  Jenna was uncomfortably aware of being hot and sticky and covered in dust—but even more aware of being closed in. The vast open space of the desert had guaranteed them a certain freedom and ease, but now they were inside the lodge once more the tension was back.

  And how.

  Rashid’s face had taken on that cool, forbidding mask once more, and his words were almost clipped as he turned to her. ‘Dinner will be at eight,’ he told her formally. ‘I will see you then.’ And he turned on his heel as he headed for his own room.

  Telling herself that she would not be disappointed by his abrupt change in attitude, she took herself off to bathe, then she slept for a while before changing for dinner. Just before eight she arrived in the dining room to find Rashid waiting for her. Her heart sank to see that his face was as darkly enigmatic as before.

  It was an informal room compared to its counterpart in the palace in Riocard, but its relative simplicity did nothing to detract from the magnificent carved table and the equally magnificent chairs. It was unmistakably a royal room, made all the more so by the sight of a brooding Rashid, who was standing by a roaring log fire, for the mountain nights could be bitter.

  He watched her as she walked in, all grace and sensuality in a long, white dress whose bodice was embroidered with tiny sprays of jasmine. With her face completely bare of make-up, he thought that he had never seen a woman look more lovely.

  Or more untouchable—which was ironic in view of how she had behaved with him the other day. But that passionate and responsive woman seemed like a world away—and, whilst the memory filled him with the constant ache of longing, he could not deny that he was captivated by the first woman in his memory who was not using every feminine wile in the book to seduce him.

  But then, why would she? She wouldn’t know how to play the games of feminine seduction. She had been a virgin, he reminded himself with a bitter pang of guilt.

  ‘Hello, Jenna,’ he said softly.

  When he looked at her like that—with a mixture of awe and hunger and fascination—she felt both shy and secure, and completely at a loss as to how to handle things. She couldn’t just walk straight into his arms, could she? Especially not as a servant was bringing in a steaming platter of Quador chicken and another dish of spicy rice.

  ‘Hello,’ she said simply.

  ‘Are you exhausted after your ride?’

  She wondered whether that was a leading question. If she said that she was, then wouldn’t that give him the excuse to sleep alone again? And anyway, she did not feel in the least bit tired; she felt alive, exhilarated—as though anything could happen on this night.

  She shook her head. ‘Not a bit—I’d forgotten just how relaxing riding could be.’ She looked at him from between slitted lashes. ‘And you?’

  His smile was tight. ‘I have never felt less tired in my life,’ he said, his voice pure velvet.

  It wasn’t easy to concentrate on anything other than the dark and proud face, but she made a big effort. Somehow she forced herself to eat something, for she had eaten nothing since breakfast, and to drink the iced juice which was poured for her.

  But they chatted like old times, and as some of the apprehension left her body it was replaced by the certainty of what she must now do.

  Because it was up to her.

  She knew that Rashid had a will of steel—and, much as she suspected that he wanted her, the first move must come from her. Her bitter words could not just be unsaid; she must show him that she was willing to be a wife to him in every sense of the word.

  They h
ad finished their coffee and the fire was very low when he lifted his dark head and fixed her with a glittering stare.

  ‘And now, Jenna?’ he questioned softly.

  This definitely was a loaded question. Her lips felt like parchment as she stared into his dark chiselled face.

  ‘I think it is time for bed,’ she managed.

  He needed to be crystal-clear about her expectations of him. Or her lack of them. ‘Alone?’

  She shook her head. She would die if he left her alone tonight.

  ‘Not alone, Rashid,’ she murmured quietly. ‘Together.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HER heart was pounding as he closed the bedroom door, and she thanked heaven that the room was lit only with the soft light of the lamps. She wanted to see him, but not in too much detail, for she was terrified that she would disappoint him and prove as hopeless a lover as she had done before.

  He stood in front of her, surveying her with an unmoving face, the ebony glitter of his eyes and the rapid beat of the pulse at his temple the only outward sign of life.

  Her lips parted. ‘Rashid,’ she breathed threadily, hoping that he would not want more than this to signal her assent. He had told her that he would not beg—well, neither would she!

  He saw her raise her chin in defiance and he almost smiled at her gesture of pride. But the moment was far too intense for humour or for battles of will. Because the look in her eyes and the way she had whispered his name told him everything he needed to know.

  ‘Come to me, sweet Jenna,’ he commanded softly. ‘Come to your Sheikh.’

  It was only a few steps, but her legs felt so weak that she feared they would not carry her that short distance. And only the fact that he was standing there, his eyes inviting her into his embrace, ensured that she found herself where she most wanted to be.

  She gave a little moan as he pulled her against him, and, catching her face between his hands, bent his head to kiss her in a kiss which was sweet and as potent as strong wine. She felt so dizzy with the sensation of his mouth against her mouth, his tongue flicking an erotic little entry inside, that she barely registered time passing, barely even registered the moment when he slid the zip of her dress down and gently removed it from her body.