Sheikh's Mail-Order Bride

by Marguerite Kaye

  But now was not the time for future regrets. Looking around her at her own little circle of people, not only women and their children but several elders, all smiling and gesturing and doing their best, despite the huge language barrier, to include her, added to Constance’s glow of satisfaction. We are grounded only by our own fears, Kadar had translated for her from his speech. She had been just that, for most of her life, but no longer. Kadar’s speech had been a turning point for her as well as for every single person here.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon by the time they left the oasis. ‘I meant to show you many other places today, but there is not time now, and besides I need to seriously reconsider my plans in the light of what I have learned,’ Kadar said as the last of their entourage of children waved a final farewell and returned to the town. ‘Today has made me realise how egotistical were my ideas. I wished to bring my world to Murimon, when what is really needed is to improve this world first, make it ready. We need ship builders and road builders and teachers and engineers more than we need scholars. Practical men.’

  ‘And women,’ Constance said.

  Kadar smiled warmly at her. ‘And women, of course.’ He brought his camel to a halt beside her. ‘Today has been one of the most enlightening of my life, and you have been fundamental to that. I am very grateful, Constance.’

  ‘I did nothing. It was all your own doing. Your speech had me spellbound, and I had no idea what you were actually saying! You were magnificent, Kadar. You should be proud of yourself.’

  He shrugged, but she could tell he was touched. ‘I have a lot to learn about being a prince, but today I made a start, I think.’

  ‘Today, you took the first step—how did you say it?—out of the shadow of your brother’s death towards a new dawn.’

  ‘A small step.’

  ‘But a significant one,’ Constance persisted.

  Kadar laughed. ‘It feels that way at the moment, but I always find that the night brings true counsel. I’ll see what I think in the morning. In the meantime, let us take a break from my kingdom’s future, and enjoy the remains of the day.’

  He urged his camel forward again, back through the mountain pass. Constance followed behind him, surprised, when they reached the head of the pass overlooking the port, that he then took a narrow path which led away from the palace, following the coast. They were traversing the ochre-coloured cliffs which bounded the beach where they had gone for their first horseback ride together, through the lines of olive trees and onto the scrubland which took over as the fertile topsoil disappeared. Below them now she could see the secluded crescent of the bay, the sand silver at the highest point, turning to gold where the sea was just beginning to creep in.

  ‘It’s a pity there is no way down,’ Constance said, for her head was beginning to ache from the relentless sun. ‘It looks lovely and cool down there.’

  ‘My English Rose is finally beginning to wilt. Let us see what we can do to remedy that,’ Kadar replied.

  The path he turned onto was narrow, cut into the rock almost like a staircase, and surely far too steep for the camels to descend. But Kadar’s camel was already on the vertiginous path, and terrifying as it was, the beach looked so appealing that Constance allowed her beast to follow, resisting the urge to screw her eyes shut, keeping them instead firmly fixed on the horizon. It took no more than a few minutes to reach the sanctuary of the sand, though it felt like an eternity. Letting out a sigh of relief, she slid down from the saddle, handing the reins to Kadar, who efficiently hobbled the two camels.

  Her beautiful silk coat was quickly discarded, along with her boots and headdress. Kadar followed suit, removing his cloak, headdress and boots, running his hand through his hair. ‘The water is the perfect antidote for hot feet,’ he said.

  ‘It does look very tempting.’ Constance walked through the soft sand, which oozed around her toes, to the water’s edge. Her trousers would get wet, but there was a limit to the amount of clothes she could discard. The first wave which washed over her feet was surprisingly cold. She jumped, staggered as her foot sank into the soft sand.

  ‘Careful.’ Kadar caught her arm to steady her.

  They waded out further. The waves licked at her ankles and then her calves. Constance giggled with childlike delight. Further, and the water went over her knees, splashing her trouser legs, making them cling to her legs. They were deep enough for the tails of her tunic to trail in the sea.

  ‘Far enough I think,’ Kadar said, ‘else I will have to teach you to swim.’

  They stood side by side in the water. It was so clear she could see their toes on the seabed. Kadar’s thigh against hers was warm. Her skin under the water tingled from the cold, yet there was a trickle of perspiration in the small of her back. ‘I was going to say I’ve never been in the sea before, but that’s nonsense, of course.’

  She turned towards him as she spoke. Her toes brushed his and she stumbled. The wind whipped her hair over her eyes. She reached out blindly, flailing in the water, as some splashed on her face. And it was that, the spray on her face, the taste of brine on her lips, that made her panic, made her heart pump wildly, made her mouth dry, her legs shake. Screams. Tearing canvas. Crashing waves.

  ‘Constance.’

  Hands on her arms, steadying her. Her face pressed against the hard wall of his chest. The slow beating of his heart.

  ‘You are safe. I have you. I won’t let you drown. You are safe.’

  Her heartbeat slowed. She forced herself to breathe. His hand was around her waist. The other was on her hair, smoothing it in a slow, profoundly reassuring motion. ‘Promise?’ she asked foolishly.

  ‘I promise.’

  Smoothing hands. Steady beating heart. His chin resting on her curls. ‘Will you teach me to swim? Not now, but soon?’ Constance asked. ‘I don’t want to be grounded by my fears,’ she added ruefully.

  ‘If I could give you a ladder to reach the stars, Constance, I would.’

  ‘If you teach me to swim, I will overcome my fear of drowning, and be able to sail away to the ends of the earth if I choose.’

  His arms tightened around her. ‘Is that what you would like? To sail away to the ends of the earth.’

  ‘It’s a little more practical than climbing to the stars.’ Her arms were wrapped around his waist. ‘I don’t know what I want.’ Her legs were pressed against his thighs. Warm skin, while hers was cold. He felt so solid. When had her fear melted into awareness? ‘That’s not true. Right now, I do know what I want,’ she said, looking up, ‘but I can’t have it.’

  ‘Constance.’ Kadar pushed her hair back from her face. His eyes were dark with the passion she felt. ‘Constance,’ he said again, his tone a mixture of anguish and desire that left her in doubt that he felt exactly as she did. ‘You know I want— You know how much I want you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. She touched his cheek, ran her fingers through his windblown hair. ‘And I you, Kadar?’

  He shuddered. ‘Yes.’

  He bent his head. She tilted hers. Their lips met but did not move. She could taste salt. She could feel his breath, rapid and shallow. The tide was ebbing, waves retreating now, rippling around her calves. Her heart was pounding, but she couldn’t catch her breath. A kiss that was not a kiss. Did it count? Or not count?

  ‘Constance,’ Kadar said huskily, her name a caress. His hand smoothed down her spine, his fingers fanning over the curve of her bottom. ‘We are playing with fire.’

  And it was setting her alight. Something snapped in her. ‘How far,’ she asked, allowing her hand to mimic his, smoothing down his spine, feeling the rippling response of his muscles, flattening on the taut slope of his buttocks, ‘how far may we go, Kadar, without getting burned?’

  His laughter was a low rumble. ‘I am already smouldering.’

  His
fingers curled into her flesh. She could feel the unmistakable ridge of his arousal against her belly. It excited her, this physical evidence of his desire, eliciting a shuddering response from deep inside her. Though their lips were still touching, they had not kissed. They had not even kissed, and she felt as if she would melt with wanting. ‘I know we cannot,’ Constance said, ‘I know that, but if we could, Kadar, what would we do?’

  His eyes flickered shut. When he opened them again they blazed, as if the fire they felt was raging was about to conflagrate. ‘You should not ask such a thing.’

  ‘But I am curious to know.’ She curled her fingers into his hair. ‘You told me, after we kissed on the rooftop, you told me that now you would stop wondering about kissing and start wondering about making love. I want to imagine that too, Kadar. I cannot have you, but I want to be able to imagine what it would have been like if I could. Don’t you?’

  He groaned. ‘Yes.’ Once again his lips brushed hers. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I want to know.’

  ‘Tell me then, for I know nothing beyond our kisses.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what that does to me, knowing that you have not—that I would be the first?’

  The naked desire in his face provided the answer. Here was Kadar, the man beneath the princely cloak, revealed just for her. Constance smiled, pressing herself just a tiny fraction closer. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I want to know more.’

  Her words, her touch, her smile, seemed to release something in him. His mouth curled into the most sinful smile. ‘Beyond our kisses,’ he said, ‘the kisses we have already shared, there are other kisses. Though I could never tire of kissing your mouth, of tasting you, of the touch of your tongue to mine, there is so much more of your delightful body to explore.’

  Every bit of her body responded, as if Kadar’s mouth, as if his hands, roved over her. ‘Go on,’ Constance urged.

  ‘Your breasts. I would kiss your breasts. Not through your tunic as before, but my mouth on your skin, my tongue on your nipples, tasting you, teasing you. Tell me what that does to you, Constance.’

  ‘Tingling. Hot. I feel hot.’

  ‘Where?’ Kadar asked.

  She pressed herself against him, brushing the aching peaks of her nipples against his chest. ‘All over.’ She slid her hand between them, her palm flattened low on her own belly, the back of her hand just grazing his arousal, making them both shudder. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Especially here.’

  Kadar shuddered, muttering something in his own language. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘especially here.’

  He took several deep breaths, struggling to control himself. It was intoxicating, seeing the strength of his desire, seeing the effort he was making to contain it. And a challenge too. Constance felt light-headed, far beyond reason, intent only on feeding her body’s urgent pleas for more and for more. There was only a breath between their lips. Their foreheads rested together. Her hair had fallen over her cheeks, tangled over his face, a screen from the world, a gauzy curtain to shield them from looking too closely, from facing consequences. ‘What next, Kadar?’

  ‘Your first time,’ he said raggedly, ‘for your first time, it is better for you to be more...’ He moved her hand from where it rested between her belly and his manhood, slipping it down, making her cup between her legs. ‘Kisses,’ he said. ‘I would kiss you again, your mouth, your quite captivating mouth, and I would touch you, here.’

  His hand covered hers. Her hand covered her sex. She was wet. Tense. Hot. No, not just hot. Every bit of her was burning. The gentle pressure of his hand on hers, the friction of her damp pantaloons against her damp sex, made her tenser, did strange things to her insides.

  ‘Tell me,’ Kadar said, his tone quite hoarse, ‘tell me what that feels like.’

  ‘As if I am being tightened inside. As if I might fly apart. As if...’ Constance let out a low groan. ‘As if I cannot— Kadar, I think I might— I cannot...’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ he urged, increasing the pressure, subtly coaxing her to increase the pressure, to increase the friction.

  She had to clutch at his shoulder with her other hand. She was panting. She closed her eyes, unable to look, to think, to do anything save focus on that mounting pressure, that dizzying combination of intense pleasure tinged with fear as she climbed. Yes, that is what she was doing. Climbing. ‘Higher,’ she heard herself say in a voice that was not hers, ‘higher’, until suddenly she reached the top and there was nothing she could do but to jump.

  Her climax made her cry out. Her knees buckled, and her grip on Kadar was so tight that she pulled them both down into the water. ‘Now,’ he said to her, his own voice hoarse, ‘now I would enter you, now I would ride the waves of your climax, letting them take me high inside you.’

  Another violent shudder shook her as he fell backwards into the shallows, pulling her on top of him, astride him, his hands cupping her bottom, her sex cupping his rigid arousal, separated only by two layers of saturated clothing. Constance shuddered again, cried out again, as her climax washed back over her. ‘And now, Kadar? What now, Kadar?’

  His chest rose and fell. His eyes were closed. But his mouth, it was his mouth which alerted her to the change in him. His lips thinned. When he opened his eyes, they were stormy, though not with passion. He sat up, lifting her gently from him. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we have managed to turn temptation into torment.’

  Getting to his feet, he pulled her out of the shallows. She was soaking, covered in sand, her hair dripping, her body still thrumming, her mind utterly confused. ‘Now,’ Kadar said grimly, ‘we know precisely how far we can go without getting burned.’

  Chapter Eight

  Following their encounter in the surf, in fact almost certainly because of it, it was almost a week before Constance found herself alone again with Kadar. She had seen him briefly at the coronation rehearsal two days ago, and she had twice bumped into him by accident, once on the roof terrace and once in the library, when they had both acted as if they had been scalded. Which she supposed they had. She could not regret what had happened between them on the beach, yet she wished she did not recall it quite so vividly or so often.

  ‘Though wasn’t that the point?’ she muttered to herself as she gazed out at the port from the roof terrace, where she was sitting under the protection of the awning, writing up her copious notes from her many long nights of stargazing. It was human nature to want what one could not have. Was that the cause of this very persistent mutual attraction of theirs, which no amount of reasoning seemed to affect and no moral barriers seemed to keep at bay? Her decision not to marry hadn’t affected her desire for Kadar, though it had made it, she secretly admitted, harder to ignore. Kadar’s sense of honour, his determination to go through with his marriage seemed equally to have no effect on his desire for her. Passion, it seemed, had little to do with honour. Nor was it necessarily related to love. How odd that she hadn’t thought of that before.

  Returning to the desk to flick sightlessly through her notebooks, Constance pondered this. There was absolutely no question of love blossoming between them. Unlike her, he had experienced love once before, albeit an unrequited love. A forbidden love, for a woman who could not marry him. A love which had hurt him so much he was determined never to love again. It explained that way he had, of shutting one out. It explained look Number One, the Haughty Prince too. He didn’t like to have his feelings probed. He didn’t like to admit to having feelings. Which was why there could be no prospect of their falling in love. Even if she were foolish enough to do so, it could not be reciprocated. She would become the victim of unrequited love, just as Kadar had been.

  Who was she, the mysterious woman who had broken his heart? Why couldn’t they marry? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She was certain Kadar would never tell her. Had their love affair blossomed here in Murimon? He had said only that it happened a long time
ago. And that he would never allow it to happen again.

  Constance closed her notebook. She had absolutely no reason to be jealous, and she, who was so determined never to marry, would be a hypocrite to judge this unknown woman harshly for refusing to marry Kadar. What mattered now was not his lost love but his new-found bride. Which brought her back in a full circle.

  No, wait. She stared off into space, replaying her thoughts of the last few moments. Her decision not to marry had not affected her desire for Kadar. Had she really come to that most terrifying conclusion? With a sigh, she dropped her head onto her hands. It was all too much. Her eyes drooped closed. Suddenly exhausted, she lay her head on top of her notebook and fell asleep.

  * * *

  When she awoke, Kadar was standing over her. ‘I thought you were working in the library,’ Constance said, rubbing her eyes. Today, his tunic was the colour of sand, his trousers cream. His hair was as ruffled as ever, but he looked tired. Dark shadows rimmed his eyes. Her first reaction was a ridiculous amount of pleasure at seeing him, quickly quelled and followed by a pang of regret. ‘I didn’t realise you planned to work up here today,’ she said. ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘No, please don’t. I actually came up here to find you.’

  Her heart sank. ‘Has a ship arrived unexpectedly?’

  ‘No ship, for which I am frankly grateful. I am in no rush to see you leave. I...’ He rubbed his jaw. ‘I want to put an end to this awkwardness between us. There is no reason why we must avoid each other’s company. It would be exaggerating something, which meant nothing, out of all proportion.’

  Something which meant nothing. Well, that put her in her place. ‘I see,’ Constance said.