So why was he polishing off a glass of Chardonnay in the middle of the afternoon? And looking at Khalim with a kind of jealous incredulity.
But then, Rose decided with more than a little satisfaction, Giles rarely met men who transcended his good looks so completely!
She looked around at the plates and cups and wineglasses littered around the sitting room and saw Khalim’s lips curve with undisguised displeasure. Well, let him judge her, she thought proudly as she bent to pick up an empty wine bottle which was in danger of tripping someone up!
‘Lara, you’ve already met Khalim,’ she said shortly. ‘Khalim, I don’t believe you’ve met Giles, who is Lara’s—’
‘Lover,’ drawled Giles arrogantly.
Khalim’s facial muscles didn’t move an inch. ‘It is my pleasure,’ he said smoothly and looked at Rose with a question in his eyes.
Now what? thought Rose helplessly. Did she take him to her room? No, she couldn’t—she just couldn’t. Not with Giles smirking like that and Lara affecting that puppy-dog expression whenever she looked at Khalim.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asked weakly.
‘Thank you,’ he replied, without enthusiasm.
The kitchen looked as though someone had tried to start World War Three in there—with every surface covered in used crockery and glasses.
And Lara had used up all the real coffee, thought Rose in disbelief as she picked up a nearly-empty jar and held it up to him.
‘Is instant okay?’ she questioned.
‘Instant?’ he echoed, as though she had just started speaking in Marabanese.
‘Coffee,’ she elaborated.
‘Do you have any tea?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ She made them two cups of herb tea and then cleared the table so that they could sit down and drink it.
They sat facing one another warily across the rising steam from their cups.
Now what? thought Rose again, before getting back some of her customary spirit.
‘You don’t have to stay, you know,’ she bristled.
‘No, I don’t,’ he agreed calmly, thinking that Rose—his Rose—should not have to live amidst such outrageous chaos. ‘But you will not come back with me to the Granchester either, will you?’
‘No.’
‘Do you mind telling me why?’
How to explain that his costly surroundings only emphasised their inequality, and that if she was to spend the tenure of their fragile relationship always on his territory, then it would always seem a little tainted.
‘Can’t we just be like a normal couple?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t always want to be surrounded by your bodyguards and the awe in which people hold you. Everyone always defers to your status—it’s always there. A barrier.’ She nearly said, A barrier towards getting to know you, and then stopped herself. Maybe he didn’t want to get to know her on the level she craved to discover him.
He stared across the table at her. ‘Then we seem to have reached some kind of stalemate, don’t we, Rose? What do you suggest?’
The idea hit her like a thunderclap. If only they could be an ‘ordinary’ couple. The idea grew. ‘Why don’t you rent a flat of your own?’ she suggested. ‘A flat where we can meet as equals?’
‘A flat?’ he repeated.
‘Why, yes.’ Of course, they would never be quite the same as a normal couple. Khalim would never have to go begging to the bank manager for a loan, for example. But neutral territory would give them some kind of equality, surely?
‘There are loads of—’ she forced herself to say the hateful word ‘—short-let flats on the market in London. Furnished or unfurnished—suit yourself. Wouldn’t it be…nice…’ she gave him a kind of feline smile ‘…to have a place where we were free to be ourselves? Within reason, of course,’ she added hastily. ‘Obviously there would have to be some provision for your bodyguard.’
He raised his eyebrows. Good of her! And then he thought about it. And thought some more. Didn’t her words have more than a kernel of truth in them? Wouldn’t a rented flat give him a fleeting kind of freedom? The kind of freedom which most men of his age took for granted? The freedom…and he swallowed as he imagined a whole place of their own. Where Rose could wander around wearing what she wanted.
Where they could watch a video and eat their supper lolling around on a sofa, as he had seen his friend Guy do with Sabrina on so many occasions.
‘Very well.’ He nodded, and his mind started ticking over. ‘I can see the wisdom behind your idea. I will get Philip to start looking immediately—’
‘No, Khalim!’ she said, interrupting him. ‘You have to do it like other people do! You go and look at flats. You find the one you want and you do all the transactions. Do it yourself for once! Forget Philip!’
Her feisty challenge drove the blood heatedly around his veins and in that moment his desire to possess her made him feel almost dizzy. But he would have to wait. He would not bed her here with the feckless actor and her sweet but rather untidy flatmate listening to them.
‘I most certainly will, Rose,’ he promised. ‘And with haste.’ He lowered his voice into a sensual whisper. ‘Because believe me when I tell you that I cannot bear to wait for you much longer.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS not a flat, of course. It was a magnificent, four-storey house in Chelsea.
‘A flat would have caused too many problems for my security,’ explained Khalim as he showed her through a wealth of magnificent, high-ceilinged rooms. And his Head of Security still had not forgiven him his breach when he had galloped off across the desert sand with Rose locked tightly against him! ‘So what do you think?’ he murmured. ‘Does my Rose approve?’
How could she do anything but? Rose let her gaze travel slowly around the main drawing room. Everywhere she looked she could see yellow and blue flowers—saffron roses and lemon freesias, and the splayed indigo fingers of iris—and she was reminded of the bouquet he had sent her, when he’d first been trying to…
To what? To seduce her? She turned her head, so that he could not see her eyes. Had that been his only intention? Maybe it had, she acknowledged, but something else had grown from that intent. You didn’t share a house with a woman if sex was the only thing on your mind.
Oh, stop it, Rose, she remonstrated with herself. Stop playing Little Miss Wistful.
‘I love it. It’s beautiful,’ she said, and hoped that her voice didn’t sound too wistful. Because they were playing house, not setting up house together, and she must never let herself forget that. But at times like this it wasn’t easy.
She stared in slight awe at the two white sofas with their jade-green cushions, and the low bleached oak coffee-table. ‘It all looks brand-new,’ she commented with approval.
‘That’s because it is.’
Rose raised her eyebrows. Heaven only knew how much he would be paying per month for a place like this. She asked the question she had been dreading asking. ‘How long is the let for?’
There was a momentary pause. ‘I am not renting it,’ he said quietly. ‘I bought it.’
‘You bought it? What, just like that?’ she asked incredulously, until she realised how preposterous she must have sounded. A place like this would be nothing to a man of Khalim’s wealth.
He saw her look of discomfiture. ‘And for security reasons, all the furniture had to be brand-new—’
‘What, in case there was an explosive device stashed behind the sofa?’ she joked, then wished she hadn’t.
‘Something like that,’ he agreed wryly.
‘Sorry. That was a stupid thing for me to say!’
He smiled. ‘How very magnanimous of you, Rose.’
When he smiled like that she was utterly lost. ‘So you’ve bought a house,’ she observed slowly.
‘Well, to be honest—nothing I looked at to rent—’ he remembered the bemusement of house-owners when he’d turned up with his bodyguard in tow ‘—came up to—’
She me
t his glittering black gaze. ‘Palace standards?’ she questioned drily.
How he loved it when she teased him that way! ‘Mmm.’ He swallowed down the desire which had been bubbling over all week. ‘Anyway,’ he finished, ‘it will be a good investment.’
A good investment. Of course. That was how the rich made themselves richer, wasn’t it? They invested.
Trying not to feel a little like a commodity herself, Rose wandered over to one of the huge picture windows which overlooked an intensely green square surrounded by iron railings and looked out.
‘A very good investment, I’m sure,’ she echoed.
‘My bodyguard will have the self-contained unit down stairs,’ he explained, watching the sudden stiffening of her shoulders and wondering what had caused it. ‘And the upper three storeys will be entirely for you…and for me.’
Rose swallowed down the excitement that his words had produced. For the past week—was it only a week? It had seemed like a century in passing—she had thought of nothing else. Tried to imagine the reality of sharing a flat with Khalim, and every time she had failed to make that final leap of faith. To think that they actually would. That he would arrange it all himself. And then bring her here to live with him. Because when she had suggested that she simply visit him on occasional evenings and stay the night, he had swiftly censured her suggestion with arrogant assertion.
‘No!’
‘No?’
His black eyes gleamed. She could fight him on this, but she would not win. Oh, no. ‘I do not want you to bring cases of clothes here, or have one toothbrush here, and another at your flat. You will live here, Rose, with me.’
For how long? her heart wanted her to cry out, but she steeled herself against its plea. She probably only thought she loved him. Wanted him because he was so completely unattainable. She must not place emotional demands on him which he couldn’t possibly meet, because in time it would wear down whatever it was they had between them.
And what was that?
‘Rose?’ He broke into her reverie with a silky question.
Well, now was the time of reckoning, she told herself as he drew her into his arms and lowered his dark, beautiful head to hers. Now they would be able to see what they had between them.
His kiss was fierce and hard and long, whipping her up into a frenzy of need which matched his.
He found himself wanting to rip the little sundress from her body, to lay her down on the floor and impale her there. But there had been little restraint in his physical dealings with her so far. Little desire to show her the mastery of which he was proud.
For he had learned his sexual skills well. His eighteenth birthday present from his cousin had been a trip to Paris, to a hotel which had been the last word in luxury. And there, awaiting him, had been his ‘present’—a stunning redhead in her forties, with a body which most men only dreamed of. A woman of the world, of a certain age. And in the three days and nights which had followed, she had taught him everything there was to know about the act of love.
The most important being, she had purred with satisfaction, the ability to give a woman pleasure.
He looked down into Rose’s milky-pale face, where her sapphire eyes shone out at him like bright stars, and he felt an unrecognisable kick of emotion. He wanted to pleasure his Rose, he realised. To give her more pleasure than she had ever dreamed of. He smiled with the heady anticipation of it.
‘Come and let me show you the bedroom now.’
She took his proffered hand, feeling oddly shy as he took her into a white and blue bedroom which was dominated by a vast bed.
He was watching her carefully. ‘Rose,’ he said, almost gently. ‘Why do you blush?’
She certainly wasn’t going to tell him that his smile had made her feel almost like…She shook her head at the ridiculousness of it all. Like a virgin bride on her wedding night. Who the hell was she kidding?
Oh, I wish, she thought helplessly as he drew her into the circle of his arms. How I wish.
‘Now.’ His voice deepened as he ran his ebony gaze over her. ‘At last.’
He undressed her slowly, and with infinite care, his fingers teasing and tantalising her as they unbuttoned the sundress and then peeled it from her body. And then, as though he had all the time in the world—off came her lacy brassière. And finally, with his fingertips flicking light and teasing movements which thrilled her to the very core—he slowly removed her little lace panties.
‘Now let me look at you,’ he commanded softly.
She should have felt shy in her nakedness, when he still stood so formidably clad in his dark grey suit—but how could she feel anything but pride under that warm look of approval? Instinctively, she lifted her shoulders back and the movement emphasised the lush thrust of her breasts.
He felt the unmistakable wrench of desire. ‘Get into bed,’ he commanded softly. ‘You’re shivering.’
Shivering, yes—but her tremble had nothing whatsoever to do with the cold, but with the tingling sense of expectation which washed over her as he began to unknot his tie.
He unhurriedly slipped his jacket off, and hung it over the back of the chair.
Come on, she thought. Come on!
But if he read the hunger in her eyes he chose to ignore it, his dark gaze not leaving her face as he slowly began to unbutton his shirt.
The shirt joined the jacket on the chair, and he unbuckled his belt before unzipping his trousers.
‘You could strip for a living,’ she told him throatily, unable to keep her thoughts to herself any longer.
He smiled. ‘So could you. What say we make a living of it together?’
It was an outrageous fantasy, tinged with a poignancy produced by that elusive word ‘together’. But she lost the sadness as he climbed into bed to join her, and pulled her into his arms, his warm, living flesh making her feel on fire where they touched.
‘Just you and me,’ he murmured, and cupped her breast in his hand, feeling the nipple thrust and jut against his palm in instant reaction. ‘How do you like that?’
‘What—that?’ She jerked her head jokingly towards her breast, where his hand looked so shockingly dark against the whiteness of her skin.
But he shook his head, a rare kind of tenderness filling his voice. ‘No,’ he demurred. ‘I meant the you and me bit.’
‘Oh, that!’ She was about to make a flippant comment, the kind of comment which would keep her safe from hurt. But she read in his eyes an elemental truth—that right at that moment he was holding nothing back from her. And didn’t such a truth deserve another? ‘Oh, that is a prize beyond rubies,’ she told him huskily.
He groaned as his mouth replaced his hand, locking his lips hungrily against the rosy nub which sustained all life. He wondered if these breasts would ever suckle a child.
A child that could never be his!
‘Rose,’ he groaned again, and the slick lick of his tongue made her feel almost weak with longing, so weak that she gave into her most primitive desire and slid her hand down between the muscular thighs until she had found what she was looking for.
‘Rose!’
Her wanton capture of him made him feel as weak as water in her hands. And so did the way she was touching him, her hands lightly caressing the rock-hard shaft of him. His eyes closed and his head fell back against the pillow. Never, since that first induction to the pleasures of the flesh, had he allowed a woman such freedom with his body.
‘Stop, Rose,’ he begged.
‘You don’t like it?’ she asked him innocently.
‘I like it.’ He said a single word in Marabanese he hadn’t realised he knew, and then gently closed his hand over hers to stop her. ‘Too much.’
She realised how much she had enjoyed seeing him look as dreamily helpless as that. To see him fighting for control. It made her feel strong. Equal. ‘Well, then?’ she whispered close to his mouth, so close that he touched his lips to hers.
‘This is intended to be traditio
nal love-making, Rose,’ he told her sternly.
‘And no demonstration that I have a certain amount of experience—and that you aren’t my first lover?’
There was no flippancy in her voice now, Khalim recognised—with a flash of insight which dispelled the black clouds of his jealousy. Nothing but a wistful trace of insecurity, as though he would be judging her and finding her wanting. He tipped her chin upwards, so that their eyes locked on a collision course.
‘You push me far, Rose,’ he told her. ‘Sometimes too far, I think.’
‘You went mad when you found out I was on the pill!’
He had to force himself to stay calm and drew a deep breath. ‘My harsh words on the subject in Maraban were based on…jealousy,’ he grated, spitting out the unfamiliar word. ‘Jealousy that I was not your first lover—’
‘And I was jealous that you weren’t mine,’ she said softly, filled with a sudden boldness—because what was to be gained by hiding the truth from him?
Khalim expelled a long, low breath, remembering the newness, the vitality and sheer power of their first encounter, and he sought to honour it in some way. ‘I felt like your first,’ he said.
‘And I yours,’ she whispered back.
‘You are more my equal than any woman I have ever met, Rose. You live by different rules to the women in my country, and the life you have lived makes you the person you are today. And I like the person you are today.’
A person who could get him running halfway around London to find a place for them to live, much to Philip Caprice’s bemusement and his bodyguard’s outrage!
‘So don’t you like your women to be subservient?’ she asked him teasingly, wondering what she had said that was so wrong, because his face darkened with a simmering look of bitterness.
He thought of the unknown woman who would one day become his wife. And his eyes flickered down to where Rose lay—so pale and so beautiful—her hair spread like a moonlit fan across his pillow.
He shook his head. ‘I never want subservience from you, Rose,’ he whispered. ‘Never from you.’
And all her thoughts and doubts and questions were driven from her mind as he began to stroke her, as if she were some pampered feline, and she wrapped her arms around him, kissing his neck and the bare warm flesh of his shoulders.
Surrender to the Sheikh Page 14
