by Lynne Graham
‘That’s enough,’ he told her thickly, lean fingers plunging into her hair as he gazed wonderingly down at her. ‘I want to make love to you.’
‘And do you always have to have top billing?’ Elinor whispered playfully, prepared to stop the sensual torment only in the knowledge that she had him all to herself for a month. And, by royal command, she thought with satisfaction. It was only now when she was starting to appreciate how much Jasim respected his father that she understood how much courage it must have taken for him to marry her without the ailing King’s approval.
A wolfish grin slashed his beautiful mouth and he hauled her up to him to kiss her with a fierce, wild thoroughness that answered the hot surge of blood through her own body. Her heart pounded as he arranged her back against the pillows.
‘I want you to remember our wedding night for ever,’ he murmured silkily.
And much, much later, she knew she would never forget it. He began at her feet and she discovered that places that had never previously been erogenous zones had surprising possibilities, not one of which he overlooked in his devotion to detail. By the time that her heart was racing and every inch of her was damp and wildly sensitive to the skilled caress of his mouth and his hands, she knew her honeymoon was going be a sensual delight from start to finish because he seemed to take so much pleasure from her eager response.
Her entire skin surface was tingling, her straining nipples moist from his attention when he finally deigned to touch her where she was most desperate to be touched. He commented on the waxing that had left her bare and sensitised and she was so excited by that stage that she couldn’t even find her voice. Her excitement was growing and growing at an uncontrollable rate. He parted the plump swollen lips that were slick and moist and she gasped out loud, squirming and rocking against him in frustration for more. The hollow ache between her thighs had become unbearable.
‘Jasim…now!’ she pleaded.
He closed his hands to her ankles and tipped them back and took her willing body with all the urgency, strength and passion she yearned for. He plunged hard and deep into her tender core and waves of intense pleasure claimed her with his every thrust. It was gloriously passionate and primal and exactly what she needed. When contractions were rippling through her he groaned as her body tightened round him. She cried out when the explosive ecstasy of climax engulfed her and held him tight while he shuddered and reached his own shattering release in her arms. There were tears in her eyes in the aftermath and a new willingness to face her deepest emotions. She was still crazy about him, she acknowledged. Love had bitten her deep and there was no longer any hope of her escaping its bonds.
Elinor pressed her lips to a smooth brown shoulder, drinking in the warm familiar scent of his skin with intense appreciation and a sleepy smile of contentment. ‘Being married definitely has its compensations,’ she told him with satisfaction…
CHAPTER NINE
‘WERE you in love with Sophia?’ Elinor asked, tossing out the question in haste before she could lose her nerve.
Jasim dealt her a look of consternation, as well he might have done at that sudden intimate question. Previously they had been discussing his recent decision in a boundary dispute causing trouble between local Bedouin tribesmen.
Mortified by her own lack of diplomacy, Elinor went pink. ‘I’m just curious,’ she told him as lightly as she could manage and she was lying through her teeth. In truth she wanted to know every tiny detail of every relationship he had ever had with a woman, which was more than a little sad in her own estimation and likely to leave her disappointed since Jasim was not given to chatting freely about such things.
The early morning silence was broken only by the crunching footfall of their horses’ hooves in the sand. They often went riding at dawn when Elinor found the heat easiest to handle. The sun had risen and the peach and pink splendour of the skies was colouring the sand to shades of ochre and red. The arid landscape of stony plains broken by rocky outcrops and vast sloping dunes had become familiar to her, as had the surprising number of animals and the wide range of fauna that survived there.
‘Why do you want to know?’ Jasim enquired.
Primed to find significance in his every word and hesitation, Elinor said instantly, ‘So, obviously you did think you were in love with Sophia—’
‘No, I did not—’
‘But you were thinking of marrying her!’ Elinor exclaimed in disbelief.
‘I was not brought up to regard love as a necessary component of marriage,’ Jasim imparted grudgingly. ‘She was beautiful, elegant, well educated and spoke several languages. I saw those as important qualities.’
Elinor turned shocked eyes on him. ‘I can’t believe how cold-blooded you can be!’
‘I am not cold-blooded, but love can cause a lot of grief,’ Jasim declared in what she could see she was supposed to accept as the closing argument of the discussion. ‘A wise man chooses a wife with more than love on his mind.’
‘My goodness,’ Elinor sighed heavily. ‘You’d never have picked me in a million years!’
‘But I’m delighted with you now that I’ve got you, habibti.’ With those irreverent words, Jasim sent her a wicked slanting grin that made her heart hammer hard inside her. It was a grin that, like his laughter, she was becoming increasingly familiar with and it transformed his invariably serious demeanour. Three weeks of privacy at the villa had given them the chance to discover a lot about each other and had laid a firm foundation for a much deeper relationship than she had ever hoped to have with him.
‘Did your parents have an arranged marriage?’ she asked with a frown as she struggled to understand his outlook, which was so very different from hers.
His dark gaze narrowed, his whole face freezing, and then he swiftly looked away, murmuring in a taut response, ‘No, but my father’s first marriage to Murad’s mother was arranged and it was happy, as well as lasting almost thirty years.’
‘You know,’ Elinor commented in a tone of discovery, while wondering why on earth her question should have created so much tension, ‘you never ever mention your own mother.’
Jasim vented his breath in a pent-up hiss of impatience. ‘And you are only just noticing? It is considered bad taste to mention her. She ran off with another man when I was a baby and I don’t think my father has ever recovered from the disgrace of her desertion.’
Elinor blinked in shock and then shut her eyes in mute discomfiture. The unevenness of his usual quiet, steady drawl told her what an emotive subject she had stumbled on and also how very unaccustomed he was to having to make such an explanation. She said nothing just then. She could only imagine how horrific a scandal must have been caused by his mother’s behaviour in so old-fashioned a society. She had seen Jasim’s shame as he told her and compassion stirred in her that he should still feel so strongly about something that had happened so long ago, particularly when it was an event he could have had no influence over. But that new knowledge added another telling dimension to her awareness that he found it hard to trust women. At the same time her mind overflowed with questions that she was too tactful to ask him to answer.
‘I believe my father is considering another visit today,’ Jasim imparted. ‘His interest in Sami is heartening.’
‘Yes.’ Elinor, however, did not find it that easy to sit on the sidelines of those visits. The King and Jasim walked on verbal eggshells in each other’s presence and extreme politeness ruled until Sami did something silly and broke the ice. She had often wondered and never dared to ask why the older man and his second son treated each other like strangers.
‘I’ve been surprised by the amount of interest my father has taken in Sami,’ Jasim shared with the abruptness of a male striving to reward her with a confidence in gratitude for her not having pursued the more controversial topic of his mother.
‘I think your father is trying to get to know you better as well,’ Elinor admitted.
‘Nonsense…why would he do that?
’ Jasim countered with distinct derision.
Elinor counted to ten and said nothing. From the corner of her eye she noted that Jasim was still regarding her with expectancy. Having cut off her opinion at the knees, he still wanted to know what had made her think that his father might be trying to mend fences with him. Amused, she held her peace. She still found it extraordinary that Jasim was so volatile beneath that sober, serious exterior of his.
Beneath the safe surface, he had an explosive temper and he seethed with dark, deep emotion. At some stage, however, he had learned to suppress those feelings and make self-discipline and duty his twin gods to be obeyed. Sometimes she marvelled at how controlled he was, rarely showing emotion except in unguarded moments or when he thought he was unobserved. She had first seen the cracks in his smooth outer surface when he played with Sami.
His love and pride for their son shone out. With Sami, Jasim relaxed, and when he played with their little boy he discarded his reserve and dignity. Sami was very much an energetic boys’ boy and he made a beeline for Jasim whenever he saw him. In fact every time Elinor saw her child in his father’s arms she knew that she had made the right decision when she had decided to give her marriage another chance. Sami adored his father.
And Elinor had come to appreciate that she adored Jasim too, although she was a little more critical than Sami was. But there was no denying that the love she had once refused to acknowledge now ruled inside her, for Jasim had made a great deal of effort to ensure that she was amazingly happy. The guy who was waited on hand and foot, and whose staff revered him for his interest in their more humble lives, brought her breakfast in bed almost every morning. Her eyes sparkled. Once he had fed her to restore her energy he often got back into bed as well. No complaints there, she thought, getting a little breathless just stealing a glance at her handsome husband.
While they had been sent to the villa for privacy, daily flights came in carrying government ministers and courtiers. Jasim was consulted about just about everything that happened in Quaram. She had once read that a man could be judged by the company he kept and, in Jasim, she saw the evidence of that. His opinions were held in high regard, his gravity admired, and everyone was delighted that he now had a wife and child.
‘But what must people think about us after that wedding when we already had a baby?’ Elinor had asked anxiously during their first week at the villa.
‘They think that I married you without my father’s permission and kept quiet about you until it was safe to bring you out into the open after Murad’s death. While disrespect towards a father is a serious matter, the romance of forbidden love, a secret marriage abroad and a baby son win that contest hands down,’ Jasim had explained with unhidden amusement. ‘Our second wedding here in Quaram was regarded as a sign of my father’s approval and acceptance.’
Since their arrival, he had taken her on several trips into the desert where they had enjoyed the hospitality of the local tribesmen in villages and in goatskin tents. He was very well informed and often in demand to settle disputes. He could sit hour after hour with the tribal elders and listen patiently to arguments, such as what was the correct compensation to be paid for a goat that had strayed into a herb garden, and still give the matter his full attention. She had sat in the back of the tent with the women and children drinking strong sweet tea while a television running off a car battery supplied the entertainment. In the process she had also become hopelessly addicted to a madly melodramatic Quarami soap full of sobbing women, swashbuckling men and disaster.
One evening it had rained and he had taken her out the next day to see the amazing sheets of beautiful wild flowers that had come up overnight on the sand. Her pale skin burned easily in the sun and he was assiduous in ensuring that she was slathered in sunscreen and covered up when the light fell on her. She felt safe with him, cared for, appreciated, she acknowledged reflectively as she dismounted from her horse at the stables.
‘I should have told you about my mother before this,’ Jasim admitted without warning over breakfast. ‘It is easier for you to hear such a story from me than to embarrass someone else with questions.’
‘It’s not that unusual a story, though,’ Elinor told him gently.
‘It is in Quaram, particularly in the history of my family.’ Lean, strong face taut, Jasim frowned. ‘My father was a widower in his fifties when he met her. She was the daughter of a Swiss doctor and half his age. He fell in love with her and married her very quickly. By the time I was born two years later, I understand the relationship was already under strain as she disliked the restricted life she led here.’
Elinor stopped eating to listen. ‘And then?’
‘She met another man when she was visiting her family. There was an affair which my father discovered and she fled, leaving me behind. She married her lover. I never had any contact with her.’
Elinor frowned. ‘Did you ever try to have contact?’
‘No, nor did she ever try to contact me. She married several times, had no more children and died a few years ago. I don’t think she had a maternal streak. I had no cause to thank her for anything other than the gift of life,’ Jasim proffered. ‘My father couldn’t bear to look at me—the son of the woman who had humiliated him in the eyes of our whole country. He sent me off to a military school abroad as soon as he could.’
‘That was cruel!’
‘He once told me that he was concerned that I might have inherited my mother’s moral weakness. Some years later, however, I learned the true reason why my father rejected me. He feared I might not be his child and I was DNA-tested without my knowledge as soon as the tests first became available.’
Elinor shook her head, distressed by what she was finding out about his disturbed and unhappy childhood. ‘How could he be so blind? You look so like him.’
‘A physical likeness was not enough to satisfy a man tortured by his suspicions.’
‘He punished you for your mother’s desertion!’ she proclaimed with angry heat.
Jasim shrugged a broad shoulder in a dismissive gesture. ‘If that is what he did, it was not deliberate for he is not a vengeful man. I was the unfortunate casualty of a broken marriage and his bitterness. No one has the power to remake the past.’
But that afternoon when King Akil arrived for his third visit, Elinor was convinced that Jasim’s father was finally trying to bridge that difficult past with his only surviving son. Unfortunately the older man was too proud and Jasim too accustomed to maintaining formal relations for any advance to be easily made. Elinor remained troubled by the awareness that Jasim had been denied the love and affection of both his parents as well as being exiled to a foreign school as a child to toughen up. She saw the proof of his sad upbringing in the warm affection he continually poured on their son. She was now also wondering if he had ever been in love with any woman or if, indeed, he had the smallest idea of what that kind of love would feel like. Certainly there was nothing in his past experience likely to encourage him to trust a woman enough to love her. Jasim, Elinor recognised then, was likely to prove a long-term project in the love stakes.
In the heat of the afternoon, Elinor often lay down for a nap. She was undressing when Jasim strolled into the bedroom. As he came to a halt, dark golden eyes openly engaged in appreciating the picture she made in a turquoise satin bra and knickers, she went pink.
‘I was about to invite you for a swim,’ Jasim husked, moving closer and turning her round to fold her back against his long powerful body in a confident movement. ‘But you might burn in the water and I would prefer to burn you with the fire of my passion in here.’
He eased her rounded breasts free of the satin cups and stroked the straining pink nipples between his fingers. A tiny clenching sensation in her groin made her gasp, feel the race of arousal flame through her while he brushed her hair off the nape of her neck to press his mouth there. She quivered, arching her spine and moaning as his clever fingers teased the tender skin between her thighs. His
touch burned through the taut, damp fabric stretched there and with a sound of impatience he stripped the knickers off, bracing her against the side of the bed and parting her legs.
Trembling with wanton eagerness, she heard him unzip his jeans and waited. He drove into her hot wet sheath with molten urgency and an earthy groan of deep satisfaction.
‘You are perfect for me, aziz,’ he told her hungrily, his hands taking advantage of her position to knead her lush nipples and torment the tiny sensitive bud below her mound.
The surge of her excitement was intense. He ravished her with sensual force. Melting ripples of explosive pleasure seized a hold of her and she cried out at the height of her climax at the strength and wonder of that glorious rush of ecstasy. In the aftermath he dragged her shaking weak body onto the bed with him and held her close, pressing his mouth gently to hers.
‘That was incredible,’ she framed unevenly.
Jasim smiled lazily down at her. ‘It always is with you.’
Releasing her to vault off the bed, he dug into the pocket of his jeans and presented her with a little box.
Propping herself up on one elbow, she opened it to reveal a glittering emerald ring. ‘My goodness…it’s exquisite.’
‘It reminded me of your eyes, aziz.’ Jasim slid it onto her finger. ‘We must make the most of our last week here. I will be very busy when I return.’
She admired her ring. He had dropped his guard, shared his secrets with her. She wanted to tell him she loved him but worried that it might make him feel uncomfortable and her feel something less when he could not return the words. The silence stretched and she curved back into his arms, seeking the warmth and familiarity of him as a reassurance.
On the final day of their honeymoon, Jasim, who had spent odd hours going through his late brother’s papers in his study, filled a box with documents and some rare old leather-bound books that more properly belonged in the palace library. Two helicopters sat outside in readiness for their return to Muscar. One of the pilots was ill and in bed in the staff quarters, but it was not a problem because Jasim was a pilot after training for several years with his country’s air force.
