The Mistress Bride

'I wish you would tell me where we are going,' Evie complained. 'I may have packed all the wrong things!' He didn't answer, his attention already diverting to Evie's mother who was coming towards them and looking tearful.

She hugged Evie tightly. 'Look after yourself,' she said. It still amazed Evie how tactile her mother had become since she'd witnessed her daughter's near-death experience. But a bit of the old Lucinda appeared when she turned towards Raschid. 'I suppose you're expecting a motherly hug too, now,' she remarked coolly.

'Not unless it is genuinely offered,' he threw back. Lucinda's eyes flashed, with irritation or appreciation, Evie wasn't entirely sure. But the curt, 'Just you take precious care of her!' was issued alongside a blow-softening kiss brushed against one of Raschid's lean cheeks.

'I think she is reluctantly beginning to like me,' Raschid confided as they settled into the helicopter. Shame the same could not be said of his own family's feelings towards her, Evie thought-and just like that she felt her mood flip over fro

m light to heavy.

He noticed, this sharp-eyed Arab of hers. 'What's wrong?' he demanded. 'What did I just say to cause you to look like that?'

'Nothing.' She found a smile from somewhere that only just made it. 'I'm tired, that's all, missing the nap Asim daily forces upon me.' Asim was sitting up front with the pilot. Evie wasn't surprised to find he was coming with them. Everywhere Evie went these days, Asim was right there with her. He hadn't been bluffing when he'd told her that this child she was carrying was now his responsibility.

'Then as soon as we board the plane that is exactly what you will do,' Raschid ordained. They transferred to one of the Al Kadah personal jets a private airfield not many minutes away from Westhaven. The moment they were up in the air, Raschid released them both from their seat belts and pulled Evie to her feet.

'Time for the lady's rest,' he explained, drawing her along the luxury main cabin and in through a door that turned out to be a fully equipped bedroom.

'Oh, very decadent,' Evie teased, looking curiously around her as Raschid moved over to the double bed that dominated the cabin, complete with passion-purple silk sheets and mounds of richly coloured silk pillows.

Picking something up from the bed, he tossed it negligently over his shoulder. It was a short silk nightdress in a very sensual dark red colour.

'Turn around,' he commanded, ignoring the taunt. 'So I can release you from this exquisite creation.'

Evie did as he bade her. 'I feel I must inform you that as a full-blooded Arab I am feeling very cheated at this precise moment,' he said lightly as his deft fingers dealt with the long zip that ran down the length of her spine. 'I was expecting those seed-pearls decorating your front to be my one hundred and one buttons-as is the traditional way Arab women drive their new husbands crazy while they are forced to unwrap their prize inch by painful inch.'

'But you don't want what's beneath this gown,' Evie pointed out. 'So why bother to mention it?' 'Is that what you really think?' The dress was eased away from her shoulders, and allowed to slither to the floor. Evie reached up to pull off the skullcap while kicking off her white satin slip-ons at the same time. She felt Raschid's fingers at the clasp of her smooth satin bra, and quivered slightly as his warm flesh touched her flesh.

'Yes,' she said.

She heard his soft laugh as he bent down to deal with the only piece of clothing she had left. Seconds later, she was naked, and his hands were gently clasping her slender hip bones. The brush of his mouth against the curving cheeks of her bottom made her spine arch in stinging response.

'Liar,' he drawled. 'You know I adore every single inch of this delectable body.' Then he was turning her to face him, his hands still holding her there in front of him while he continued to squat at her feet. In a slow, slow, agonisingly sensual drift of his heavy eyelids, he inspected her from bare toes upwards. Her legs turned to liquid, her thighs began to bum, that hidden place between them pulsing out its needy message. He inspected the pale-skinned flatness of her stomach where their baby was not yet making its presence felt, drifted those hooded eyes up over her rib-cage to her breasts where a new firm fullness was most definitely evident.

'Every inch,' Raschid repeated huskily.

Evie dragged in a constricted breath of air, her hand snaking up to cup his lean cheek so that she could make him look at her. His eyes changed colour, darkening on a swirling tempest of craving. Her thumb moved, brushing across his lips to gently part them. The moist inner heat lining the recess of his mouth drew powerfully on some inner heat of her own that had her folding to her knees in front of him.

'I don't really need to rest, you know,' she told him softly. 'But I do need you.'

'Ah .. .' he sighed sorrowfully. 'But-'

Evie smothered the 'but'. She crushed it right back into his mouth with the hungry press of her own. What was absolutely glorifying was the fact that he didn't attempt to fight her. He let her deepen that kiss to a bone-melting intimacy that made her feel alive and happy for the first time in weeks.

He still held her hips tightly between his two hands. Evie used her own hands to begin urgently dealing with his clothes. As far as she was concerned, he was wearing too many; impatient fingers tossed the nightdress to one side then began pushing his jacket from his shoulders before yanking at his tie. In all their two years she had never longed for him as much as she was longing for him right now, and it showed in the small growl of triumph she made against his mouth as the tie came free.

Shirt buttons then began popping without a care to how they came free. He wasn't helping her-which only incited her urgency. The shirt came to rest around his elbows with his jacket, trapped there by the hands he still had clamped to her hip bones.

Evie didn't care; she had warm, tight skin to touch at last, and a wonderful hair-roughened breastplate to reacquaint herself with. Her mouth wrenched itself away from his so it could go and taste that newly exposed flesh. On a tormented groan, Raschid suddenly burst into action. He freed his arms from his trailing clothes, reached for her, pulling her hard against him, his hot mouth homing in on tight, tingling nipples that set her whole body singing.

How long had it been since they'd been together like this? Five weeks?

It showed in the violence of their breathing, in the urgency with which they began to devour each other. He sucked so hard on one of her nipples that she actually whimpered-then laughed because she had missed his mouth on her like this so very badly.

Breathing gone haywire, bodies hot, emotions locked into a raging frenzy. When he dragged himself to his feet, Evie rose up with him, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. His mouth found hers again; she clung to him, her breasts pressing against him in open provocation. But when she dropped het hands to the waistband of his trousers his reaction was so unexpected that it thoroughly stunned her. Picking her up in his arms, Raschid turned and dumped her on to the bed.

'No!' he ground out, jerked right away from her, then spun on his heel to bend and snatch up the discarded nightdress, which he tossed at her before bending to snatch up his shirt.

'Wh-what do you mean-no?' she gasped, barely able to believe he really meant what he was implying here! 'I'm sorry,' he muttered. 'I didn't mean to become so carried away. But we must not,' he added tautly. 'I made a vow.'