In the meantime, all she could freely do was glory in the sheer physical beauty of Raj, his wonderful broad-shouldered, lean-hipped and long-legged physique that magnetically glued her attention to him, the dark deep-set eyes that were silver starlight when he stared up at her, his perfect golden features taut. Heaven knew, he was gorgeous and it was little wonder she was obsessed, she conceded ruefully. He had broken through her barriers, made her experience feelings she had never known she could feel, but he hadn’t intended to do that and now she was stuck with the rules according to Raj, which had about as much give in them as steel bars.
‘My father believes you could be my perfect for ever wife. He’s hoping for more than a pretend marriage from us and obviously he’s doomed to disappointment,’ Raj extended drily.
‘Oh...’ Deprived of speech by that piece of bluntness and stung by the assurance that she was safe for ever from being asked to entertain the idea of something other than a pretend marriage, Zoe sped on into the bedroom.
There was so much she didn’t know about Raj, she reflected. All she had were the bare bones of his background and the fact that his first love had cheated on him. At least, she was assuming that Nabila had been his first love but, really, what did she know? Little more than was available on the Marabanian website about the royal family. And ignorance was not bliss. Raj had frozen and backed off the instant she’d asked about his mother. Nabila wasn’t the only no-go zone; his mother clearly was as well. Zoe heaved a sigh as she showered, wondering what had made Raj quite so complex and reserved.
Raj glanced up from his laptop as Zoe reappeared downstairs, clad in some kind of pastel floaty dress that bared most of her shoulders and a slender length of shapely leg. Not even the most severe critic could have deemed the outfit provocative, but her pert little breasts shifted as she completed the last step and he went instantly hard, cursing his libido and the fierce desire he was holding back that was becoming harder and harder to contain. Most probably he would need her covered from head to toe not to be affected, he conceded wryly, and what good would that do when he had already seen her virtually naked and could summon up that mental image even faster? He clenched his teeth together, hating the sense of weakness she inflicted. It was weak to want what he knew he shouldn’t have. He prided himself on being stronger and more intelligent than that.
Nabila had been enough of a mistake to scar a man for life, a warning that his judgement wasn’t infallible, that people lied and cheated to get what they wanted or merely to make a good impression and cover up the less presentable parts of their character. But, at least, he no longer carried resentment where Nabila was concerned, he reflected absently. Time had healed his bitterness and maturity had taught him more about human nature. Even so, the very prospect of having to deal with Nabila in any form, most particularly in a professional capacity in the company of others, was deeply distasteful to him. It was even more offensive to him that Nabila had dared to approach his wife and introduce herself. That had been brazen and, although he knew that Nabila could be utterly brazen and calculating, he could not begin to understand why she had made such an inappropriate move.
‘Wow...look at the food!’ Zoe whispered in wonderment as she glimpsed the array of dishes spread across the low table in front of him. ‘You should’ve started without me.’
‘I do have some manners,’ Raj told her huskily, amusement glimmering in his shrewd gaze.
‘I never said you didn’t,’ she muttered in some embarrassment, lifting a plate to serve herself and watching him follow suit. ‘But I did take ages in the shower.’
Raj could have done without that visual of her tiny, delicately curved body streaming with water. ‘I had a shower before we left the palace.’
‘I didn’t have time and it was so warm in that car even with the air conditioning.’ She sighed. ‘So, I’m about to ask you to be straight with me on certain issues because if you aren’t I could slip up and say something embarrassing to the wrong person,’ she pointed out, trotting out the excuse she had come up with in the shower to make Raj talk about what he didn’t want to talk about. ‘Who was your mother?’
Raj tensed and swallowed hard. ‘She was a nobody in the eyes of most. Ayshah and my father’s second wife, Fairoz, were both royal princesses from neighbouring kingdoms and my father married them to make political alliances when he was in his early twenties. Since he did his duty in the marital line you can understand why he expected me to be willing to do the same eight years ago.’
‘Yes, but he grew up during a very unsettled period of Maraban’s history when there was constant war and strife. It was different for you because you didn’t live through any of those wars or periods of deprivation,’ Zoe told him calmly, her retentive memory of what she had read about Maraban’s history ensuring that she had a clear picture of past events. ‘Now tell me about your mother and why she was nobody in the eyes of others.’
‘She was a commoner, a nurse. My father had heart surgery in his fifties and she looked after him in hospital.’
Zoe smiled in approval. ‘So, it was a romance?’
‘Well, no, for most of my life I assumed he simply took my mother as a third wife in the last-ditch hope that a much younger woman could give him a child,’ Raj confided with a twist of his full sensual mouth. ‘That was the perceived reality. It never occurred to me that he had fallen in love with her until he admitted that to me only a few days ago. Now I am shamed by my prejudice but, in my own defence, my mother was a very unhappy wife and I remember that too well.’
‘Why was she unhappy?’ Zoe pressed.
‘Picture the situation, Zoe,’ Raj urged with rueful emphasis. ‘Two childless older wives of many years were suddenly challenged by a much younger new arrival and they didn’t like it. They didn’t think my mother was fit to breathe the same air as their husband and when she quickly fell pregnant, as they had failed to do, their resentment and jealousy turned to loathing. They bullied her cruelly and treated her like dirt. My father likes a quiet life in his household and he did not interfere between his wives. He ignored the problems.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured, registering that Raj must have been old enough to understand how his mother was being abused and that his troubled relationship with his father and Ayshah probably dated from that period.
‘By the time I was nine years old, she was so depressed that she took her own life with an overdose. It happened here in the old original house. Perhaps that is also why my father had it demolished,’ he admitted in a driven undertone. ‘There, now you know the whole unhappy story of my childhood.’
Zoe reached for him, her small fingers spreading to grip his much larger hand in a natural gesture of sympathy, finger pads smoothing over the sleek brown skin. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ she whispered. ‘I wouldn’t have pushed so hard if I’d known it was a tragedy.’
‘She was a wonderful, loving mother but it was many years before I could forgive her for leaving me,’ Raj confessed in a rueful undertone.
‘I have no memory of either of my parents. I was only a baby when they died in a car crash,’ Zoe told him with regret. ‘Cherish the memories you have, try and build a bridge with your father. Everybody needs family, Raj.’
‘I prefer not to need anyone. Independence, in so far as it is possible, is safer. Do you want something sweet to finish?’ Raj enquired in casual addition. ‘There is a fridge hidden in that cupboard over there. The maid filled it with desserts.’
Listening to him, Zoe had lost much of her appetite, but she scrambled upright and fetched the desserts to serve, knowing that Raj would welcome that distraction. It seemed that she always, always put her foot in it with him. She should have been more patient, should have waited until he was willing to talk, instead of forcing the issue. Beating herself up for her nosiness soon led to her faking a yawn and saying she was going up to bed.
Raj worked on his
laptop for an hour, giving Zoe time to fall asleep. He mounted the stairs as quietly as he knew how and then he saw her, lying on the bed in something diaphanous, the pool of light surrounding her veiling her entire body in soft gold. She looked up from her book, green eyes wide, little shoulders tensing, petite breasts pushing against the finest cotton to define the pointed tips and that was the moment that Raj finally lost the battle. Hunger surged through him with such power it virtually wiped out conscious thought. She was there, she was where he wanted her to be and, in that moment, she was irresistible.
Zoe was fiercely disconcerted when Raj simply stalked like a prowling jungle cat across the room and bent down to snatch her up into his arms. ‘Raj?’ she exclaimed uncertainly, all the breath from her body stolen by that action.
‘I want you... I burn for you,’ he breathed rawly. ‘Tell me to put you down and I will walk away. I will not try to railroad you into anything you don’t want.’