‘What do you want?’ Bethany demanded shrilly.
Sudden, unexpected raw amusement flashed through Razul’s tawny eyes as he strolled closer. With an indolent hand he removed the golden iqual and headcloth, baring his dark, luxuriant head of hair. ‘You need to ask?’ he murmured lazily.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘What do you think I am doing?’ Razul turned the question back on her without hesitation.
He was undressing, but Bethany refused to believe the evidence of her own eyes. ‘I thought this was my bedroom—’
‘Tonight it is ours.’ Razul framed the words softly.
‘I am not sharing this room with you,’ Bethany informed him flatly.
‘You will.’ He shifted with innate, fluid grace to survey her. ‘You are my wife.’
‘Technically speaking—’
‘I am not technically minded.’ He shrugged off the black, gold-edged cloak with complete calm.
The breath shortened in her throat. ‘Morally—’
‘And what could you possibly have to say on that subject?’ Razul interrupted with sudden, slashing derision. ‘Or do you forget that only this morning you offered me the freedom of your body without the commitment of marriage?’
Flames of hot pink burnished Bethany’s cheeks. ‘I was...confused this morning—’
‘Correction...you were desperate, and allow me to tell you what would have happened if I had agreed. Once you were safely back in England you would have shut me out again and discovered a hundred reasons why we could not be together!’
‘That’s not true—’
‘Your retreat stops here...now...tonight,’ Razul spelt out with silken menace. ‘And you made that decision for yourself when you chose not to go home. I told you I would marry you if you stayed, and I have no need to justify my presence here on my wedding night. You are my bride—’
‘No...I want to get an annulment when I go home!’
‘That is one fantasy destined to go unfulfilled. Think again,’ Razul advised, with a blaze of anger in his magnificent eyes. ‘Or think of me as your lover and not your husband... At this moment I do not care, but be assured that the games you play are at an end. Tonight you will lie in my arms and we will make love.’
Bethany trembled with furious disbelief. ‘If you think that I would allow you to use me like that, you’re in for a severe shock!’
Razul dealt her a look of shimmering intensity that burned up the distance that lay between them. ‘I think it is not I who will be shocked.’
‘You said that marrying me was a stupid, witless mistake!’ she threw at him incredulously.
‘A mistake I have to live with until the end of the summer, and if I have to live with it you will live with it too!’ Razul informed her with compelling emphasis.
“That is a totally unreasonable attitude to take!’ Bethany seethed back at him.
‘I am not feeling reasonable. Why should I be? You are no longer deserving of any special consideration from me. In honour I married you, and how am I repaid?’
‘I didn’t want to marry you!’ Bethany reminded him hotly.
‘Then why in the name of Allah did you not get on that helicopter?’ Razul raked back at her in an intimidating roar.
‘I...I—’
‘I knew that would silence you...’ Razul slung her a sizzling glance of splintering derision. ‘But do not think that I do not know the answer to that mystery. I know what was on your mind!’
Bethany had turned very pale. ‘How could you possibly know?’
‘I know your arrogance—’
‘My arrogance?’ she queried, scarcely believing that he could accuse her of such a fault.
‘You thought you could make me play your game. You believed that you could have everything your own way. But what lay beyond that piece of self-deception?’ Razul demanded with contempt. ‘The truth that you would go to any lengths to avoid. Your desire for me is stronger than your pride, stronger than your prejudices and stronger than any hold you now have over me...because I would have let you go!’
As he forced that unwelcome truth on
her her teeth clenched and she went white. It was as if that half-hour of decision time out in the desert had been a contest between them—a battle of wills in which he had triumphed, and he was not about to let her forget that.
‘So do not seek to punish me for your vacillation, for I gave you your freedom and you turned your back on it,’ Razul reminded her with savage impatience. Smouldering golden eyes whipped over her and his expressive mouth twisted. ‘And why do you still cringe behind that garment? You look ridiculous! I am not so stupid that I imagined a woman of your age and background would still be a shy virgin!’
‘I think you’re very stupid,’ Bethany hissed, flushed scarlet by outrage and chagrin, but she was not about to drop that robe and stand revealed in an almost transparent nightdress, no matter how ridiculous he thought she looked!
‘In that you are probably right.’ A tide of fierce emotion clenched his startlingly handsome features. ‘I should have been true to my own ideals. I should not have sought to make allowances for your less principled society. I had to overcome certain cultural reservations before I could ask you to become my wife, knowing that I would not be your first lover—’
‘Did you indeed?’ Bethany quivered on another energising gust of rage. Yet she received a grim satisfaction from the realisation that he was unaware of her inexperience. ‘And how did you know that?’
His sensual mouth compressed. ‘I am well aware that you shared your apartment with a man the year before we met. I learned that in England.’
Danny, one of her colleagues, temporarily finding himself without a roof over his head, had begged for her spare room, and she had acquiesced purely and simply because he was the only male friend that she had ever had...and he was gay. ‘But Danny—’
‘I do not wish to hear about that other man.’ Razul dealt her a furious glance of reproach, his tension palpable. ‘And had you not roused such bitter hostility within me today such unjust feelings would not have occurred to me, nor would I have referred to them.’
‘But I’m so glad that you did! I can quite understand your reservations,’ Bethany responded acidly, seeing the weapon that he had put within her reach and ready to use it if it held him at bay.