Still looking at him, Bethany felt a prickling of heat twist low in her stomach. She could feel her entire body tense with physical awareness. Her breathing fractured, a sudden stirring heaviness swelling her sensitive breasts beneath their fine covering, pinching her nipples into painfully tight little buds. She watched his stunning eyes shimmer gold and trembled, her heart pounding.
‘Do not look at me like that,’ he breathed raggedly.
Bethany smiled with a new, sensual consciousness of her female power and waited. She was not one whit discomfited by her own response when she saw it mirrored in him. On this level, she thought helplessly, they were equal ‘Why not?’
With a muffled groan he reached out and pulled her to him, sealing every inch of her to the hard, lean muscularity of his male heat and strength. Her senses swam. Instinct took over. As his mouth came down on her softly parted lips a long sigh of satisfaction escaped her and a wanton thrill of excitement jolted her from head to toe, leaving her dizzy and disorientated and clinging to his broad shoulders to stay upright.
When he set her back from him the shock of separation was sharp. She focused passion-glazed eyes on him in bewilderment. He steadied her against the wall behind her and withdrew a fluid step, studying her with grim intensity.
‘You learn quickly.’
‘You’re a good teacher.’ A hectic flush lit her fair complexion as she registered his withdrawal. Suddenly she felt unbearably humiliated.
‘But I was too impatient. I taught you the wrong things,’ Razul murmured very quietly, and reached for her clenched hand, smoothing out her taut fingers and cradling them in his.
Scorching tears had flooded her eyes. She bowed her head, immobilised by her devastating weakness. She wanted him so much. It was as if there were a clock ticking inside her where her heart should be. She couldn’t think, couldn’t be rational about the concept of losing Razul, but she could feel the time they had left sliding remorselessly through her fingers like silky grains of sand. The inner strength she depended on was fast buckling into a kind of fevered desperation in which she told herself that she knew what she was doing, when she really didn’t know at all.
‘I want to show you something.’ Retaining a purposeful grip on her hand, he trailed her back indoors with enthusiasm and drew her into one of the reception rooms. A basket sat on the priceless carpet. ‘It is for you’
She crouched down and lifted the lid, already knowing what she would find within—another kitten, a rolling ball of Persian fluff with bright eyes, the twin of the gift he had given her two years earlier.
‘You kept the female,’ he commented. ‘This one is male.’
‘Yes. Thank you. He’ll be great company for her...when they finally get around to meeting,’ she managed stiltedly.
The pedigree kitten danced across the rug, swung an ambitious paw at the strap dangling from the basket lid and fell over in comical confusion. Yet she didn’t laugh; in fact her throat closed over.
A matching pair, male and female. He probably thought-that she would let them breed. It would not occur to him that she might have had the female doctored and that this was one little male who would not become a father. Her cat was barren, just as her mistress would be, she reflected, gripped by a sudden stab of pain. No kittens, no children—and although it was a ridiculous comparison to make it brought home to Bethany as nothing else could have done that she would never, ever have a child of her own, because if she couldn’t have Razul she would have nobody.
‘You are thinking of the British quarantine rules,’ Razul registered harshly.
She heard that harshness but was too distressed by her own emotional turmoil to question it. ‘He’ll be quite grown-up by the time he emerges from six months of confinement and comes home to me,’ she mumbled tightly.
‘Please excuse me...I have some calls to make.’
His abruptness disconcerted her. She sprang upright, painfully reluctant to see him leave her. ‘Do you have to make them right this minute?’
‘For what would you ask me to remain?’ Razul angled a chillingly impassive glance over her. ‘No doubt it is your wish that I make arrangements for the cat to be put into quarantine now?’
‘No...yes...oh, I don’t know.’ Hurt by his visible reluctance to stay with her and wretchedly conscious of the ice in the air, she heard herself ask, ‘What have I done...what did I say?’
The merest sliver of gold showed beneath the lush screen of his lashes. ‘Nothing of import.’
Yet the silence stretched and buzzed like a razor-edge, honing her nerves to screaming point.
Awkwardly she cleared her throat. ‘Did your father live here with your mother?’
‘Is that not obvious?’
East on one side of the hall, West on the other. A his and hers set of rooms which were unmatched to a degree that might have been farcical had it not been the evidence of a bitterly divisive gulf which had never been bridged. ‘I gather nobody compromised in that relationship?’
‘My mother had no desire to go what she called “naive”
Bethany winced visibly.
‘You flinch, but were you any more generous on our wedding day?’ Razul condemned.
She paled and then swung her head up again with pride. ‘You didn’t give me enough time to adjust...you have to know that!’
His lion-gold gaze shimmered. ‘What I know is that that half-hour waiting in the desert was the longest thirty minutes of my life,’ he admitted in a growling undertone. ‘Having undergone that, I was determined that we would marry without further delay.’
‘Because I tried to run away...or because I seem to have this problem with you when it comes to making up my mind?’ She worried ruefully at her lower lip, her wide green eyes unguarded and vulnerable as she stared back at him. ‘The first four days I was here I lurched from one shock to the next, barely knowing what I was thinking or feeling. Everything happened so fast; I couldn’t control it and I’ve never been in a situation like that before. It was unbelievably unnerving...’
‘But not giving you time worked for me,’ Razul responded without apology.
Yes, with hindsight she could see that it had. He had kept her on the run, emotionally and physically. He had battered down her defences and allowed her no breathing space and that constant pressure had been more than she could withstand.
‘It would not have worked for me in England,’ he continued with cool emphasis. “There you would have closed doors in my face, taken the telephone off the hook, run away somewhere where I couldn’t find you. And even here, now as my wife, you place outrageous barriers between us—’
‘But I’m not your real wife, Razul!’ Bethany reminded him, stabbed by an inescapable surge of bitterness. ‘I’m only here on a temporary basis. You seem to forget that.’
‘How could I forget it when you hold that belief between us like a drawn sword?’ Razul demanded with a blinding flash of seething condemnation.
‘What did you expect?’ she retorted painfully. Golden eyes flared over her in a shockingly sudden storm of dark fury. ‘You play dangerous games in the name of pride,’ he condemned. ‘Allow me to make certain facts clear. We will not mee
t again after you leave. Our time will be over and there can be—indeed, there will be—no turning back for I will be married again within months. That was the promise I made to my father. I also gave my word that I would not contact you again, although I now see no room even for temptation on that count...your cold heart does not tempt, it repels!’
Caught unprepared, Bethany was stunned by the pain that his words inflicted on her. Every scrap of colour drained from her face. She swallowed convulsively, couldn’t even suck air into her lungs, she was so devastated by what he’d flung at her. Her cold heart...she would have given ten years of her life to possess such a gift at this moment, to have the enviable power to detach herself from her pain.
But anger came to her rescue as nothing else could have done. Bringing her to Datar had been an act of unsurpassed cruelty and she blamed Razul absolutely for the torment that she was suffering now. It would have been better by far had she never known what they could have together. No, she didn’t believe that old chestnut about it being better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all!
She threw her fiery head back and fixed glittering green eyes on him, bitterness consuming her like a fire raging out of control. ‘Do tell me what sort of second wife you are looking forward to receiving...’ she invited with shrewish sweetness.
Razul froze in shock, his golden eyes veiling to darkness. ‘That I will not discuss with you—’
‘Why not? Heaven knows, you have been so disarmingly frank about everything else! So go on, tell me. I really would like to know!’
A silence of savage intensity now thundered between them, vibrating with her challenge and his wrathful incredulity.
‘She will be a very good wife by my father’s standards,’ Razul gritted rawly, breaking that terrible silence with a suddenness that shook her. ‘If I am ill-bred enough to raise my voice, she will beg to know how she has offended me. She will not answer me back. She will greet my every opinion with admiration and agreement. She will never come to my bed without invitation. She will spend her days dressing up in Western fashions, watching television, shopping and gossiping with her friends. I see her now,’ he breathed with merciless bite. ‘Beautiful, indolent by nature and not very well educated, but she will give me children.’ A slight tremor fractured that final phrase.