‘Ours has barely begun, aziz.’As the noise of the propellers drowned out any prospect of further conversation, Elinor met Jasim’s dazzling golden-as-topaz eyes, gloriously fringed by black lashes, and her heart skipped an entire beat.
Suddenly, exasperated by the level of her response to him she closed her hands tightly together on her lap and urged herself to use her head. Jasim had dropped the aggro and made peace with her for a very good reason: he didn’t want a divorce. His elderly father had no doubt decided to accept his foreign daughter-in-law for much the same reason. Sami lay at the very heart of her acceptance as a wife and it would be foolish to overlook that reality. Jasim might still suspect that she had attempted to lure his brother away from his wife—and that she’d accepted a very valuable ring in the process—but from now on, he would probably keep his reservations on that score to himself. Why? For the sake of their marriage and the image of the monarchy in a small country, where such matters were still of vital importance.
So, Elinor reflected, it was time for her to jump off the bridal bandwagon that had given her starry eyes and reconnect with the ground. What was it about Jasim that could make her behave so foolishly? Last night’s insane attack of insecurity after Laila’s jibes about his taking a second wife? It had not been her intellect that spawned her reaction, but the tumultuous emotions that Jasim still aroused in her. He had the power to make her jealous and possessive, to lift her to passion and drop her into the depths of despair. The day she had walked away from him she had almost drowned in that sense of despair, until she had picked herself up and focused on her baby rather than her broken heart. If she didn’t want to be badly hurt again, she needed to regain that emotional control and distance, because Jasim was never likely to give her the love that she secretly craved from him, was he?
The leader of a large contingent of security staff met them off the helicopter. The villa was a palatial, ultra-modern structure embellished by a verandah, extensive grounds and every possible interior extravagance. ‘The views in daylight are spectacular,’ Jasim told her, and then he swept her up into his arms to carry her over the threshold.
‘You don’t have to do fake stuff like this to impress me or make me happy,’ Elinor told him uncomfortably. ‘I know and accept that this is a very practical marriage. I’ve got no illusions.’
‘It’s not fake,’ Jasim protested, lowering her down the hard length of his muscular body to lead her upstairs.
‘I don’t want to get into another…er…difference of opinion with you,’ Elinor selected, borrowing his terminology, ‘but you never really wanted me. You didn’t choose me. You were only interested in the first place because you thought that your brother—’
Jasim rested a brown forefinger against her parted lips in a silencing gesture that stilled her tongue. ‘Don’t go back over that ground again, particularly if you’re about to make another set of wrong assumptions,’ he instructed. ‘This is our wedding night.’
‘I know,’ Elinor reminded him dolefully, moving into a lamplit bedroom adorned with an over-generous number of flower arrangements. ‘But facts are facts—’
‘You are a very stubborn woman,’ Jasim intoned. ‘But we are two different people. Your facts are not my facts. How could they be?’
Blinking warily, Elinor looked back up at his bronzed features, her senses singing against her will at his dark, sleek perfection. His stunning dark golden eyes were sombre and serious. ‘How do your facts differ from mine?’
‘The first time I saw you, even though I was prejudiced against you and you had been drinking, I still thought you were the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen,’ Jasim breathed in a driven undertone of urgency that suggested that practising such candour was still a challenge for him. ‘Although I have never found redheads attractive, I really love your hair.’
In tune with that unexpected confession, Jasim meshed long fingers into the tumbled, scented depths of her luxuriant mane. ‘I love your hair,’ he said again, knuckles brushing her cheekbone, her lips and the curve of her breasts to emphasise the point he was determined to make. ‘Your face, your mouth, your very beautiful body. I wanted you as soon as I saw you and with a powerful desire beyond any I have ever known before. That reaction had nothing whatsoever to do with anything I had been told about you…it was private and personal to me and concerns only you—’
Elinor was gripped by the edge of fierce urgency in his dark, level drawl. ‘If that’s true, I—’
‘You must accept that it is true. You must also understand that that reaction was not at all welcome to me,’ Jasim stated with a frown. ‘Naturally I didn’t want to be that attracted to you.’
Elinor had gone from feeling like the consolation prize in the wedding lottery to the most desirable of women. On that issue, at least, his sincerity was highly persuasive, right down to the assurance that he had never previously found red hair pleasing. Her slim shoulders lifted a little, her spine straightening. Her hands sliding up to his broad shoulders, she began to help him out of his jacket.
A surprised laugh fell from his lips. He shrugged off the jacket, dealt with his tie and smiled down at her while she undid the buttons on his dress shirt with unsteady hands. ‘You know what you want,’ he murmured thickly.
And she knew she wanted him; for the first time in well over a year, she wanted him without any sense of guilt or shame. She knew now, and without any shadow of a doubt, that he genuinely wanted her too. It was a simple truth but an immensely important one for her peace of mind. She parted the edges of his shirt and ran her palms down slowly over the warm, hairroughened wall of his muscular torso, delighting in the heat and masculinity of him. His breathing quickened audibly when her fingers dipped below his waist. He took her hand and pressed it against the hard contours of his surging erection.
‘This will be a night of unforgettable pleasure,’ Jasim promised huskily and he turned her firmly round and began to unfasten her gown.
Pink spots of colour adorning her cheekbones, Elinor stepped out of the rucked-up folds of her beautiful dress. She had never felt more exposed than she did then, with her slender body clad only in the ivory satin underpin
nings of her bra, panties and lace-topped stockings.
‘I have never seen anything more exquisite,’ Jasim swore, studying her with scorching golden eyes of deep appreciation.
A slow burn started in her pelvis as he undid her bra and slid it off.
‘You have the most wonderful breasts, aziz.’
He moulded his hands to the full firm globes, catching the swollen stiff nipples between his fingers and then backing her down onto the bed to put his mouth there instead. The feel of his lips and his tongue on her sensitised flesh fanned the slow burn at the heart of her into a blaze of tingling heat. He tormented the tender buds until her hips were arching off the bed. Stepping back from her, he shed the remainder of his clothing.
Elinor could hardly breathe for desire and the joy of looking at him. There was a pagan glory to his lean, hard body and his rampant arousal. He pulled her down onto the white linen sheets with him. Her tapering fingers skimmed like butterflies over a powerful hairroughened thigh. Newly confident, she was touching him as she had long yearned to touch him and the very intimacy of her erotic exploration and her pronounced awareness of how she was affecting him stimulated her even more.
A tremor ran through his big frame and he murmured her name. Her fingertips found him, traced his towering potency and practised a delicious friction before her lips engulfed the most sensitive part of all. She elicited a groan from him and then a protest.
‘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.