‘I’m replacing your wedding ring.’ And this time the ring on her finger was a perfect fit as well as being very different from its predecessor. The first ring had been a plain gold band but the second struck her as a good deal more personalised for it was a slender platinum ring chased with ornate decoration.
‘Don’t call me your wife again,’ Ruby muttered helplessly, twirling the ring round her finger with a restless hand. ‘It makes me feel trapped.’
This time Ra
ja did not hide his anger. His nostrils flared and his dark golden eyes scorched hers like burning arrows, leaving her feeling alarmingly short of breath. ‘You should be proud to be my wife,’ he told her without hesitation.
Her breath rattled in her tight throat. She had not meant to insult or offend. Without warning things had become terrifyingly personal. ‘I’m sure I would be proud if I loved you,’ she whispered in a response intended to soothe.
‘Love!’ Raja loosed a derisive laugh of disagreement. ‘What need have we of that with the fire that burns between us?’
Well, so much for the emotional angle, she was thinking irately, for clearly she had not married a romantic guy, when sure fingers trailed across her cheekbone and captured her chin. His other hand curving to her waist, Raja lowered his proud, dark head and claimed her full, pink mouth hungrily with his. There was a split second when she might have pushed him away and her slim body braced and her hands rose in protest against his broad shoulders to do exactly that. But the moist slide of his tongue between her lips and the hand rising below her pyjama top to curve to the plump swell of her breast sent a flood of damp heat to the tender flesh between her thighs and a surge of such hunger that she shivered in shock. The dark force of desire took her by storm, every fibre of her being sitting up, begging and clawing for more.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WE SHOULDN’T do this!’ Ruby gasped in a last-ditch attempt to reclaim control of the situation while she mustered sufficient self-discipline to drag her tingling mouth from the unadulterated magnetic allure of his.
Having already whisked her free of her pyjama bottoms, Raja threw back his tousled dark head and angled his lean hips to let her feel the hard evidence of his erection against her stomach. She quivered, fighting her desire for him with all her might, for at that instant desire had as much of a hold on her as a powerful addiction in her bloodstream.
‘You mustn’t get me pregnant!’ Ruby exclaimed in a sudden panic, anxiety gripping her at the thought of suffering such a far-reaching and serious consequence. Just for a moment she could barely credit that she had ever been stupid enough to run that level of risk.
A hand spread below her hips to raise her to him. ‘We took no precautions in the desert,’ Raja reminded her with a frown.
‘But we don’t need to run that risk now. I take contraceptive pills but I missed some when we were there so for the rest of the month I need to take extra precautions.’
Raja found it deeply ironic that the potential pregnancy from which she was so keen to protect herself would have been a source of much rejoicing in both their countries. He suppressed that knowledge, for once uninterested in the bigger picture and concentrating on his own reactions for a change. As he studied her stunning oval face with burnished golden eyes of anticipation, he was startled to discover that he was willing to want whatever would make her happy. ‘It’s OK. Don’t worry about it. I will protect you—’
‘We can’t be sex buddies…it’s indecent—’
‘I like indecent,’ Raja confided huskily, trailing provocative fingertips very gently along the tender skin of her thigh so that she became even more painfully aware of the awesome strength of her own craving. ‘In fact I could live beautifully with indecent.’
To silence the argument he sensed brimming on her lips he tasted her sultry pink mouth with the lingering eroticism that came so naturally to him, sensually teasing the soft fullness of her lower lip before penetrating her mouth in a smooth, explicit thrust. And while he kissed her he was skimming the ball of his thumb against the most sensitive spot on her entire body with a shocking expertise that made her stifle a scream while she writhed and gasped her response.
Before she could catch her breath from that onslaught, Raja leant back from her to rip open a foil packet and make use of a condom. Her heart thudded violently up tempo. She would not let herself think about what she was doing. She was rebelling against everything she knew because she had never wanted anything so much as she wanted him in that moment. And without a doubt she was ashamed of it, ashamed of the wild seething longing that controlled her, befuddling her brain and enslaving her body.
Raja sank into her in a long, slow surge, stroking her tender flesh with his. It felt so indescribably good that she cried out and her inner muscles clenched and convulsed around him. In the throes of extreme pleasure, he shuddered violently, as entrapped in that hunger as she was. ‘It’s never been like this for me before…’ he confided.
Or for her, her brain echoed but speech was beyond her. Her whole body was attuned to every movement of his. With every subtle shift of that lean, powerful physique of his the dark pleasure rose in a sweet suffocating tide. He withdrew and then delved deep, moving faster and faster and her spine arched and she moaned in frantic excitement, defenceless against the feverish beat of exquisite sensation. Her climax finally rippled through her in an unstoppable force and she flamed into countless burning pieces before she dropped back to planet earth again. Another cry was dragged from her as the violent tremors of his final pleasure rocked her slight body with renewed sensitivity and sensation.
Raja eased back from her to study her with appreciation. He bent his head to press a kiss to her cheekbone. ‘You’re amazing,’ he told her breathlessly.
‘What have we done?’ Ruby lamented out loud, already gritting her teeth, aware that in yielding to her hunger for him she had given way to weakness for the first time in her life. And that acknowledgement hurt her pride, really hurt.
Laughing, Raja described what they had done in the most graphic terms and she curled a hand into a fist and struck his shoulder in reproach. ‘This is not a joke.’
‘You’re my wife. We had sex. Our desire was mutual and natural and the slaking of it rather wonderful. Why the fuss?’ Raja enquired with a slumberous smile of satisfaction while he marvelled at the unfathomable way in which she drew out the lighter side of his nature.
Ruby was jolted by the reality that he was in a totally different frame of mind and mood. He was celebrating while she was filled with regrets. ‘It’s not that simple—you know it’s not. We made an agreement—’
‘A foolish agreement destined to be broken from the outset,’ Raja countered without an ounce of uneasiness. ‘How could we marry and live in such proximity and not surrender to the attraction between us?’
In rejection of that stance, Ruby twisted free of his arms and rolled away to the far side of the bed. ‘That’s not what you said to me at the time.’
At that precise reminder, an impatient look skimmed across Raja’s face. ‘Choice didn’t come into it—I had to win your agreement to marry me—’
‘Had to?’ Ruby prompted stiffly, her whole attention lodged to him with unwavering force.
Far from impervious to the threat of the drama waiting in the wings, Raja raked his fingers through the black hair falling into curls at his brow and sent her a look of reproach. ‘You are not that naive, Ruby. With this marriage we brought the end to a war and created a framework for a peaceful future for both our countries. There is nothing more important than that and I never pretended otherwise. We sacrificed personal freedom for the greater good.’
That grim little speech, voiced without sentiment, froze Ruby to the marrow and felt like an ice spear thrust through her heart. He had torn any possibility of fluffy illusion from their relationship to insist on showing it to her as it truly was. But had she ever been in doubt of what their relationship entailed? A marriage that was part of a peace treaty between warring countries? A royal husband, who had married her because it was his duty to do so? Exactly when had she begun to imagine that finer feelings might be incorporated in that logical and unemotional package?
Scrambling out of bed because she was hugely uncomfortable with any physical reminder of what had just taken place there, Ruby pulled on her wrap and folded her arms. She would be reasonable, totally reasonable and practical just as he was, she told herself urgently. ‘You said that we made a foolish agr
eement. On what grounds do you base that charge?’
‘When we made that agreement, we were already strongly attracted to each other.’
‘But you didn’t argue that at the time,’ Ruby protested.
‘Sometimes you can be very naive.’ Raja sighed, expelling his breath in a measured hiss and stretching back against the tumbled pillows, a gloriously uninhibited vision of male magnificence. ‘Why do you think I went to the UK to meet you? My job was to persuade you to marry me as quickly as possible and assume your rightful place as a royal here in Ashur.’
Ruby lost colour as he made that explanation. ‘Your…job?’
‘There is nothing warm and fuzzy about that peace treaty, Ruby, or the stability that rests on the terms being upheld to the letter of the law. Obviously I was prepared to do pretty much whatever it took to win your agreement,’ Raja admitted tautly.
‘Obviously,’ Ruby repeated, feeling horribly hollow inside as if she had been gutted with a fish knife. ‘So, are you saying that you deliberately set out to get me into bed in the desert?’
‘I desired you greatly.’ Brilliant dark eyes struck challenging sparks off her critical and suspicious scrutiny.
‘That’s not what I asked you,’ Ruby declared. ‘I asked you if I was seduced to order, another box to be ticked on your list of duties.’
His clever brow furrowed, his darkly handsome features still and uninformative. ‘To order?’ he queried huskily.
‘Your English is as good as mine, possibly even better!’ Ruby snapped, her temper hanging by a fingernail to a cliff edge as she forced herself to seek a clarification that stung her shrinking self like acid. ‘Stop faking incomprehension to play for time when I ask an awkward question!’
Unmoved by that indictment, Raja stretched, hard muscle rippling across his broad shoulders and abdomen as he shifted position with the fluidity and grace of a tiger about to spring. ‘Is that what I’m doing?’ he traded with an indolence she suspected to be entirely deceptive.