The Desert King's Blackmailed Bride

‘I am what I am—’

‘Too set in your ways to change?’ Polly skimmed back thinly.

‘We have only been married for a couple of months. What sort of miraculous transformation were you expecting this soon?’ Rashad derided.

Polly paled at that sardonic recap and intonation and turned away. ‘I’m going to bed.’

‘I’m going for a ride,’ Rashad told her between gritted teeth.

‘No, you’re walking out on me again because I’ve said things you don’t want to deal with!’ Polly condemned angrily.

Rashad settled stormy dark golden eyes on her and froze. ‘Very well. I will stay.’

To talk? To share? Or to prove her wrong in her contention that he’d walk away sooner than deal with difficult issues? With a determined little wriggle, Polly unzipped her dress while watching Rashad shed his clothing. Watching him made her mouth run dry, all that sleek bronzed flesh overlying lean, hard muscle being exposed. Flushing at her thoughts, she pulled on a robe and went into the bathroom to remove her makeup.

Now he was furious with her, she ruminated wryly. Golden fury had blazed like the heat of the sun in his beautiful eyes. But he wouldn’t admit that he was angry. Nor would he raise his voice or lose his temper. His absolute control of his emotions mocked her trembling hands because she was so wound up she felt as though she might explode with the powerful anxious feelings racing round inside her.

Seeing her in his first wife’s jewellery roused ‘unfortunate memories’. It made him angry too. Had he watched her tonight in that wretched amber necklace and wished she were Ferah? What else was she supposed to think?

Rashad studied Polly’s slender figure. The silk of the robe outlined the rounded curve of her derriere and delicately shaped her pouting breasts, hinting at her prominent nipples. His reaction was instantaneous and it infuriated him but there it was: the lust to take, the lust to possess gripped him almost every time he looked at his wife. The strength of that craving disturbed him as much as his loss of self-discipline. Hard as a rock, he stepped into the shower and put the jets on cold but it didn’t help because all that out-of-control emotion washing about inside him like a dangerous rip tide threatening to drag him down only heightened his arousal, exacerbating h

is need to be close to Polly in the only way he knew.

Share his memories? Was Polly crazy to suggest such a thing? He did not want to relive his unhappy marriage to Ferah. The two women could not have been more different, he conceded heavily. Polly wanted to talk about sensitive issues but Ferah had refused to talk and had brooded on her disappointments until she was overflowing with the bitterness and self-pity that had eventually plunged her into long depressive episodes. How could he even consider sharing that unlovely truth with Polly?

Polly undid the robe and wondered if it would be a little ridiculous for her to put on a nightdress because they had had a disagreement. When she normally wore nothing to bed but her own skin a nightdress would be like making a statement, wouldn’t it be? Ultra-sensitive and on edge, she glanced uncertainly at Rashad as he strode out of the bathroom. The air positively crackled when she collided with burning dark golden eyes and she noticed, really couldn’t help noticing, his condition.

‘Yes, I want you,’ Rashad intoned thickly. ‘But then… I always want you.’

‘Don’t say it like you wish you didn’t!’ Polly exclaimed, her mouth running dry, her heartbeat speeding up.

‘It can be inconvenient—’

‘What’s a little inconvenience?’ she whispered, achingly aware of him, struggling to remind herself that he hadn’t dealt with her demand for more information and that she should be light on understanding while playing it cool and offended.

‘I couldn’t be gentle in the mood I’m in—’

Polly tried and failed to swallow. There was a wildness in his eyes, a gritty roughened edge to his dark deep drawl and, in the strangest way imaginable, she welcomed that hint that he was not as much in control as he usually was. It was almost as though a barrier had come down inside him, one of several barriers that kept her at a determined distance. ‘I might not necessarily need gentle right now…’

Without the smallest hesitation, Rashad crossed the space between them in one stride, both arms snaking round her to bring her crashing up against his hot, muscular body. His sensual mouth feasted on hers with a ferocity that suggested she could be the only thing standing between him and insanity and she gloried in a fervour that empowered her at a moment when her self-esteem had taken a battering. After all, it was hard to be proud of being Rashad’s consolation prize in the bride stakes, the replacement wife virtually forced on him by the Dharian people.

‘I burn to be with you,’ Rashad growled, erotic energy radiating from him as he brought her down on the bed, his hunger unleashed and sizzling with unashamed intensity. ‘Every minute of the day. My appetite for you consumes me.’

She would have told him that that cut both ways but his mouth crushed hers again and the taste of him was like an aphrodisiac, the plunge of his tongue making her body arch up in a wave of shivering delight that shot a fire storm of response through her veins. There was a ripping sound as he extracted her impatiently from the entangling folds of the silk robe. Long, knowing fingers zeroed straight in on the slick pink flesh at the heart of her and she jerked and moaned out loud, on the edge of spontaneously combusting with excitement.

Rashad flipped her over and drew her up on her knees. With a heartfelt growl of satisfaction he sank into her in a single compelling thrust. She was stretched almost to the point of pain but simultaneously the raw pleasure stormed through her nerve endings like a healing drug. He took her hard and fast and that sense of being on an edge flung her up onto an endless high of breathless excitement. Carnal pleasure gripped her bone and sinew. His lack of control thrilled her because she knew that she wasn’t in control either. In any case, this was Rashad and she loved him, trusted him, needed him, and that his savage hunger for her should be even stronger when he was angry and troubled comforted her. After all that same primal need to connect with him at such times was just as powerful and driving for her.

She was riding a ravishing surge of excitement when a skilled hand rubbed against her throbbing bud of pleasure and the world burst into Technicolor fireworks behind her eyelids. She jerked and cried out, caught up in a rolling climax that detonated deep in her pelvis and totally wiped her out. When she collapsed back down on the bed, Rashad rolled her into his arms and lay there with her, struggling for breath, his heart still thundering against her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rashad gritted unevenly. ‘I was rough, selfish. I am truly sorry—’

‘No… I liked it…’

Long fingers pushed up her chin to force her eyes to meet his, his concern evaporating to be replaced by the beginnings of sheer masculine awe. ‘You liked it?’ he whispered wonderingly.

‘Uh-huh,’ Polly confirmed, her colour rising inexorably beneath that stunned appraisal.

‘Sometimes I feel as though there’s a crazy storm rising inside me—’