The Desert Bride

‘I am not a hypocrite. I would not demand from you a standard which I cannot claim for myself. And, in the temper you have put me in, it is probably fortunate that you are not untouched,’ Razul told her with controlled savagery as he impatiently began to unbutton his shirt.

A golden wedge of muscular chest sprinkled with curling black hair appeared between the parted edges of the shirt. Bethany turned away, her heart suddenly thumping madly inside her chest, her colour high as she dug her arms into the robe he had derided. ‘If you’re staying here,’ she informed him in a voice empty of all expression, deliberately chosen to deflate any expectations that he might have, ‘I shall be sleeping elsewhere.’

Without warning a pair of powerful arms closed round her from behind. ‘No.’

‘Please remove your hands from me.’

‘No.’

‘Razul—’

‘I am done with being a gentleman,’ he asserted, hauling her back into the hard heat of his tall, powerful body.

‘If you don’t let me go I will walk out of here tomorrow,’ Bethany swore shakily, hot tears suddenly lashing her strained eyes as the evocative scent of him washed over her, but with every ounce of her remaining self-discipline she struggled not to surrender to her own weakness. ‘And when I get home again I swear I will talk to the Press!’

In response to the worst threat that she could think of making, Razul went satisfyingly rigid. ‘You would not do that—’

‘I would!’ she lied frantically, her throat closing over. ‘And why not? Didn’t you say you were prepared for a diplomatic incident? Well, I’ll give you one!’

Razul slid his hands down to her hips and snatched her off her feet in one dauntingly strong movement. ‘Then tomorrow you go nowhere!’ He headed for the door and wrenched it open before she could even catch her breath. ‘Nor any other day!’

‘What the heck are you doing?’ Bethany gasped, thoroughly disconcerted by the tempest of fury that she had unleashed.

He strode off down the dark corridor.

‘Razul...put me down!’ Bethany ordered.

He kept a tight grip on her as he took a set of stairs at speed.

‘Razul—’

‘Close your mouth!’

‘I’ll scream!’

‘Why not? In every tight corner you scream. Other people talk, you scream.’

‘I just don’t want to get any more involved with you...can’t you understand that?’ Bethany suddenly demanded in a voice an octave higher. ‘I don’t want to be married...I don’t want an affair either! I just wish I had never met you!’

‘Coward,’ Razul jeered, thrusting wide some sort of a door with holes in it.

There was a metallic clang as it swung shut. ‘How dare you call me a coward?’

‘You have a streak of yellow down your backbone so wide I could find you in the dark!’ Razul flashed back.

‘It’s not cowardice, it’s common sense!’ Bethany retaliated in outrage.

‘And your cowardice took you all the way to Canada the last time...but not this time,’ Razul informed her from between clenched teeth. ‘As my wife you will have as much freedom as a criminal on parole, and you can thank my father for that. He never recovered from the humiliation of my mother’s desertion. The female members of my family are the only women in Datar who cannot leave the country without a visa signed in triplicate by their husbands or fathers! To think that I should live to be grateful for such a medieval law!’

His mother’s desertion? His mother had walked out on his father? Before she died? Well, obviously before she died, a dry little voice pointed out. Bethany cleared her swimming head of the irrelevancy. ‘Put me down!’ she demanded again.

Astonishingly he did so, only for it to become clear that that had been his intention in any case, for, a split second later, lights illuminated their surroundings. Bethany stole a dazed glance over the exotic splendour of the vast room they stood in. A simply huge bed hung with elaborate hangings stood in state on a marble dais. Her attention wandered over to the vibrant colours of the swirling murals.

She tilted her head, the better to interpret those pictures, and then flags of scarlet burned her cheeks. The act of love between a man and a woman was depicted in a series of graphic but highly artistic illustrations which she was severely embarrassed to look at in Razul’s presence.

‘For an anthropologist you are astonishingly prudish.’ Razul surveyed her as though be had just learnt something fascinating about her.

‘Where are we?’ she enquired uncomfortably.

‘My harm...did I not promise to bring you here?’ Razul sliced back softly. ‘Truly I honour you, for no European has ever seen these rooms.’

‘And exactly why have you brought me down here?’ Bethany snapped, infuriated by her inability to foresee what Razul might do next.

‘Until you faithfully promise me that you will remain until the end of the summer, I will keep you here.’

Bethany turned to fix shattered green eyes on him, and any desire to ask him if he was serious was quashed by the unyielding set of his strong features. She swallowed hard and staunchly reminded herself that this had not been one of the most ego-boosting days of Razul’s gilded royal existence, and, on those grounds, she was generously prepared to make certain allowances for his temper. ‘That is a quite barbaric concept but I am convinced—’

‘But surely only what you would expect from me?’ Razul cut in grimly. ‘As this day dawned you called me a barbarian and it is true that you unleash that side of my nature.’

‘Only in the middle of an argument,’ Bethany protested breathlessly.

‘No...in argument with you I have subdued my natural instincts,’ Razul told her, with a harsh laugh. ‘I have quelled my temper, bitten my tongue and restrained my passion on your behalf. In an effort to gain your trust I have withstood the most base insults ever offered to me and I have forgiven you over and over again. I have also tolerated screams, tantrums and an attack of cold feet which would have driven most men to commit murder! But I tell you now that I will do it no more...my generosity is at an end.’

That sounded incredibly threatening. With difficulty, her colour high, Bethany cleared her throat in the claustrophobic silence. ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

‘I will not lie down to be walked on by any woman!’ Razul spat out at her with ringing bitterness. ‘So, if that is what it takes for a liberated woman to accept a man, you will never find me acceptable!’

‘I wasn’t aware that I was—’ she began in bewilderment.

‘From now on I will be true to my own instincts,’ he interrupted. Fierce emotion had clenched his facial muscles taut. ‘I was conceived in the heal of the desert sun and I was born a true son of the sands, for I have nothing of my mother in me. No ice runs in my veins, no cool calculation controls my need for you. I know what I want. I know what I feel. I want to lock you up and hold you in purdah as my forefathers kept their women for their eyes alone. You make me feel like that!’

Glittering golden eyes scorched into hers with such ferocious intensity that she took a clumsy step backwards. ‘Less than fifty years ago we would not have had this problem. I would have claimed you and taken you to my bed the same day I first saw you. I would have suppressed your rights with immeasurable pleasure! You would have known then that you belonged to me heart and soul. You would have been honoured to bear my ring on your finger—’

‘You wouldn’t have lived long enough to put it there!’ Bethany asserted in a shattered rush of defiance, her emerald-green eyes spitting sudden fire.

‘No?’

‘No! ’

Razul unleashed a slow, burning smile of sheer sensual threat and strolled fluidly closer. ‘Then prove to me that you are not a coward. Prove to me that the same desire that flames in me does not flame in you... Come here, lie in my arms...reject me then,’ he challenged.

‘No bloody way!’ Bethany gasped with heartfelt sincerity.

‘Chicken,’ Razul derided softly, stalking her across the depth of the room with the innate expertise of a natural predator.