Virgin for the Billionaire's Taking

‘You dare to accuse me of your own low moral standards?’

Jay looked so angry as he took a step towards her and stood almost menacingly over her, filling the air with the heat of his fury, that Keira wasn’t sure what would have happened if the site manager hadn’t come and interrupted them, explaining that there were some papers he needed Jay to sign.

The sooner this commission was completed and she could end her association with Jay the better, Keira told herself fiercely.

She had an appointment to meet with one of the manufacturers who was providing some of the furniture for the show homes tomorrow. His factory was several hours’ drive away, in a small town close to the border of the desert. Remembering what had happened when she had gone to visit the fabric factory, this time Keira had sent a message first to Jay, explaining what she intended to do and requesting his approval. He had not said anything about it just now.

Keira’s heart slid heavily into her ribs. It was no use trying to lie to herself. Each time she saw him she might promise herself that this time she would not permit herself to endure that surge of sick, aching need that made her long to be in his arms even though she knew that that was the worst place she could ever be, but she knew that in reality it was a promise she would never be able to keep.

Take today. It was just over four weeks since she had last seen him—four weeks, two days and ten minutes, to be exact. Well, twenty minutes if she counted the extra ten minutes she had spent concealed behind the fretwork of the latticed jails, designed to keep the women of the harem from public view whilst enabling them to look down into the street below, watching Jay walk away from the palace.

Four weeks during which she had resolutely focused on her work, filling every heartbeat of time with a feverish busyness designed to deny her the ability to give in to the temptation to think about Jay. She had even taken to reading books on Indian culture and crafts when she went to bed, until her eyes became too heavy to stay open.

And yet earlier today, the minute she had looked up and seen him, every rule she had made to protect herself had been ignored and forgotten.

It had taken his insulting remark about Alex to force her to recognise reality.

In that regard at least she was most certainly not her mother’s daughter, Keira recognised tiredly. She felt no quickening of her senses at all where other men were concerned.

Which made her danger greater rather than less. Loving the wrong man could be every bit as destructive as loving too many wrong men—especially when that wrong man was a man like Jay.

Jay leaned against one of the pillars supporting the vaulted ceiling of the palace’s main reception room. The walls and the pillars were decorated with a traditional form of plasterwork that had been hand polished with a piece of agate, to create a marble finish, but of course that finish was a fake, false—just like Keira. Did she really think he had been deceived by that protest of hers about her fabric designer friend?

Jay paced the room restlessly. He had gone to Mumbai to escape from the ache of wanting her that being here with her gave him. He had even sworn that he would ease that ache in the arms of the actress who had been so delighted to hear from him. So why hadn’t he done exactly that? And why had he cut short his visit and returned here ahead of schedule?

He wasn’t going to answer that question. Why should he, when he had so many far more important matters to concern himself with?

Keira’s heart sank as she stood in the main entrance hall to the palace. Her driver had just brought her the unwelcome news that he was not going to be driving her to her appointment but that instead Jay was going to take her, and that he would join her shortly.

Up above her was the gallery she had just walked along, which separated the main part of the palace from the women’s quarters, where once they had lived in Purdah.

Purdah! The concealment of a woman’s face and body from the eyes of all men except those of her immediate family. To some a protection, but to others a form of imprisonment. As a Western woman the very thought of enduring Purdah was beyond comprehension.

But wasn’t the reality that what she herself was enduring, and had endured for most of her life, was in its own way an inner form of Purdah, imposed on her by her own fears? Her Purdah meant that her emotions and desires must always remain hidden away, denied the light of day for her own protection.