An Arabian Courtship

Her mind was a blank. She was shaken by her sudden explosive physical awareness of him. His sexual impact that close was like a punch in the stomach, yet she did not retreat from it. ‘You’re not angry any more,’ she muttered.

‘Be grateful for your visual compensations. I learnt long ago that the perfection Allah denies in the copying of nature is no more easily to be found in human beings, especially in those of your sex,’ he stated quietly. ‘The inviting smile which falsely offers tenderness and understanding—that I do not require from you. You will be as you are with me. That I will respect.’

He slid fluidly upright. ‘We will forget today. I don’t believe you knew what you were doing. Had that been obvious to me, I would not have spoken so harshly.’

Reeling from that imperturbable calm and gravity, Polly was agonisingly conscious of the seismic force of the personality behind the cool front. He had not once lost control. She had behaved appallingly, but he had remained cool-headed enough to see her hysteria for what it was. While grateful for his calm, she squirmed from the lash of his superior perception.

A knock sounded on the door. ‘That will be the meal I requested. You ate very little earlier,’ he reminded her. ‘I also ordered a restorative drink for you—before we parted Asif assured me that it was an infallible cure for a hangover. Drink it and then sleep.’

Disconcerted yet again, Polly couldn’t even look at him. The stewardess entered, darting a nervous glance at Raschid, who appeared to figure in her mind as a wife beater. Guilty pink suffused Polly’s cheeks. He had treated her with a kindness few men would have employed in the circumstances. Dully she reviewed the reckless, thoughtless immaturity of her own showing throughout the day. The contrast did not lift her spirits.

She was wonderfully relaxed when she woke up. Only as she shifted and came into startling contact with a hair-roughened thigh did she realise where she was, and her eyes flew wide.

‘Good morning.’ Raschid leant up on his elbow. Reading her shock, he laughed. He looked ruffled and in need of a shave and unnervingly, undeniably gorgeous. Black hair, golden skin, blue eyes—a devastating combination. Smiling, he moved a hand lazily and tugged a strand of her hair. ‘Come back over here. Or do I have to fetch you?’

‘F-fetch me?’ she quavered.

He snaked out his hand and settled it on her slim waist, his fingers splaying to her hipbone to propel her coolly back towards him.

‘No!’ she gasped in alarm.

‘Yes.’

‘No…I’m not joking!’ she cried feverishly.

Raschid laced his other hand into the tangle of her hair and held her frightened green eyes steadily. ‘Neither am I, Polly.’ He pulled her the last few inches, sealing her into union with his long, hard length. ‘And there is nothing to fear, only much to discover,’ he promised huskily.

Her hand braced against a sleek brown shoulder, only to leap quickly away again. His dark head bent, the brilliance of his eyes somehow sentencing her to stillness. Taking his time, he brushed her lips with his, and she trembled, lying as rigid as a stone statue in his embrace. He strung a line of light, butterfly kisses over the arc of her extended throat, softly, sensuously dipping a smooth passage across the delicate tracery of her collarbone while his fingers skimmed caressingly over the sensitive skin of her back.

Polly’s limbs turned fluid without her knowledge. A strange heat blossomed in her pelvis. She quivered as his palm curved to the swell of her hip and he moved sinuously against her, teaching her the depth of his arousal and momentarily shocking her back into tension. He nuzzled at the tender expanse below her ear and her cheek curved into the pillow, her body awash with fluttering sensations which completely controlled her. With a soft laugh, he finally returned to her mouth, playfully coaxing, introducing her to the myriad textures of his firm lips and sharp teeth and the velvety roughness of his tongue, until the blood drummed in her veins with burning excitement.

Catherine wheels and shooting stars illuminated the darkness of her mind. It was everything she had ever secretly dreamt of, everything she had never expected to feel, except…except…The thought eluded her. Raschid’s hands traced the shape of her breasts with erotic mastery, moulding, stroking, inciting. A tiny moan escaped her. A searing rush of almost painful pleasure arched her body up into the heat and potency of the all-male body over hers. Then as suddenly she was freed.

Her glazed scrutiny rested on her treacherous fingers. Anchored in the springy vitality of his hair, they prevented him from further retreat. Strickenly she retrieved them.

He skated a mocking fingertip over her ripe mouth, his eyes bright pools of incredible blue, tautness etched over his flushed cheekbones. ‘I am very tempted to enjoy the delights of the bridal chamber with you now.’ Straightening with an earthy groan, he looked intently down at her. ‘However, that would not be wise. But at least you may now appreciate that you need have no fear of me tonight.’

Pushing back the sheet, he slid out of bed, not a self-conscious bone in a single line of his lean, sunbronzed body. Tonight. A blush warmed what felt like every inch of her skin. She had lain there and actually let him…at no stage had she objected. But on a level with that shockingly polished technique of his, her experience was nil. Raschid could not be compared to the teenage boys, full of selfish impatience, who had grabbed her roughly, attempting to infuse her with a matching passion, only to fail. Never once had she understood what she was supposed to feel during those embarrassing sessions.

Now, in the arms of a male who was virtually a stranger, she found out, and she was in shock. Had he been Chris she would not have been surprised. But he wasn’t Chris and he wasn’t remotely like Chris. Nor could she ever recall yearning for Chris to touch her. That accidental acknowledgement slid in and jolted her. It was true, she realised in bewilderment. Picturing herself drifting from the altar with Chris, she had then seen them in a dozen cosy settings, but never in one that centred on sexual intimacy. Something in her retreated uneasily from an image of Chris as a lover. Confused by the awareness, she buried it. Hadn’t she seen friends succumb to dangerous physical infatuations that burnt out through the lack of any more lasting fuel? Her feelings for Chris had always seemed infinitely superior. She had felt safe. She knew better, she had thought.

And Raschid taught her differently. Carelessly, easily, with the light touch and control of an expert lover, he had showed her what physical hunger was—a wanting, unreasoning ache without conscience, powerful enough to destroy every scruple. She was disgusted with herself. And dear heaven, he was like Jekyll and Hyde! Whatever she might have expected, it had not been that heart-stoppingly sensual persuasion which had effortlessly overcome her resistance. He bewildered her.

He had calmly referred to the wedding night still to come. Panic reclaimed her. What had she done in marrying him? Suddenly she was waking up to the full portent of what marrying Raschid entailed. How could she go through with it? How could she actually go to bed with a stranger? She was not some medieval maiden raised to be bartered in matrimony. Environment had not conditioned Polly to submissively accept her fate without argument.

She was sitting up when Raschid reappeared from the shower-room, towelling his hair dry. Crimsoning at the amount of masculine flesh on view, Polly lost inches of recaptured poise and studied the bed. ‘We need to talk,’ she muttered.

‘I am here.’

Nervously she breathed in. ‘Earlier you seemed to make it pretty clear that I couldn’t be the sort of wife you want.’ She paused. ‘Maybe you’d prefer to call a halt now.’

‘A halt?’

‘An annulment.’

An unexpected laugh greeted her stilted suggestion. ‘I presume you are trying to amuse me?’

Indignantly she glanced up. He looked totally unfamiliar in flowing robes of soft cream. ‘Actually I’m being constructive,’ she told him.

‘Don’t you think your desire to be—constructive,’ he repeated the word very drily, ‘is a little late?’

Polly bit her lip. The suggestion had been born of cowardly impulse. Undoubtedly it must seem to him as if she wanted to renege on the agreement after having collected the profits. ‘But you said you wouldn’t acknowledge me,’ she protested lamely.

‘I too may say things in anger which I do not mean. I seriously doubt that you have a drink problem, and even if you had,’ his beautifully shaped mouth slanted expressively, ‘you are unlikely to find any outlet for it in Dharein.’

‘I don’t understand you!’ Frustration rose in her.

‘Our meetings to date have not encouraged either of us to behave naturally,’ he returned with infuriating composure. ‘And to talk of annulment now when we are married is really quite ridiculous.’

Defensively she stiffened. ‘That’s the only time you could talk about annulment…you don’t give a damn how I feel, do you?’

He viewed her narrowly. ‘You would like me to be honest? I came to your home with no idea of what reception awaited me there. I cherished no inclination to marry any woman.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ she cut in.

‘I believe you heard me, Polly. Nor can I accept that this news surprises you.’

Hearing was not always believing. He had not wanted to marry her. The information stung and shocked like a sudden slap on the face. A deep sense of incredulous mortification crept over her. ‘Then why did you come?’ she asked.

‘In the hope that you might withdraw as I could not.’ Raschid dealt her an unrelentingly sardonic glance, his mouth cynically set. ‘But that hope was swiftly laid to rest, wasn’t it? However I might have behaved, my proposal would have been acceptable to you and your family. But I am not one to quarrel with what cannot be altered. You are beautiful. Insh’allah. It could have been worse.’

As she listened with a slowly dropping jaw, a tide of rage unfettered by reasoning even of the meanest form was building inside her. ‘How could you marry me thinking like that? It could have been worse,’ she parroted in enraged repetition. ‘And how…dare…you get into bed with me!’

Raschid bound a gold agal round his headress. ‘There may be a certain piquancy to our mutual reservations, but they are unlikely to spill over into the marital bed. There you do not find my attentions offensive.’

‘Don’t you dare throw that at me now! I had no idea what you were thinking then!’ she rebutted stridently.

‘I have explained my feelings to you.’ The inflection was one of definite reproof, clipped and controlled. ‘Now I suggest you dress suitably for your audience with my father. We will be landing soon.’

Sudden moisture gritted her eyelids and she blinked, her anger deflated. Raschid was gone, and she was unutterably crushed by what he had coolly dropped on her. The black joke of the century was on them both. Prince Raschid ibn Saud al Azarin had not wanted to marry her either. Damn him to hell! she thought abruptly. If that was true, why were they here now? Why had he even come to Ladybright? Oh, she wanted to scream! Some outdated code of honour had made him come, had made him refrain from admitting his unwillingness. But now—when he told her it was too late—he had slung it at her with hauteur, as if Polly and her family had gone in pursuit of him with a shotgun. Now she could review his grim and guarded manner at their first encounter. She had fallen hook, line and sinker for an act. The arrogant swine had actually been trying to put her off!

Equating his arrival with unquestioning acceptance of the marriage, she had been too wrapped up in her own anxieties to appraise his attitude logically. But why had he gone through with it? Her thoughts chased in concentric circles, her temper rising afresh. He had the gall to inform her bluntly that her sole saving grace was her face and figure. Suddenly she was dismissed as an individual and reduced to the level of a sexual plaything. It could have been worse—indeed? If it crossed her mind that there was a strong hint of the biter bit in her enraged reaction, she refused to identify it.

‘The obvious solution is a divorce as soon as possible,’ she pronounced, entering the cabin, her slender curves fetchingly attired in a full-length pale green gown which accentuated her air of spun silver delicacy.

‘Don’t be a child, Polly.’ Raschid glanced up from the papers he was studying at his desk, awarding her reappearance the most cursory interest.

She folded her arms, wrathful at being ignored. ‘If the only thing that brought you to Ladybright was that stupid assassination attempt on your father and the crazy promise he made then, I’m not being childish.’

Blue-black lashes swept up like silk fans. ‘I cannot refrain from saying that the attempt might have ended in a death which would have been tragic for my country’s survival and stability,’ he replied abrasively. ‘But I will concede that I too consider that promise to be rather…odd. My father is not a man of ill-judged impulse.’

‘But, like him, you believe in this honour nonsense.’

‘A concept which few of your sex have the unselfishness to hold in esteem. The pursuit of the principle infrequently leads down a self-chosen path,’ he delivered crushingly. ‘Nor was I made aware of the pledge between our fathers until three weeks ago.’

Polly was astonished. ‘Only three weeks ago?’

‘There was no reason for me to be told sooner. When I married at twenty, you were still a child. Since my father could not have supposed that an Englishwoman would desire to enter a polygamous marriage—’ He paused. ‘Although having met you and your family, I would not be so sure.’

It took her a minute to unmask that base insult. She flushed to the roots of her hairline while he spoke on in the same coolly measured tone.

‘My father cannot always have believed in that promise to the degree which he presently contends. Had it been otherwise, I would have been informed of it years ago,’ he asserted. ‘But I understand his motivation and I speak of it now, for it is no secret within the palace. It has long been my father’s aim to force me into marriage again.’

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