Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: December 2017 Books 1 - 4 - Эбби Грин, Линн Грэхем - Страница 15
ОглавлениеAZRAEL WANTED A shower and a change of clothes and he headed straight for his bedroom, it not having occurred to him that the staff would have lodged Molly in the same room. He crossed the threshold at the same time as she erupted out of the bathroom accompanied by a cloud of billowing steam. He came to a very sudden halt and stared, for with her spectacular curves enhanced by turquoise silk panties and a matching lace bra, her pink bath-warmed skin gleaming through every tiny aperture of the lingerie, Molly was a vision of stupendous sexiness.
‘What are you doing in here?’ Molly gasped, racing to the bed to snatch up the dress she had left there and hold it up against her to provide cover.
‘This is my room,’ Azrael admitted, wishing she would lower the dress a little to give him another riveting glimpse of the full creamy mounds of her breasts cradled in that low-cut bra. The hardening at his groin was unavoidable. ‘I did not realise you were in here.’
‘Why was I put in your room?’ Molly enquired with a frown, retreating at speed back into the bathroom to get dressed. ‘Be out in a minute!’ she called, yanking the dress down over her head and forcing her arms into it.
‘This is the only bedroom with a private bathroom,’ Azrael told her truthfully.
Very much ruffled and still clawing her wet hair out from below the dress, Molly emerged again, acknowledging that it was fortunate that she was not particularly vain because Azrael kept on seeing her at her worst. ‘Oh...right—’
‘We’ll talk after I change. You could wait for me in the room next door. I have ordered coffee for us,’ he told her as he rifled through a chest of drawers to pull out items of clothing.
Still in her bare feet and very flushed, Molly left the room and padded along the corridor to a spacious room that contained antique armchairs. A servant arrived with a tray and a plate of tiny sugary delicacies. Molly munched through one while she waited for Azrael and wondered how soon she would be travelling home. What was he planning to do about the passport problem? Contact the British Embassy on her behalf? But then they would naturally want to know how she had contrived to travel to Djalia without a passport. Azrael would not want to be forced into an explanation on that issue. Why was everything so difficult? she thought ruefully.
Azrael sent all the staff back to their quarters before he left the bedroom. Sheathed in jeans and a white linen shirt, he joined Molly.
‘Coffee?’ she asked politely, intending to play hostess and then looking up and fully taking him in and almost gasping at his sheer impact. Azrael was always gorgeous, no matter what he wore. In fitted jeans and a shirt that delineated every line of his lean, powerful body, with his long black hair feathering damply back from his brow, he was breathtakingly handsome.
‘Thank you. I can look after myself,’ Azrael asserted, pouring a cup of black coffee and heaping several spoonsful of sugar into it.
‘You use a lot of sugar,’ Molly could not resist remarking.
‘Yes. I like it.’ The flash of perfect white teeth gleaming in his half-smile made a lecture on dental health seem redundant. ‘We have a problem that we must discuss. I want you to take a deep breath if you feel like shouting and listen. Do you think you could do that?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Molly parried a tinge weakly, still reeling as she was from that utterly alluring smile of his.
‘But you can try,’ Azrael pointed out with emphasis. ‘Because shouting will get us nowhere in our current predicament.’
Her smooth brow indented. ‘What predicament?’
‘First, I will admit that this is all my fault,’ Azrael intoned gravely. ‘I said something on impulse which turned out to be a very bad idea but my intentions were good.’
Molly nodded, wondering what on earth he was talking about.
‘When we walked out of the cave I made an announcement. I was unable to be honest about why you were staying with me at the desert fortress as that would have meant exposing Tahir,’ he explained. ‘I knew that there would be speculation that you were my mistress—’
‘Your mistress?’ Molly stressed in lively astonishment. ‘Are you serious?’
‘What else would I be doing hidden away at the fortress with a secret female guest?’ Azrael fielded drily.
Molly clashed with glittering dark golden eyes and her face suddenly burned hot as fire, forcing her to trail her gaze away again and focus on the ornate coffee pot. Was the desert fortress where Azrael took women? Of course, there were women in his life, she told herself impatiently. He was too heart-stoppingly beautiful not to have a constant procession of equally beautiful women in his bed and because Djalia was a conservative place he would naturally have to be discreet about his liaisons.
Azrael breathed in deep. ‘I didn’t want you to be subjected to that type of unpleasant rumour and targeted by the press. It would have damaged your reputation.’
Molly tilted her head back and studied him in wonderment. ‘If I lived in Victorian times, I expect I would have worried about my reputation but not these days—’
‘I do not think you—an innocent woman—would have enjoyed the sort of opinions that would have been bandied about in the press,’ Azrael asserted. ‘And you did not deserve such a humiliating experience after what Tahir had already done to you. When I faced the crowd outside the cave I wanted to protect you from adverse comment of any kind and for that reason I said you were my wife.’
A pin-dropping silence fell. Rigid in her chair, Molly stared at him as if he had been telling a joke and she were still waiting to hear the punchline.
Relieved by her lack of reaction, Azrael went on talking. ‘I spent six months in London last year, forging useful alliances while I waited to make the final push of our campaign against Hashem. Few people have any idea what I did during that period and, if asked, I intended to say that I had met and married you while I was living in London—’
Molly’s green eyes were huge and her lower lip had dropped. He had so much more imagination than she would ever have dreamt, she registered in awe, but he also had an insanely honourable streak a mile wide. ‘What a crazy, crazy thing to have done in your position!’ she exclaimed in consternation. ‘What on earth got into you?’
‘Sadly that is not the end of the story,’ Azrael extended grudgingly. ‘I have since learned that that simple public statement that we are married is accepted in law in Djalia as a legal declaration of marriage. That is what I have to tell you. According to our most senior judge we are genuinely husband and wife now.’
Very slowly, as if her limbs were stiff, Molly rose from her seat. ‘No...that’s not possible,’ she told him firmly.
‘I wish it were not but that is the situation as it stands,’ Azrael countered grimly. ‘We are legally married.’
Molly looked at him in disbelief. ‘We can’t be. You admitted it was your fault and that it was a mad impulse. You said something...foolish, so now you fix it.’
Azrael threw his wide shoulders back. ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’
‘Of course you can,’ Molly shot back at him half an octave higher in her mounting frustration. ‘Of course you can fix it! You told me that you were the law in Djalia.’
‘If only it were that simple, Molly,’ Azrael sliced back. ‘But it is not. Many other factors are involved here—’
‘I don’t care about other factors. I only care about me!’ Molly snapped back roundly, ringlets dancing round her flushed cheeks. ‘You unfix this stupid marriage or I’ll be guilty of murder!’
‘It is unthinkable for me to request an immediate divorce. It would look very bad, as if I am a man who does not know his own mind, a man who casts a woman off without even living with her for a few months—’
‘While the real truth is that you’re nutty as a fruitcake and locked in the ethics of a bygone age!’ Molly threw at him at full volume. ‘Who the heck but you would worry about a woman’s reputation in this day and age?’
‘I am not ashamed of an honourable urge to protect you—’
‘I don’t need protecting!’ Molly yelled at him at the top of her voice. ‘I’m a strong, independent woman, perfectly capable of looking after myself—’
‘But not when you’re being kidnapped and not when you’re lost in the desert,’ Azrael derided.
‘And only you would dare to throw that at me!’
‘It is the truth,’ Azrael pointed out without hesitation. ‘In the space of a few days I have rescued you twice from dangerous situations. Now I find myself in a position where I need to ask you to be understanding and reasonable.’
‘You were not reasonable with me!’ Molly flung at him straight off, green eyes electric with anger. ‘You threatened to keep me a prisoner until I agreed not to slap charges on Tahir, but now I do understand one thing. The Djalian royal family are all crazy as loons. Your brother kidnaps me, you imprison me and tell me we’re married without me even being asked how I feel about that—’
‘I am sure you feel as trapped and resentful as I do,’ Azrael cut in.
Molly lost colour and tossed her head, turning away defensively, wondering why she wasn’t warming to that honest admission of his the way that she should. He felt trapped and resentful at the idea of being married to her. When she didn’t want to be married to him in the first place, how could that acknowledgement hurt her feelings? Why did she feel very much as though he had just smacked her in the face with a wounding truth?
‘We can’t possibly be married when I didn’t agree to it,’ she told him dismissively, taking refuge in a more basic argument.
Azrael breathed in deep. ‘In the days when that law was made women didn’t have equal rights and were treated in law much the same as a piece of property.’
‘This is not the time to be telling jokes, Azrael,’ Molly warned him tartly while throwing back her slim shoulders as if she was trying to make her diminutive stature look more physically impressive.
The movement drew the silk taut across her lush breasts, revealing the crowning peaks of her nipples, and Azrael ached the instant he remembered the succulent taste of those ripe buds. ‘I am not joking,’ he breathed thickly. ‘I wish I was.’
‘You have to get us out of this marriage and fast!’ Molly spelt out fiercely.
‘When my people are already celebrating the fact that I have taken a wife?’ Azrael shot back at her rawly. ‘How would that look?’
Molly tilted her chin, almost tripping over the coffee table when her eyes encountered the shimmering gold of Azrael’s smouldering gaze. ‘That’s really not my problem.’
‘But it is,’ Azrael contradicted, concentrating his attention on her lush full mouth instead, his tension pronounced as he fought his arousal. ‘You are my wife and my people will look to you to be a queen. Are they to pay for my mistake? My misguided attempt to protect you?’
An angry flush mottled Molly’s fair skin and she turned angrily away from him, fury and conflicting feelings pulling her in different directions. He called his attempt to protect her reputation ‘misguided’, but she knew that her grandfather would have called it noble and would have applauded him for his desire to shield her. Of course, Maurice was an old-fashioned man, a former soldier, who had grown up convinced that women were the weaker sex in need of a strong man to defend them from the harsh realities of life. Indeed, her grandfather was the only person who had ever tried to protect Molly from anything...until Azrael came into her life.
She had always had to fight her own survival battles, only leaning on her grandfather while she was a teenager, and she had been so proud once she knew she could stand on her own feet and had felt even stronger when she could repay Maurice’s kindness by fighting to ensure he received the best care possible. In a nutshell it shook her rigid that Azrael would even try to protect her. It made her feel foolishly fragile and feminine and decidedly envious of women who could take it for granted that they had someone supportive by their side. She liked that he had been willing to make that effort and come to her rescue, even if he had chosen a rescue boat that seemed to be full of dangerous holes.
Furiously shrugging off such irrelevant thoughts, Molly spun back to him, breasts heaving as she dragged in a steadying breath. ‘What do you want from me?’
Mesmerised by the voluptuous shift of rounded flesh below the fabric of her dress, Azrael strode over to the window to focus on something less stimulating. He knew what he wanted from her and just then he knew he had never been further from getting it. ‘I want you to stay here for a few months and behave as if you are truly my wife,’ he admitted in a harsh undertone. ‘Then we would be in a better position to reconsider our situation.’
‘But I can’t stay here!’ Molly exclaimed. ‘I’ve got responsibilities back home and I have to work to help cover my grandfather’s care bills.’
‘You could bring your grandfather out to Djalia,’ Azrael informed her.
Startled, Molly shook her head vehemently. ‘No, that wouldn’t work. Change isn’t good for him in his current condition. He needs familiar faces and surroundings or he loses touch with the world altogether because he gets so confused,’ she explained. ‘Moving him is out of the question. I love him dearly. His comfort and contentment for however long he has left have to come first.’
‘Then I pick up the bills for his care and you make regular visits back to London to spend time with him,’ Azrael suggested.
Molly bristled. ‘You can’t just reorganise my entire life to suit you!’ she condemned.
‘If the reorganisation brings a positive result for many, why not? Is your life in London so much better than it could be here? Is there perhaps...a man involved? Someone you want to return to? I know it was Tahir’s belief that you were unattached but who knows whether you told him the truth on that score?’ Azrael quipped in a raw undertone.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, I’m totally single!’ Molly admitted impatiently. ‘I have friends back home but with the three jobs I had I rarely had time to see them. Now at least two of the jobs are gone. Everything that’s happened here has screwed up my life and my ability to keep myself, so why the heck can’t you just put things back the way they were and fix this problem?’
‘You are a very unreasonable woman. You demand the impossible and then look at me accusingly when I fail to deliver.’
‘So, I’m unreasonable?’ Molly pressed a hand to her chest to emphasise that point. ‘Nobody’s asking you to give up your life and independence!’
‘There is nothing I would not sacrifice for my country,’ Azrael countered fiercely.
‘But you don’t own me, so you can’t sacrifice me without my consent!’ Molly shot back at him tempestuously, green eyes alive with hostility. ‘Oh, no, that’s right, we are currently standing in the most primitive place on earth where women are as much a man’s property as his horse. So maybe you can sacrifice me without my consent!’
The very word ‘primitive’ set Azrael’s blood boiling through his veins. He regularly worked eighteen-hour days in his efforts to pull Djalia out of the past and into the future and in that endeavour he had the full support of his people. Hashem had held fast to barbaric practices and laws that had supported his appetite for helpless women and brutality. He had kept a harem of concubines, young females stolen from their families and literally imprisoned. Azrael had been appalled by the stories he had heard after the palace had fallen, but guiltily relieved that Hashem had died of a massive heart attack before he could be put on trial. His country would not have benefitted from a public washing of that amount of dirty laundry.
‘Stop...shouting...at...me,’ he commanded with lethal quietness.
‘I’m a lot more vocal than a horse would be, aren’t I?’ Molly told him with a certain amount of satisfaction.
‘You are my wife and I will treat you with respect,’ Azrael breathed tautly. ‘But you must treat me with respect too.’
‘Not feeling it right now, Azrael...not feeling it at all,’ Molly confided, trembling with rage. ‘If you marry a woman without her consent, you must roll with the punches when she dares to complain. I am not going to stop shouting because you tell me to!’
Azrael took an almost silent step closer and an ebony brow quirked. ‘No?’ he queried, golden eyes bright as polished ingots between black framing lashes.
‘No!’ Molly shouted emphatically back at him.
And Azrael swooped down on her like a hawk, taking her so much by surprise that she yelped in fright as he snatched her off her feet and up into his arms as if she were a lightweight, which she knew she was not.
‘Lesson one,’ he ground out. ‘Do not shout at me when I am tired.’
He kicked open the bedroom door and dropped her down on the bed. ‘Lesson two, do not call Djalia primitive or backward—’
As her lips parted furiously to add even less welcome adjectives to the line-up, Azrael laid a hand across her mouth. ‘Be quiet,’ he told her without hesitation. ‘When you insult my country, you offend me. Stop doing it.’
Rigid with rage, Molly jackknifed in an effort to throw him off her because he had her pinned to the mattress by his superior weight. He knelt over her, her arms held still by his hands, and he was much too strong for her to fight.
‘I may well be a primitive man because I have had to do many primitive things in my life but I would never treat a woman as a piece of property or physically hurt her. And no, you know I am not hurting you at this moment,’ he growled, lean, darkly handsome features grim with warning as he made that point.
Molly dragged in a steadying breath. ‘I will not insult your country again,’ she conceded quietly.
‘Thank you...’ Azrael freed her arms and sprang off the bed, giving her a fleeting view of his taut behind in denim that roused unfortunate memories of her glimpse of his naked back view in the cave.
Molly’s face suffused with burning colour. She watched him lean back against the stone wall by the window like a panther lounging in sunlight. He was so incredibly sexy. Something clenched at her core and she dug her hips into the mattress as if she could squash that feeling, but it filtered up through her in a hot liquid surge, a hungry awareness that refused to die.
‘We can work on the shouting. There are ways of learning better control,’ Azrael told her helpfully.
‘Wanting to slap you won’t help me learn better control,’ Molly told him.
‘You are my wife—’
‘Stop it!’ Molly reared up against the tumbled pillows. ‘Stop saying that!’
‘What is the point of arguing with the truth?’ Azrael murmured sibilantly, his entire attention welded to her as her glorious hair shimmered in the sunlight like highly polished copper. ‘Would you truly strike me in anger?’
Molly shook her shoulders and pursed her lips. ‘Probably not. I’m not the violent type, but you do enrage me.’
‘I am trying to be reasonable,’ Azrael confided, scorching dark golden eyes still locked to her.
‘Your reasonable isn’t like anyone else’s reasonable,’ Molly framed abstractedly, her veiled gaze resting on his sculpted lips as she relived the taste of them.
‘Look on being my wife as a job. I will pay you for your compliance,’ Azrael spelt out softly. ‘I will make it well worth your while to stay here for a few months.’
Molly was mesmerised by his presence and his dark silky voice. He could have been reciting the numeric tables and she would not have reacted. He was offering her the role of wife as a job which paid a salary. That would take care of all her problems at home, she acknowledged reluctantly, but accepting money from him in such circumstances seemed utterly wrong to her.
‘I’m not sure,’ she muttered in bemusement as Azrael approached the side of the bed and settled down on the edge of it within reach.
‘You can trust me,’ Azrael intoned. ‘I will keep my side of the bargain.’
Her brow furrowed into an anxious frown. ‘It’s very expensive keeping Maurice in that care home, but I do only pay weekly top-up fees. The authorities cover most of his costs because he had very little money of his own,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘He’s happy at Winterwood. I sold my mother’s jewellery to pay the extra charges but I have only enough funds left to cover next month’s bill.’
‘I will take all that responsibility from your shoulders,’ Azrael purred, brushing a stray ringlet back from a delicately flushed cheek to gaze down at her. ‘I would be honoured to help you care for your only living relative, but I think it is very sad that you were forced to sell your mother’s jewellery to meet the obligation.’
‘It was only a ring and a brooch that belonged to my grandmother,’ Molly muttered shakily.
The brush of his fingertips across her cheekbone made her want to reach up a hand and touch him back, but she knew, meeting the burning dark gold of his eyes, that what she wanted would only encourage the kind of dangerous intimacy that neither of them should want. There was a burn at the junction of her body, a hot, liquid throb of awareness that made her achingly conscious of a part of her body she had always ignored, and she shifted her hips uneasily. Her breasts were swelling in the cups of her bra, the nipples pushing forward. She sucked in a ragged breath, entrapped by the overwhelming power of what she was feeling.
‘I have emeralds the exact colour of your eyes,’ Azrael told her huskily, dense black lashes low over his bright eyes. ‘You would look magnificent wearing them.’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake, Azrael...’ Molly breathed helplessly, insanely tempted to reach up and drag him down to her so that her fingers could lace hungrily into his luxuriant black hair. ‘I’ve never worn proper jewellery in my life.’
His hands settled around her waist and he lifted her across him, bringing her down on his lean, powerful thighs. ‘Open your mouth for me,’ he breathed thickly, one hand curling into her hair to tip her head forcibly back over his arm.
He tugged at her lower lip with the edge of his teeth and a low whimper of sound escaped her. She opened her mouth and he delved deep and she jerked, almost pained by the new sensitivity of her awakened body. He claimed her mouth with a sensual savagery that was as intensely erotic as the hand tracing the silken line of her inner thigh. Instinctively she parted her thighs, craving more, needing more.
He traced the taut fabric stretched over her heated core and her heart leapt and her breathing fractured, the craving rising to an unbearable height. He skimmed the edge of her knickers out of his path and gently outlined the tender pink flesh beneath before circling the tight little bud where every nerve ending in her body seemed to reside. Excitement raced through her at a feverish pace, her body shifting restively as he discovered the damp, honeyed slickness between her folds and slid a single finger into her tight opening, gently testing and teasing the entrance at the same time as his thumb rubbed across her. And she cried out, her hips rising to his hand, her body out of her control and rushing for the finish line. The heat and the ache of need combined and she shattered into a sudden intense climax that tore her apart at the seams.
Azrael lowered her limp body back against the pillows and smiled down at her dazed face with satisfaction. ‘Instead of arguing, we should go to bed,’ he murmured persuasively. ‘It would be much more enjoyable.’
‘But not very wise,’ she whispered giddily. ‘We’re not going to have a real marriage.’
Azrael said nothing. He knew what he wanted. He would play a waiting game. He would fight for what he wanted. After all, that was nothing new to him. He had always had to fight for everything that was important to him. She wanted him and he could work with that. Their marriage would be real in every way because nothing less would satisfy him.
Initially he had felt trapped and resentful about a marriage that he had not personally chosen. Azrael had always liked to plan major events, but Molly had come at him much like the sandstorm, throwing his life into turmoil, and it was a turmoil that he was discovering he could actually find exhilarating. Molly with her passion, her hot temper and her quick, enquiring mind. Molly, who had no fear of him, no ridiculous reverence and no desire to flatter him. She treated him like an equal and that was a very precious trait to find in a woman, Azrael acknowledged, because all his life he had been treated as different, separated by his royal birth from other men even when he was a soldier in training. He had always been a loner, but with Molly he no longer felt alone. So, why would he want to part with a woman so uniquely perfect to be his wife?
A knock sounded at the door and he frowned, vaulting upright with a weary sigh. If he didn’t get some sleep soon he would be a zombie.
‘You can fly home to make arrangements in London and pack your possessions up,’ he suggested calmly. ‘Perhaps you should choose a wedding dress there—’
‘A wedding dress?’ Molly repeated in astonishment.
‘We have to stage a proper wedding to please people.’ Azrael opened the door to find Butrus wearing an apologetic expression. ‘Yes?’
‘Prince Firuz is here in person.’
Azrael’s expressive mouth tightened. ‘I’ll join him downstairs in a few minutes.’
Molly slid uneasily off the bed. ‘A proper wedding?’ she questioned.
‘It is expected of us,’ Azrael admitted, shedding his shirt to reveal a muscular torso straight out of a centrefold.
Self-conscious, Molly moved over to the window, turning her back on him, listening to the sound of a closet door being opened. ‘I’m not sure I can meet the sort of expectations which will be focused on me. I’m a very ordinary girl.’
‘You are extraordinary. Look how you’ve looked after your grandfather, look how you’ve dealt with everything that’s happened here. True, there was a little shouting, but you have great heart and tremendous courage and compassion,’ Azrael countered with ringing conviction.
Molly smiled, whirling round to look at him to discover he was back in formal apparel, his hair covered, a pristine long white buttoned tunic teamed with a gold-braided cloak. ‘I’ll have a go at being your wife,’ she murmured. ‘But that’s the most I can promise.’
Dark golden eyes gleamed over her smiling face. ‘That you agree to try is enough.’
