Читать книгу Modern Romance June 2019 Books 1-4 - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 16

GRABBING THE SHEET to cover herself, Zoe hauled herself up against the tumbled pillows, watching Raj yank on his jeans. Going commando, she noticed, colour flaring in her face. It was as if her mind weren’t her own any more. She couldn’t take her eyes off his lithe bronzed body, couldn’t concentrate.

‘I didn’t lie,’ she reasoned stiffly.

‘You lied,’ Raj repeated wrathfully. ‘You said it was time you tried sex again when clearly you had never had sex before—’

‘Well, I may have blurred the edges of the truth a bit,’ Zoe mumbled defensively.

‘You lied and I detest dishonesty!’ Raj shot back at her fiercely.

‘So what?’ Zoe fired back, her temper sparking in answer to his. ‘It was my decision to make—’

‘And mine. I wouldn’t have touched you had I known I would be the first!’ Raj bit out curtly. ‘But you chose to withhold that knowledge, which was unfair—’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake...’ Zoe thrust the blonde hair falling round her hot face back off her damp brow. ‘It was just sex. Why are you making such a production out of it? We’re consenting adults, neither of us is in another relationship.’

Raj skimmed scorching dark eyes to her. ‘I don’t do relationships.’

‘Well, I’m afraid you’re stuck in this one,’ Zoe told him with unashamed satisfaction. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Raj. If you don’t do relationships, then you should be quite happy to have had no-strings-attached sex.’

Dark colour scoring his superb cheekbones, Raj shot her a blistering look of derision and strode out of the room. She listened to his bare feet thumping down the wooden stairs and then the slam of the front door signifying his exit from the house. Switching out the lights, she got out of bed to walk over to the window and finally picked him out striding down onto the beach. Moonlight glimmered along the hard line of his broad shoulders and danced over his curls.

Mortification gripped Zoe, who was conscious she had said stuff she didn’t actually believe to hit back at him because she had felt humiliated by his annoyance. It had been her decision to have him as her first lover, hadn’t it? But she wasn’t liberal enough to plan to have casual sex with anyone, even if she had made it sound as though she were. She had simply wanted that experience, had wanted him. Was that so bad? But it also felt wonderful to no longer fear the act of sex, to no longer feel that she was somehow less than other women and missing out on an experience that others enjoyed.

Uneasily aware then of the ache at the heart of her from that first experience, she went into the bathroom and ran herself a bath to soak in. She had messed up, brought sex into their platonic relationship...but, hey, hadn’t Raj been the one to make the first move? Why hadn’t she thrown that at him? It was his fault they had ended up in bed. Why, in his eyes, would it have been acceptable to become intimate if she had had more experience? How had it somehow become wrong because she had been inexperienced?

Throwing on a cotton wrap and stuffing her feet into flip-flops, Zoe left the house and trudged across the sand to where Raj was walking through the whispering surf.

Raj heard her approach. There was nothing stealthy about Zoe crossing sand. He breathed in deep and slow, rising above his angry discomfiture and the guilt she had inflicted him with.

‘All right, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you beforehand, but you’re the one who dragged me into bed,’ Zoe reminded him flatly, her face burning. ‘Regrets now are a bit late in the day and they’re not going to change anything.’

‘In my culture a woman’s purity is highly valued and respected. That may seem outdated to you—’

‘Very much so. Why should a woman be any more restricted with what she does with her body than a man is?’ Zoe slung back at him half beneath her breath.

‘I feel guilty that I took that innocence from you,’ Raj admitted harshly.

‘Even if it’s what I wanted? It’s not like I’m still a teenager in need of protection,’ Zoe argued vehemently, surprised herself to realise how strongly she felt about the decision she had made. ‘I just wanted to be like everyone else and know what it was all about instead of feeling...feeling odd,’ she framed grudgingly.

‘You deserved more than I gave you. It wasn’t special...it should have been special,’ he asserted with conviction.

‘Was your first time special for you?’ Zoe demanded, cutting in.

Disconcerted by that unexpectedly bold question, Raj gritted his teeth and opted for honesty. ‘No.’

‘Well, there you are, then, once again you didn’t practise what you preach.’

A reluctant laugh was torn from Raj and he turned to look at her, so tiny she barely reached the centre of his chest and yet in so many ways she was absolutely fearless in her outlook, happy to express her views even when they conflicted with his. She was also too stubborn and independent to even acknowledge his point that if she had valued herself more she would not have entertained surrendering her innocence to him. People rarely confronted Raj with his mistakes or criticised him but Zoe had no such filter. She was quite correct: he had dragged her into bed.

‘And I’m sorry if you don’t feel the same way,’ she added stiffly, ‘but what we shared did feel special to me.’

Disconcerted, Raj sent her a gleaming glance and then his lashes dropped low. ‘I’m sorry if I upset you but I do hate lies,’ he murmured grimly.

‘I’m usually very honest but I didn’t want you to back off,’ Zoe completed unevenly.

‘You were curious,’ Raj commented, wondering if he had ever had such an extraordinary conversation with a woman before, a conversation in which he was painfully honest and she was as well. He didn’t think so and there was something remarkably refreshing about the experience.

‘Yes, sorry if that makes you feel a bit like an experiment...but I suppose you were, rather, a new experience, I mean,’ she mumbled apologetically.

Exactly like having a day out behind the wheel of a supercar, Raj thought again with relish, and he burst out laughing. No, no woman had ever dared to tell him before that he was an experiment, but then none had ever used that word, special, for what they had shared with him either. ‘Am I allowed to ask how I scored?’

‘No. That would be bad for your ego...’ Zoe gazed up at him, encountering moonlit dark eyes that shimmered, and her heart skipped a beat.

‘You were amazing...and special,’ Raj murmured, lifting his hands to gently comb her tousled mane of hair back from her cheekbones, the pads of his fingers brushing the petal-soft skin of her face, sending a quiver of awareness arrowing through her. ‘But I shouldn’t have touched you. I had no right.’

‘We’re married.’

‘In name only,’ he reminded her with scrupulous accuracy, and for some reason she wanted to kick him. ‘It’s not meant to be real but it’s starting to feel very real, which is worrying.’

‘Why worrying?’ she prompted.

‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were supposed to live separate lives and make a few public appearances together and that was to be that.’

‘So, we departed from the set script. But we’re not hurting anyone,’ she whispered, her hands settling to his lean waist, her fingers rubbing over smooth, hot skin, feeling the ripple of the muscles of his abdomen pull taut at even that slight touch.

‘I don’t do relationships,’ he reminded her stubbornly even as he leant down to her, drawn by the ripe pink swell of her mouth.

‘You’re right in the middle of a relationship with me...stop kidding yourself!’ Zoe countered. ‘Do you think you’re about to wake up some morning and find yourself handcuffed to the bed and trapped?’

Raj scooped her slight body up into his arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world to carry her and trudged back up the beach towards the house. ‘If it was you cuffing me to the bed, I wouldn’t fight and I wouldn’t feel trapped,’ he muttered huskily.

‘That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, but I’ve got to tell you that cuffing you to the bed looms nowhere on my horizon. If you don’t want to be there, you can sleep on the floor,’ she told him roundly.

‘You said you weren’t up for that option.’

‘Guess I lied again,’ Zoe trilled. ‘I could happily consign you to the floor now.’

‘And if I want to share the bed?’ Raj left the question hanging as her lashes opened to their fullest extent, revealing emerald-green enquiry.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said gruffly as he set her down and she kicked off her flip-flops. ‘I think sex makes me hungry... I’m starving again!’

And Raj threw back his head and laughed, stalking over to the concealed fridge, discovering it was packed with prepared food in readiness for such an occasion. Zoe stiffened, marvelling at how relaxed she now felt with Raj. Barriers had come crashing down when they had shared that bed, she acknowledged, but now that she felt closer to him and no longer separate, she was more likely to get hurt. What had happened to her defences? What had happened to her belief that she was only in Maraban to become stronger and more independent? Now she was involved with Raj on a level she had never expected to be and her emotions were all over the place and making her feel insecure.

Zoe froze, frowning as she surveyed the room. ‘All the dinner dishes have been cleared away.’

‘The staff have been in. Our protection team probably let them know the coast was clear. The bed’s probably been changed as well,’ Raj forecast.

Zoe gulped. ‘It’s after midnight, Raj. Don’t the staff sleep?’

‘They work rotation shifts. Invisible service is a matter of pride to them.’

They ate snacks and she went up to bed first, the exhaustion of the long day crashing down on her all at once. She pillowed her cheek on her hand and watched Raj strip off his jeans and go for a shower, enviably indifferent to any form of self-consciousness. But then maybe had her body been as flawlessly beautiful as his she would’ve been equally blasé, she thought sleepily. Instead she was blessed with short legs, tiny boobs and a bottom that was a little big for the rest of her.

‘What are we doing tomorrow?’ she whispered when he joined her.

‘It is already tomorrow,’ he pointed out. ‘I’m taking you to the old palace where your grandmother grew up and afterwards there’ll be an informal meet-and-greet session with the locals and official photographs. My father is making as much possible use of your time in the family as he can.’

‘I suppose that was the deal,’ she muttered drowsily. ‘It’ll be interesting seeing where Azra grew up... It was almost as interesting watching your father and my grandfather politely avoid each other at the wedding, and then I was steering clear of your uncle Hakem and he was staying well away from me as well.’

Her brow furrowed at that recollection. Prince Hakem had proved to be a rather colourless little old man and she had been astonished that such a seemingly nondescript personality could be burning underneath with thwarted royal ambitions.

A husky laugh fell from Raj, his breath warming her shoulder. ‘My father made a fuss about having your grandfather at the wedding but I talked him round. Stam is, after all, the man who ran off with the Banian princess my father was supposed to marry.’

‘But my grandmother, Azra, and your father hadn’t even met when she met Stam and fell for him,’ Zoe whispered.

‘My father still felt it was an insult and it rankled. Go to sleep,’ Raj urged. ‘This will be another long day but, after the palace visit, we are off the official schedule for the rest of our stay.’

And Zoe thought tiredly of how anxious she had been about having to make any public appearances when she’d first arrived in Maraban and of how inexplicably Raj’s presence by her side, or even in the same room, soothed her apprehensions. Somehow, he made her feel safe, protected, as if nothing bad could happen while he was around. It was so silly to endow him with that much importance, she conceded ruefully, and then she slept.

What they had was a relationship, Raj recognised with considerable unease. It had become one the minute he married her and intimacy had only deepened the ties and made it more complex. Truly it had been naïve of him not to foresee that development, given the level of attraction they shared Zoe had said it was ‘just’ sex. Could he believe that, accept that? Was she really sophisticated enough to make that distinction? And could they keep it at that casual level? And in time go their separate ways without regret? It would be like a very long one-night stand, he reasoned while even his brain told him that that was a foolish misconception. He didn’t want to treat Zoe the same way he treated his occasional lovers, being distant, keeping it impersonal, always hiding his true self. He felt much more comfortable with Zoe. He wanted to make her happy. For the first time ever with a woman, he would just go with the flow...

* * *

Zoe wakened in the morning in Raj’s arms. ‘Hey, your only body temperature seems to be hot as the fires of hell,’ she complained, striving to slide away to cool off.

Raj pulled her back to him with ease and the thrust of his arousal against her stomach made her eyes widen. She looked up at him, all bronzed and in need of a shave, with blue black curls, and he was to die for and there was no denying that she was willing. ‘Oh...’ she said in entirely another voice.

‘If it would be uncomfortable for you...?’ he husked, hitching a perfect ebony brow in enquiry.

It probably would be a little bit, she acknowledged, but there was a hungry tingle of awareness heating up between her thighs that made her hips shift with longing. ‘No, it wouldn’t be,’ she lied shamelessly. ‘But I need to clean my teeth.’

‘No, you don’t...you smell like strawberries and woman,’ Raj framed thickly, cupping her cheekbones and devouring her mouth as though his life depended on it.

And that was that for Zoe, her heart thumping fit to burst from her chest as her body ratcheted up the scale of arousal as though it had been doing it all her life. When he kissed her, he set her on fire, when he touched her, exploring her urgently sensitive nipples and the tender flesh between her thighs with those long skilful fingers of his, the fire began to blaze out of control and she was turning and twisting, downright writhing with tormented pleasure. By the time he hooked one of her legs over his hips and plunged into her, Zoe was surging towards a climax at an unstoppable pace and the raw, hot excitement of that passionate invasion sent her flying with a choked gasp into the horizon.

‘Let’s see if you can do that again,’ Raj growled as she thrashed under him and he surged into her afresh in a timely change of pace, aiming for long and slow rather than fast and furious.

And she caught her breath again and barely with a quivery little inhale, blonde hair lying in a mad tangle around her head as he rose over and looked down at her, black starlit eyes intent and riveting, her body still singing and pulsing from his last onslaught. His rhythm was sensual, calculated, letting the erotic tension build again and inexorably she shifted from melting to craving. His passion compelled her, and her hands slid over his back, rejoicing in the hard, smooth strength of him as rippling waves began to clench at her pelvis. A wildness took hold of her and she wrapped her legs round him and that final thrust made her soar in an excess of pleasure to the heights again.

Afterwards, he brushed her hair off her damp face and kissed her. ‘I hate to hurry you when I’ve made you late in the first place, but we have to be out of here in an hour if you want to see the palace before we have to face the official welcome...’

‘An hour?’ she gasped incredulously.

‘I’ll call your maid and get out of here,’ Raj told her helpfully. ‘Am I allowed to say that you make a great friend with benefits?’

Was that what she was? Zoe thought about that in the shower and pulled a face. It sounded a lot bolder and a lot more laid-back than she believed she was, but who was to say she couldn’t change? Wasn’t that what her stay in Maraban was aimed at? Finding out who she really was without her sisters and her grandfather wrapping her in cotton wool and watching over her all the time? She was in a brave new world, she reminded herself, and aspects of it were likely to be unfamiliar and scary. Or sobering, she conceded ruefully, because her gut instinct was that she didn’t want to be a friend with benefits for any man...even Raj.

Her maid had apparently accompanied her from the palace and already had an outfit laid out for her when she reappeared from the bathroom. Zoe cast an eye over the pale green tailored dress and decided it would do very well. At her request her hair was braided, which was cooler in the heat, and when she descended the stairs dead on time, she was smiling, thinking that a maid with hairstyling skills was an invaluable asset and a luxury she had better not become too accustomed to having. It was all temporary, she reminded herself, like a winning prize ticket that took her off on an extravagant holiday. Raj was, also, simply a temporary presence in her life. Maybe that was what made the ‘friends with benefits’ concept meaningless and possibly a little slutty. She winced at that self-judgement.

‘You can’t wear those shoes trekking round an old building!’ Raj exclaimed, engaged in staring at her feet in what appeared to be disbelief.

Zoe sent him a dirty look. ‘I’m crazy about shoes, but I’ll bring a pair of flats and change into these later,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘But don’t you get the idea that you have the right to tell me what I should and shouldn’t wear... I’m not having that!’

An unholy grin slashed Raj’s often serious features as he awaited her reappearance.

* * *

The one-time home of the former Banian royal family was huge and sprawling and, although the building had been carefully conserved, it was not used for any purpose other than to house a small museum on the history of Bania and provide the public with the chance to tour Princess Azra’s former apartments.

‘I wish she hadn’t died before I was born.’ Zoe sighed, studying old black and white photos of a youthful blonde in local dress. ‘Grandad showed me pictures of her. He totally adored her, you know,’ she told Raj cheerfully. ‘He cast off my father for refusing to do a degree in business and come and work for him. My grandmother told him he was doing the wrong thing and that he should let my dad make his own path but Grandad was too proud and stubborn to listen.’

‘It is a challenge for one generation to understand what drives the next. It was years before I could appreciate that in demanding that I marry a woman he chose my father was only asking me to do what he had done himself.’

‘But you were in love with someone else,’ Zoe reminded him. ‘You couldn’t possibly have married another woman and made a success of it. You would’ve been full of bitterness and resentment.’

‘My father believes that in our privileged position emotions cannot be allowed to make our decisions for us. I learned the hard way that he was correct,’ Raj completed with a harsh edge to his voice.

‘You still have to tell me about you and Nabila,’ Zoe told him.

‘I thought women didn’t like a man to talk about previous affairs,’ Raj countered in surprise, shooting her a disconcerted glance.

‘I’d have to be in love with you to mind that sort of thing and all jealous and possessive and I’m not,’ Zoe pointed out calmly. ‘I’m just being nosy.’

Raj nodded, although the concept shook him because he was unconsciously accustomed to women wanting more from him than he was willing to give, which was why his sensual past consisted of more fleeting encounters than anything else. ‘I studied business at one of the Gulf state universities. That’s where I met her. Have you ever been in love?’ he heard himself ask with astonishing abruptness, but he was, without warning, equally curious.

‘No, not even close,’ Zoe admitted tightly. ‘What happened to me at twelve put me off trying to have a relationship with a man, and then I watched my sisters fall in love and didn’t fancy it for myself. There seems to be a lot of angst and drama involved and I’m not into either. So you met Nabila at uni?’

‘We were together for two years. I fell hard for her,’ Raj bit out grudgingly, while wondering what superhuman qualities it would take to make Zoe fall in love with a man, and then his thoughts became even more tangled because he questioned why he was even thinking along that line. Was it exposure to Zoe? His cousin, Omar, had confided that following his marriage he’d found himself thinking weird thoughts, more like a woman, and that constant female company had that effect on the average man. Raj had to shake his head to clear it and he couldn’t grasp how such random ruminations were arising in his usually logical brain.

‘Obviously,’ Zoe conceded. ‘I mean, you weren’t likely to defy your father’s command for anything less...so you lived together for two years?’

‘No, such intimacy was out of the question. If I expected my father to take my wish to marry Nabila seriously, it had to be non-sexual,’ Raj proffered curtly. ‘He would not have respected anything else.’

Zoe stopped dead and gazed up at him in wonderment. ‘Are you saying you didn’t sleep with her?’

‘Of course, I didn’t. My bride had to have an unsullied reputation. It would’ve been disrespectful to ask my father to countenance any other kind of relationship. He is from a different generation. He does not understand female liberation. In his day a woman’s main claim to fame was her purity and a decent woman didn’t give it up for anything less than a wedding ring.’

‘Gosh, I was cheap,’ his bride chipped in, her face suddenly on fire. ‘Because as you pointed out, we’re not really married in the truest sense of the word.’

‘You weren’t cheap,’ Raj breathed as the museum custodian nervously watched their progress round the exhibits from the other side of the room. Long fingers stroked down her face and lingered below her chin to lift it. ‘You were totally incredible and I was unworthy of the gift.’

‘That’s just flannel,’ Zoe informed him, her face warming even more as she connected with brilliant dark eyes that sent butterflies fluttering in her tummy. ‘We did what we did because we wanted to.’

‘And every time I look at you,’ Raj confided thickly, ‘I want to do it again.’

‘You were telling me about Nabila,’ Zoe reminded him doggedly, tiny tingles of arousal coursing through her slight taut length while she fought to suppress those untimely urges. ‘Not trying to turn me into a sex maniac.’

‘Could I?’ Raj asked in a roughened undertone, those gorgeous eyes pinned to her with a feverish intensity that scorched.

‘It’s possible,’ she downplayed in haste. ‘Nabila?’

‘She told me she was a virgin because she probably assumed that that was what I wanted to hear. But it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have cared,’ Raj admitted ruefully. ‘So naturally I respected what she told me and I was prepared to wait until we were man and wife, but she got bored.’

‘Hard to be set on a pedestal and to pretend to be something you’re not,’ Zoe put in thoughtfully.

‘Yes, I did have her on a pedestal.’ Raj grimaced. ‘I was very idealistic at the age of twenty.’

‘You were too young for that size of a commitment,’ Zoe commented. ‘What happened?’

‘I refused to give her up and my father exiled me. It was my final visit and I left Maraban in a hurry. Nabila had given me a key to her apartment and my sudden return was unexpected. That was when I found her in bed with one of her so-called friends. It was clearly a long-standing arrangement and what an idiot I felt!’ Raj relived, his superb cheekbones rigid. ‘I had surrendered everything for her and there she was, the absolute antithesis of the woman I believed her to be—a shameless cheat and a liar, who only wanted me for my status!’

‘And your body, probably,’ Zoe told him abstractedly, winning a startled sidewise scrutiny. ‘You must’ve been devastated. I’m lucky. I’ve never been hurt like that, don’t want to be either.’

Raj stared down into her beautiful expressive face and wondered why it was so very easy to talk to her about Nabila, whom he had never discussed with anyone before. It was because she didn’t have a personal stake in their marriage, at least not one that he understood, because from what he had observed her new royal status and the awe it inspired meant precious little to her. ‘The meet and greet downstairs starts in thirty minutes. You can put on the skyscraper heels if you must.’

‘If I must?’ Zoe queried, slinging him a look of annoyance.

‘You struggle to walk in very high heels,’ Raj pointed out bluntly.

‘Because I never went out anywhere until I came to Maraban. I had this fabulous collection of gorgeous shoes and my sisters borrowed them and I never got to wear them until now,’ Zoe told him hotly. ‘I’ll learn to walk in them!’

‘Obviously,’ Raj countered, realising that he had been tactless in the extreme. ‘But why didn’t you go out anywhere?’

‘I panicked if men came onto me, couldn’t handle it,’ she confided reluctantly. ‘But you don’t do that to me for some reason.’

‘Maybe because you’re not falling for me,’ Raj suggested glibly, while cherishing the obvious fact that she felt safer and more protected in his company.

‘Yes, that could well be it,’ Zoe responded cheerfully as she slid her feet into her high heels while leaning on both his arm and a door handle to balance. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much more confident I feel standing a few inches taller.’

Watching her sip coffee and smilingly chat by his side only minutes later, Raj decided it had nothing to do with the stupid shoes. He remembered their first meeting and her panic attack and marvelled at how much she had already changed. He had merely met her at a bad moment in a scenario that would have frightened any woman, he recognised. His fingers splayed across her spine and he concealed a grin, thinking about the scratches on his back, badges of pride for a man who knew he had satisfied his woman. Not his woman, he immediately corrected himself. Well, she sort of was his for the present, an acceptance that somehow lightened the cloud threatening his mood.

It seemed no time at all to Zoe before they were being posed in the palace’s grand reception room for the photographs and then they were done, and it was a relief to not be on show any more and know that they had only a holiday ahead of them, she reflected sunnily. They were walking back to the car when a photographer popped out from behind some trees and shouted at them. Half of Raj’s security team took off in pursuit of him. At the same time Raj’s phone started shrilling and one of the diplomats she had met at the reception emerged with a grim face and moved in their direction with something clutched in his hand.

‘What the hell?’ Raj groused only half under his breath, pulling out his phone while ensuring that Zoe was safely tucked into the car awaiting them.

She watched as the diplomat proffered the magazine to Raj, saw him glance at it with patent incredulity and then compress his lips so flat they went bloodless. After that he strode back and forth in front of the car talking on his phone, his lean brown hands making angry gestures, his whole stance telegraphing his tense, dissatisfied mood.

‘What’s happened?’ Zoe asked anxiously when he finally came off the phone and climbed in beside her.