Читать книгу The Royal House Of Karedes Collection Books 1-12 - Кейт Хьюит, Шантель Шоу - Страница 31

WITHOUT thinking Eleni leaned forwards and brushed her fingertips over one of the angry red ridges which scarred both the sheikh’s wrists and Kaliq’s mouth tightened.

Truly, her impulsive gesture was an imposition—for how dared a commoner touch a prince in such a way? Yet considering he had been touching her only moments before—he was disinclined to stop her. Even if the feel of her breast was infinitely more pleasurable than the feel of her fingers. Although…

He frowned. Her touch was oddly distracting. It was soothing—almost healing. Was that why she was so wonderful with horses, he wondered—because she had the gift of softness about her? And if he allowed her this touch then wouldn’t it lead them down the path of sensual pleasure? Only this time—with her sympathy engaged—she would be less likely to stop him. He gave a cynical half-smile. Women were very predictable.

‘What happened?’ she asked quietly, her fingertip automatically questing over one of the hardened and raised red ridges as she saw his black brows crease into a hard line.

‘You are very impertinent, lizard,’ he drawled. But he didn’t move his hand away from the comforting caress. ‘To ask your sheikh such a question.’

Biting her lip, she let his wrist go. ‘Forgive me.’

But strangely her question did not trouble him as much as protocol demanded. Now why was that? Was it because women always asked about these marks—only he was usually naked when first they noticed them? And the scars on his back were much worse—making these seem almost trifling in comparison.

Sometimes he explained them away by saying that an over-enthusiastic partner had got slightly carried away during a sex-game. Sometimes they believed him—depending on their own experience and worldliness. Even when they clearly didn’t believe him they rarely challenged him—because they were too busy clicking into whichever fantasy they thought he wanted from them. They tried to be everything he wanted in order to please him—and in so doing they ended up being nothing.

But Eleni was different. Probably because she was low-born. Did she not realise how preposterous it was for a humble stable girl to have tenderly stroked the raised weals at his wrists?

But perhaps your kiss made her think that all such contact was appropriate.

He studied her as suddenly her inexplicable refusal to allow him more than a kiss made sense. ‘Are you a virgin?’ he demanded.

She shrank back against the silken cushions. ‘Highness!’

His black eyes glittered like jet. ‘You asked me an impertinent question and now I am asking you one in return. What do you say—shall we exchange intimate knowledge, lizard? That seems only fair to me.’

Eleni bit her lip. It seemed a terribly personal thing for him to want to know—but perhaps if she told him then he might not try to seduce her again as he had done this evening.

Even if you want him to? taunted a voice in her head. Even though the touch of his lips made you feel more alive than you’ve ever done in your life?

Swamping down her rogue thoughts, she nodded her head reluctantly. ‘Yes, I am a virgin, Highness,’ she said quietly, her cheeks flaring scarlet.

Kaliq seized on the information with a feeling of triumph. So that was why she had done the unthinkable and resisted his advances. But he could feel the renewed beat of excitement, too. A virgin. A sweet, green-eyed virgin. How the gods must be looking down on him—and how good it would be to enjoy such a gift for his own.

‘I cannot believe that you have never known a man’s love,’ he observed, his mouth drying at the thought of initiating her into the art of love-making. Of piercing through her tight maidenhood. Of having those soft breasts in his hands and those firm thighs wrapped tightly around his back. ‘I thought that you country girls sometimes took lovers out of wedlock.’

‘Perhaps some of them do, Highness, but not me,’ said Eleni disapprovingly.

‘Yet you might die and never know the pleasures of the body.’

‘Then I will gladly accept my fate,’ she answered fiercely.

He laughed at her feistiness. ‘Ah, but you are missing out on a great deal, Eleni—one of the greatest wonders of life,’ he said softly. ‘More than you will ever know if you do not try it for yourself.’

His eyes had softened, as well as his voice, so that they were more like molasses than jet and again Eleni was reminded with shocking clarity just how potent his kiss had been. And that strange and bewitching sensation of the sheikh’s tongue entering her mouth and… and…

‘Perhaps what you say is true, Highness—but I will not attempt to control my own destiny by lying with a man. To seek to shed my virginity simply for the sake of it is not how a well-brought-up girl should behave!’

‘And you are a well-brought-up girl, are you, Eleni?’

She heard the mockery in his voice and she wanted to tell him not to confuse her with her father—that her mother had brought her up to behave as much like a lady as was possible when living in such basic conditions. But, of course, she could not boast about her own qualities at the expense of her father’s reputation.

‘Yes, Highness, I am. I know the difference between right and wrong and if it is not meant to be, then I accept that. After all, no-one can possibly have everything in life,’ she answered carefully. ‘And since I’ve answered your question—is it not fair to now answer mine, Highness? How did you come by these terrible scars?’

How bold she was, he thought admiringly with a renewed kick of lust at his groin. And how outrageous of her to interrogate him in the light of her refusal to let him bed her. He could order her to go to hell…

But how long since he had talked about that terrible day when his world had changed for ever? It was a subject off-limits, even with his twin who shared the awful guilt. A dark secret which had been hushed up by the palace apparatus like so much else. A stain on the family of Al’Farisi.

Yet secrets became burdens which could grow in weight until they became intolerable—and suddenly the innocent and green-eyed young stable girl seemed as welcoming and as unthreatening as a newborn falcon chick.

‘You know about my brother?’ he demanded.

The royal family of Calista was an endless source of fascination to its people. Even without mass communication, gossip about the ruling clan was always available—it was swopped in the market place or spoken of outside the school gates, just as it was the world over.

Eleni knew that there had been five brothers—one of whom was his twin, Aarif. And she knew too that there was some terrible tragedy surrounding the youngest. Hadn’t he gone missing—when he was just a child?

‘You mean… Zafir?’ she ventured nervously.

Kaliq flinched. She was one of his subjects, simply answering his question—yet it resonated painfully to hear Zafir’s name spoken aloud and a pang of remorse shot through him. How long since he had thought of his black-eyed little brother?

Had he, and the palace, been guilty of airbrushing from their lives the tousle-haired young sheik who had disappeared at the age of six, lost without trace and never to be seen again? Was it because the painful reality had become too much for them all to bear—or were they emotional cowards who simply pushed away the darker sides of life?

Yet Kaliq was not a man usually given to soul-searching and he stared at the young stable girl angrily, blaming her for the sharp stir of memory.

‘What do you know of Zafir?’ he demanded.

Eleni wondered what had caused his hard black eyes to cloud over with such terrible pain that she wanted to take his injured wrist in her hand and rub it again, as she would a horse who had been pierced by a deep thorn—but she did not dare for all kinds of reasons.

‘I know that something terrible happened to him,’ she answered with slow truth.

Black eyes pierced into her. ‘But you do not know what?’

‘Our history lessons at school… they were very basic, Highness.’ Eleni remembered one of her father’s card-playing companions—a wild poet who had drunk an entire flagon of Zelyoniy by himself during a game of poker. What had he said? That the people knew only what the palace wished them to know. Censorship, he had called it—but Eleni remembered thinking at the time that keeping the dark stuff secret was just being private, surely? The sort of thing that any family might do—especially for a family in the spotlight as much as the royals were. ‘What happened to him, Highness?’

Her soft voice wove into the cold stone of his memory. How long since he’d said it aloud? ‘My twin brother and I took a raft out to sea,’ he said flatly, as memories of that nightmare day came back, as bitterly sharp as if it had happened yesterday. ‘And Zafir begged to come along with us. We were supposed to be looking after him, you see. Neither of my other brothers were around, and so we were responsible for him. We should have left him at home—by the raven’s claw we should have left him at home, but…’

‘Little boys can be very persistent,’ interjected Eleni softly.

And very appealing, thought Kaliq—as he remembered the child’s winning smile. Was it because their mother had died giving birth to him and because he had never known the comfort or security of a mother’s love that everyone had made allowances for Zafir, who had quickly learned he could wrap anyone around his cute little finger?

‘The raft was swept out to sea,’ he remembered slowly. ‘And we were captured by some scum diamond smugglers—and in the course of the struggle, little Zafir blurted out that they had taken three royal sheikhs as prisoners.’

‘Which would have been a far more lucrative bounty than all the diamonds in Calista,’ breathed Eleni with horror—as she imagined the delight of the smugglers when they discovered the unexpected value of their captives. ‘Oh, Highness—what happened?’

Kaliq barely noticed the familiarity of her question. It seemed that he was on a roll now—as if he had unleashed a dark torrent of facts which were determined to stream from his lips like poison. ‘Zafir managed to free us from the ropes which bound us and we quickly put him on the raft—but as we were following him our escape was noticed. We were shot at—Aarif got hit in the face. He fell into the sea and I dived in to save him. Naturally, we were recaptured.’

‘And… Zafir?’

Kaliq flinched, clenching his hands into two tight fists. ‘The raft drifted away—and with it Zafir. No trace of him has ever been found—despite the longest and most intensive searches put in place by my father. That was the last anyone ever saw of him. He was six years old,’ he repeated, his mouth twisting with pain.

Eleni stared at him in horror. ‘And what happened to you and your twin brother if you were still prisoners?’

‘Oh, they thrashed us and nearly killed us…’ His mouth twisted. ‘Sometimes I wish that they had—’

‘Highness! You should never wish that.’

‘Better that I should have perished if my little brother could have been found,’ he flared back, and as the old rage and despair came back to assail him he glared at her, even angrier now that she had been the one to instigate this. To make him feel this pain again, when he had locked it deep inside him for so long. He would teach her to pry. He would teach her everything!

He reached for her and her green eyes widened like one of the palace cat’s as he stared down at her. ‘You will kiss me,’ he grated. ‘You will not deny me that.’

Eleni knew that she dared not refuse him but the truth was that she didn’t want to—for written on his face was so much more than mere desire. There was pain and bitterness and a deep self-loathing, too. He blamed himself for his little brother’s disappearance, she realised achingly—even though he had been little more than a boy himself. And somehow she saw that human contact was what this powerful autocrat craved at this moment more than anything. And you crave it too, Eleni. At least admit that.

She bit her lip. Surely no harm could come of one simple kiss—for instinctively she felt that the sheikh would not dare to take her by force. Or was she being too trusting?

She touched her fingertips to the harsh line of his mouth, wanting above all else to see it soften and smile. ‘Yes, Highness,’ she said quietly. ‘I give you permission to kiss me.’

In spite of his anguish and frustrated longing Kaliq almost laughed aloud at the gross impertinence of this lowly stable girl giving him—him the sheikh—permission to kiss her!

But her lips were too soft and inviting for remonstration. Too beguiling for her own good. And yet instead of driving his own down hard on them as a preliminary to taking her swiftly and without ceremony—Kaliq found himself exercising an unknown restraint. Was that because this whole situation was so bizarre? He was a man whose appetite was jaded by excess and the unusual had the power to captivate him—who could blame him for wanting to prolong it?

First he traced the outline of her lips with the tip of his finger before following it with the brush of his mouth. He grazed his lips over hers almost negligently—feeling them tremble like a heat-haze in response. And strangely, Kaliq found himself luxuriating in the slow sensuality of this meeting of flesh. At the realisation that this was the first time a man had ever kissed her. And the oddly haunting recognition that he couldn’t remember a kiss feeling quite this good before.

Because he had never bedded a virgin—and maybe they needed to be treated differently. Perhaps he needed to take his time with her—just as you would take time to saddle up a nervous mare before jumping her.

‘Eleni,’ he said softly.

‘H-highness.’

Pushing her further into the soft heap of cushions, he took her face in between the palms of his hands and stared at her long and hard before kissing her again, with a soft intent he had never used before. Just enough to provoke but not enough to frighten her. And he could not deny that he was intoxicated by her response.

Her lips were velvety and completely untutored and yet he could sense the instinctive eagerness which lay behind her innocence. No doubt the same sound instinct she demonstrated with horses. Could he capitalise on her purity and his experience? Kiss her into submission until she was so senseless with desire that she would let him have his way with her?

He drew his mouth away, noting the flush to her cheeks and the darkened pools of her eyes—the way that her breath had quickened. And suddenly Kaliq realised that it would be far more exciting if he seduced her to the point of mindless longing—until she begged him to take her. What a prize that would be!

‘You like being kissed by me, Eleni?’ he questioned idly.

Dazzled by the tumult of her feelings and dazed by the candid look he was piercing at her, Eleni bit her lip. What an unnecessary question—and how could she possibly answer it? By saying that his kiss was the most wonderful thing which had ever happened to her? That it made her want to open her heart to him, as well as her body. Because that would be true. But something warned Eleni to stick to facts, not feelings—for the sheikh did not want to hear fervent declarations of emotion from a humble stable girl.

‘Yes, Highness,’ she said softly.

His black eyes blazed into her. ‘How lukewarm your praise!’ he mocked.

Her gaze flickered uncertainly to his glittering black eyes. ‘I liked it very much.’

Her shy acclaim was oddly moving, and Kaliq’s mouth twisted. Unless she was playing the games that women often did—acting coy in order to appeal to his sense of honour. But he did not think she was playing games—apart from anything else, games had to be learned, and what could her life so far have possibly taught her other than how to mount and train a horse?

The thought of her mounting a horse—of the muscular flesh of the animal locked between her soft thighs—made him grow harder still, but Kaliq quickly came to a decision. There would be no sex here tonight—not without a lot of effort on his part—that much was clear. So there was little point in her hanging around kissing him on the silken cushions.

But he wanted her—and he would have her. He just needed to work out how best to go about it.

‘Go now and rest,’ he said dismissively, and then a slow smile began to curve his cruel lips as he began to get the first shimmering of an idea which would throw a little excitement and unpredictability into the mix. ‘We will need to talk in the morning about our trip.’

Eleni had been scrambling to her feet—half pleased to have been granted her freedom and yet half disappointed that the prince had decided against kissing her again. But his words drew her up short and she stared down at him.

‘Trip, Highness? Wh-what trip would that be?’

‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he drawled carelessly. ‘I am going to Europe—and I am taking you with me.’