Читать книгу Royal and Ruthless: Innocent Mistress, Royal Wife / Prince of Scandal / Weight of the Crown - Annie West, Robyn Donald - Страница 14

CHAPTER NINE

LEXIE breathed, ‘It was wonderful. Couldn’t you tell?’

Rafiq’s smile was wry. ‘Some women fake orgasms very well, but yes, I could tell. I’m glad.’

And without saying anything more he got up and stooped for his clothes, giving her a last view of his powerful back and leg muscles shifting in smooth harmony, the light of the lamps casting golden highlights and coppery shadows over his lean, magnificent body.

He looked both alien and heartbreakingly familiar, a man of sophistication backed by raw power, his combination of bloodlines and cultures so different that the only thing they had in common was this passionate desire.

Lexie’s heart clamped into a hard knot in her chest. What now?

Without hurrying, he got into his trousers and slung the shirt over one broad shoulder. She couldn’t read his expression; he’d retreated behind the bronze mask of his face to a place where he seemed entirely unaware of her.

Chilled, she sat up and reached for her dress. Perhaps the movement broke his introspection; he came across and picked it up from the floor to put it beside her.

‘Not a good way to treat such a pretty thing,’ he said conversationally, his eyes hooded and enigmatic, and walked away to the table where the champagne flutes gleamed in the lamplight.

Hastily scrambling into her clothes, Lexie wondered dismally what on earth she was supposed to do now.

What followed was a tense ten minutes spent in sophisticated conversation with Rafiq—conversation Lexie could match only with taut, disconnected answers.

So she felt relief and disappointment in equal measure when he walked her back to the door of her bedroom.

There he paused, and said with a humourless twist of his lips, ‘This is not how I envisaged the end of the evening, but I think we both need a night of sleep before we talk.’

Eyes raking her face, he finished, ‘Before that, I should repeat that I enjoyed very much our evening together—all of it. I hope you did too.’

She flushed, wanting only to be taken in his arms again, to be reassured in the most basic of ways that he was telling her the truth.

But that wasn’t going to happen. ‘I’ve already told you I did,’ she said, her tone aloof and edged with more than a hint of defiance.

He laughed softly, and for a transparent second she thought he was going to put paid to the tumbling whirlwind of her thoughts and emotions with another sensuous kiss and the addictive security of his arms.

Then his face closed against her, and he stepped backwards with an inclination of his head. ‘Goodnight. Sleep well,’ he said formally.

‘Goodnight.’ She closed the door on him before the hot tears could reach her eyes.

As always he’d been considerate, but even though he’d liked making love to her he might still be regretting that it had happened. After all, there was a huge difference between an experienced woman of the world, who knew how to conduct an affair with style and grace, and a virgin with no skills or experience when it came to matters of sex.

He might even now be trying to find a way to tell her that it was over—a kind, considerate way, of course—she thought on a spurt of fresh anguish.

She woke the next morning with one decision fixed in her mind: she’d go back to the hotel.

‘No,’ Rafiq said unemotionally when she told him at breakfast on the terrace that overlooked the lowlands.

Lexie’s brows shot up. Pleased with the cool crispness of her tone, she stated, ‘I’m not asking your permission. I’m perfectly well, so the hotel no longer has any reason to object.’

He leaned back. A stray ray of sun struck across his face, and she glimpsed a corsair, dark and dangerous—a leader of men even more desperate then he was.

‘It is not possible,’ he said evenly. ‘Your accommodation has been given to another guest.’

Stunned, she closed her mouth with a snap. ‘Who made that decision?’

‘I told them to,’ he said with a controlled assurance that grated across her nerves. ‘The hotel opening was a huge success—bookings have come in from all over the world. It would have been foolish not to take advantage of that. Why do you want to leave the castle?’

‘Because there’s no longer a reason for me to be here.’ She stared at him, her eyes sending a challenge she didn’t care to voice. ‘My stay was only ever temporary. I’m fine, my ribs are fine—’ Colour burned her skin but she ploughed on, ‘As you know.’

When Rafiq got to his feet in one swift movement, she had to stop herself from flinching. He loomed, and although Lexie knew she had nothing to fear from him she had to resist her immediate impulse to leap up so that she faced him on slightly more equal terms.

He was deliberately being intimidating, she realised, her hand closing around the handle of a knife. Why?

Calmly, yet with an edge of authority to his voice as though reasoning with a rebellious teenager, he said, ‘There is no need for you to go. I understand your feelings, and I agree—this has happened so fast that we don’t know each other very well. But fleeing is not the way to deal with it.’ His eyes dropped to her death grip on the handle of the butter knife. ‘I refuse to believe that you are afraid of me.’

‘I’m not!’ She dropped the knife back onto her plate. The sharp little chink broke into the soft air like a small explosion.

No, she wasn’t afraid of him; she just wanted him so much that her last shreds of prudence dictated flight, before she made a total fool of herself by falling madly and hopelessly in love with him.

‘Perhaps you should be,’ he said, and the silence between them became suddenly charged with a menace that sent shock waves through her.

Disbelievingly, she stared at him as he leaned down and caught her wrist, urging her upwards. His mouth came down on hers; she resisted for a second, then sank into his warmth and strength, even as part of her mind fought this insidious entrapment.

The sensations—potent, arousing—were the same, yet she knew something was different. Behind his passion she sensed an icily restrained anger and a determination that made her extremely wary.

When he released her she commanded furiously, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’

He examined her with hooded eyes, flinty and cold. As she watched the anger faded, and he said something in a raw, harsh voice in the local language.

Lexie didn’t have to understand it to know that he was swearing.

Between his teeth he said in English, ‘I will not touch you again until you ask me to.’

‘I— All right,’ she snapped, hoping her uncertainty wasn’t humiliatingly obvious.

He scanned her face, his own devoid of expression. ‘I am not normally so crass,’ he said curtly. ‘You affect me in a way I haven’t had to deal with before. I’m sorry.’

Lexie bit her lip, trying to repress a forlorn hope. Surely he couldn’t mean that he was as lost to emotion as she was? She didn’t dare hope that.

His eyes hardened. ‘Tell me, do you want to leave because we made love?’

After a few tense seconds she decided that the truth was the only way to go. ‘Yes.’

Not because of their loving—never that—but because afterwards the odd sense of alienation, of rejection, had pained and confused her.

Rafiq watched her expression, still shuttered against him, and wished again he’d managed to rein in his hungry desire. Making love had infinitely complicated the situation; he felt smirched by his own behaviour, although it had never occurred to him that she could be a virgin.

He couldn’t let her leave the castle because Gastano still wanted her, and he was dangerous.

After witnessing that carefully stage-managed kiss at the party last night, the self-titled count must know he’d lost his passport to the world of the very rich and privileged. During the past twelve hours he’d have learned that his world was shattering around him, the empire he’d built with such ruthlessness in chaos, and Interpol hot on his heels.

And although he might not yet know that the man who’d taken Lexie from him was responsible for all that, he would very soon. He’d react with all the viciousness of a cornered rat.

Warning her would achieve nothing; she clearly had no knowledge of Gastano’s criminal life, and why should she believe Rafiq?

Unless he told her about Hani…?

Not now, he thought. Everything in him refused to reveal his sister’s humiliation and suicide. But although he hadn’t been able to protect her, he could make sure Lexie was safe.

Choosing his words carefully, he said, ‘I promised a few moments ago not to touch you until you asked me to. I made that promise in anger, but it holds. You will be perfectly safe here.’

Lexie sensed rather than saw the inflexible line of his mouth, and wondered what was going on behind the handsome, arrogant features.

Fighting back a bleak disappointment, she said, ‘I know that. It’s— You were right, everything’s happened so quickly…’

So quickly it didn’t seem possible that the emotions that gripped her could be true. Until she remembered that her sister had taken one look at Prince Marco of Illyria and instantly fallen into lust.

And although that initial fierce attraction had grown into love, just because it had happened for Jacoba didn’t mean it was going to be her fate too.

Rafiq smiled, and the green eyes—so uncompromising a minute ago—warmed. ‘It will be difficult keeping my hands off you, but by the exercise of great—immense—restraint I think I can manage it.’

And he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it, then turned it over to press another kiss into the palm.

A painful delight throbbed through her. Somehow their lovemaking the previous night had made her even more sensitive, as though she’d been trained to react infinitely more strongly to his powerful presence.

If she were cautious or even sensible, she’d leave the castle and find a room in another hotel. She’d run fast and far—as far as New Zealand—from this reckless delight.

But she wasn’t going to. Whatever happened she would always be glad that she’d met Rafiq, that her initiation to sex had been so wonderful, that here on this magical island east of Zanzibar she’d found something rare and precious, something she wasn’t going to let fear forbid her.

‘Perhaps,’ she said solemnly, those swift kisses still tingling through her bloodstream. ‘But how do you know I’ll have the same self-control?’

‘I rather hope you don’t.’ The deep voice was amused and tender. ‘But not today; I have a council meeting that will take all day. So relax.’

* * *

He didn’t come home until after she’d gone to bed, but he’d rung twice, and at the sound of his voice she’d melted. Rafiq. Always and for ever Rafiq, she thought later, lying in bed alone and watching the stars drift slowly across the velvet sky as she remembered the previous night. Eventually she slid into sleep, and into turbulent dreams.

Several hours later Rafiq asked abruptly, ‘Where is M’selle Sinclair?’

‘She went up to her room shortly after she had dinner, sir.’

‘Thank you.’ He strode up the staircase, slowing a little when the passage forked to go to Lexie’s room.

Damn, he wanted her! After that moment’s hesitation, he went on past. In his own room he swore beneath his breath when he saw the red light blinking on the communication device that connected him to the head of security.

‘Yes?’ he barked into it.

‘Sorry, sir, but there’s just been an attempted robbery in the strongroom at the citadel. It looks like an inside job on the fire-diamond vaults.’

Rafiq’s head came up. Harshly he ordered, ‘Go on.’

He listened keenly as she concisely laid out the evening’s events. ‘A man armed with the correct passwords infiltrated the citadel and got as far as the vaults before the alarms finally picked up his presence.’