Читать книгу By Request Collection Part 3 - Майя Бэнкс, Robyn Donald - Страница 16
ОглавлениеLEXIE 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.’
Mind racing, Rafiq demanded, ‘Where is he?’
Chagrined, she admitted, ‘He gave us the slip in the old town.’
So he was a local. No outsider would be able to navigate the narrow alleys of the original town.
Mme Fanchette confirmed this. ‘We’ve got a good shot of him on tape. He’s a petty thief—been in trouble since he was a kid, and he’s now deep in hock over gambling debts.’ She paused. ‘The man he owes has been seen talking to Gastano.’
Rafiq digested that. ‘Have the passwords been changed?’
‘As we speak.’
‘But if we don’t know who the traitor in the household is, we’ll have to assume that he—or she—will also be told of the changes.’ His frown deepening, Rafiq thought rapidly before commanding, ‘I want the watch on Gastano reinforced; he’s wily and he’s ruthless. And step up the security at the castle as well as the citadel.’
‘You think M’selle Sinclair is in danger?’
‘Possibly.’
Driven by a need to know that Lexie was safe, Rafiq strode down the hall towards her room. Once he was sure of that, he’d set a guard at her door. Although he’d chosen her room to make sure she couldn’t escape, the sheer walls on the seaward side would also make it impossible for anyone to reach her that way.
But if Felipe Gastano had suborned someone in the household to get those passwords, he could have access to someone in the castle as well.
Rafiq opened the door quietly. The room was in darkness, although the shutters were still open. He could see the stars through the tall windows, and hear the muted thunder of the sea on the reef.
And something else—a soft weeping that lifted the hairs on the back of his neck.
Get out of here, he told himself, angry because he knew he wasn’t going to abandon her to such distress.
His voice woke Lexie from a nightmare of loss and disillusion, of frantic fear and terror. She reached blindly for him, feeling the side of the bed sink as he sat down on it, and then the safe haven of his arms closed around her.
Stroking her hair, he murmured, ‘Hush, hush, it’s all right, Lexie. It’s just a nightmare, just a bad dream, and you’re awake now.’
‘You were gone,’ she sobbed. ‘I couldn’t find you—they wouldn’t let me go—but I knew you were dead…’
‘I am very much alive.’ His confident voice eased the horror that still gripped her. He picked up her hand and held it against his heart. ‘Feel that? It’s my pulse, and it’s not going to stop for many years yet.’
Brokenly, mouth against his throat, she said, ‘Oh, thank God. Thank God…’
And she reached up and kissed him, relief making her bold.
When he pulled away, she whispered, ‘No. Oh, please.’ And his mouth hardened on hers and she knew it was going to be all right.
They made love with a rapacity that should have shocked her, and then slowly, gently, with a sweet tenderness that made her heart sing and weep at the same time.
When he eased away from her, she clung openly.
Rafiq laughed, a sexy sound that sent more shivers of delight through her. ‘So valiant now,’ he teased, and ran a light, infinitely provocative finger from the hollow at the base of her throat to the dimple of her navel.
Lashes drooping over her eyes, she savoured the rills of anticipation from that light, unsatisfying touch. She looked up into a face that hardened subtly, the autocratic framework exposed by tanned skin.
I love you so much, she thought achingly.
She kissed along his jaw, lips tingling at the slight friction of his beard while heat began to build again in the pit of her stomach.
‘Yes,’ he said deeply. ‘You like that. So do I.’
His seeking hand cupped the soft mound of her femininity, then two fingers slid into the moist recess and she arched against the intimate caress, her breath coming rapidly between her lips, the heat transmuted into a wildly erotic complex of sensations.
But this wasn’t what she wanted—a quick release.
No, she wanted him to remember her, to never be able to walk into this room again without her face coming to him, and her voice echoing in his ears.
Emboldened, she pushed at his shoulders. ‘Lie down,’ she said, and bent her head and kissed him, using that slight leverage to ease him back.
She felt his mouth curve beneath hers, and then he obeyed, settling onto the sheets, heavy-lidded eyes smouldering.
Long and lean and golden, he sprawled across the bed beneath her, the smooth definition of relaxed muscles beneath his sleek skin belying the power she knew he commanded, the blazing male potency that called to everything female in her.
Absorbed in sensation, she explored him with increasing boldness, delighting in the contrast of textures and the swift contraction of muscles beneath her fingertips, the way his eyes promised the most carnal of retribution, the thinning of his beautiful mouth as he fought her effect on him.
A film of moisture across his forehead sent her pulses racing. She lowered her head and touched tiny butterfly kisses there, then licked across the path her lips had taken.
Hoarsely, he said, ‘You’re killing me.’ And when she hesitated his mouth twisted and he went on, ‘But stopping would kill me faster.’
‘I just want to please you.’ She dropped another kiss on each shoulder, bunched now, and iron-hard beneath her seeking mouth.
He gestured down his body. ‘You must see you’re succeeding.’
Indeed she could. Desire burned her cheeks, and she reached out a hand, cupping him, caressing the silken shaft that had given her such erotic pleasure.
He said unevenly, ‘Much more of that, and you’ll unman me.’ His arms were outstretched, the muscles corded and tight, his hands curled into fists.
‘I don’t think anyone could unman you,’ she said in a tone to match his, and opened her lips to his fierce demand, before a wild impulse pulled her away to climb over him and stretch herself the length of his taut body.
He didn’t move, not even when she slid herself down, shivering with pleasure as she took him into her. She caught the green glitter beneath his lashes, welcoming the colour along his high, autocratic cheekbones.
Concentrating hard, she began to clench and unclench inner muscles in a subtle massage. His lashes lifted; he pinioned her gaze with such single-minded intensity, she felt he was reading her soul.
Eyes locked, bodies still, the only sound was the mingled harshness of their breathing. Lexie continued the voluptuous torment, ratcheting up the sensual tension, until the only thing she could feel was the molten pleasure rising like the tide through every cell.
And then it broke over her, a wave of such passionate delight that she gave a muffled cry, and her body stiffened in a rictus of ecstatic release.
Rafiq’s hands whipped up to support her; he made a guttural sound that mingled with hers, and his powerful length arced beneath hers, hands on her hips forcing her down as he joined her in fulfilment.
When it was over he held her against him and they lay spent in silent communication. Dazed, Lexie understood that something significant had happened, but she didn’t know exactly what. It seemed to her that they had forged a link that might never be broken.
For her, anyway.
Much later, when she was almost asleep, she felt him move. Grief tore at her; without thinking, she whispered, ‘Stay with me.’
But he said gently, ‘My sweet one, I don’t want the staff to know I have been with you. Let me go now.’
Humiliation woke her properly. Keeping her eyes closed, she mumbled, ‘Oh, of course.’
Rafiq heard the note of chagrin in her voice and gritted his teeth as he dressed. All he wanted was go back to her, lose himself in her warmth and her passion, but he needed to check the castle security.
Something he should have done before he came to her room.
When Lexie woke the next morning it was to a lonely breakfast out on the terrace. Forcing fresh fruit salad and toast past her lips took effort and concentration.
She’d asked where Rafiq was, and had been told that he was working at the citadel. Well, of course; rulers had to rule, and no doubt that was what Rafiq did every day.
But once more she faced the bitterness of rejection. Was she being too sensitive? Probably. Last night had been the high point of her life so far, yet clearly to him it had meant so little he hadn’t even bothered to join her for breakfast.
‘Stop it,’ she muttered, startling a small bird that had settled on the edge of the balustrade. Her mouth quirked as it opened its bright orange wings and fluttered to a safer perch on a potted gardenia not too far away. ‘Sorry, birdie, it’s not your fault.’
This was all so new to her, but obviously it wasn’t to Rafiq. And she’d been the lucky recipient of his overdeveloped sense of responsibility, so she shouldn’t be surprised or disappointed at his absence.
She was finishing a cup of delicious local coffee when she heard the chatter of a helicopter coming fast from the capital.
A pang of embarrassment clutched her. What had seemed so natural and thrilling last night suddenly appeared in a different light. Would Rafiq think she’d been forward and needy when she’d writhed in desperate rapture in his arms? Or when she’d explored his body with greedy adoration? Or, most pathetic of all, when she’d pleaded with him to stay with her?
Was he secretly despising her? Or wondering how to get rid of her?
And did he realise—as she had when she’d woken that morning—that their mutual passion had been so great they’d forgotten to take any precautions against pregnancy? She’d counted the days of her cycle, relaxing when she found it was highly unlikely she’d been fertile, even though the thought of carrying Rafiq’s child under her heart melted her bones.
Heat stung her skin. She got up and walked nervously to the shade of an arbour, watching the black dot that was the chopper grow rapidly as it headed purposefully towards the castle.
Should she go down, or wait for Rafiq here?
She decided to wait.
The maid Cari appeared, obviously looking for her. And just as obviously flustered, holding her handbag. ‘Miss, it is the Emir—he has sent the helicopter to pick you up. From the upper terrace!’
Joy flooded through her. ‘Oh—I’d better go, then!’
Wondering why on earth Rafiq had chosen that particular landing ground, she accepted the bag and hurried with the maid up onto the upper terrace, where the water lilies held their satiny cups up to the sun.
Noise filled the air and she had to half close her eyes against the wind blasting from the rotors as the chopper landed. Someone inside pushed back the door, painted with the stallion of the royal house of Moraze in all its menace and grace, the crown on its head glittering with fire.
The same man beckoned. Without hesitation, Lexie ran across.
Strong hands hauled her inside and stuffed her into a seat. The chopper took off instantly, and the door closed before she had time to fix her seatbelt. Frowning, she did up the belt and turned towards the man next to her.
An odd apprehension kicked her beneath the ribs when Felipe Gastano lifted a thumb to her and mouthed words she couldn’t hear.
