Читать книгу Modern Romance July 2018 Books 1-4 Collection - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 23

CHAPTER TEN

THERE WERE TWO different ways of dealing with a problem. Hannah knew that better than anyone. Stepping from her bath, she bent forwards a little as the servant wrapped a fluffy towel around her damp shoulders. You could either accept the problem and learn to live with it, or you could try to solve it. And hadn’t she spent her life trying to do the latter?

She watched rose petals swirling round and round as water drained away from the golden bathtub. When she and Tamsyn had been hungry as children, she’d found food, hadn’t she? And when her schooling had suffered as a result of her having to keep house, she’d tried to teach herself. Even when her lack of formal qualifications had led to what some people might have considered the non-aspirational job of chambermaid, she had worked hard and earned herself promotions. Necessity had made her one of life’s fixers and that was the way she operated.

So couldn’t she apply the same criteria to her marriage—to find a way to elevate it from its current state of stalemate? To make it into something more meaningful, despite Kulal’s determination that it should exist only on the most superficial of levels? She swallowed. Because she was finding that what she had was not enough.

Not nearly enough.

She had a husband who was physically present but emotionally distant. A man who occupied himself by day—and sometimes evenings, too—with the many demands placed on him. Oh, occasionally he made a space for her in his diary, when for a brief time she felt as if she was actually sharing his life rather than living on the periphery of it. Times when she would accompany him to a state banquet, or the opening of some new medical centre, or perhaps they would eat dinner together—but that was the exception, rather than the rule. The only time she really had Kulal to herself was in bed at night.

Patting her skin dry, she sighed, because that wasn’t quite true. Even being in bed with him was time-limited. Once they had satisfied their mutual desire several times over, he would slip away to sleep in his own room, rising at five to saddle his horse and pound the desert sands until his hard body was sheened with sweat and little tendrils of black hair clung to his face. She knew this because once, long after he’d left her bed, she’d heard a noise and, on getting up to investigate, had found him stripping off in one of the anterooms of their vast suite. He had pulled the damp shirt from his body and had been in the process of unzipping his jodhpurs when Hannah had walked in and he had frozen.

So had she. Because the sight of Kulal undressing was overwhelming enough to make her heart race erratically. Oh, she got to see his naked body at night—every night, as it happened—but at times that felt almost stage-managed and this totally unexpected half-clothed version of him was unbelievably erotic. She hadn’t meant to be provocative when her tongue had slid out to slowly moisten her lips, but the increased tension in Kulal’s muscular torso had suggested that he’d found it so.

As she stood in her long, diaphanous nightgown, her rounded shape must have been very apparent with the lamplight shining through the folds of silk-chiffon, and she’d seen her husband’s black eyes roving greedily over her body before he deliberately lifted his gaze to hers.

‘You are not ill?’ he demanded.

She’d shaken her head. ‘I heard a noise, that’s all. It woke me up.’

He’d lifted his broad shoulders in apology, pointing to the discarded riding crop which had lain beside one leather-booted foot, which had been tapping at the marble floor with impatience. ‘I must have thrown that down with more force than I intended.’

She’d wanted to ask him why. Just as she’d wanted to ask him whether he might break his cast-iron rule and take her into his arms and kiss her. Now. Here. No matter how damp and sweaty he was. She had held her breath for one long moment when such a scenario had seemed possible—if the darkening of his eyes and the hungry hardening of his lips had been anything to go by—before he’d given her a dismissive smile.

‘Forgive me for waking you.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘You should. A pregnant woman needs her sleep.’ There had been a pause. ‘Go back to bed, Hannah.’

The memory retreated as Hannah bent down to dry her toes, then pulled a silky robe over her head. Was that what happened in relationships? Were you always seeking something more, no matter how much you had? And wasn’t the danger that she could jeopardise what they did have, if she allowed these restless longings to take over?

So she tried to count her blessings and to pray that some of Kulal’s icy reserve might melt a little. One morning, he had flown her to the north-eastern side of Zahristan, to his royal beach house, where they had sat beneath a shaded canopy and watched the glitter of the sun on the Murjaan Sea as they’d sipped fire-berry cordial. Their small contingent of protection officers had been entirely female, giving Hannah the opportunity to swim in the enormous pool which was surrounded by palm trees. The silken waters had rippled deliciously over her skin and she’d seen Kulal smile when she’d given a little squeal of delight.

‘Come and join me?’ she had questioned shyly.

Uncharacteristically, he had hesitated before telling her he needed to make a conference call to New York, and that brief pause had been enough to make a flicker of hope enter her body. Because in that moment, hadn’t he been tempted by an intimacy which wasn’t just about sex?

And the trouble with hope was that it was like a weed—it grew wildly with the slightest bit of encouragement. Hannah wondered if it was all in her imagination, or whether Kulal’s nocturnal visits were getting longer. Last night, it had been almost dawn before he had left the rumpled sheets to retreat to his own bedroom. Her eyelids had fluttered briefly open as she had watched him dressing in the dim light, longing for the time when he might spend an entire night with her. But she didn’t dare ask him outright. Not after the humiliation of their wedding night. Not when she suspected such an appeal would prompt the proud desert King into doing the very opposite.

In the meantime, her pregnancy was progressing with textbook perfection. Each day her bump grew bigger, ticking off every developmental milestone along the way. The palace doctor declared herself delighted with Hannah’s progress during their regular consultations, though the Sheikh had been absent from all of these.

‘It would be inappropriate for the King to be present during such an intimate examination,’ Kulal had said in reply to her tentative query about whether he might one day accompany her.

It was an old-fashioned point of view, but in many ways he was an old-fashioned man despite his western business dealings and cosmopolitan lifestyle prior to his marriage. He didn’t seem to mind that royal law decreed that the sex of their unborn child should be known only to the attending doctor, even though Hannah was longing to find out if she was having a boy or a girl. Sometimes she reflected on how different Zahristan was from the world she had grown up in.

But somehow, despite all the odds, she liked it and found a peace there she’d never known before. She liked the quiet and beauty of walking in the palace gardens, or drinking her tea in the vast courtyard, with its cobalt-blue mosaic floor and the mingled scent of orange blossom and gardenia filling the air. She liked it when she was appointed a female aide and two female protection officers so that she was able to explore the ancient museums and artefacts in the nearby city of Ashkhazar, though she preferred to make these visits unannounced, so that there wouldn’t be too much fuss. And she loved the huge library in the palace itself because, for the first time in her life, she actually had the time and the opportunity to read.

It felt magical to have endless rows of beautifully bound leather books at her fingertips and she began to read up more about Zahristan history, partly because she wanted to take her role as Sheikha seriously and partly because she wanted to understand Kulal’s land and, by definition, him. She read that he was from a long line of Zahristan kings from his father’s side and that his mother had been a princess from the neighbouring land of Tardistan. But there seemed to be gaps in the various accounts of his family history, even in the more modern publications—and it was only on a neglected shelf in a hidden alcove that she discovered a short biography about Kulal himself.

Her eyes scanned the pages eagerly, her eyes drinking in the portraits of his hawk-like features and flashing black eyes. There were descriptions of his exemplary school record and his daring exploits when he’d run away as a teenager to fight in the fierce border battle with Quzabar. There was an account of his father’s lying-in-state and the political turmoil before Kulal’s subsequent accession to the throne, but practically nothing about his mother’s early death, other than the fact it was ‘tragic’. And if Kulal was the younger of twin brothers, as was stated, it didn’t explain why he had taken the throne instead of his older brother, Haydar. Hannah wanted to know, but instinct told her not to pry. That the answers she sought would only come about if she and Kulal grew closer as a couple—and wasn’t she attempting to help that process along, by increasing the amount of time they spent together?

She’d quickly realised that Kulal working late into the evening before he came to bed was an evasive tactic. She realised that he preferred her to be waiting and ready for sex—she guessed because that ruled out the need for conversation other than the ‘do you like it when I do that?’ variety. She remembered those far-away days when she’d cleaned his suite in Sardinia when they used to chat about stuff. When once in a while he’d even teased her. Couldn’t they get back to easy conversations like that—and the sort of intimacy which didn’t involve her gasping out her pleasure as he drove into her eager body?

She told herself that the only reason she’d decided to start waiting until Kulal returned to their suite before retiring for the night was so they could chat. But deep down she knew that wasn’t the whole truth. Deep down she realised she had started to care for her husband in a way he had emphatically warned her against. A way which felt frighteningly close to love, even though she told herself that wasn’t possible.

But something had changed.

She wasn’t sure how or when it had happened, because it wasn’t the obvious things which had made her feel so differently about him. Not the muscular body which transported her to heaven and back every night. Or the ruler in all his finery with people bowing before him. It was the man with the occasional flicker of vulnerability in his eyes before the shutters came crashing down—that was the Kulal who had captured Hannah’s imagination and then her heart. Was it so wrong to wonder if she could ever forge a tiny place for herself in his heart?

Her silken robes whispered as she walked over to the desk where she’d left her book open and the dull thud of the outer doors of their suite told her that Kulal had returned. Instantly, she felt her heart begin to thunder.

‘Hannah?’

The sound of his voice was enough to send desire rippling down her spine and Hannah struggled to keep the hungry tremble from her voice. ‘I’m in here!’

He walked into the bedroom, appearing startled to see her sitting at the desk, a halo of golden lamplight surrounding her. ‘You’re not in bed?’ he questioned.

‘As you see,’ she said, with a smile. ‘I thought I’d wait for you and do a spot of reading.’ She put a bookmark in her book and closed it. ‘How did your meeting with the Sultan of Marazad go?’

Kulal felt momentarily disorientated because he hadn’t been expecting to see her waiting up for him. He swallowed. The sight of her alluring body was making him want to ravish her with a hunger which never seemed to wane, no matter how many times he took his fill of her. And it had never happened to him before—not like this. Every night since their wedding had been spent in her arms and not once had he grown bored. Unusually, he’d found himself cancelling trips to Europe and the States—feeling it wasn’t really fair to abandon his pregnant wife in a strange new country, even though no such complaint had come from her. Despite the huge leap of being catapulted from chambermaid to queen, she hadn’t been in the least bit clingy or dependent. She had been...

He swallowed.

She had been irresistible.

Beguiling him little by little—her shy sexual confidence had increased daily until he wondered which of them was the tutor and which the pupil. But it wasn’t just sex she excelled at. It was other stuff, too. She seemed to instantly grasp what was important to him and what was not. She didn’t say unnecessary things or do that glazed-eye thing women did when they were pretending to be interested in your job. Her interest in his work seemed genuine. His gaze distracted by the hard points of her nipples, which were thrusting against her pink gown, he dragged his mind back to the question she’d just asked him. Something about a meeting...

‘It was good,’ he said vaguely, even though this particular meeting had been months in the planning. ‘Malik was unusually compliant.’

‘So you think he’s eager to embrace solar power at last?’

Kulal frowned. He didn’t remember discussing that either, but he supposed he must have done. And why the hell was he getting into a discussion about renewable energy when he’d come here specifically to make love to her? ‘Not nearly as eager as I am to embrace you,’ he murmured, walking over to the desk and switching off the lamp, before pulling her to her feet. ‘You should be in bed.’

Those amazing eyes widened. ‘I’ve been reading.’

‘It’s late.’

‘So what? I’m pregnant, Kulal—and I’m getting plenty of sleep. The doctor says I’m in peak health and right now I feel wide awake.’

‘That’s good. Because so do I.’ He slid his hand down over one undulating hip and instantly heard a long breath escape from her lips.

‘Kulal.’ He heard her swallow. ‘I...I wanted to ask you some more about the solar power initiative and...and...oh!’

Her words faded away as his lips brushed hungrily over her neck. ‘Which is the very last thing I want to talk about, Hannah. I’d rather concentrate on...this...’ He started rucking up the gauzy gown to explore the silken territory of her thighs, his fingers finding her moist heat as he explored further. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ he said unsteadily.

‘Well...’ She tipped her head to one side as if she was giving the question careful consideration, but he saw her eyes become opaque as his finger found her sweet spot and began to drum softly against it.

‘You were saying?’ he prompted softly.

‘I don’t...remember,’ she moaned.

And neither did he. She felt so good and tasted so good that he could wait no longer. With a low groan, he picked her up and carried her over to the bed, ignoring her habitual protestations, because although she was almost six months pregnant with his child, he could still lift her with ease. She was wearing her nightgown, but Kulal was too hungry to care. In fact, he couldn’t even wait to remove his own robes. But silk and satin could be pushed aside enough for him to gain all the access he needed and before too long she was breathlessly urging him to enter her. Kulal needed no second bidding as he filled her with an erection that had never felt quite so hard. Each thrust seemed to take him deeper. He felt as if he wanted to explode. As if nothing else in the world existed outside this room and this bed. He teetered on the brink of pleasure until at last she gave a strangled cry and almost immediately he let go with a harsh and breathless shout of his own.

Kulal didn’t know how long he lay there before withdrawing from her, but her face was flushed and her eyes dark as they gazed at each other in the lamplight. ‘That was a very welcome homecoming,’ he said eventually.

‘I’m glad,’ she said demurely.

‘Where the hell did you learn to be so...responsive?’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Or are you just one of life’s natural seductresses?’

‘I’ve read some stuff,’ she admitted a little shyly. ‘I figured that an inexperienced wife might drive you into the arms of someone else if I wasn’t careful.’

The unexpected candour and humility of her response made Kulal’s heart punch painfully in his chest. ‘But I promised you my fidelity,’ he growled.

‘I know you did, but I...’

She seemed about to say something else when he saw a shadow cross over her face, and instead she shrugged.

‘What?’ he probed.

‘It doesn’t matter. Honestly.’ She fastened her arms around his neck and planted a lingering kiss on his lips. ‘What matters is that you should enjoy your coming home at night as much as I do.’

‘I certainly enjoy coming,’ he mused.

‘Kulal!’

He gave a low laugh. ‘I don’t really think you’re in any position to be shocked by my words, Hannah—not when you seem pretty unshocked by some of the things we do together. Now...’ his voice dipped ‘...why don’t we rid you of this nightgown—beautiful as it is—which, in my haste to be inside you, I neglected to remove?’

He helped her slide out of her nightdress, but took his time while undressing himself, deliberately making himself step back from the easy intimacy which seemed to have developed between them. Because sometimes, didn’t disquiet whisper over his skin—as warm and as insidious as the slow trickle of blood? Instinctively, his fingertips went to the ridged scar which ran all the way from nipple to belly. At the time, he hadn’t felt the knife enter his body because he had been on a rush of adrenalin, and sometimes he felt the same way now, when he was in bed with his wife.

He had warned Hannah what he would and wouldn’t tolerate within their marriage yet he hadn’t expected her to be quite so accepting of his demands. Hadn’t he anticipated rebellion once she realised he would not bend the stringent rules he had imposed on their union? But she had confounded all his expectations. She hadn’t sulked, or bargained, or pleaded for him to spend the whole night with her. She hadn’t drummed her fingernails on the table and told him what she wanted. She had just seemed to slot into palace life as if she’d been born to it. According to his aides, she spent her days quietly, either in the gardens or in the library, with the occasional trip into the city as she prepared for the birth of their child.

‘Kulal.’ Her voice sounded soft—like a harp playing on a spring evening.

‘What is it?’ Yanking off his robe, he slid into bed beside her.

‘I want...’

‘What do you want, Hannah?’ he questioned indulgently.

‘To...to kiss you.’

It was such an innocent request—how could he refuse? Why would he even want to refuse? Was it because he detected a trace of some indefinable emotion in the melodic caress of her words? Or because kissing represented an intimacy which sometimes felt as if it was mushrooming out of his control? As he bent to brush his lips over hers, he told himself it was only a kiss, but within seconds they were having sex again. If she hadn’t been pregnant he might have been a little rougher with her—made her ride him like a cowboy riding a bucking bronco, to demonstrate that this was nothing more than physical.

But if she hadn’t been pregnant, she wouldn’t be here, he reminded himself as his orgasm hit him like a muffled burst of stars. And that was his last coherent thought before he fell into a deep sleep.

His dreams were fitful and he awoke to an unfamiliar smell, forcing open his eyelids to see Hannah on the other side of the bedroom, tipping strong coffee into two tiny glimmering cups. Sitting up in bed, he raked his fingers back through his tousled hair—scowling in confusion as he noticed slats of bright sunlight slanting through the shutters.

‘What time is it?’ he demanded.

She was undulating towards him, her silken gown flowing around her like a waterfall as she carried one of the tiny golden cups.

‘Almost nine,’ she replied, putting the coffee down beside him. ‘You slept right through.’

Was he imagining the hint of triumph in her voice and the look of satisfaction on her face? ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ he questioned, pushing aside the sex-scented sheets and watching her aquamarine gaze automatically flicker towards the hardness at his groin, before she lifted her eyes to his face. ‘You know I like to exercise my stallion before dawn.’

‘I know you do. But you looked so peaceful lying there that I couldn’t bring myself to wake you. And I assumed one of the servants would take your horse out in your absence.’

His mouth thinned. ‘How quickly you have become used to having servants, Hannah,’ he commented drily. ‘But I think we’re both aware that nobody gives Baasif a ride quite as hard as I do.’

He saw colour creep into her skin and knew that she wasn’t thinking about horse-riding. The throb at his groin intensified. Neither was he. But she needed to understand that this wasn’t going to become like a regular marriage, with them spending every constricting moment in each other’s company. Did she think he would give up his morning ride and become sedentary and fat? To lie in bed with her, drinking coffee and eating pastries? He scowled as he reached for his robe.

‘Why don’t you drink your coffee, Kulal?’ she said calmly and her words suddenly felt like the domestic kiss of death.

‘I don’t want any coffee,’ he snarled.

He pulled the garment over his head and saw the disappointment on her face. But he would be tolerant with her. He wouldn’t berate her for forcing him into something he had told her he didn’t want—not when it was his own fault for falling asleep like that. But it would not happen again, he thought grimly. Never again would he waken to some commonplace scene of domesticity, with her giving him that doe-eyed look which was suddenly making him feel so trapped.

He thought she might be about to do the sensible thing and just let him leave, but she didn’t. She crossed the room and stood in front of him, reaching up to cup his jaw and to run a questing thumb over it—as if testing for herself how rough his new growth of beard was first thing in the morning. It was as much as Kulal could do not to flinch, but somehow he stopped himself in time. And then she started to speak.

‘Kulal?’

He stepped away from her touch. ‘I hope this is urgent, Hannah,’ he said warningly.

She drew in a deep breath as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘Must you leave my bed every night, as though I am your mistress instead of your wife?’

He raised his eyebrows, trying to keep it light. ‘You don’t think that such behaviour adds a piquant spice to our relationship?’ he drawled.

‘You’re all the spice I need, Kulal,’ she said almost shyly and then did something she hadn’t done for many weeks.

She blushed.

She blushed and Kulal felt the whisper of danger.

‘Haven’t we already had this discussion?’

‘Yes, but I wondered whether we might review things.’

‘Review things?’ he echoed. ‘Like what?’

She shrugged. ‘I like waking up beside you,’ she said shyly. ‘Just as I like you holding me tightly all night long.’

He frowned. ‘Was I holding you all night long?’

‘You don’t remember? You certainly were. You were murmuring things to me in Zahristanian in the middle of the night.’ She smiled, and the blush deepened. ‘I didn’t have a clue what the words meant, but they sounded...’

His head jerked up. ‘Sounded what?’

Nervously, she ran the tip of her pink tongue in a moist and curving path over her lips as if she had suddenly recognised that this line of conversation was unwise. ‘Nothing,’ she said quickly.

But it was too late because just then, Kulal did remember. Something she’d whispered in his ear in the deepest point of the night when he was deep inside her.

Kulal, I love you.

Kulal, I love you so much.

Had that been her response to his own words of appreciation, which had probably been nothing more than murmured praise for her ability to make him orgasm so often? Had she misinterpreted them—seen her opportunity to strike, by professing for him what he had emphatically told her he didn’t want? He felt the icy clench of rage around his heart as he studied her. Did she think everything had suddenly changed just because they were sexually compatible and could spend the occasional evening eating dinner without having a row? Did she think she could disregard his wishes in order to pursue her own? ‘What’s this all about, Hannah?’ he questioned.

She paced around the suite a bit, moving her shoulders restlessly like someone eager to get a whole load of stuff off their chest. ‘I’ve read various things about your childhood,’ she said at last. ‘Although the information available was quite patchy.’

‘And?’ he questioned, though she appeared not to notice the warning in his voice.

‘And I can see you probably had to learn to be independent because your mother died when you were so young and your father was away a lot. But I can understand that independence, because I had to grow up fast, too.’

‘That’s enough!’

‘Please, Kulal.’ Her words started to falter when she saw his expression, but she forged on. ‘Let me just say this.’

‘I would strongly advise against saying anything else, since I need to shower and get dressed and go to see my advisors,’ he said, but she carried on as if he hadn’t spoken and fleetingly Kulal thought how audacious it was that the one-time chambermaid should so openly disregard the wishes of the King.

‘I’m not asking for the impossible,’ she said, still in that same soft voice. ‘Just that you relax and let what happens happen. That you stop leaving my bed straight after we’ve had sex.’ She cleared her throat and slanted him a hopeful smile. ‘I’ve never seen you looking so contented as when you were asleep this morning.’

It might have worked if he hadn’t remembered her words and Kulal realised it would be easier to pretend he hadn’t heard them. But he knew women well and once that phrase was out there, she would say it again. Oh, it might not be for a week—maybe even a month—but there would be some vulnerable point when she mistook passion or kindness for something more. She would say them again and expect him to start saying them back. And that was never going to happen.

‘Have you fallen in love with me, Hannah?’ he questioned softly and as she drew in a sharp intake of breath, he could see the flicker of hope in her pale eyes.

‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘I’ve tried so hard not to but it’s happened almost without me realising it. I love you, Kulal. I love you so much.’

Kulal stared at the woman before him, her eyes bright with passion and her cheeks flushed with emotion.

His wife.

His wife who had just told him she loved him.

His lips curved as he felt anger course through his veins. ‘What do you want me to say, Hannah?’ he snarled. ‘That I love you, too? Because, believe me—that is never going to happen.’