Rumours: The Billion-Dollar Brides: The Desert King's Blackmailed Bride (Brides for the Taking) / The Italian's One-Night Baby (Brides for the Taking) / Sold for the Greek's Heir (Brides for the Taking). LYNNE GRAHAM
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finality.
Night was folding in fast around them. The sun was going down in scarlet splendour over the dark shimmering sea while against that backdrop and raised on a rocky outcrop above the beach she could see the silhouette of a battlemented stone building. ‘A...castle...?’ Polly mumbled. ‘We’re going to stay in a castle?’
‘My grandfather and his friends once used it as a fishing lodge. Don’t worry,’ Rashad told her, misinterpreting her reaction. ‘It’s not as medieval as it looks. Our private apartments were renovated soon after I became King. The castle is one of our national treasures—’
‘You mean it’s open to the public?’ she prompted in surprise.
‘Only when we’re not using it—which means it’s open most of the year. It’s a Crusader castle and if we want to attract tourists we must offer historic sites. The royal family owns all the sites but from now on we will share them with our people.’
Minutes later, Polly slid out of the car in a stone courtyard while staff rushed around them bowing and grabbing up luggage and smiling endlessly to display their pleasure at their arrival. And Polly thought in wonderment, Rashad’s talking again. Was that because it was their wedding night with all the expectations that that signified? What else could it be? Her chin lifted and her mouth compressed.
They were ushered into a giant stone room furnished like a very opulent historical set piece. She gazed in awe at the huge scarlet and gold fabric-draped four-poster bed and the matching silver and mother-of-pearl-inlaid furniture. ‘Please tell me there are modern washing facilities somewhere,’ she whispered.
With a husky laugh, Rashad opened a small arched door in one corner and spread it wide to display the marble-tiled bathroom, presumably custom built to fit the circular turret room.
His laugh and that spontaneous smile brought her head up again, silvery blonde hair spilling across her shoulders, and she connected with black-lashed golden eyes so heated in their steady regard that something in her pelvis burned, liquefied and positively ached. Her heart raced and her face hurt with the effort it took not to smile back but how could she smile and forgive and forget when all her husband wanted her for was to provide him with an heir? He had pretty much ignored her throughout their wedding day, she reminded herself stubbornly, and if his outlook had improved it could only be because he now expected to have sex with her.
Momentarily, as she freshened up at the vanity unit, she paused when she caught a glimpse of her hectically flushed face in the mirror. She couldn’t do it—she couldn’t do the sex thing coldly, on demand, not the way she felt now!
She had always wanted that first experience to be special and she had expected it to be special with Rashad right up until he had made her feel like an anonymous female body to be impregnated. Was she being unfair? Even unreasonable? She knew he needed an heir but following on from his behaviour throughout their wedding that had been a step too far into the dark for her to accept.
Her body was hers alone to share or deny. She had always been the least likely woman to be coaxed into doing anything she didn’t want to do because for all her eagerness to please she had always had a very strong sense of self. But until she met Rashad she hadn’t actually wanted to have sex with anyone, not that acting as her grandmother’s carer for years had given her many opportunities in that department, she conceded ruefully. But right now, this night, this moment felt very wrong to her because she needed more from Rashad than he had so far given her to feel safe with him...and yet?
Deep down inside she wanted him, craved him as much as her next breath of air, she acknowledged in driven discomfiture. Her brain might say one thing but her body was singing an entirely different tune. Her breasts were full and tight and there was something like a little flame burning low in her pelvis that had made her all tender and damp and aching in a place she had literally never thought about before. But it wasn’t right, she reminded herself doggedly. Where was her self-respect? Her courage?
Well, what are you waiting for? she asked her now wildly flushed reflection in the mirror. She had to tell him before expectations got out of control.
Rashad watched Polly emerge from the turret room and he strode forward, involuntarily drawn by the sheer effect of her delicate ethereal looks and all that beautiful trailing white-blonde hair. He stretched out a hand to clasp her smaller one, tugging her to him with an impatience he couldn’t control even though his brain was warning him to go slow. There was so much hunger inside him for the bubbling warmth of her smile and the as yet undiscovered delights of her slender body and he wrapped his arms round her to capture her.
‘Rashad...’ Polly gasped, disconcerted by that sudden advance.
‘You’re my wife now. In some ways, I don’t really believe it yet,’ he confided in a thickened undertone, slowly winding a brown hand into the fall of her silky hair, long brown fingers gently caressing her pale-skinned throat. ‘I can’t believe you’re mine—’
‘Yes, b-but...’ Polly stammered, struggling to hold onto her wits that close to Rashad when she could feel the thump of his heartbeat through their clothing and the heat and strength of his big muscular body against hers. He was fully aroused and she could feel the hard thrust of him against her. In receipt of that very sexual message the kind of brutal need she had never had cause to feel before held her rigid with momentary indecision. In that instant she wanted so badly to let him touch her just as she urgently wished to touch him. She ached to smooth explorative fingers over that long bronzed muscular body and learn everything that had until now been denied her.
‘And there is no fancy protocol that can keep us apart now,’ Rashad continued with a raw-edged smile of satisfaction, his gorgeous black-lashed, dark golden eyes locked to her wide blue gaze as he lowered his head.
His sensual mouth came down on hers with a devastating hunger that travelled through her slight length as violently as a lightning bolt. His tongue plunged deep, electrifying her with sexual desire. He tasted so good she moaned into his mouth, helpless in the grip of her desire to deny herself, never mind him. Rashad pushed up the long trailing length of her dress and found her, fingers flirting with the silky panties she wore and then sliding beneath the elastic to find her feminine core. Something similar to spontaneous combustion detonated at the heart of Polly’s quivering body. She was so eager to be touched, she felt scarily out of control and that shocked her, reminding her that she had to pull back if she was to have any hope of defusing a difficult situation with honesty. Feeling as she did, it was wrong to be submerging herself in wholly physical sensation, she reminded herself fiercely, and she yanked herself back out of his arms with so much force that she stumbled back against the footboard of the huge bed, her hair tumbling across her face.
Taken aback by that vehement withdrawal, Rashad stayed where he was, a bemused frown forming between his black brows, dark yet bright as stars eyes glittering and narrowing. He had never looked more beautiful to her disconcerted gaze. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked levelly.
‘I can’t do this with you tonight,’ Polly muttered hoarsely, still struggling to control the inner quaking of need that had momentarily burned right through her defences. Even as she stood there she was alarmingly aware of the pained ache between her thighs, the high of her excitement abating with painful slowness. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m not ready to go to bed with you...er...yet...’
‘We are married.’ Rashad framed the words with pronounced care, without inflexion, without expression. ‘We are man and wife. What possible objection could you have?’
‘Probably nothing that you will really understand,’ Polly countered in a discomfited tone. ‘I hardly know you, Rashad. I haven’t really even seen you since I agreed to marry you and today you were weird—’
His extreme stillness remained eerily unchanged. ‘Weird?’ he repeated darkly. ‘In what way?’
‘How can you ask me that when you wouldn’t speak to me or look at me or even touch me if you could avoid it throughout the wedding festivities?’ Polly demanded emotionally. ‘I would have settled for friendliness if that was the best you could do.’