A convoy of four-wheel-drive vehicles awaited them outside. Chrissie climbed into the lead vehicle and watched as Jaul’s bodyguards divided to fill the vehicles behind. Her brow indented. ‘What happened to your old bodyguards?’
And she knew the instant she saw the pallor leach away his natural colour and his haunted eyes met hers that she need not have asked. ‘The accident?’ she whispered in distress, involuntarily recalling Hakim, the tall, thin, serious one and his younger brother, Altair, who had always had a smile on his face.
Jaul nodded in silent acknowledgement and regret.
Chrissie reached for his hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said frankly, painfully aware that Jaul had grown up with the two brothers.
The convoy rocked noisily along a rough track into the desert. Chrissie almost tumbled off the seat several times until Jaul secured her with a protective arm. ‘Have we far to go?’ she asked, certain her teeth were going to rattle right out of her head with the jolts and bumps.
‘We are almost there. We pitched the camp closer than usual to the palace.’
Jaul stepped out into the dense shadow cast by a huge tent while lights flared both outside it and within it. ‘We will have every comfort here,’ he assured her, helping her out. ‘The twins will join us tomorrow. It would not have made sense to disrupt their sleep.’
The tent was in no shape or form what she had expected. For a start it was much more spacious than she had foreseen and partitioned off into different sections. The seating area was in the front portion and clearly for entertaining. The walls were hung with bead and wool work while the floor was covered with an exquisite rug and fur and silk throws and elaborate soft cushions provided an opulent accent to the seating. ‘Wow...this is not camping as I imagined it.’
‘We’re not camping. Are you hungry?’ Jaul enquired, thrusting open a door hidden by a hanging.
‘No, I’m absolutely stuffed,’ Chrissie admitted, following him into a bedroom even more magnificently decorated than the entertainment area. ‘No stinting on comforts here...’
‘But we will have to share a bathroom,’ Jaul confided, casting open another concealed door to let her see the facilities. ‘We will be as comfortable here as we would be at the palace. For generations my forebears have visited the desert in spring and late summer to meet with the tribal elders.’
Glancing in a mirror, Chrissie removed the coin headdress because, like the rest of the handmade antique jewellery she wore, it was very heavy. Stilling behind her in silence, Jaul undid the clasp of the necklace she wore without being asked and she caught it as it slid down and settled it on the mirror tray before pushing back her hair to detach the earrings.
‘Which outfit did you prefer?’ she suddenly asked him. ‘The wedding gown or this...?’
‘You looked fantastic in the white gown, like a model on a catwalk. But my heart raced when I saw you in this...’ He smoothed long brown fingers over a slender shoulder. ‘The colour reflects the shade of your eyes and your glorious curves are only hinted at, which I liked,’ he confided huskily. ‘Perhaps I am more like my ancestors than I ever dreamt and a hundred years ago I would have veiled you from all eyes but my own...’
Warmth flared in her cheeks. She had expected him to tell her that he preferred her in the wedding gown and he had surprised her with an honesty that she found extraordinarily sexy. ‘Veiled?’ she teased.
‘Your beauty could blind a man,’ Jaul husked, trailing his warm mouth across the pale skin of her shoulder and drawing her back against him. ‘You blinded me the first moment I saw you but it was the wrong time in the wrong place and in the wrong company.’
‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, breasts swelling from the proximity of his hands and a very basic need to be touched as her breath feathered in her throat.
Yet his allusion to the discomfiture of their first meeting surprised her, for nothing could have been more awkward than encountering him fresh from bedding her friend and flatmate the night before. Even though her friend had swiftly moved on to another man and indeed moved in with him, that unhappy connection had ensured Chrissie resisted Jaul’s advances.
His lips caressed her throat as he drew her down on the bed and as a shiver of almost painful sexual awareness travelled through her she blinked as he lifted her hand, splayed her fingers and smoothly threaded a ring onto her wedding finger.
‘What’s this?’ she gasped, scanning the band of incredibly glittery gems now set next to her wedding ring. ‘Pink?’
‘Pink diamonds. A gift as flawless as you. My wedding gift.’
‘I never even thought of giving you a gift!’ she exclaimed with a groan of frustration.
‘But you gave me Tarif and Soraya, whose worth is beyond price,’ Jaul declared without hesitation. ‘I can never thank you enough for our children.’
Her eyes shone luminous in the lamplight because she realised he was sincere. Her fingers shifted on the sheet beneath her hand and she frowned, glancing down to see that the bed had been sprinkled with silky pink rose petals. ‘Are these supposed to be a fertility aid or something?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Roses have always been revered in our climate. The Marwan press has already christened you “Our English Rose”.’
Chrissie laughed and rolled her eyes.
‘It is true. You are very beautiful.’
Encountering the lustrous glint of gold in Jaul’s dark deep-set eyes, Chrissie flushed because a tiny ball of heat was suddenly igniting deep down inside her. The wild potency of his compelling sexuality made her mouth run dry and her heart pound. It had always been like that: one look from Jaul ensnared her.
Long fingers curving to her cheekbone, he melded his mouth with hot, fierce pleasure to the lush softness of hers. As he licked along the sealed seam of her lips, it was like a lightning strike with electricity snaking through every fibre of Chrissie’s body. Something clenched low in her pelvis, an ache stirring wanton warmth and dampness between her thighs.
‘Jaul...’ she whispered shakily between reddened lips.
‘Very beautiful...and finally mine,’ Jaul growled, peeling off his headdress and hauling her onto his lap to embark on the tiny pearl buttons running down the back of her top.
‘Very much married anyway,’ she mumbled, her body taking fire at the mere thought of his touch. ‘That’s married three times over now. There’ll be no denying that.’
‘I will never deny you again, habibti,’ Jaul muttered raggedly, closing his hands round the firm swell of her unbound breasts, his fingers tugging at the straining tips before he rolled her back onto the bed. With deft ease, he tugged off her skirt and underwear and knelt down to slip off her shoes.
Chrissie watched him strip and leave everything in a messy heap. His untidiness, the result of never ever having to clear up after himself, had once infuriated her, but now it struck a familiar note that gave her lips a wry curve. His lithe, lean bronzed body was fully, unashamedly aroused. His eyes burned gold with potent hunger below languorously lowered black lashes. ‘I want you so much...’
Chrissie
