desire had always enthralled her. She was not perfect, she knew she was not perfect but Jaul had always vehemently disagreed. There had never been anyone else for her purely because only Jaul made her burn with earthy longing and only Jaul could look at her as though she were a goddess come to earth in human flesh. He slid down beside her, his stunning eyes all hot intensity as he claimed her mouth again with devouring hunger. She shifted fluidly under him, her thighs sliding apart, her legs curving up round his hips to bring the most needy part of her into line with his arousal.
‘You’re trying to hurry me again,’ Jaul censured. ‘This is a special night.’
‘Every night with you is special,’ Chrissie broke in, tilting up to him, inviting him into her with every weapon in her feminine armoury.
He pulled back from her briefly to reach for a condom and returned to stroke the heated damp flesh between her thighs, teasing her in ways that made her writhe and jerk with a readiness she couldn’t conceal. When he finally thrust into her, she expelled her breath in a joyous hiss of sensual shock and pleasure and flung her head back. ‘Yes!’ she gasped.
Jaul withdrew and glided into her again and her inner muscles clenched tight around him. With his every carnal thrust, excitement leapt higher, perspiration beading on her skin as her heart hammered. He pushed her back against the pillows, lifting her legs over his shoulders to gain better access to her willing body.
‘You’re a total minx, you scramble my wits,’ he told her raggedly, his control breaking as she lifted her hips to deepen his penetration and his pace quickening to a more forceful rhythm.
And then there was nothing but the passion and the wild, crazy excitement he induced until she felt as though she were about to fly clean out of her skin. Molten heat consumed her as he pounded into her with fierce hunger and when the finish came it was spectacular for both of them and a blaze of ecstasy that was overwhelming.
Chrissie lay with her cheek pressed up against Jaul’s shoulder. ‘I have to learn to trust you again,’ she mused, speaking her thoughts out loud because all barriers were down. ‘I know—intellectually speaking—that you didn’t choose to desert me but I’ve always had a hard time trusting men.’
Jaul smoothed her tossed hair. ‘Why?’
‘Mum lived with a lot of loser men while I was growing up,’ she told him ruefully. ‘Either they were drunks or gamblers or they stole her money or beat her up.’
Jaul was shocked, belatedly registering that Chrissie had always been cagey about her background and only now was he understanding why. ‘That does explain some things about you. You were always so suspicious of me, always expecting the worst.’
‘Mum married her last partner and he was the worst of all...’ she admitted heavily.
‘In what way?’ Jaul prompted.
‘It’s sordid,’ she mumbled, abruptly pulling away from him.
Jaul hauled her back into his arms without hesitation. ‘There should be nothing you can’t tell me. Your mother’s mistakes are not your mistakes and I will not judge you by them.’
Chrissie swivelled round in the circle of his arms. ‘Before Mum died, my stepfather was making her work as a prostitute,’ she framed sickly. ‘Men would come to the house during the day. Lizzie doesn’t know about it because she was at secondary and she had a job after school but I was only seven and home at lunchtime. Once I went upstairs to the bathroom and I saw Mum in bed with a man and there was a huge row.’
Jaul tipped up her face, seeing the distance and defensiveness etched in her turquoise eyes. ‘What happened?’
‘My stepfather hit me. I was much older before I understood what was going on. After that I was locked in my room every day after school... I was very scared of my stepfather.’
‘I am so very sorry you had to go through that,’ Jaul breathed in a raw, driven undertone, wishing he could look up the stepfather and kill him for terrorising the sensitive, innocent child Chrissie had once been. ‘But it is not your disgrace to bear.’
‘It’s never felt like that, though,’ Chrissie confided, willing to meet his beautiful eyes again, anxiously in search of any sign of revulsion in his gaze and relieved to see only concern etched there. ‘Now tell me something you’re ashamed of...’ she invited to distract him from asking further questions.
Not checking out his father’s story about her once he was fit to do so.
But Jaul didn’t want to rake up that divisive past and instead presented her with another less than stellar moment. ‘I lost my virginity with a very high-class hooker in Dubai,’ he told her grimly. ‘Believe me, I was of an age where it was past time I found out what sex was like.’
‘Why was that?’ she asked curiously.
‘The first real freedom I had ever had was when I went to university in the UK,’ Jaul confided with a grimace. ‘I had no experience whatsoever of normal life.’
Chrissie rested her head down on his shoulder and studied him with drowsy turquoise eyes of sympathy while thinking of how badly she had misunderstood him when she’d first met him and assumed he was the quintessential Arab playboy. In truth he had spent his youthful years of supposed irresponsibility in boarding school and the army with even his free time mapped out by his controlling father. If he had gone a little wild when he’d first slipped that leash, she was sure only a saint could blame him for it.
It dismayed her to appreciate how little they had actually known about each other when they had first married, but it soothed her that she understood him better now and could accept that in possession of his faculties and the true facts he would never have abandoned her.
* * *
Bandar greeted Jaul over his morning coffee by the fire the following morning.
His aide gave him a list of the day’s events and passed on urgent messages before pausing to extend an envelope. ‘This arrived in the diplomatic bag yesterday. It’s from Yusuf and apparently it’s personal and confidential.’ Bandar raised his brows at that surprising label being applied to any item sent by as aloof a personality as his former boss.
Jaul stiffened and lost colour before grasping the envelope. As soon as he was alone, he tore it open. Somewhere in the depths of the tent he could hear Chrissie singing tunelessly in the shower but, for once, he failed to smile. He was reading what his father’s former adviser had to say and in the short note of fervent apology one sentence stood out clearer than any other.
Bearing in mind my actions two years ago, it would have been an offence for me to enter the same room as your queen and offer my best wishes on the occasion of your wedding.
And there it was in a handful of words: what Jaul had most feared. It was confirmation of everything Chrissie had told him because it was obvious that Yusuf had felt too ashamed of his treatment of Chrissie in the past to attend their wedding. That confirmation struck Jaul like a body blow. His stomach lurched and he sprang to his feet, too unsettled to sit still. Evidently, everything Chrissie had told him was the truth. She had been thrown out of his Oxford apartment and humiliated. She had gone to the Marwani Embassy in London to enquire about her missing husband, only for those visits to be mocked and hushed up. She had not accepted money from his father.
Jaul
