soft, silky hair she had ached to touch earlier.
His body, packed hard with muscle, was excitingly alien and overpoweringly male. His impatience to be a part of her made her gasp and shudder as he kissed her throat, her shoulder and then her mouth, whilst he wrapped her tightly in his arms so that they were lying intimately, naked body to naked body.
The feel of him pressing against her. Hot and hard, aroused, his movement against her urgently explicit, was more than she could withstand.
Eagerly she coiled herself around him, opening herself to him, crying out as she felt him enter her, each movement powerful and sure, strong and urgent.
Already her own body was responding to his movement, her muscles clinging to him. Sensually stroking him and savouring each thrust, she could feel him strengthening inside her, filling her to completion, picking up the rhythm of her body and carrying… driving them both with it.
‘Never mind the child he has given you, has my cousin given you this? Has he made you feel like this when he holds you? When he possesses you? When he loves you? Was this how it was between you when you made Fleur together?’
Mariella’s whole body stiffened.
‘Did you give yourself to him as easily as you did to me? And how many others have there been?’
With a fierce cry, she pulled away from him, her brain barely able to take in what he was saying, her body and emotions in such deep shock that removing herself from him made her feel as though she were physically dying.
The shock of her rejection tore at Xavier’s guts. He wanted to drag her back into his arms, where surely she belonged, to roll her into the bed beneath him and to fill her with himself, to make her admit that no other man had ever or could ever give her or share with her what he could. But most of all he wanted to fill her with the life force that would ultimately be his child. A part of him recognised that there was no more elemental drive than this, to fill a woman’s body with one’s child in order to drive out her commitment to another man and the child he had already given her. The barbaric intensity of his own emotions shocked him. He had done what he had done for Khalid’s sake, to protect him, he reminded himself, and to reinforce that fact he told her, ‘It’s a little too late for that now! You have already proved to me just what you are, and once Khalid learns how willing you were to give yourself to me he will quickly realise how right I was to counsel him against you.’
He had taken her to bed for that? Because of that? So that he could denounce her to another man?
In the outer room Fleur suddenly started to cry. Dragging on her clothes, Mariella hurried in to her, picking her up and holding her tightly as though just holding her could somehow staunch the huge wound inside her that was haemorrhaging her life force. She was shaking from head to foot with reaction, both from what had happened and from what she had just learned.
Fleur was not Xavier’s child! Xavier’s cousin was Fleur’s father! But Xavier believed that she was Fleur’s mother. And because of that he had taken her to bed, out of a cold-hearted, despicable, damnable desire to prove to his cousin that she was a… a wanton who would give herself to any man!
Fate had been doubly kind to her, she told herself staunchly: firstly in ensuring that she had not betrayed her sister, and secondly in giving her incontrovertible proof of just what manner of man Xavier was!
CHAPTER SIX
AS SHE stepped inside the welcome familiarity of her Beach Club bungalow, Mariella allowed herself to expel a shaky sigh of relief. Her first since she had left the oasis!
Now that she was safely here, perhaps she could allow herself to put the events of the last forty-eight hours firmly behind her. Lock them away in a very deep sealed drawer marked, ‘Forget for ever.’
But how could she forget, how could any human being forget an act as deliberately and cold-bloodedly cruel and damaging as the one Xavier had perpetrated against her?
If she herself had been a different kind of woman she might have taken a grim sense of distorted pleasure in knowing that, for all he might try to deny it, Xavier had physically wanted her. In knowing it and in throwing that knowledge back at him! Instinctively she knew that he would be humiliated by it, and if any man deserved to be humiliated it was Xavier!
Just thinking about him was enough to have Mariella’s hands curling into small, passionately angry fists. As her heart drove against her ribs in sledgehammer blows. How could he possibly not have recognised that she would never, ever, ever under any circumstances betray her love, and that if she had been another man’s lover nothing he could have done would have tempted her to want him? Hadn’t her body itself proclaimed to him the unlikeliness, the impossibility of her being Fleur’s mother and any man’s intimate lover?
But believing that he had been Tanya’s lover hadn’t stopped her, had it?
She would carry that shame and guilt with her to her deathbed, Mariella acknowledged.
The message light on the bungalow’s communications system was flashing, indicating that she had received several telephone calls, all from the prince’s personal assistant, she discovered when she went to check them. Before answering them, the first thing she intended to do now that she was safely back at the hotel was ring her sister and double check that she had not misunderstood Xavier—he was not Tanya’s lover or Fleur’s father!
And once she had that confirmation safely in her possession, then Xavier would be history!
It took her several attempts to get through to Tanya, who eventually answered the phone sounding breathless and flustered.
‘I’m sorry, Ella,’ she apologised quickly. ‘But things are really hectic here and… Look, I can’t really talk right now. Is Fleur okay?’
‘Fleur is fine. She’s cut her first tooth, but, Tanya, there’s something I’ve got to know,’ Mariella told her, firmly overriding her attempts to end the call.
‘I must know Fleur’s father’s name, Tanya. It’s desperately important!’
‘Why? What’s happened? Ella, I can’t tell you…’
Hearing the panic in her sister’s voice, Mariella took a deep breath. ‘All right! But if you won’t tell me who he is, Tanya, then please at least tell me that his first name isn’t Xavier…’
‘Who?’ Tanya’s outraged shriek almost hurt her eardrums. ‘Xavier? You mean that horrid cousin of Khalid’s? Of course he isn’t Fleur’s father. I hate him… He’s the one responsible for parting me and Khalid! He sent Khalid away! He doesn’t think that I’m good enough for him! Anyway… how do you know about Xavier, Ella? He’s an arrogant, overbearing, old-fashioned, moralistic beast, who lives in the Dark Ages! Look, Ella, I’ve got to go… Love to Fleur and lots of kisses.’
She ended the call before Mariella could stop her, leaving her gripping the receiver tensely.
But at least she had confirmed that Xavier was not Fleur’s father.
Determinedly Mariella made herself turn her attention to her messages.
The prince had now returned to Zuran and wanted her to get in touch with his personal assistant.
‘Don’t worry,’ the prince’s personal
