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.’
‘Polly...it was a state wedding with television cameras and an army of onlookers. Friendly?’ An ebony brow elevated in apparent wonderment and his entire attitude made her feel small and stupid and childish. ‘I don’t have the acting ability to relax to that extent in that kind of public display—’
Polly had turned very pale. ‘It was more than that. You acted like...like you were hating having to marry me!’
Rashad lost colour below his bronzed skin, his strong facial bones tightening, because in truth he was in deep shock at what was unfolding. He was a very private man. Even as a child he had been forced by circumstance to keep his thoughts and feelings absolutely to himself. And in all his life nobody had ever been able to read him as accurately as she just had and it made him feel exposed as the fraud he sometimes feared that he was. He had done his duty, he conceded bitterly, but clearly he had not done it well enough to convince his bride. ‘Why would you think such a thing of me?’
‘If you lie to me now, it will be the last straw!’ Polly warned him shakily. ‘I deserve the truth.’
Rashad angled his proud dark head back in the smouldering silence that had engulfed them. Somewhere in the background Polly could hear the timeless surge of the sea hitting the shore outside and, inside her own body, she could feel the quickened apprehensive beat of her heart.
‘For me, the last straw would be that you have married me today and now, quite independent of any reason or discussion, have decided that you will refuse to consummate our marriage!’ he bit out rawly. ‘That, by any standards, is unacceptable.’
His roughened intonation made Polly flinch at the standoff she had hoped to avoid by explaining her feelings. ‘Trust a man to bring it all down to sex!’ she shot back bitterly. ‘Of course you can’t get me pregnant if we don’t have sex, so I suppose that has to be your main grounds for complaint—’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Rashad ground out abruptly, too many damaging memories tearing at him to allow him the calm and patience required to deal with an emotionally distraught bride. ‘I’m going out.’
Polly was stunned by the idea that he would simply walk out on a row. ‘You can’t just walk out... Where are you going to go, for goodness’ sake? We’re on a beach surrounded by desert in the middle of nowhere! And what will people think?’ she exclaimed in sudden consternation.
‘Let me see...’ Rashad inclined his handsome dark head to one side in a way that made her want to slap him, the slashing derision in his gaze unhidden. ‘They will think that a honeymoon baby is unlikely,’ he breathed curtly. ‘But thankfully they will not know that my bride refused me!’
He strode through a connecting door she hadn’t noticed until that precise moment and the door thudded shut in his wake. The silence that spread around Polly then felt claustrophobic and, her throat tight and dry, she collapsed down on the side of the bed, her lower limbs limp as noodles. What had she done? she asked herself in belated consternation. What on earth had she done? The right thing? Or the wrong thing?
In the room next door, Rashad paced the floor, smouldering with a rage so emotionally powerful it disturbed even him. But he never ever lost his temper with anyone because the need to regulate any potentially dangerous outburst had been beaten into him at an early age. He had taught himself to master his volatile nature, he had taught himself to quell the passion that fired him and...and walk away. But the look on his bride’s face when he’d walked away had been frankly incredulous. Too late he was discovering the downside to marrying a woman unafraid to fight and argue with him.
As he paced, on several occasions he strode back towards the door that separated their rooms, eager to defend himself, but each time he stopped himself and backed off again. What, after all, could he say to her? That the knowledge he was on show in front of cameras invariably paralysed him with unease? That such intense attention had never been welcome to him and that her ability to behave with cool normality had astounded him? A man, particularly a king, was supposed to be stronger than that, more disciplined, more able to perform the essential duty of public appearances. A king was not supposed to be introspective or emotional, he was supposed to be a powerful figurehead, a flawless role model and a very strong leader. While Rashad reiterated his stringent uncle’s most frequent directives inside his own head, he continued to pace in raging frustration.
He had married a foreigner with a different set of values. A foreigner who had fired an erotic hunger in him that was stronger than anything he had ever expected or even wanted to feel. In such a situation, it was downright unnerving and absolutely outrageous to positively crave another opportunity to argue with her. Tearing his attention from the door between them, he ripped off his ceremonial robes and donned more comfortable clothing. He had stayed long enough out of view not to rouse household comment at his abandonment of his new bride, he reasoned grimly as he left the room and strode down to the stables.
At
