in disbelief. ‘But you are twenty-five years old.’
Polly explained about her grandmother’s long, slow decline into full-blown dementia and the heavy cost that had extracted from her freedom while her sister was away at university. ‘So, if I’m a little inexperienced in relationships, you’ll have to make allowances on that score,’ she told him tautly.
A frown line was slowly building between Rashad’s ebony brows. His fingers smoothed lightly up and down her spine as if to encourage her to keep on talking as he stared down at the top of her pale blonde head, far more engaged in what she was telling him than she would have believed.
Polly could feel the heat of embarrassment rising into her cheeks in a wave. Gooseflesh was forming on her arms, the hairs at the back of her neck prickling while the warm hand at her spine had tensed and stilled. ‘And I think that may be why I sort of freaked out last night because I was a bit nervous...of course I was...and you hadn’t made me feel safe or special or anything really!’ Conscious her voice was rising in spite of her efforts to control it, Polly looked up at Rashad in dismay and discomfiture.
And for the very first time, Rashad understood his bride without words and he felt like the biggest idiot ever born because he had been guilty of making sweeping assumptions without any grounds on which to do so. It had not once crossed his mind that Polly might be less experienced than he was. Indeed he had even worried just a little that he might not be adventurous enough or sophisticated enough to please her. With a sidewise glance at the guards studiously staring out at the desert and the beach, Rashad bent down, scooped his surprised bride up into his arms and carried her indoors. Doors were helpfully wrenched open ahead of him by the staff as he strode back to their bedroom.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Polly exclaimed when he had finally tumbled her down in a heap on the giant bed in which she had slept alone the night before.
‘Giving us privacy,’ Rashad advanced with a sudden smile of amusement that sent her heart racing. ‘I don’t wish to offend you but I had made the assumption that you would have enjoyed at least a few lovers before me—’
‘And why the heck would you assume that?’ Polly demanded with spirit.
‘Your values are more liberal. Here, although young adults now tend to choose their own partners, it is still the norm for women to be virgins when they marry. That would be more unusual in your society.’
‘I suppose so,’ Polly conceded reluctantly because she knew her sister fell into the same ‘unusual’ category, Ellie having admitted that she had yet to meet a man who could tempt her into wanting to cross that sexual boundary. ‘But my sister and I were both brought up in a very strict home. My grandmother believed that both I and Ellie were illegitimate and until she fell ill she policed our every move because she was afraid that we would repeat what she saw as our mother’s mistakes and come home pregnant and unmarried.’
‘I know very little about your background.’ Rashad settled fluidly down on the edge of the bed in a relaxed movement. ‘Even your grandfather warned me against having unrealistic expectations of you—’
Polly flushed scarlet. ‘My...grandfather? Please tell me you’re joking—’
‘There was no discussion, Polly, but I guessed what he meant. He merely wished to protect you from the risk of me being naïve in that line. I am not naïve,’ Rashad completed with wry emphasis. ‘But Hakim and I have naturally never discussed anything that intimate, so he could have formed no idea of my attitude in advance.’
In receipt of that explanation, her mortification ebbed. It was evident that her grandparents had made the same assumption and she couldn’t find it in her heart to fault her grandfather for trying to shield her from the threat of Rashad’s disappointment.
‘You’re not that old-fashioned,’ she commented with a helpless little giggle. ‘But obviously Grandad is.’
‘I spent several years studying at Oxford University and that was an enlightening experience being a mature student,’ he told her wryly.
‘Must’ve been,’ Polly conceded, picturing Rashad with his film-star good looks and wealth let loose to enjoy a student’s freedom. ‘Was that after your wife passed away?’
His lean, strong face tensed. ‘Of course. I could not have left her behind here to be oppressed by her father.’
Polly frowned. ‘How...oppressed?’
‘In essence my late uncle was a good man but he was also a bully. I say that with respect because without his intervention I would not be alive,’ Rashad admitted levelly. ‘On several occasions during Arak’s dictatorship rumours of my continuing existence put a price on my head. I could have been hunted down and killed like an animal but the tribe took me in as one of their own and protected me because my uncle was their sheikh.’
It was the first time he had given her a little window into the sheer turmoil of his formative years and it sobered Polly as nothing else could have done. Certainly it could not have been all rainbows and roses being brought up by a bully, most particularly not if he owed his very life to that same bully, who had coolly married the putative future King of Dharia off to his own daughter at the age of sixteen. Her heart was touched and she pressed her hand briefly against a lean masculine thigh in silent empathy.
‘It seems we do, in spite of all that has happened, have something in common,’ Rashad remarked with a flashing smile of such intense charisma that she couldn’t drag her attention from his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘We were both raised by strict guardians.’
‘Yes,’ Polly conceded feverishly, encountering the dark golden depths of his eyes with a mouth that was running dry and a stomach awash with butterflies as awareness of their proximity kicked in with electrifying effect.
‘I do not want you to be nervous of me, habibti,’ Rashad confided huskily. ‘I promise you that I will never do anything that you do not want.’
‘I... I pretty much want everything!’ Polly confided with a strangled little laugh of self-consciousness because she didn’t feel it was fair to go on acting as if she were a terrified virgin because she was not.
‘Everything...’ Rashad savoured the word and she flushed. ‘I love your honesty.’
And he kissed her, slowly, carefully, nibbling at her lower lip, then tracing it with the tip of his tongue. In fact he turned up the temperature so gradually she was barely aware that one of her hands had crept up to spear into his thick black hair and the other to tighten on a strong shoulder. She wanted more, much more, she acknowledged, her whole body turning warm and languorous in response while the little prickles and tingles of desire were already pinching at her nipples and warming her pelvis.
‘I will make it special,’ Rashad intoned into the scented depths of her tumbling hair, his dark deep drawl roughened by the knowledge that she was giving him her trust.
‘You can’t promise that,’ Polly felt forced to tell him prosaically. ‘If it hurts, it’s not your fault. I’m not that ignorant—’
‘Hush...’ Rashad groaned.
‘No, you stop setting standards,’ Polly warned him playfully, tracing his hard jawline with a gentle forefinger, marvelling at how much closer she felt to him as he pressed her back against the pillows and leant back to flip off her shoes, letting them fall to the tiled floor.
‘I’ve
