Darker Side of Desire & the Sheikh's Pregnant Prisoner(17)

Sighing faintly, Claire went through to the bathroom, filling the large marble tub with water scented with rose petals and relaxing into it while she read Teddy’s letter.

Matron had taken him to buy some new clothes and he was to spend half-term with his friend ‘Porky Rogers’. However, when she reached the final paragraph of his letter, Claire started to frown, a small gasp of dismay escaping her parted lips. Teddy wanted to know if he could spend part of the summer holidays in Omarah with her.

No! What on earth was she going to do? Having kept his existence such a secret from Raoul, she could hardly ask him now if her younger brother could come and stay with them. And Teddy was very astute for his age. She had allowed him to believe she had married for love. It wouldn’t take Teddy long to discover what little regard Raoul had for his supposed wife. Hating to disappoint her brother but knowing there was little alternative, Claire tried to think of an adequate excuse. Perhaps she could tell him that she didn’t have enough money for his flight. Yes, that would do it. She was always so chronically short of money that he would never suspect the truth. She would write to him later, and keep her fingers crossed that he wouldn’t be too upset.

Back in her room, dressed in one of the soft silk nightgowns Raoul had purchased for her in Paris, her hair a silver cloud on her shoulders, Claire found her thoughts returning to the scene in her room when they had returned from the oasis. Perhaps she ought to go and apologise to Raoul, and assure him that there was no question of her absconding with Saud. She could also tell him of her suspicions that his grandmother had suspected the truth. Not for one moment did she doubt the old lady, but it paid to be extra careful.

Before she could change her mind, or investigate her reasons too deeply, she shrugged on the soft peach negligee which matched her nightdress, unaware of how the silk-satin clung to her body, moulding itself lovingly to her curves, the soft peach fabric emphasising the silky pallor of her skin.

She knocked briefly on Raoul’s door and hearing his voice pushed it open, puzzled when she saw that the room was empty, until she realised he was in the bathroom beyond. She heard him call out something in Arabic and as he emerged from the bathroom, a towel draped across his hips, his surprise at seeing her very evident as he frowned and pushed his fingers into the damp tangle of his hair.

‘When I heard you knock I thought you were Ali. Is everything all right? Saud?’ He sounded so formal and distant that Claire found herself wishing she had never been foolish enough to come to his room, on what she realised now was the flimsiest of pretexts and born more of her own need to be near him than any more logical motive.

‘Saud’s fine,’ she assured him, dismayed by the husky, uneven pitch of her voice, dragging her eyes away from his gleaming torso, and the droplets of water still coursing hypnotically over his skin, darkening the tangle of hairs arrowing down over his flat belly. ‘I just wanted to tell you that… that I’d never do anything that might endanger him,’ she managed, before panic overwhelmed her and she turned instinctively back towards the door, cursing the foolish impulse that had brought her into Raoul’s presence.

‘A pity you don’t extend those sentiments to include yourself,’ Raoul murmured softly, somehow reaching the door before her and leaning against it, blocking her exit, his mouth curling in a smile that increased her agitation. ‘Because by coming to my room you have definitely endangered yourself, Claire, or is that what you had in mind? Did reading your lover’s letter awaken a longing inside you that only a man’s possession can assuage? This afternoon when I returned and found you gone, I wanted to seize your slender body in my arms and break it in two. But now my anger has found other channels and when it mingles with the desire I feel whenever you are close to me there is a dangerous alchemy between them. I want you, Claire,’ he said softly, ‘and by coming to my room you have admitted that you want me too.’

‘No.’ Her denial was a strangled protest which he ignored, smothering the sound with the raging heat of his mouth which told her that he hadn’t exaggerated the dangerous chain reaction she had set off inside him. His tongue forced her lips to part, hotly exploring the hidden recesses of her mouth, compelling her to give him the fervid response his kiss demanded, and by doing so feed his desire.

‘Too many times I have wanted you like this,’ he muttered thickly, sliding his fingers into her hair and curling the silver strands round them. ‘My desire for you is like a leech sucking at my life blood and my reason, and until I assauge it I cannot be free. You arouse me to a lust I heartily despise,’ he continued, each word a poisoned barb in her heart, ‘but I know if you tried to leave this room now I would come after you and drag you back to my bed, and even perhaps enjoy doing so. Strange that such a pale, golden beauty should arouse the darker side of desire.’

The darker side of desire. Claire shuddered deeply, trying to wrench her mouth away from the renewed possession of his, telling herself that she would despise herself to the end of her days if she gave in to the tug of sensation she could feel exploding through her now. He had told her quite plainly what he wanted, how he felt about her, but if she aroused dark, dangerous passions in him, he aroused a blind need in her that would not listen to reason or logic, and her fingers, encountering the hard smoothness of his body, could no more be stopped in their wanton exploration of his skin than her heart could be prevented from beating.

He quickly disposed of her negligee, stroking the liquid softness of her body until she was shivering delicately in his arms, welcoming the fierce, almost brutal urgency of his kisses, even though his hunger bruised her mouth and through her delirium a small voice warned that there could be only one outcome. It was with relief that she felt him remove her nightgown and carry her to his bed, her body stretched languorously on the silk covers as he stood over her, shrugging aside his towel. His body was totally male, his stomach fiat and his lean hips narrow; her fingertips automatically followed the path of her eyes down his body, the hard tautness of his buttocks and the muscled solidity of his thighs, darkly shadowed with soft hair. He turned and she caught her breath, half-awed and half-dismayed by the aroused maleness of his body as he moved towards her, his fingertips drifting upwards over her body with far more assurance and knowledge in their touch than she felt she could ever possess.

‘You want me. Tell me it’s true,’ he urged, as he came down alongside her, taking her in his arms, his mouth finding the vulnerable area behind her ear and teasing it until she was trembling against him, gasping out that she wanted him more than she wanted life itself.

‘As bad as that?’ He almost seemed to purr with satisfaction and alarm shot through the haze of sexual need engulfing her. This was wrong. She might love him but he most certainly did not love her, and worse still she suspected he was going to be very angry when he discovered that she was still a virgin. It occurred to her that she ought to tell him, but his hands were doing such delicious things to her body, his mouth and tongue were inciting such a fevered response from her that she felt incapable of discussing anything at all, much less something that would surely put a stop to his expert love making.

‘Still want me?’ His tongue teased her erect nipples and she raked her nails protestingly across his back, the tempo of his lovemaking suddenly changing as his body tensed against her, his mouth now avid in the demands it made on her body as his hands slid to her hips and his knee parted her thighs.

The intrusion of his body was unexpectedly painful, making her tense, her eyes widening in shock, the deep kiss she had been enjoying broken as she pulled instinctively away. But Raoul was still holding her hips and his possession continued even though she cried out to him to stop, her world turning from pleasure to a pain she fought instinctively against.

* * *

Something was different, but what? Slowly, Claire opened her eyes and then closed them again as reality hit her like a bath of icy water. She was still in Raoul’s bed. She moved gingerly, feeling his body close to her and winced as she remembered his anger. Mercifully, she had passed out before he had been able to give full vent to it. He was asleep now, if she turned her head carefully she could see him. The lamp which was still illuminated threw dark shadows across his face. Even in sleep he looked hard and unyielding and she shuddered sickly, remembering what had happened.

Dear God, how could she have been so… so stupid? No wonder he had been angry. She bit her lips, her face flaming as she remembered some of the comments he had flung at her. She had wanted to leave then, she rememberd, but as she had sat up the room swayed muzzily round her and he had pushed her back unceremoniously telling her to lie still. And that had not been the worst. Even though her mind shied away from it, she forced herself to remember how he had left the bed and come back with a sponge and some towels and had made her lie there while he soothed away the worst of the pain. She didn’t think she could forget until her dying day how grim and furious he had looked. Never, as long as she lived, would she ever endure anything quite as humiliating. That at least was something to be thankful for, she told herself drily. She had acted like the heroine out of a Victorian romance, swooning away because a man had…