His Queen by Desert Decree(48)

Her heart thumped like an express train inside her body as Azrael reached a hard, insistent rhythm that made her buck and gasp with helpless excitement, her hips writhing, her entire skin surface burning up with the inexpressible wildness of the experience. The wicked delights of his possession went on and on and on until finally her body was thrust over the edge into climax. Delicious internal convulsions gripped her as the surge of pleasure washed over her in an unstoppable tide.

Still floating, she lay there cradled in Azrael’s arms and feeling positively sunny in mood. It was slowly dawning on her that a baby with him, assuming she wanted to keep him, might even be a development she could welcome. Why? Because he was great in bed? Hardworking, honest, noble, gorgeous? Naturally there was also the beautiful ring and the cave setting, chosen for her benefit. But most of all her heart was his because he was a hero, who had suffered horrors she couldn’t imagine, horrors he didn’t even want to talk about for fear of upsetting her! Listening had almost broken her heart as she’d pictured Azrael, young and proud and vulnerable, accepting pain and humiliation to shield his mother. Now she was also picturing a little Azrael or a little girl and her heart began to go all floaty too.

‘I was thinking...about a baby...’ she murmured, stumbling over the words, having spoken before she even knew what she planned to say.

‘We don’t need to concern ourselves with that issue,’ Azrael cut in, smooth and cutting as polished steel. ‘Forget about that idea. I wasn’t thinking rationally.’

Molly was disconcerted by that response; her lips framed a silent oh of perplexity and then hurt flared inside her where it didn’t show because she felt rejected. He had thought the concept over just as she had done but he had reached a different conclusion. She had decided that it could be a very good idea to have a family with him but evidently, after further consideration, Azrael had decided against the same idea. He had changed his mind. He was entitled to do that. Did that mean that he no longer wanted to keep her? And if he had decided that, what was she supposed to be doing about it?

He hadn’t asked her to fall in love with him, had he? It was her own fault that she had fallen head over heels in a process that had started the day she first saw that gorgeous portrait of him in the Djalian Embassy. But they had originally signed up for only a few months of being married and perhaps Azrael had realised that that option would still suit him best. Was there even a possibility that he was already planning that his next wife would be Princess Nasira? In fact, was Molly merely a kind of hiccup and an aberration in Azrael’s planned marital journey?

That sneaking, humiliating suspicion kept Molly quiet when she would normally have spoken up and asked him why he had changed his mind. How could she ever be good enough or loveable enough for someone like Azrael? she questioned painfully. Compressing her lips, she shut out the mad tumult of her rushing thoughts and stamped on them hard when they tried to emerge and torment her again. Agonising over what could not be would not change anything. It would not change what Azrael felt and thought, but if she was sensible, and she so badly wanted to be sensible, she would begin trying to detach herself from unrealistic hopes and step back from her emotions.





CHAPTER TEN

‘BUT THERE’S SOMETHING you’re not thinking about,’ Molly said as Azrael encouraged her to peruse the display of blueprints on the housing project. ‘If you want to attract foreign experts to work on large developments that will run for years, you should consider setting up an international school—’

‘An international school?’ Azrael cut in with a frown. ‘When our own education system is still so basic?’

‘You have to prioritise,’ Molly pointed out. ‘You need the experts and they will be unwilling to sign up for long contracts without their families. They will want schooling for their children that will enable them to return to their home countries fully equipped to continue their education.’

Azrael’s lean dark face took on a thoughtful aspect. Molly, he had learned, might tackle problems from a different angle but often came up with solutions that would not have occurred to him. She was clever and progressive. He studied her preoccupied face as she examined the blueprints he had recently had drawn up to house workers from abroad. She was correct. His country badly needed those professionals and their skills to drag Djalia into the twenty-first century, and to appeal to the right calibre of personnel they had to make the employment contracts attractive.

‘Zahra is a teacher,’ Azrael reminded her. ‘Work with her to consider the setting up of an international school as soon as possible.’