Married for the Sheikh's Duty(15)

The look in her eyes made Zayn laugh. It was refreshing and a little addictive to see a woman not cater to his personality or his status. But he was sure it would soon lose its charm. Sooner or later, Amalia would lose her appeal to him. He was too used to docile, pleasing women who didn’t question their role in his life. After all, no one woman had ever swayed his control, ever. “Why do you look so...combative even when I agree with you?”

“Because that’s not what I said at all. That does not sound like marriage at all. That sounds like...a clinical agreement in a science-fiction novel. This is what you’re modeling your marriage on, too, isn’t it?”

“By all measures, their union   continues to be a success, so why not?”

“If you don’t even want your wife’s companionship, why marry?”

“To produce legitimate heirs.”

“And then you set the wife aside?” She didn’t even wait for his nod. “Did your mother not mind it? I can’t believe that any woman would willingly walk into a marriage like that.”

He shrugged. “The number of women Ms. Young found for me says otherwise. As to Mother, if she didn’t know it at the beginning, I’m sure she learned it soon.”

“I could never marry a man like that.”

“My wife will want for nothing. She will never have to work a day in her life, will be independently wealthy beyond imagination and will lead a life of globe-trotting, couture-shopping and feasting on mussels and duck confit of the highest order. And to top it all, she will have me in her bed, for as long as she wants me, to fulfill every little heated fantasy she might have ever had.” Zayn had no idea why he was goading her like that, or why he wanted to hear her admit that she wanted him. Was it only a stroke to his ego as she had claimed?

Or was it all the confidences they had exchanged, this talk about marriage and love that stirred something inside him? That gave him a vague sense of disquiet in his gut?

All he knew was that he wanted to muss up Amalia’s self-sufficiency, to push past the prickles and see what she was made of beneath it all.

He could see Amalia in that role, especially in that last scene. Amalia, whose heated fantasies he was making true. Amalia, who stared at him with naked longing, her long, silky limbs splayed invitingly over his bed, Amalia submitting that fiery temper and that steel core to him.

“Tell me you’re not a little tempted.” The hoarse need in his voice shocked him, the languorous heat flaring through him coming up against the self-control he prided himself on.

She tipped her chin, her gaze sweeping over him in a thorough appraisal that Zayn found incredibly arousing. As if she was weighing all the benefits of going to bed with him against everything else, as if she was imagining the same incredibly erotic scene... Was she so thoroughly naive that she didn’t know the signals she was sending?

And yet, even as her topaz-colored eyes flared into wide pools, her sensuous lower lip trembled, she would even deny admitting it.

How thoroughly aggravating could this woman be! And yet, Zayn’s awareness of her, his desire for her, only grew sharper.

He had months of this pretense, months of sparring with this woman before he would be able to remove her from his life. Before he could go back to the path that had been decided for him even before he’d been born.

Her openly hungry gaze said she was more than tempted, by him at least if not by his wealth, while her lush mouth said, “No. Not in the least bit. I have no romantic illusions, but I want a marriage between equals. I want affection, respect, a man who will deem my ambitions equally important as his own.”

“That will never work in reality. Even if my duty to Khaleej didn’t come before my personal desires, I would always be the aggressor in my relationship with a woman.”

He saw the tremor that went through her slender shoulders, the shift to sensible reality as her gaze cleared. “Fortunately, not every man on the planet is so rampantly, aggressively masculine that he demands complete submission in every aspect of life, including...”

“Including?”

She looked at him and then away, but he caught her glance. Abashed.

The sound of his laughter reverberated in the confines of the jet. Feral satisfaction coated every breath he released as color poured into her cheeks. Her mouth pursed, her eyes flashing topaz fire at him, her lithe body radiating barely suppressed outrage, she made a delicious picture.

Zayn had never been so satisfied that his aggressive masculinity apparently could drive a woman nuts. Nor had the exposé been the source of anything but a headache. Until now. “So how many times did you read the part about my...voracious appetites?”

He wondered if smoke would come out of her ears if he teased her any more. “It’s not a compliment, Sheikh,” she offered in a dull voice. “It’s more...a statement of fact.”

“What will you do if you never find this ideal man?”

She shrugged, but by the little frown on her head, Zayn knew she had never really thought about any of this. He wondered if her mother’s poison had forever turned her off men, or if it was justification to never commit herself to one man. That meant she was either untouched or was one of those modern women who could have sex for the pleasure it afforded. Like he did.

Utterly hypocritical of him, but even in this indulgent speculation, Zayn found he preferred the first option far better than the second when it came to Amalia. He, who had always welcomed sophisticated and sexually mature women into his bed, women who knew what they would get from him.

What was beyond disturbing, however, was that his...interest in her didn’t wane either way. The growing realization that Amalia might be innocent should have been a deterrent. It had been before, for he was not a man from whom women could expect flowers, or gentle kisses or wooing. Jewelry, designer clothes, the right word in a highly connected ear, and mind-blowing sex—that was more his forte. For the first time since he’d come into his own, Zayn had a sense of inadequacy, for Amalia wanted nothing he could give.

“I’m far too busy with my career right now anyway. And if I can’t meet a man like that, I guess I’ll stay single.” Did she know how dejected she sounded at the end there? That her eyes ate him away even as she challenged him?

He leaned in, trapping her in her seat. She was forced to spread her legs to accommodate his frame, and the warmth of her body was a teasing rasp against his own. “You work all kinds of hours, you want this impossibly ideal man to marry. What will you do in the meantime?”

Her tongue snaked out and licked at that lush lower lip, while her gaze locked with his. “In the...” a little throaty rasp, “in the meantime? What does that mean?”

“What about passion, Amalia? What do you do when you get lonely at night, or when your body demands a certain kind of satisfaction that only a man can give?”

He leaned in a little more until his breath feathered over the rim of her ear. A little tremor shook her shoulders, her fingers tight over the armrest. Something she had dabbed on her pulse point in her neck floated up at the warmth of her skin, the scent incredibly arousing. God, did she smell like that all over? “Are you telling me you’ve never felt even a little stirring of sexual hunger? Or do you take lovers just for that purpose and discard them when you’re done?”

“Passion is overrated,” she whispered, and her breath caressed his cheek. In utter contrast to her words, her fingers rose to his cheeks, traced the line of his jaw. “All my life—” tips painted the palest pink now moved to the edge of his mouth and started tracing the curve of his lower lip “—I’ve seen the toxic effect it could have, not on one or two, but four lives.”

Zayn felt like a predator caged and forced to sheath his claws while his favorite prey sniffed out around him. He wanted her hands on his hot skin, his tight muscles, those questing fingers on the part of him that was thickening in reaction to her touch. “But what about passion shared between two people who have no expectations of each other except mutual pleasure?” The question fell from his mouth before he realized he was asking it.

Naked longing swept across her face as her gaze rested on his mouth. “I’ve never...been tempted to throw caution to the wind.”

Until now.

She didn’t say the words but her rumbling breath, her trembling mouth, they spoke for her. Her chest fell and rose fast, her mouth moving closer and closer to his. Another breath and he knew he would plumb the taste of her lush mouth.

He tipped her chin up until she was looking into his eyes. Desire had darkened them; her nostrils flared. “If I kiss you now, I will not stop, Amalia. Come to me when you’re ready. Come to me when you can admit that you want me.”

Before he was tempted to lick the pulse that was hammering madly at her neck, Zayn got up from his seat.

His blood hummed with the thrill of the chase, his muscles tight against the heat flooding his body. He had never played at seduction this way; it had never been a chase like this where he didn’t really know how it would end.

He didn’t know what he wanted to do with Amalia, only that he wanted to tame that fiery spirit of hers, just a little. To possess a part of her. Maybe like his Bedouin ancestors had done with wild horses.