An Arabian Marriage. LYNNE GRAHAM

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СКАЧАТЬ frame was sheathed in a dark grey business suit that was exquisitely tailored to his powerful physique. A study in shades of vibrant bronze, he was lethally attractive. And meeting those eyes, those extraordinary eyes that she could not look away from, she felt an enervating charge of tension pulse through her, tautening every tiny muscle. Yet her body was filling with a sensation of liquid, languorous warmth, making her outrageously aware of the heaviness of her breasts and the sudden embarrassing prominence of her nipples.

      ‘Pizza…’ Jaspar murmured huskily, rooted to the spot by the sight of her.

      Where the hell had his attention been on his previous visit? he asked himself with stark incredulity. Her eyes were the aqua colour of the sea, that curious blending of blue and jade and turquoise that changed according to the light. And she had the kind of hair mermaids had in fairy tales, a wild golden mane that fell round her shoulders in glorious, rippling abundance. But no legendary sea creature could have competed with the luscious swell of her creamy breasts above the towel or that glorious hourglass shape. Even as he hardened in hot-blooded male response to that sensual vision, Jaspar was shifting cool mental gears, knowing that he had severely underestimated the opposition and that was a rare error for him. He wanted to rip the towel off, propel her back against the wall and sink deep into her, lose himself in the kind of raw, urgent sex he hadn’t fantasised about since he was a teenager. And maybe he would, once he had got what he wanted.

      ‘P-pizza,’ Freddy stammered like a belated echo, dazed by the throbbing silence, the almost painful tension and heat inside her, the sheer terrifying emptiness of her own mind.

      ‘Are you planning to take the towel off?’ Jaspar enquired silkily. ‘Or are you just a tease?’

      Slow burning colour flushed her throat in a wave and climbed up into her cheeks as she tore her dilated gaze from his intent scrutiny and glanced down at herself in dismay, absorbing the fact that she truly was still hovering a few feet from him clad only in a towel. With a stifled moan of embarrassment, she blundered into sudden movement in the direction of the cloakroom.

      Afterwards, she could never work out how it happened, but as she accidentally brushed against him he caught her to him, one lean brown hand anchoring into her hair, the other splaying to her hip. Her startled aqua eyes flared into mesmeric gold and it was as if fireworks were flaring inside her, setting every inch of her ablaze.

      ‘The stammer was overkill…’ he told her huskily, white, even teeth flashing as he slanted a mocking smile down at her, ‘but the welcome invitation was ace—’

      ‘You’ve got the wrong idea!’ Freddy gasped, all composure crumbling.

      ‘I don’t think so… I hate to sound like a jerk, but women have been throwing themselves at me since I was a teenager.’

      And before Freddy could even absorb that unashamed assurance that wickedly sensual mouth had descended with devouring heat down onto hers. Intense excitement surged up inside her in a sheet of multicoloured flame. Reaching out blindly, she gripped his arm to stay upright. She felt as if she were falling, falling so fast and furiously that she would burn up before she reached solid earth again. And nothing mattered, nothing mattered but that that connection with him remained. She was in a wonderland of sensual discovery, gasping at the plundering invasion of his tongue inside the tender interior of her mouth, shivering violently, desperately longing for him to pull her close and crush her up against him.

      She heard the doorbell buzz with a kind of delayed recognition only as he tensed and then pulled back from her.

      ‘Oh…crumbs…’she framed, blinking rapidly and then shooting into the cloakroom behind him like a scalded cat.

      Thrusting home the bolt on the door, Freddy flung herself back against it, shaking like a leaf in a gale. The mirror surrounded with lights opposite confronted her with her own image. Literally cringing with mortification, she studied her swollen mouth, her dilated pupils and the expression of shock and bewilderment still etched there. How are you ever going to go out there again and act as if nothing happened? screamed the first thought to emerge from her reawakening brain.

      He thought she had deliberately flaunted herself in the towel too. True brazen hussy stuff. At that realisation, she writhed in even greater embarrassment, but over and above that discomfiture lurked an entire new level of self-knowledge. She honestly hadn’t known that a man could make her feel like that. There was a sort of shameless fascination still gripping her: that one smouldering kiss could make her forget everything. Who she was, who he was, everything. It also seemed especially cruel that she should have made that discovery with Jaspar al-Husayn. In fact, could there be anything more infuriating? All this time she had wondered why most women’s magazines raved about sex as though it was a truly exciting pursuit when her own slender experience had taught her otherwise.

      And then this guy she hated like poison grabbed her and showed her that the excitement might actually not be a giant con practised on the female sex. How dared he have done that to her? What was the point of finding out that a Crown Prince had more than a fighting chance of persuading her out of celibacy? A blasted Crown Prince, she thought afresh, eyes scorching with sudden tears.

      He had come to talk about Ben, she reminded herself. Paling, she forced herself to move and unlocked the door sneakily and silently, before pressing down the handle equally quietly and peering out into the hall through a gap barely an inch wide. The coast seemed clear. Had he left? She crept out and then fled down the corridor to her bedroom faster than the speed of light to find some clothes.

      Pulling on an oversized T-shirt and a jersey skirt which fell almost to her ankles, she dug her feet into clumpy shoes. The whole time she was dressing, she was rationalising what had happened between them. He had taken her by surprise. She had been temporarily deprived of her wits by the simple fact that he was so gorgeous. But he only had to speak and his mythical attraction vanished, so really she was quite safe from making an even bigger ass of herself. So women were forever throwing themselves at him…oh, the poor love, how did he bear the torment of being so unbearably fanciable? He had the most gigantic ego and she would have done anything to puncture it.

      She trudged back down to the main reception rooms, very much hoping he wouldn’t be waiting for her. But the guy had no tact, no shame and the kind of self-assurance that would have ensured that the Titanic sank the iceberg instead of the other way round. There he was, large as life and twice as bold in the drawing-room, which she had barely entered since Erica’s death. But then he had found his natural milieu, hadn’t he? He looked more at home there against the elaborate furniture and the curtaining weighed down with excessive swagging, fringing and tassels.

      ‘Your pizza…’ Indicating the shallow box parked on the coffee-table, Jaspar al-Husayn sent her a slow, slashing smile that made her heart skip a beat and told her too many things that she didn’t want to know.

      ‘Look, I don’t fancy you!’ Freddy heard herself state with shocking baldness before she could think better of it. ‘So you can stop looking so pleased with yourself because what happened out in that hall was just one of those stupid things and there is not the smallest danger that I am going to be tempted to throw myself at you! Not unless I get a brain transplant.’

      He said nothing. In the silence that dragged even in the first second, and which was working like a shriek alarm on her nerves by the tenth second, Jaspar gazed back at her with measuring cool.

      Freddy could feel her face burning up like a bonfire. While those ten seconds limped past, she went from defensive defiance to shrinking chagrin. What on earth had come over her? Instead of ignoring what had happened, she had dredged it back up again and attacked him like a teenager desperate to save face.

      ‘Let’s СКАЧАТЬ