Midnight in the Desert: Jewel in His Crown / Not Fit for a King? / Her Desert Prince

‘I don’t care what you say either,’ Ruby added truculently. ‘Give it a rest—stop trying to train me into being a stuffy royal who never puts a foot wrong!’

This time Raja al-Somari laughed out loud, his ready sense of humour finally breaking free of his innate reserve, for Ruby was very much an original and not at all like the women he was accustomed to meeting. She didn’t flirt—at least if she did, she didn’t bother to do it with him. Indeed she used no feminine wiles that he could identify. She staged no enticing poses to draw attention to her body. She made no attempt to appeal to his ego with compliments or to pay him any especially gratifying attention and she had not told him a single story calculated to present her in a flattering light. He had never in his entire life met a woman as uncomplicated as she was and the more he was exposed to her frank, fearless style, the more he liked it.

‘So, you do have a sense of humour after all. My goodness, is that a relief!’ Ruby exclaimed, shaking her head in emphasis, a wealth of damp strands escaping her loose knot and spilling across her shoulders.

Raja stared down at her stunning face and the teasing smile on her ripe rosy lips. He lowered his handsome, dark head almost jerkily as if he were being yanked down to her level by some mysterious but very powerful outside force. He found her soft, sultry mouth with his and although that kiss started out gentle and searching it heated up at supersonic speed. Desire rose to gush through Ruby in a floodtide. Nothing had ever felt so necessary as the hard pressure of that sensual mouth on hers and the taste of him drowned her senses like a shot of alcohol on a weak head.

Without a word, Raja released her with startling abruptness and pressed a hand to her spine to urge her back down the slope towards the tent.

Ruby had never experienced such a charge of hunger before and, suddenly deprived of that connection with him, she was in a daze. The tip of her tongue snaked out to explore the reddened and swollen contours of her lips and all she could think about was how much she wanted his hot, hungry mouth back on hers again. The strength of that craving shook her. Her nipples were tight and tingling and her legs felt shaky. Putting one foot in front of another was a challenge. And at the same time, gallingly she was desperate to know what he was thinking.

Outside the tent Ruby shot Raja a sidewise glance brimming with curiosity. His hard profile was taut and he skimmed a look back at her, eyes brilliant with a wealth of stormy emotion. That shook her and in response her heart started beating very, very fast. ‘Don’t play games with me, Ruby,’ he spelled out in a roughened undertone.

Games? Ruby was offended by the suggestion and she lifted her chin in denial. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—you kissed me—’

‘But you made no objection. When you have said that you don’t want me to touch you what else is that but a game?’

‘I don’t calculate things to that extent. You are so suspicious,’ Ruby condemned, flushed and flustered by the reminder and by the embarrassment of her own uncharacteristic behaviour. ‘It’s being in this situation … I simply forgot and got carried away for a moment.’

‘Every action has consequences,’ Raja pronounced, rigid with the pent-up force of arousal he was restraining, his lean hands clenching into fists, for his body was not one half as disciplined as his quick and clever brain.

Ruby sank down on a mat inside the tent. It was hot but nothing was as hot and disturbing as the hum of unnatural warmth at the centre of her body, which was shockingly new and demanding. She could not relax. She lifted a hand, watched it tremble and tried and failed to laugh at the state she was in. One kiss and it had been earth-shattering, even more so than the last. Now she felt cheated. She wanted more, she wanted to know what it felt like to make love with a man who attracted her to that extent. The hurricane-force potency of that attraction was certainly a first. She had not experienced anything comparable with other men when intimacy had often felt like more of a threat and a nuisance than a potential source of pleasure. More than once her unenthusiastic response had led to her being asked if she was frigid or gay. She had often had to fight her way out of over-keen encounters. She had had to shout, she had had to defend and justify her boundaries because the easy availability of sex was often taken for granted in relationships. But not once, not once in the five years since she began dating had she actually wanted to make love.

And now what was she doing about it? Here she was taking refuge in the tent and avoiding Raja as if she were ashamed of herself or afraid when she was neither, she conceded uncertainly. It was not as though she could fall pregnant either, she reminded herself squarely. Some months earlier her doctor had advised her to agree to a course of contraceptive pills in the hope of correcting an irregular menstrual cycle. Although she had no supply with her in the desert she assumed she would still be protected for some time against conception. She lifted her head high. She had not been playing some sexual game with Raja, she was not a tease and didn’t want him thinking that she was. In an impatient movement she scrambled upright again.

Raja was staring into the dying embers of the fire, black lashes lowered and as spectacular even in profile as glossy black fringes, his high cheekbones prominent, sculptured mouth clenched.

‘I wasn’t playing games,’ Ruby declared defiantly.

He flung his proud dark head back and looked straight at her. ‘I want you so much I ache …’

And his admission sizzled through Ruby like a hot knife gliding through butter. His confidence shocked her, for she had believed that she was being bold but his words made hers meaningless and little more than a sulky expression of innocence. Indeed almost a lie, she adjusted uncomfortably, jolted by her sudden unexpected collision with the scorching challenge of his gaze. Just at that moment she knew that she had sought him out again quite deliberately and that he was experienced enough to know it.

‘A woman hasn’t made me ache since I was younger than you are now,’ Raja told her huskily, vaulting upright with an easy grace of movement that tensed every muscle in her slim body. ‘You’re very beautiful …’

So was he, but she was too wary and proud to tell him that that lean dark-angel beauty of his had taken up residence in her brain and dug talon claws of need and desire into her very soul. When he kissed her she felt as dizzy and uncoordinated as though she had drunk too much alcohol. He made her feel out of control and she didn’t like that but, regardless of that fact, every time she looked at him it was a tougher challenge to look away again. She moved closer and somehow he met her in the middle, a possessive hand closing on her slight shoulder to hold her in place, his mouth or was it her mouth eagerly melding with the temptation of his again. And that crushing kiss was good, so good, her bare toes curled and her nerve endings sang. Her arms went round him, her fingers spearing into his hair, and with her eager encouragement his mouth got rougher and harder, his lean, powerful length sealing more forcefully to her softer curves.

It was too much: she couldn’t breathe, broke her mouth free to pant for breath and yet immediately sought him out again with renewed hunger and blindly impatient hands. In the midst of it he eased back from her to haul off his robe but just as quickly he pulled her back into his arms. The sarong fell at her feet but she didn’t notice because Raja was already lowering her down on the quilts while pressing taut open-mouthed kisses along the slender expanse of her neck. She squirmed helplessly as the tip of his tongue scored the pulse there and then he nipped at her responsive flesh with his strong white teeth. Need was driving her now, all the while the heat in her pelvis was building and building into a furnace.

Her bra fell away. His palm closed over a small, pert breast and she gasped, back arching as he plunged his mouth down to the swollen pink tip and let his teeth graze the straining nipple. She dragged him up to kiss him again and ran an appreciative palm down over the hair-roughened expanse of his superb torso. He caught her hand in his and brought her fingers down to the rampant length of the shaft straining against his hard flat stomach. A shudder ran through his big frame as she took that invitation and stroked him, moulding the smooth hard heat and promise of him with reverent fingers.

He moved her beneath him and again put his carnal mouth to her tender nipples. He was gentle at first but still she writhed and when he got a little more ardent she cried out, struggling to find herself again in the thunderous, greedy surge of the hunger he had awakened.

‘Very beautiful,’ Raja groaned in reply. ‘And wonderfully passionate …’

The hollow ache between her thighs had her hips shifting back and forth. He traced the tender pink flesh there and she shivered, violently and with longing, driven by feverish want and need. He slid a finger into her and she was hot and wet and tight and he groaned with masculine appreciation, capturing her lips with his again, letting his tongue dart into the sensitive interior of her mouth with a skilful flick that made the blood drum insanely fast through her veins.

He teased the tiny bundle of nerve endings that controlled her entire body and she writhed in the storm of intoxicating sensation. ‘Don’t stop … whatever you do, don’t stop!’ she warned him through gritted teeth, reacting to an overload of pleasure that wiped out every thought and consideration and left frantic desire in charge.

Black hair tousled, golden eyes hot as flames, the prince rose over her. ‘After this, there is no going back.’

In the merciless grip of unsated need, Ruby could barely focus on his darkly handsome features. ‘No going back?’ she repeated blankly.

Raja, as eager for completion as she was, was already pressing back her thighs and impatiently splaying his hands below her hips to raise her to him. As he positioned himself and pushed into her a sharp pain arrowed through her and she cried out. He stopped moving to gaze down at her with a bemused frown. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing … don’t stop,’ Ruby told him, taut with discomfiture for it had not occurred to her that losing her virginity might hurt. Her more experienced friend, Stella, might have told her a lot of things but that possibility had not been mentioned.

Dark eyes confused, he stared down at her. ‘But I hurt you.’

Ruby could feel her face getting hotter and hotter. ‘It’s my first time … that’s all. No big deal.’

It was Raja’s turn to be surprised and it was a very big deal on his terms. His bride was a virgin? The level of his ignorance about her annoyed him. He had made the wrong assumptions but not without her encouragement to do so. A slight shudder racked him as he endeavoured to remain still while every fibre of his being craved the completion of sinking into her as far and as fast as he could go.

‘It’s all right … it really is,’ Ruby whispered, deeply embarrassed by the enforced pause in their lovemaking.

The prince lowered his head and pressed a kiss to the rosy invitation of her mouth. For the very first time he allowed himself to think of her as his wife. It was a powerful source of attachment for a man given to ruthlessly guarding his emotions. Lithe as a cat, he shifted inside her and her eyes widened with wondering appreciation as the first swirl of sensation circled her pelvis and melted her inside to hot, liquid honey.

‘Oh …’ she framed, taken aback by that feeling of exquisite fullness, lips parting, eyes drifting shut on a heady vocal sound of appreciation.

‘I want it to be good for you …’

Ruby looked up at him, her entire body buzzing with electrified arousal. ‘It’s better than good …’

Raja shifted again, initially slow and sure, patiently teaching her his rhythm while he revelled in the velvety grip of her slick passage. In the still heat of the tent, perspiration gleaming on his sleek bronzed length, he pleasured her with long driving strokes. Excitement gripped her as the pace quickened and the only thing that mattered then was the pounding surge of his body into hers. Delirious with the pulsing pleasure, she arched her back and wild tremors tore through her. With a feverish cry she splintered into the electrifying heat of an earth-shattering climax.

Afterwards, Raja held her close, soothing fingers caressing the smooth skin of her abdomen while little quivers, aftershocks of that intense physical crescendo, still coursed through her. ‘I’m sorry I hurt you. If I had known that you were not experienced I would have been more gentle.’

Hugging a glorious unfamiliar sense of well-being along with the feeling that she was still floating on a fluffy cloud, Ruby fixed dazed eyes on his face. ‘I’m not sure gentle would have been quite so exciting.’

Raja laughed with easy appreciation and vaulted upright. He pulled on his boxers and strode out of the tent. She wondered what he was doing but was too lazy to ask or follow as she lay there with limbs that felt weighted down. At the corner of her mind a kernel of unease was nagging at her, keen to remind her that she had trashed the platonic agreement she had forged with Raja and made their relationship much more personal, much more intimate than she had ever envisaged.

Just at that moment such serious reflections seemed ridiculously irrelevant. They were marooned in the desert in circumstances neither of them could ever have foreseen and, as far as she was concerned, the normal rules no longer applied. It was just sex, she told herself urgently, not worth getting worked up about. Creating a fuss about it would only make her look deeply uncool.

Raja strode back in and knelt down by her side. One glimpse of that strong, dark face and sleek physique and her tummy flipped and her brain seemed to turn to mush. He smiled down at her, and it was, without a doubt, the most spectacular smile. Evidently her approval rating had gone from zero to through the roof. He reached down to uncurl her legs for she was lying coiled in a ball.

‘What are you doing?’ she muttered in bewilderment.

He didn’t answer, he simply showed her. He had soaked the towel in the pool and wrung it out. Beneath her stunned gaze he began to run that very welcome cold, wet cloth over her hot, damp body, cooling her feverish temperature, leaving her fresh and revitalised and unexpectedly touched by his thoughtfulness.

They ate in a surprisingly comfortable silence below the tent canopy. ‘I don’t think we’ll be here for much longer,’ Raja admitted quietly. ‘Once the fact that we were married in the UK is publicly announced there can be no reason for leaving us here.’

‘But that means that someone would have to own up to knowing where we are.’

‘There are many ways of passing information without the source being identified,’ the man by her side remarked shrewdly.

When she finished her drink and began to get up he rose with her and pulled her up against his powerful frame. Hot eyes raked her flushed and uncertain face and for an instant she was stiff, suddenly disturbingly lost in the brave new world of intimacy she had created with him. The balance of power had changed irrevocably. A low-pitched growl vibrating in his throat, Raja closed a hand into her tumbled hair and kissed her, hard and hungrily, unleashing a passion that was uninhibited. He thrust aside the sarong and cupped her bare breasts, teasing the tips between thumb and finger. An arrowing tingle of damp heat speared between her thighs and she ached. She quivered and clung, wanting and needing again even more than she had the first time.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_a320f32b-d872-5f1a-bc7f-500f86bf52da)