Magnates: Desert Prince, Bride of Innocence

‘You believe that those are the only options I’ve got?’ Elinor exclaimed in a tone of angry rejection as they reached the hall.

A manservant pressed wide the door of the library where Jasim invited Elinor to take a seat. ‘Of course, if you chose to remain in London where you could discreetly lead your own life, I would naturally compensate you for giving Sami into my care. You would be a very wealthy woman,’ Jasim informed her, determined to test the level of her attachment to their son.

Elinor glowered at him in disbelief. ‘You honestly believe that I might be willing to sell my son to you?’

‘It’s your decision and sell is an unnecessarily emotive word,’ Jasim replied softly.

‘No, it’s a word as offensive as your offer. I gave birth to Sami, I brought him into this world purely because I loved and wanted him. I will never give him up to anybody else’s care and, believe me, no amount of money will make me change my mind!’ Elinor proclaimed heatedly.

Jasim strode forward and closed his hands round hers. ‘I am happy to hear that assurance. Naturally Sami needs his mother. You must come to Quaram with me—’

Elinor winced, her brow furrowing as she tried and failed to slide her hands free of his without making a production out of it. ‘Does it have to be with you? I mean, maybe I could travel out to Quaram and stay somewhere and you could see Sami as often as you liked—’

Jasim frowned. ‘I will not even dignify that foolish suggestion with an answer.’

‘Well, if I ask foolish things that irritate you, whose fault is that?’ Elinor demanded between gritted teeth. ‘You’re the guy who set out to charm me and who hauled me off to bed where you didn’t use protection!’

‘Haven’t we got beyond the stage of hurling recriminations yet?’ Jasim demanded, smouldering dark golden eyes welded to the bewitching vivacity of her lovely face and the inner glow of emotion that she could not hide. ‘Let us leave the anger behind and move forward. I live in the present and when I look at Sami I do not see a mistake, I see the future of my family—’

‘But what about when you look at me?’ Elinor slung helplessly. ‘I’m a mistake who doesn’t belong in your world!’

A lean masculine hand curved to her hip to ease her closer. Against her stomach she felt the hard swell of his erection and the insistent strength of his potent masculinity. ‘I think you belong,’ he breathed huskily.

‘That’s just sex!’ Elinor proclaimed, so full of emotion and frustration she could almost have burst into tears. Her heart was pounding, her mouth bone-dry.

Jasim pinned her to him in that intimate connection with impatient hands. She trembled, fighting the magnetic draw of him as well as the treacherous weakness of her own body. Stunning topaz eyes held hers and a breathtakingly beautiful smile tilted his beautiful mouth. ‘You like sex too, aziz.’

Her skin burned beneath that confident pronouncement and she had to still an instinctive protest. She wanted more from him than his body, and even as she surprised herself by thinking that thought she wondered where her hatred had gone and loathed herself more than she had ever loathed him. ‘We would need a lot more than that to make a marriage work,’ she said tightly.

‘Stay with me tonight,’ Jasim urged, his breath stirring the vibrant curls on her pale brow. ‘Let’s make a new beginning.’

All atingle inside and out and with goose bumps marking her skin in response to the strong deep tone of his rich dark drawl, Elinor pulled free of his hold before her self-control wavered and let her down again. Once burned, twice shy, she rhymed inside her head. Sex was not that important to her, sex could not be that important to her that just the sound of his voice sent receptive shivers down her spine. ‘That’s out of the question.’

‘I have to fly home within forty-eight hours,’ Jasim imparted gravely. ‘My father’s health is very poor and I can’t stay abroad for much longer. I must have your answer quickly.’

The speed with which he had snapped back into businesslike mode had taken Elinor aback. But then what more had she expected from him? Persuading her to accompany him home to Quaram was an easier option for him in the short term than trying to wrest custody of her child from her. Jasim bin Hamid al Rais was very practical and far from averse to manipulating her into doing his bidding. When he had described Sami as the future of his family she had truly understood the strength of the opposition she was facing. Unfortunately, a reluctant husband willing to offer her a new beginning on the basis of a night of rampant sex wasn’t a tempting proposition. At least not to a sensible woman with some pride, Elinor affixed to the stream of her feverish thoughts. She might have made a total idiot of herself over Jasim eighteen months ago, but that should not mean that she had to spend the rest of her life paying for that act of bad judgement.

Resolved to fight for what best suited her needs, Elinor squared her slim shoulders. ‘You were educated here in England, weren’t you?’

His ebony brows elevated. ‘Not fully. I began my education here when I was sixteen.’

‘I don’t want to be your wife any more than I believe you want me to be your wife,’ she declared tightly. ‘I have every respect for your background, your family and Sami’s importance to you, but I intend to raise my son here in England. When he’s older he can make his own decision about where he wants to live.’

Jasim’s bone structure had set taut below his bronzed skin and his thickly lashed dark eyes were grave and cold. ‘That is not an acceptable arrangement. I may have been educated abroad, but I was born a second son and my upbringing was very different from Murad’s. Sami is the firstborn and my heir. I cannot allow you to keep him here.’

Her nerves succumbing to the terrible bite of tension in the air, Elinor was trembling. ‘I’m not asking you to allow anything, I’m telling you that I do not want to live in Quaram!’

His hard gaze glittered gold with anger. ‘You will not dictate terms to me. I hold diplomatic status here and I could fly Sami back home today without your permission. It was a courtesy to offer you a choice. Sami is vitally important to the succession and the stability of Quaram and I will not rest until I can bring my son back to my country because that is my duty.’

‘Are you threatening me?’ Elinor questioned fiercely.

‘I am insisting that you consider your position and Sami’s future with simple common sense, rather than through some fluffy veil of foolish emotion and selfishness,’ Jasim drawled in a raw tone of contempt. ‘Sami will not be accepted as a future ruler if he is a stranger to our people. He cannot learn our culture and language at a distance and still expect to understand our ways and belong. If you deny him that experience, you will make him an outsider.’

Reeling from that crack about fluffy, foolish emotion, Elinor folded her arms in a sharp defensive gesture. ‘I truly hate you for putting so much pressure on me!’

‘I do what must be done,’ Jasim countered with sardonic cool. ‘You have to face reality. Sami is not an ordinary little boy. Some day he too will have to learn that responsibility goes hand in hand with great position and privilege.’

Elinor was anything but grateful for those home truths. She felt that Jasim had cruelly plunged her into an intolerable situation, where either she sacrificed her own needs or her son’s. Was her son ever likely to forgive her if she denied him easy access to his father and his heritage? Separating Sami from a parent who would one day be a King could well foster uncertainties and divisions that would make Sami’s life more difficult as an adult. How could she possibly act against what might be Sami’s best interests?

‘I want to go home now with Sami,’ she breathed stiltedly.

A few minutes later she watched as Jasim bent to lift Sami from the cot. Although awake, Sami was still drowsy from his nap and his little face took on a cranky look when he registered the strangeness of his surroundings. Jasim was amazingly gentle with the little boy and Sami slumped against him and rested his heavy head down trustingly on his father’s shoulder. ‘He’s getting to know me,’ Jasim remarked with satisfaction.

At that same moment Sami stole his thunder by espying his mother and throwing his arms wide in a demonstration of enthusiastic welcome. In spite of her stress level, Elinor managed to smile and give her son a hug, while Jasim told her about the toast that Sami had dropped at the crèche. His very choice of words helped Elinor to appreciate why he had intervened and removed Sami—‘I could not stand to see him cry like that.’ Elinor realised then that she was getting to know Jasim as well, or at least another side to him that she could not have dreamt existed. When it came to Sami, it seemed Jasim was anything but cold, detached and harshly judgemental. Elinor wondered with some bitterness how it would feel to have the same power her son had to stir Jasim’s emotions.

But, in the absence of that emotion, she had to consider what was best for her son. She recognised that, unless she was prepared to go out on a limb and risk damaging Sami’s future prospects in his father’s country, she did not have a choice to make. Moving to Quaram was a necessity, not another option.

‘If there is no other way and it has to be done for Sami’s sake, I will agree to live in Quaram,’ Elinor breathed in a driven tone as she reached the foot of the elegant staircase.

‘That is the right decision and it will not be one which I give you cause to regret,’ Jasim asserted softly.

‘You know very well that you might as well have turned a gun on me when you warned me that you could easily have flown Sami out of the country today without me!’ Elinor snapped, compressing her soft mouth into an indignant line.

Yet Elinor also appreciated that, although Jasim was a ruthless, heartless rat, she still had unresolved feelings for him, feelings composed of maybe fifty per cent resentment and distrust, forty per cent sexual fascination and ten per cent hope for a fairy-tale happy ending in which he fell madly, deeply, hopelessly in love with her. But, as her late mother had taught her to have little faith in happy endings, she wasn’t about to hold her breath on that score.

She went home and drew up lists of things she had to do before she could leave London for Quaram and she sat up late discussing events and making plans with her friends. The next morning she quit her job and Jasim insisted on taking Sami and her shopping for clothing more suited to a hot climate. She was startled by the number of outfits he deemed necessary and increasingly perturbed by his evident knowledge of what women liked in the wardrobe department.

‘You’ve had an awful lot of women in your life, haven’t you?’ she opined, while he calmly selected garments that were displayed by a team of sales personnel for their appraisal and announced that he thought she suited bright colours like green and blue.

‘I have a certain amount of experience,’ Jasim responded with measured cool. ‘But it would not be appropriate for me to discuss that side of my life with you.’

Her fingers curled into talons, her nails marking her palms with sharp little crescents. She hated the idea of him ever having been with another woman and felt sick at the concept of him being intimate with anyone else but her. Registering just how confused her emotions were around him, she felt her discomfiture increase. ‘I didn’t say I wanted to discuss it precisely. But the way you swept me off my feet—literally—at Woodrow the first day we met was educational,’ she murmured soft and low. ‘With hindsight I can see I was dealing with an expert womaniser.’

‘You’re entitled to your own opinion on that score,’ Jasim remarked without heat, refusing to argue the point in public.

While it was true that Jasim had enjoyed many women, he was not ashamed of the fact. His affairs had always been discreet and conducted on candid terms. He had learned that most women were delighted to give him their company and sexual pleasure in return for a glittering social life and expensive gifts. Sex had never been complicated for him, but he was beginning to suspect that sex within marriage might well prove to be his biggest challenge yet. He glanced at Elinor, noting the tension still etched into her delicate profile. In his extensive experience all women loved to be spoiled. Not unnaturally, he had assumed that a major shopping trip would lift her mood and please her.

But the pursuit had failed to work its usual magic. It was slowly dawning on him that he had very little idea what went on inside Elinor’s head. She gave him wildly conflicting signals. What was the matter with her? Why did he please her less than he pleased other women, who were enthralled and eager to reciprocate when he expressed an interest? Why was she sitting beside him watching the parade of beautiful designer garments with the expression of a puritan invited to an orgy? Sudden devilment gleamed in his dark deep-set eyes. If that was her attitude, he should meet her expectations head-on …

Frustration was filling Elinor to overflowing. As usual, Jasim had ignored her questions and slammed a door shut in her face and he was raising barriers to keep her at a distance. He didn’t want her to know him any better. Evidently her role was to be more Sami’s mother than a wife to Sami’s father. It was an assumption that was to take a thorough beating at their next port of call—a highly exclusive lingerie boutique filled with tiny frilly pieces of satin, silk and lace that shocked Elinor to her unadventurous core. While she stood frozen with mortification by his side, Jasim examined what was on offer and made generous selections of frivolous items of underwear that Elinor could not even imagine wearing. She was outraged by his nerve. How dared he make such intimate purchases on her behalf?

Temper bubbling up in her like a natural spring, Elinor dealt him a furious appraisal when they were back inside the limousine.

‘I wouldn’t be seen dead dressed in underwear of that sort!’ she snapped at him.

Unholy amusement turned his dark brown gaze to simmering gold chips of enticement in the lean dark lineaments of his handsome face. ‘Such lingerie would certainly provide a novel look for your departure from the world … but I would much prefer to see you wear them while you were very much alive and kicking, so that I could show you my appreciation.’

‘Never in this lifetime!’ Colour ran like a betraying banner as high as Elinor’s hairline as she recoiled from that riposte and the hot masculine appraisal that accompanied it. As if he was already imagining her prancing about a bedroom in those minuscule confections of satin and lace, designed to enhance and display the female body for a man’s gratification!