Rumours: The Billion-Dollar Brides: The Desert King's Blackmailed Bride (Brides for the Taking) / The Italian's One-Night Baby (Brides for the Taking) / Sold for the Greek's Heir (Brides for the Takin

‘You mean it’s open to the public?’ she prompted in surprise.

‘Only when we’re not using it—which means it’s open most of the year. It’s a Crusader castle and if we want to attract tourists we must offer historic sites. The royal family owns all the sites but from now on we will share them with our people.’

Minutes later, Polly slid out of the car in a stone courtyard while staff rushed around them bowing and grabbing up luggage and smiling endlessly to display their pleasure at their arrival. And Polly thought in wonderment, Rashad’s talking again. Was that because it was their wedding night with all the expectations that that signified? What else could it be? Her chin lifted and her mouth compressed.

They were ushered into a giant stone room furnished like a very opulent historical set piece. She gazed in awe at the huge scarlet and gold fabric-draped four-poster bed and the matching silver and mother-of-pearl-inlaid furniture. ‘Please tell me there are modern washing facilities somewhere,’ she whispered.

With a husky laugh, Rashad opened a small arched door in one corner and spread it wide to display the marble-tiled bathroom, presumably custom built to fit the circular turret room.

His laugh and that spontaneous smile brought her head up again, silvery blonde hair spilling across her shoulders, and she connected with black-lashed golden eyes so heated in their steady regard that something in her pelvis burned, liquefied and positively ached. Her heart raced and her face hurt with the effort it took not to smile back but how could she smile and forgive and forget when all her husband wanted her for was to provide him with an heir? He had pretty much ignored her throughout their wedding day, she reminded herself stubbornly, and if his outlook had improved it could only be because he now expected to have sex with her.

Momentarily, as she freshened up at the vanity unit, she paused when she caught a glimpse of her hectically flushed face in the mirror. She couldn’t do it—she couldn’t do the sex thing coldly, on demand, not the way she felt now!

She had always wanted that first experience to be special and she had expected it to be special with Rashad right up until he had made her feel like an anonymous female body to be impregnated. Was she being unfair? Even unreasonable? She knew he needed an heir but following on from his behaviour throughout their wedding that had been a step too far into the dark for her to accept.

Her body was hers alone to share or deny. She had always been the least likely woman to be coaxed into doing anything she didn’t want to do because for all her eagerness to please she had always had a very strong sense of self. But until she met Rashad she hadn’t actually wanted to have sex with anyone, not that acting as her grandmother’s carer for years had given her many opportunities in that department, she conceded ruefully. But right now, this night, this moment felt very wrong to her because she needed more from Rashad than he had so far given her to feel safe with him...and yet?

Deep down inside she wanted him, craved him as much as her next breath of air, she acknowledged in driven discomfiture. Her brain might say one thing but her body was singing an entirely different tune. Her breasts were full and tight and there was something like a little flame burning low in her pelvis that had made her all tender and damp and aching in a place she had literally never thought about before. But it wasn’t right, she reminded herself doggedly. Where was her self-respect? Her courage?

Well, what are you waiting for? she asked her now wildly flushed reflection in the mirror. She had to tell him before expectations got out of control.

Rashad watched Polly emerge from the turret room and he strode forward, involuntarily drawn by the sheer effect of her delicate ethereal looks and all that beautiful trailing white-blonde hair. He stretched out a hand to clasp her smaller one, tugging her to him with an impatience he couldn’t control even though his brain was warning him to go slow. There was so much hunger inside him for the bubbling warmth of her smile and the as yet undiscovered delights of her slender body and he wrapped his arms round her to capture her.

‘Rashad...’ Polly gasped, disconcerted by that sudden advance.

‘You’re my wife now. In some ways, I don’t really believe it yet,’ he confided in a thickened undertone, slowly winding a brown hand into the fall of her silky hair, long brown fingers gently caressing her pale-skinned throat. ‘I can’t believe you’re mine—’

‘Yes, b-but...’ Polly stammered, struggling to hold onto her wits that close to Rashad when she could feel the thump of his heartbeat through their clothing and the heat and strength of his big muscular body against hers. He was fully aroused and she could feel the hard thrust of him against her. In receipt of that very sexual message the kind of brutal need she had never had cause to feel before held her rigid with momentary indecision. In that instant she wanted so badly to let him touch her just as she urgently wished to touch him. She ached to smooth explorative fingers over that long bronzed muscular body and learn everything that had until now been denied her.

‘And there is no fancy protocol that can keep us apart now,’ Rashad continued with a raw-edged smile of satisfaction, his gorgeous black-lashed, dark golden eyes locked to her wide blue gaze as he lowered his head.

His sensual mouth came down on hers with a devastating hunger that travelled through her slight length as violently as a lightning bolt. His tongue plunged deep, electrifying her with sexual desire. He tasted so good she moaned into his mouth, helpless in the grip of her desire to deny herself, never mind him. Rashad pushed up the long trailing length of her dress and found her, fingers flirting with the silky panties she wore and then sliding beneath the elastic to find her feminine core. Something similar to spontaneous combustion detonated at the heart of Polly’s quivering body. She was so eager to be touched, she felt scarily out of control and that shocked her, reminding her that she had to pull back if she was to have any hope of defusing a difficult situation with honesty. Feeling as she did, it was wrong to be submerging herself in wholly physical sensation, she reminded herself fiercely, and she yanked herself back out of his arms with so much force that she stumbled back against the footboard of the huge bed, her hair tumbling across her face.

Taken aback by that vehement withdrawal, Rashad stayed where he was, a bemused frown forming between his black brows, dark yet bright as stars eyes glittering and narrowing. He had never looked more beautiful to her disconcerted gaze. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked levelly.

‘I can’t do this with you tonight,’ Polly muttered hoarsely, still struggling to control the inner quaking of need that had momentarily burned right through her defences. Even as she stood there she was alarmingly aware of the pained ache between her thighs, the high of her excitement abating with painful slowness. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m not ready to go to bed with you...er...yet...’

‘We are married.’ Rashad framed the words with pronounced care, without inflexion, without expression. ‘We are man and wife. What possible objection could you have?’

‘Probably nothing that you will really understand,’ Polly countered in a discomfited tone. ‘I hardly know you, Rashad. I haven’t really even seen you since I agreed to marry you and today you were weird—’

His extreme stillness remained eerily unchanged. ‘Weird?’ he repeated darkly. ‘In what way?’

‘How can you ask me that when you wouldn’t speak to me or look at me or even touch me if you could avoid it throughout the wedding festivities?’ Polly demanded emotionally. ‘I would have settled for friendliness if that was the best you could do.’

‘Polly...it was a state wedding with television cameras and an army of onlookers. Friendly?’ An ebony brow elevated in apparent wonderment and his entire attitude made her feel small and stupid and childish. ‘I don’t have the acting ability to relax to that extent in that kind of public display—’

Polly had turned very pale. ‘It was more than that. You acted like...like you were hating having to marry me!’

Rashad lost colour below his bronzed skin, his strong facial bones tightening, because in truth he was in deep shock at what was unfolding. He was a very private man. Even as a child he had been forced by circumstance to keep his thoughts and feelings absolutely to himself. And in all his life nobody had ever been able to read him as accurately as she just had and it made him feel exposed as the fraud he sometimes feared that he was. He had done his duty, he conceded bitterly, but clearly he had not done it well enough to convince his bride. ‘Why would you think such a thing of me?’

‘If you lie to me now, it will be the last straw!’ Polly warned him shakily. ‘I deserve the truth.’

Rashad angled his proud dark head back in the smouldering silence that had engulfed them. Somewhere in the background Polly could hear the timeless surge of the sea hitting the shore outside and, inside her own body, she could feel the quickened apprehensive beat of her heart.

‘For me, the last straw would be that you have married me today and now, quite independent of any reason or discussion, have decided that you will refuse to consummate our marriage!’ he bit out rawly. ‘That, by any standards, is unacceptable.’

His roughened intonation made Polly flinch at the standoff she had hoped to avoid by explaining her feelings. ‘Trust a man to bring it all down to sex!’ she shot back bitterly. ‘Of course you can’t get me pregnant if we don’t have sex, so I suppose that has to be your main grounds for complaint—’

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Rashad ground out abruptly, too many damaging memories tearing at him to allow him the calm and patience required to deal with an emotionally distraught bride. ‘I’m going out.’

Polly was stunned by the idea that he would simply walk out on a row. ‘You can’t just walk out... Where are you going to go, for goodness’ sake? We’re on a beach surrounded by desert in the middle of nowhere! And what will people think?’ she exclaimed in sudden consternation.

‘Let me see...’ Rashad inclined his handsome dark head to one side in a way that made her want to slap him, the slashing derision in his gaze unhidden. ‘They will think that a honeymoon baby is unlikely,’ he breathed curtly. ‘But thankfully they will not know that my bride refused me!’

He strode through a connecting door she hadn’t noticed until that precise moment and the door thudded shut in his wake. The silence that spread around Polly then felt claustrophobic and, her throat tight and dry, she collapsed down on the side of the bed, her lower limbs limp as noodles. What had she done? she asked herself in belated consternation. What on earth had she done? The right thing? Or the wrong thing?

In the room next door, Rashad paced the floor, smouldering with a rage so emotionally powerful it disturbed even him. But he never ever lost his temper with anyone because the need to regulate any potentially dangerous outburst had been beaten into him at an early age. He had taught himself to master his volatile nature, he had taught himself to quell the passion that fired him and...and walk away. But the look on his bride’s face when he’d walked away had been frankly incredulous. Too late he was discovering the downside to marrying a woman unafraid to fight and argue with him.

As he paced, on several occasions he strode back towards the door that separated their rooms, eager to defend himself, but each time he stopped himself and backed off again. What, after all, could he say to her? That the knowledge he was on show in front of cameras invariably paralysed him with unease? That such intense attention had never been welcome to him and that her ability to behave with cool normality had astounded him? A man, particularly a king, was supposed to be stronger than that, more disciplined, more able to perform the essential duty of public appearances. A king was not supposed to be introspective or emotional, he was supposed to be a powerful figurehead, a flawless role model and a very strong leader. While Rashad reiterated his stringent uncle’s most frequent directives inside his own head, he continued to pace in raging frustration.

He had married a foreigner with a different set of values. A foreigner who had fired an erotic hunger in him that was stronger than anything he had ever expected or even wanted to feel. In such a situation, it was downright unnerving and absolutely outrageous to positively crave another opportunity to argue with her. Tearing his attention from the door between them, he ripped off his ceremonial robes and donned more comfortable clothing. He had stayed long enough out of view not to rouse household comment at his abandonment of his new bride, he reasoned grimly as he left the room and strode down to the stables.

At least his horse wasn’t going to ask him unanswerable questions and pick up on his deficiencies, he reflected with bitter humour. He wasn’t sure of his ground with Polly, he acknowledged, furious at that demeaning reality. In truth his previous experience with Western women had been purely sexual and casual and nothing more than that. But he did have considerable experience of being denied sex. That Polly should do that to him when he recognised that she felt the same chemistry he did had enraged and frustrated him beyond bearing.

What did she want from him? What the hell did she expect from him? So, he had acted weird?

Possibly a bit stiff and silent, he interpreted as he directed his stallion, Raza, across the desert sands at a pace that his guards were stretched to match. But then Rashad had been born to the saddle and raised from the age of six within a nomadic tribe, who ranged freely across the vast desert landscape that spanned several countries and recognised no boundaries. That same innate yearning for complete freedom had been bred into his bones but the sleeker, more sophisticated man he had inevitably become wished he had paused to take a cold, invigorating shower before his departure.

He didn’t get women, he reflected, recalling Rio once admitting the very same thing. And if Rio, an incurable playboy with vast experience of the opposite sex, didn’t understand women, how was Rashad ever to understand the woman he had married?

Ironically he had been brought up to believe that he would own his wife’s body and soul much as he owned his horse. Maybe he should’ve thrown that at her to show how far he had travelled from the narrow-minded indoctrination of his youth. So backward had his ancestors been that they would have taken such a refusal as a justification for forcing the issue. He was fairly certain Polly would not have been impressed by that admission and he could not imagine ever wanting to physically hurt a woman. But there were other ways of harming and hurting a wife. Even by the tender age of six he had heard and seen enough in the palace of his childhood to grasp that his mother was pitied by some and blamed by others for his father’s relentless debauchery. That was why when Polly had banished him from the marital bed he had wanted to protect her reputation by waiting in the room next door.

But, in spite of that concession, Rashad remained blazingly, scorchingly angry with his bride. What a way to embark on a new marriage! This was not what he had wanted. Separation was not a way forward and sex was not a reward for good behaviour. And what was Polly’s idea of good behaviour? Rashad hadn’t a clue. He was right back to where he had started out, utterly in the dark as to what way he had somehow contrived to fall short...

* * *

Eventually, and only once Polly had surrendered all hope that Rashad would reappear and discuss their quarrel, she removed her jewellery and undressed and got into the giant bed. She felt curiously overwhelmed and deflated by the reality that she was alone on her wedding night. She couldn’t even understand her own reaction, because she had asked him to leave her alone and now to feel dissatisfied on that score seemed perverse.

In truth, she recognised ruefully, on some level inside herself she had expected Rashad to reason, persuade or even seduce her into changing her mind. But Rashad hadn’t done anything so predictable. Instead he had walked out on her. Angry? Bemused? Hurt? She discovered that she didn’t like to think that he was either hurt or confused by her behaviour. But she must have hurt his pride, she finally acknowledged unhappily, wondering why she had not foreseen that very obvious consequence.

The next morning, she came awake with the sunlight. At some stage while she still slept her luggage had been unpacked. Her grandparents had insisted on equipping her with a new and more appropriate wardrobe to wear after the wedding. She had picked out styles she liked with a trio of Dharian designers and had been concerned by the likely cost of such exclusivity even after Hakim assured her that he was well able to afford such a generous gesture.

Polly extracted a comfortable dress and smilingly dismissed the maid kneeling at the door ready to assist her into her clothing. The blue sundress was light and airy and, with canvas shoes on her feet, she sat down to breakfast on the terrace on the floor below, to enjoy the view of the sea while telling herself repeatedly that she was not one whit bothered by Rashad’s vanishing act. At some stage of the night that had passed, however, she had reached new conclusions about what she had done.

When she had been getting so wound up before the wedding, Rashad had been completely absent and unable to answer or soothe any of her concerns. Her sister’s dire fear that she was making a mistake had encouraged her own insecurities, which in turn had exploded when Rashad had appeared to act differently throughout their wedding day. Had she imagined that he was different? Had she been looking for trouble, seeking a fatal flaw that would give her the excuse to step back and take stock of her new marriage? After all, what did she want from Rashad when she already knew that he didn’t love her?

Honesty, respect, trust, caring, affection, she listed anxiously, her lovely face clouding as she acknowledged the unrealistic level of desired perfection inherent in making such a list about a man, particularly on the very first day of a brand-new marriage.