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

Rashad’s dark head reared up, a startled look in his dark eyes as he searched her flushed and smiling face. And then he threw back his head and laughed. ‘Polly...only you would tell me that!’ he said appreciatively, dropping a kiss on her brow. ‘I thank you. It was even more amazing for me, aziz.’

‘Do you think it would have been like this for us last night?’ she asked, suffering a belated attack of regret.

‘No, we were both too tired and irritable and I had no idea I would be your first lover,’ Rashad replied, letting her off that hook with newly learned generosity as he freed her from his weight and rolled over.

Her hand sought and found his below the sheet. Had she had the energy she would have turned cartwheels because she felt happy and too laid-back to guard her words. Succumbing to her curiosity, she said lightly, ‘Your first marriage was arranged, wasn’t it?’

His fingers flexed and tensed beneath the light cover of hers. ‘Yes.’

‘Did you love her?’ Polly pressed helplessly, desperate to know even though she didn’t understand why she should have such a craving to know that information.

‘Yes,’ Rashad replied, stifling his unease at being forced to think back to his miserably unhappy first marriage. ‘How could I not? We were childhood playmates.’

And somewhere within Polly a little hurt sensation sprang up like a claw that had the power to scratch her deep where it didn’t show. She didn’t understand it because it was surely good news that he had contrived to love Ferah, regardless of the reality that it had been an arranged marriage. But perhaps she had not been quite prepared to hear that he had known Ferah so well, a young woman who would have understood so much more about Rashad than Polly probably ever would. Her predecessor, she acknowledged unhappily, would be a tough act to follow.

CHAPTER EIGHT (#u601743d7-3da5-5316-b4c3-1f7b3fd2f2ed)

‘YOU’RE DOING VERY WELL,’ Rashad assured Polly seven weeks later. ‘Your posture is much improved.’

With the ease of practice, Polly ignored the audience of grooms and guards gathered round the palace horse paddock. When Rashad had first informed her that he planned to teach her to ride she had laughed out loud in disbelief and outright denial of the idea because Polly had never been into anything even remotely athletic. Unfortunately, Rashad considered the ability to ride a horse an essential skill and from the instant she was put aboard a four-legged monster and then panicked at the height she was from the ground, the lessons had begun. If you had a weakness, you worked hard to conquer it: that was how Rashad expected her to operate. And backsliding and excuses weren’t allowed.

If Rashad knew the actual meaning of the word ‘honeymoon’ he was hiding the fact very well, Polly conceded with rueful amusement while her mount trotted obediently round the paddock, her own body moving easily now in the saddle as Rashad had taught her to move. When she had pleaded her fear of falling as an excuse to avoid the activity, Rashad had borrowed a mechanical horse from somewhere and set it up with crash mats in the basement gym and she had spent two ghastly days learning how to fall as safely as possible. At no stage had she required Dr Wasem’s attention but she had certainly picked up a few bruises before she’d learned the technique of tucking in her arms and her head and rolling to lessen the impact of a fall. When the doctor had cautiously suggested to Rashad that learning to ride could be considered a rather risky activity for a woman hoping to conceive, Rashad had scoffed.

‘That will probably take at least a year to achieve!’ Rashad had remarked dismissively to Polly, releasing her from the fear that her ability to conceive would be under constant scrutiny.

In fact, on that score, she had worried unnecessarily, she conceded with relief. Rashad appeared to have neither a sense of urgency nor indeed any level of expectation when it came to the question of his bride falling pregnant. Of course they weren’t taking any precautions either, so she supposed that over time the odds of conception would naturally increase. It could hardly have escaped her notice that his first marriage had been childless but, when taxed on that question, Rashad had quietly admitted that Ferah had had a medical condition that made her infertile.

Rashad lifted Polly down off the mare and stared down at her with brilliant dark eyes of satisfaction. ‘I’m really proud of you,’ he admitted huskily. ‘You’ve conquered your fear.’

Polly grinned. ‘I’m going for a shower,’ she told him cheerfully.

Their audience had vanished back to their duties when she trudged into the building at the rear of the stables that housed luxury changing and washing facilities. They had stayed at the castle by the sea for only two weeks before Rashad’s necessary attendance at an important meeting of his council had interrupted their seclusion. They had returned to the palace, where it was much easier for Rashad to oversee the progress of various projects and still take time off.

But Polly still retained tantalising memories of the sea and the castle. They had picnicked on the beach and gone swimming, for both of them were proficient in the water. They had talked late into the night on the terrace and rumpled the bed sheets until dawn lit the skies. By the end of that stay at the castle Polly had admitted to herself that she had fallen head over heels in love with her husband. He could charm her with a smile and seduce her with the smallest touch but his greatest skill was that he made her feel wonderfully happy and content.

Rashad had reached the shower block ahead of her. She started in surprise when she saw him: a lithe, dark, electrifyingly sexy figure sheathed in a polo shirt, tight riding breeches and riding boots. As soon as she appeared he shut the door and locked it behind her, towering over her as she relaxed languorously back against the stone wall. He ran a calloused fingertip lightly over her pouting pink lips and breathed thickly. ‘I can’t keep my hands off you when I think of you getting naked in the shower, aziz.’

A shiver of excitement as stimulating as a storm warning snaked through Polly’s slender body. While formal in so many other ways, Rashad was wonderfully earthy about sex. Over the past weeks they had probably had sex virtually everywhere they were left alone together in the palace. In his office, in the stables, in unoccupied rooms he showed her round and once, thrillingly, over the dining-room table. Polly was equally challenged to keep her hands off Rashad’s gloriously masculine body. And as many of their unplanned encounters had proved to be the most sensational she literally stopped breathing when a certain smouldering look appeared in Rashad’s dark golden eyes. It made her feel like the most seductive and beautiful woman in the world. And it was a level of intimacy with a man that she had never dreamt of experiencing.

Polly leant back against the wall, almost boneless with anticipation of his touch, her blue eyes starry. She was intensely aware of her own body, already screaming a welcome as her gaze slid down his body to the desire outlined by his breeches and impossible to hide.

‘Getting naked, Your Highness,’ she murmured playfully, ‘would appear to be a sensible idea.’

Rashad planted his hands beside her head and pushed his lean strong body into hers, letting her feel the urgency of his need. ‘Sensible is the very last thing you make me feel—’

Polly gazed up at him, loving every proud line and hollow of his lean, hard face and the stunning black-fringed dark eyes that often made her breath hitch in her dry throat. ‘Well, if I have to suffer, why shouldn’t you?’ she teased.

Challenged, Rashad dug his hands into the silky swathe of hair she had unbraided and brought his mouth crashing down in hungry demand on hers. The very taste of her was an aphrodisiac. He was wound up tight as a spring and Polly was the only woman who had ever had that much power over him. He craved her body like a drug and revelled unashamedly in her responsiveness. At first, his extreme need for her had disturbed him and he had tried to restrain that need, but a willing Polly in his bed every night, and most unforgettably a Polly wantonly bending over the dining-room table while offering him a cheeky smile of challenge, had demolished his resistance entirely. They had a scorchingly sexual and satisfying connection he had never thought to find in marriage.

Polly’s clothes came off long before they made it into the shower. He tormented her swollen nipples with his mouth while his lean fingers probed the receptive wetness between her thighs and expertly fuelled her hunger. He hauled her up to him and brought her down on him, bracing her hips against the wall to take her with hard, forceful thrusts that made her cry out in excitement and blissful pleasure. Barely able to stand in the aftermath, she rested up against him for support and let him carry her into the shower.

‘How useful are you finding Hayat?’ he asked curiously as he switched on the multi-jets of water.

‘She’s indispensable,’ Polly admitted, for she was making her first official appearance as Rashad’s wife that evening at a diplomatic dinner in the capital, Kashan. ‘She’s explaining everything I need to know. She’s like a walking book on faces, etiquette, clothes. I couldn’t do without her.’

‘That’s good,’ Rashad responded, hiding his surprise at the news. Polly’s grandfather had suggested Hayat for the role of supporting Polly and it seemed the older man must also have seen a side to the waspish brunette that Rashad had failed to appreciate. At the same time, however, as his sister-in-law, he acknowledged that Hayat deserved superior status and recognition.

Having shampooed her hair, Polly surveyed Rashad as he lounged back against the tiled wall, slumberous and relaxed and all male to her appreciative gaze. She padded forward and rested her hands down on his wide shoulders before slowly tracing them down over his washboard abs, watching his lush black lashes shift upward, his dark golden eyes shimmer tawny with renewed desire.

‘You are so predictable,’ she scolded. ‘Do you ever say no?’

At that sally, Rashad grinned with unabashed enjoyment, slashing cheekbones taut below his bronzed skin. ‘Do you want me to?’

And no, she didn’t, she acknowledged as her hands went travelling down over his lean, powerful physique in confident reacquaintance. She turned him on and she liked that power very much, adored the way he closed his eyes and simply let her do as she liked with him, the evidence of his arousal hard and smooth and pulsing between her fingers. She stroked, cupped, knelt at his bare brown feet and used her mouth on him until he groaned and shuddered and lifted her up to him with impatient hands and brought her down on him again with all the explosive demanding passion he couldn’t control. Afterwards she was limp with satiation and drowsy as he washed her down, showering away the proof of their intimacy and roughly rubbing her dry with fleecy towels. Having to get dressed again was a trial, she reflected.

‘I’m so sleepy,’ she complained as he walked her back through the palace, his hand engulfing hers and maintaining a physical link with her that she appreciated.

‘Take a nap before this evening. You’ll be standing around a lot meeting people before the meal,’ he warned.

‘Do you need a nap?’ his bride asked him winsomely.