Heat surged up from Ella’s throat to her hairline and mortification almost choked her. She gritted her teeth. So, he was too tired to be tempted by her. Well, she had offered and he had turned her down. Let it not be said that she could not take rejection on the chin. Punching the pillow beneath her head, she turned her back on him and curled up, eyes wide and stinging like mad.
* * *
When Ella wakened she was alone in the big bed. Rising, she went through the closets and drawers until she found her own clothing. Leaving out lingerie and a sundress, she went into the bathroom to freshen up. When she emerged wrapped in a towel, a maid was changing the bed and as soon as she saw Ella the young woman curtsied and swept open a communicating door to indicate the table laden with dishes in the room next door.
‘Good morning, habibti,’ Zarif drawled, springing upright from the table.
Ella hovered. ‘Good morning. I’d better get dressed.’
‘There is no need. We won’t be disturbed and I would assume that you don’t want cold hot chocolate.’
Taste buds watering, Ella took a step forward. ‘You have hot chocolate?’
A wolfish grin slashed Zarif’s darkly handsome features and his tawny eyes gleamed. ‘I have hot chocolate and croissants for you...’
Ella gave him a huge natural smile and closed the door behind her, tucking in the towel knotted above her breasts and sinking down into a chair. ‘When did you get up?’
‘I go into the office about six and answer my emails while it’s quiet. I like to enjoy a leisurely breakfast.’ He poured the hot chocolate and the rich aroma of it made her sniff in appreciation as she reached for a croissant.
Ella was disconcerted that he had remembered two of her favourite things. The past beckoned and she struggled to fend off memories of their bittersweet time together three years earlier. Back then she had been utterly convinced that he was a romantic and she had been so much in love that even the feel of his hand enclosing hers had lit her up inside like a firework display. She blinked, pushing away the unproductive memories and all recollection of the dreaming, trusting girl she had been. Then as now, she told herself, it had all been about sex and she had better not forget that for a moment.
Zarif withdrew the ring box from his pocket and set it in front of her. ‘I intended to give this to you yesterday but there was no opportunity.’
Ella opened the box to stare down at the magnificent sapphire and diamond ring. ‘What’s it for?’
‘I heard the child at our English wedding ask why you had no engagement ring. I bought it for you three years ago,’ Zarif admitted ruefully.
‘And you don’t mind me wearing it?’ Ella had flushed. He had very much disconcerted her.
‘I want you to wear it, habibti. It was always meant to be yours.’
Ella slid on the ring. It was a perfect fit. He had kept it for three years, maybe even forgotten he still had it until a child’s chatter had reminded him. He was being practical, that was all. He would hardly want to give the ring he had chosen for her to another woman in the future. ‘It’s gorgeous. Thank you,’ she said quietly.
Zarif liked looking at the two wedding rings and the engagement ring on her slender finger. She was his at last, a surprisingly soothing thought. He watched her eat the croissant, crumbs scattering while a look of delight slowly wakened on her lovely face. Within seconds he was hot and hard and when she sipped the chocolate, just a hint of the sweet drink coating her full, soft lower lip as she emitted a soft moan of pleasure, he was ready to rip her out of the chair and carry her to bed. Suddenly all he could think about was seeing that expression on her face while he pleasured her.
‘I want you...’ he husked.
Ella froze like a cornered kitten, blue eyes flying wide as she stared back at him, a tiny pulse beating like crazy just above her collarbone.
‘I meant to wait...I intended to wait,’ Zarif confided thickly as he sprang gracefully upright. ‘But when I look at you, I can’t.’
Her mouth ran dry while the blood in her veins ran hotter than lava. He towered over her, all male, decidedly exotic and stunningly sexy in his pristine robes. Her gaze locked tight to him, her heartbeat quickening, her breath feathering in her throat while her lungs laboured to fill again. That stillness, that primal sexual awareness that engulfed her was exactly what had made mincemeat of her principles when she had first met him. It shocked her that that could happen to her again, cutting through her new maturity, her bitterness and distrust to leave only the mindless yearning she had once suppressed.
As Ella began to rise from her seat Zarif bent his head and claimed a long, intense kiss. His tongue skated across hers and a piercing dart of such primitive longing slithered through her that it was a challenge to stay upright. A strong arm slid to her spine to support her slender frame and he lifted her off her feet with breathtaking ease to carry her back into the bedroom.
ELLA SURFACED TO find herself lying on the bed. After that burning kiss she felt a little as if she had been hit with a brick because her brain no longer felt as if it were functioning. Zarif was poised several feet away, stripping off his robes and letting them fall on the rug, his proud dark head already bare. Ella breathed in slow and deep.
It was time, she told her quailing nerves firmly. They were married. This was the deal she had made. Neither love nor liking came into the arrangement. Sex was on the menu, nothing else, and she had to learn to be practical about the fact.
Naked but for his boxers, Zarif was an intimidating sight, a literal power-house of whipcord muscle overlaid with smooth bronzed skin. Her intent gaze skated down over the steely muscles of his formidable chest, down over the little furrow of soft dark hair disappearing below the waistband of his boxers, and screeched to a sudden halt. The bulge of his straining masculinity was larger than she had expected and she tensed, telling herself not to be silly, not to get all worked up about something that other women took in their stride. She wasn’t a child. She might not have had sex before but she was an educated adult and none of her friends had been swept off to paradise by their first-time experience. Once it was done, though, it was done, she bargained with herself, desperate to establish a calmer outlook. Afterwards she would know what all the fuss was about and she would be able to treat such intimacy as a mundane event.
‘I’ve wanted you for so long,’ Zarif admitted, running long supple fingers through the swirling spill of her honey-coloured hair across the pillows. ‘You’re so beautiful...’
Ella very nearly laughed. She could see herself as pretty on a good day but only when she was all done up and her hair absolutely perfect. Certainly she did not compare well to the true beauties she had seen him pictured with in newspapers three years earlier. Zarif was the truly beautiful one, an outstandingly gorgeous male, who had stolen her heart the first time she saw him and broken it the day he proposed, sending her plunging from the heights of happiness straight down into the darkness of despair. In the aftermath she had picked herself up and gone on but the trust he had broken remained broken and she was a much more anxious, suspicious person than she had once been.
His thick silky hair nudged her cheek and then his mouth, velvet and warm, claimed hers again, closing out the rest of the world as though it had never been. There was nothing then but the racing beat of her heart and the tightening at her secret core. Without warning the towel she wore was gone and he cupped her full breasts, his thumbs strumming her engorged nipples to send currents of fire shooting down into her pelvis. Her hips shifted, rose without her volition and at the heart of her she felt tight as a drum and desperate for more.
Zarif drew back, lean, strong features taut. ‘If you truly don’t want this, I will stop. I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give, habibti.’
Taken aback, Ella stared up at him, still partially lost in