Sheikh's Forbidden Queen: Zarif's Convenient Queen / Gambling with the Crown. Carol Marinelli
was only for a year, he recalled absently, wondering why he hadn’t demanded two years or even three until he remembered that sooner rather than later he had to marry for real and reproduce and he marvelled that he could even have momentarily forgotten that salient fact.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that your mother had had a heart attack and your father a breakdown?’ Zarif demanded without warning. ‘Your father’s friend, Jonathan, spoke to me at the reception and clearly assumed that I already knew.’
Ella compressed her lips. ‘I didn’t think that plucking a thousand violin strings would cut any ice with you.’
‘Telling me would not have been plucking strings,’ Zarif censured. ‘It would have been giving me relevant facts and it would have changed my outlook.’
Ella shot him a dark look. ‘I doubt that very much. I didn’t sense any compassion in the room.’
Zarif gritted his teeth, exasperated that she could think him that cruel. Her parents were good, decent people, who had been kind and welcoming to him for several years without any hope of reward or profit. ‘You have a seven-hour flight during which I expect you to get over your sulk and accept your new status,’ he delivered grimly once the jet was in the air.
‘I do not sulk!’ Ella exclaimed furiously, her blonde head swivelling to deal a fiery glance at his lean, dark, beautiful face.
‘Oh, I can assure you that you do,’ Zarif drawled, smooth as glass. ‘But I am impervious to such moods.’
Ella undid her seat-belt fastening and shot upright as though jet-propelled. ‘I will say it once more only...I am not in a mood!’ She launched the declaration furiously down at him. ‘You’re as insensitive as a rock. Have you no concept of how difficult it is for me to leave my home to live in a foreign country with a different culture and a man who doesn’t even have the saving grace of loving me? Have you any idea how I felt today lying and putting on a fake happy-bride act for all my family and friends?’
Zarif stayed where he was and contemplated her with an immense sense of satisfaction for the Ella he knew best was back on display. Her volatile emotions and innate spirit never failed to entertain him while other women displaying similar tendencies had swiftly been dismissed from his life, he acknowledged dimly. But in a rage, Ella was magnificent, sapphire-blue eyes splintering defiance, lovely face angrily flushed, lush bee-stung lips prominent and offering pure pink invitation.
‘Are you just going to sit there saying nothing?’ Ella positively snarled, nonplussed by his stillness and lack of reaction.
‘When you get all steamed up,’ Zarif murmured huskily, ‘you look incredibly hot and sexy.’
Ella did what any sane woman would have done, because it was clear that he had not paid heed to a single word she had said. She lifted her glass of water and emptied it over his arrogant dark head. ‘Then it’s time you cooled off...’
Totally taken aback by that liquid assault, Zarif sprang upright, tawny eyes ablaze with anger and no small amount of disbelief as he flicked dripping black hair off his wide, intelligent brow. ‘You are behaving like a madwoman!’
‘No, a madwoman would have used a knife, not water,’ Ella told him succinctly. ‘Now I will say it again. I was not sulking. I’m simply nervous about the challenge of embracing a new lifestyle.’
‘And so you should be because I am no pushover when I lose my temper!’ Zarif grated as he snatched her off her feet without the smallest warning and stalked stormily down the cabin to thrust open the door at the foot.
‘Put me down!’ Ella yelled at him.
Zarif dropped her from a height down onto a bed without a great deal of bounce and she fell back against the pillows, bright honey-coloured hair rioting round her flushed features. She surveyed him in shock as he began to wrench off his jacket and haul at his tie. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.
‘You soaked my clothing,’ he reminded her grittily as he ripped open the buttons on the white silk shirt plastered to his muscular chest. ‘And if we’re about to have a row, we will stage it in here where it is more private.’
Ella sat up, more than a little embarrassed at the water she had thrown over him. ‘I shouldn’t have drenched you...but when you go all stony-faced and unemotional, I hate it!’
‘I am unemotional by nature,’ Zarif shot back at her as he stripped off the shirt. ‘I’m afraid you’ll just have to learn to deal with that. Assaulting me isn’t an option I’m prepared to tolerate.’
Ella’s tummy somersaulted and a slow heavy heat spread in her pelvis as she looked at him because he, undoubtedly, had the most beautiful male body she had ever seen. Roped muscle defined his broad bronzed torso. Dark whorls of hair adorned his impressive pecs, arrowing down over a flat washboard stomach to disappear below the belt encircling his lean hips. For a split second, he simply took her breath away.
‘Particularly when there are so many more entertaining possibilities on offer now,’ Zarif completed softly as he came down on his knees on the bed beside her, still bare chested, his tailored trousers pulling taut across his lean, powerful thighs.
Unnerved, Ella froze like a stone pillar. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Of course you do,’ Zarif contradicted, running a mocking fingertip along the compressed line of her mouth. ‘Freezing into stillness like an animal being hunted isn’t going to save you. You’re my wife. I can touch you, hunt you any time I like...’
That awareness had taunted Ella from the moment he whipped off his shirt without a shade of self-consciousness to expose his glowing bronzed skin and whipcord muscles. But then why would Zarif be self-conscious in any intimate situation? Ella mocked her own naivety, all too painfully aware of the many highly experienced lovers he had evidently enjoyed. He was so close now that she could have reached out and touched him and her fingers braced harder to the mattress as if she feared being tempted. And she did fear it because he had always tempted her and it would destroy her self-respect if she gave him anything more than passive compliance.
Zarif lowered his head and used his lips to pluck teasingly at the taut line of hers. Oxygen feathered in her tight throat and with a faint gasp she opened her mouth. But he continued to play games with her, suckling at her lower lip and then darting the tip of his tongue along the underside of her lip, setting off an astonishing flurry of reaction that slithered through her like a sweet piercing dart that went deep. She trembled, astonishingly aware of the prickling tightness of her nipples, and then all of a sudden, literally between one breath and the next, she wanted his mouth hard on hers with a ferocity that shook her. Her hands wanted to claw into his hair to drag his head down to hers.
Her head fell back on her shoulders even as she felt the faint brush of his fingers against her spine. Cooler air washed her backbone and surprise gripped her as she registered that he had unzipped her dress without her even noticing. Her lashes flew up, her gaze connecting with scorching gold fringed with lush black lashes. He had such beautiful eyes, she acknowledged, and every other thought in her head evaporated simultaneously.
Zarif tugged the perfumed weight of her honey-blonde hair forward as he eased the dress down her arms. ‘I always loved your hair... It’s the most amazing colour when the sun catches it.’
‘No sun here,’ she framed nervously, feeling alarmingly shy at being stripped down to her bra and panties. He was coolly undressing her without a hint of passion and she was so unnerved by the experience that she could not even contemplate the much greater intimacy that surely still lay ahead of her.
Hard as a rock, Zarif studied the ripe mounds of her full breasts and swiftly removed the bra to cup the lush heavy globes in his appreciative hands. He stroked the quivering tips to aching sensitivity and only then did he kiss her.
Ella quivered, her whole body alight and tingling. Her hands dug into his shoulders as he took her rosy nipples between his fingers while claiming her mouth in a long drugging kiss. He skated his tongue across the sensitive roof of