Cinderella's Desert Baby Bombshell by Lynne Graham, Louise Fuller

CHAPTER SIX

TATISTUMBLEDASshe walked away from the giant Ferris wheel on the Place de la Concorde. Her head was still spinning from the experience and the fabulous views of Paris. Saif’s hand shot out to steady her and she glanced up at him with a huge grin. ‘My goodness...that was amazing!’ she exclaimed.

Saif gazed down into her glowing face and the bright blue eyes lit up with enjoyment and he bent his head and crushed her mouth hungrily under his. That hunger speared through Tati like a flame striking touchpaper. Her knees wobbled and her hands closed into his sleeves to keep her upright. The urgent plunge of his tongue formed a pool of liquid heat in her pelvis and she gasped.

Saif jerked his head up, momentarily disconcerted to discover that he was in a public place, his bodyguards all politely looking away and probably astonished by his behaviour. In the crush of tourists and cameras flashing, he clenched his jaw hard. A very faint darkening scored his high cheekbones as he closed a hand over his wife’s and walked her in the direction of the picnic lunch awaiting them on the Champ de Mars. He felt vaguely as though she had intoxicated him.

‘The Louvre was exhausting.’ Tati sighed as she sank down on the rugs already laid across the springy grass for their comfort. She imagined that going sightseeing with Saif was very different from the usual tourist trek. They didn’t queue, they didn’t wait anywhere for anything and everything that they required was instantly provided. Her elegant black sundress pooled around her feet and she tugged off her high heels to curl bare pink toes into the grass beyond the rug.

‘We did only do the highlights tour. I spent months working in Paris and I went to the Louvre several times,’ Saif imparted with amusement, watching the way the sunshine bathed her luxuriant mane of hair in gold. He wanted to touch her again and the temptation entertained him because it was a novelty.

Usually, one taste of a woman was sufficient for him and he would move on. Sex, however, was a great leveller, Saif allowed cynically and, clearly, he hadn’t enjoyed enough of it for too long because around Tatiana he was on the constant edge of arousal and it was a challenge to resist her appeal. Yet, only a few yards away, young lovers were lying in the grass kissing passionately with their bodies entwined and their mouths mashed together. The Crown Prince of Alharia, however, had always known that he was not able to practise that kind of freedom and he told himself that he was too disciplined to give way to so juvenile a display. Yet he had kissed her in the street, utterly forgetting where he was, who he was.

‘I’m not really into art. Mum was,’ Tati confided. ‘She could look at a picture and make those highbrow comments the way people do, but then she went to art college and originally planned to train as an art historian.’

Dainty little bites of food were set out on a low table in front of them along with china plates and wine glasses in an elaborate spread.

In terms of an outside space, it was a picnic, but not quite the kind of picnic Tati had naïvely envisaged when Saif had first mentioned it. The Prince, she was starting to realise, didn’t truly know what informal or casual was. He was far too accustomed to top-flight silent service. Marcel had arrived laden down with hampers and his spry companion, who was an Alharian, had served them, moving forward on his knees with a bent head as though even to meet the eyes of the Emir’s heir would be a familiarity too far. A lot of people were watching the display but Saif seemed no more aware of that scrutiny than of the presence of the plain-clothes police hovering beyond the ring of their personal protection team, keeping a watchful eye over a foreign royal. But then why would he be aware? she asked herself ruefully. Presumably, this was Saif’s world as it always was, surrounded by security and hemmed in by tradition and formality.

‘Why didn’t you go to college?’ Saif asked softly.

‘Further education wasn’t an option for me after Granny died. Uncle Rupert was covering the cost of the nursing home and I was already living below their roof because, when Mum went into care, my uncle needed to rent out the cottage we had been using to set against the bills and I was too young to live alone,’ Tati explained wryly. ‘I felt obligated to help around the house because they couldn’t afford full-time staff and I was able to plug the gaps.’

‘Your relatives should not have allowed you to make such a sacrifice,’ Saif opined, impressed by the sacrifices she had made on her mother’s behalf. When he had been younger, he had been much more curious about his absent mother, particularly after her death. He might even have initially sought out his brother to find out more about the woman who had brought him into the world and then walked away. Angel had told him all he needed to know about his absent parent, had satisfied that empty space inside him.

‘She’s my mother and she was a loving one. It was my duty to do what I could to pay my uncle back,’ Tati contradicted gently. ‘If I’d gone to college I would have built up thousands of pounds in student loans and it would have been years before I was in a position to make a decent financial contribution. I’m only twenty-one. I’ve still got loads of time to study and focus on a career.’

‘That was a mature decision,’ Saif acknowledged, wryly recalling the party girl he had assumed he was marrying while conceding that, undeniably, her cousin made a far more appropriate wife for a man in his position.

Tati nibbled at the delicious finger food on the plates and quaffed her wine.

‘We have one personal topic which we haven’t yet but must touch on,’ Saif murmured in a low voice, and he topped up her wine glass, impervious to the shocked appraisal of the server hovering only yards away, keen to jump at the smallest sign of either of them having any need for attention.

Smooth brow furrowing, Tati glanced at him, thinking how incredibly good-looking he was with sunshine gleaming off his black hair and olive skin, lighting his eyes to a sea-glass green shade. ‘And what is that?’ she prompted abstractedly.

‘Yesterday I was negligent in my care of you. As the experienced partner, all the blame on that score is mine. But that recklessness must not be repeated. In our position, the potential consequences would bring complications we would not want to deal with,’ Saif framed in a taut undertone of warning.

It took a rather long moment for Tati to grasp what he was talking about. ‘Negligent in my care of you...consequences...complications...mustn’t be repeated...’ And then the penny of comprehension dropped with a resounding thump and her tummy curdled in dismay. He was referring to their lack of contraceptive common sense the day before. What else could he be talking about? He hadn’t used birth control and she had reassured him, it only occurring to her later that her contraception was scarcely reliable when she had already been off it for a couple of days because she had left her strip of pills behind in England. Losing the rosy colour in her cheeks, she paled and swallowed down her misgivings before sipping her wine while studiously not looking in his direction.

There was no point worrying him ahead of time when really...what were the chances that she would conceive the very first time she had sex? She gritted her teeth, anxiety flashing through her as she reminded herself that she was not a naïve teenager, thinking that that should be sufficient to keep her safe. There was a chance, of course, there was when, even with precautions, no form of contraception was foolproof.

‘We need to be responsible,’ she said, proud of the steadiness of her voice until it occurred to her that, once again, she was throwing up a green light for further such intimacy.

And she shouldn’t be doing that, of course, she shouldn’t be. Even though she had enjoyed the experience? Her cheeks hot, she argued with herself inside her head. If they were careful going forward, there was no reason why she shouldn’t be intimate with Saif again. She was an adult woman capable of making that choice on her own behalf. There was nothing morally wrong about having a sexual relationship, she reminded herself irritably, as long as the same consequences that had derailed her mother’s life did not assail her.

Sadly, unplanned pregnancies sometimes extracted the highest price from the female partner, she reflected ruefully, because a man might have to contribute to his child’s maintenance, but that did not necessarily mean that he took on any share of the childcare or indeed had any further interest in the child involved.

Her father had been of that ilk, indifferent from the day that her mother had informed him of her pregnancy. Even after his release from prison, he had pleaded poverty when pursued by the law for child support payments. She had never met her reluctant father in the flesh. As a teenager she had once written to him asking for a meeting but, even though the courts had verified her paternity, he had only responded with the denial that she was his child. That had hurt, that had blown a giant hole in her secret hope that he was curious about her as well.

‘Yes,’ Saif agreed, relieved, it seemed, by her attitude, which only made her feel even guiltier for not being fully honest with him from the outset and just admitting that there was a risk, admittedly, she hoped, a very slight risk that conception was a possibility.

Only telling the truth would make her sound like such an idiot, she conceded ruefully. She had told him it was safe. She had told him she was on contraception, only to recognise when it was too late that the pill method only worked if taken on a consistent schedule.

‘We’re attending a party tonight,’ Saif murmured, disconcerting her with the ease with which he flipped the topic of conversation. ‘You should enjoy it. I believe it’s usually quite a spectacle.’

‘Fancy, then,’ Tati assumed, mentally flipping through her new wardrobe and realising with some embarrassment that she had bought so much that she couldn’t remember all of the outfits without the garments being physically in front of her. That was not a problem that she had ever thought she would live to have, she acknowledged ruefully.

‘Very,’ Saif confirmed lazily, watching her with eyes that were sea-glass bright green seduction in the sunlight, his gaze enhanced by dense black spiky lashes. He wasn’t touching her, he didn’t need to touch her, she acknowledged in wonderment, he just had to look at her a certain way and that certain way was, without a doubt, incredibly sexy and potent.

Heat rose at the heart of her, butterflies fluttering in her tummy. Dragging her gaze from his, she sipped at her wine, reminding herself afresh that she was an adult woman, able to make her own choices...and right now, she thought, dizzy in the grip of that sensual intoxication, her choice was him.

Ana had always told Tati that she was very naïve about men. Her cousin prided herself on being as ruthless as any male in taking what she wanted from a man and then moving on, regardless of how the man felt about it. Ana often left broken hearts in her wake. Tati not only didn’t want to leave broken hearts behind her, but also didn’t think she would ever possess the power her cousin seemed to have over the opposite sex.

No, she couldn’t compare herself to Ana, Tati acknowledged back at the magnificent house while she browsed through her wide selection of gowns. She was not and would never be a heartbreaker, but she rather suspected that Saif fell into that category. He emanated that cool, sophisticated air of unavailability that her cousin found so attractive in a man, so it was rather ironic that he had ended up married to Tati instead. Tati, unrefined, clumsy...and so angry from the moment he had met her.

Tati had never argued and fought with anyone the way she had with Saif. And where had all that rage come from? She supposed it had built up over the years below her uncle and aunt’s roof where she had been consistently bullied and reminded of her lowly place in life on a daily basis. The smallest request for a wage that would at least fund her bus trips to visit her mother and little gifts for the older woman had been viewed as an offence of ingratitude. That she was a ‘charity’ child dependent on the goodwill of others for survival had been brought home to her hard and often and that label had ground her pride into the dust. Her mother’s troubled past, her care bills and even the family embarrassment caused by Tati’s illegitimate birth had often been used as a stick to beat Tati with and keep her down. Her uncle would not have dared be so offensive had her mother been around still possessed of her cutting tongue.

At the same time, her grandmother had had no idea what went on in her own house and Tati had shielded the frail old lady from the ugly truth. Even so, her Granny Milly had once taken the trouble to assure Tati that her mother would always be looked after, and Tati had prayed that sufficient money would be laid aside in the old lady’s will to cover the nursing home costs. Unhappily, though, her late grandmother had forgotten that promise and had remembered neither her daughter Mariana nor Tati in her last will and testament.

That oversight had hurt, Tati conceded ruefully, because she had been deeply attached to her grandmother. In addition, the soothing knowledge that her mother’s care was secure would not only have meant the world to Tati, but would also have released her from her virtual servitude in her uncle’s home. But she had long since forgiven the old lady, who had been quite ill and confused towards the end of her life.

Shaking her head clear of those disturbing recollections of the past, Tati tugged a silvery-grey evening gown out of one of the closets. The delicate lace overlay was cobweb fine and it shimmered below the lights. She had fallen in love with the elegant dress at first sight, thinking comically that it was a princess dress for a grown-up, it not occurring to her that she was, technically speaking anyway, now a princess, thanks to her marriage to a prince. The modest neckline and long sleeves might not be eye-catching, but the gown had a quiet, stylish elegance that appealed to her.

As she emerged fully clad from the bathroom, her make-up applied in a few subtle touches, Saif stilled halfway out of his shirt. Tati paused as well, reluctantly enthralled by the expanse of muscular bronzed chest on view. He was beautifully built from his broad shoulders to his narrow waist and long, powerful thighs. For a split second she remembered the weight of him over her and she was suddenly so short of breath she almost choked, her cheeks flaming as she coughed and croaked, ‘Sorry, wasn’t expecting to see you!’

‘That dress is spectacular on you,’ Saif breathed appreciatively, because that particular shade of grey enhanced the deep blue of her eyes and lent a glow to her porcelain skin while the tailoring of the dress sleekly outlined the feminine curves of her lush figure.

‘Seriously?’ Tati queried, her head lifting high again.

‘Seriously,’ he confirmed, strolling across the room to indicate the gift boxes on the highly polished dressing table. ‘These are for you.’

‘Presents? It’s not my birthday yet,’ Tati told him, lifting a gift box with the certainty that such packaging could only contain jewellery and uncomfortable at the prospect.

‘As my wife, you need to wear jewels. It’s expected,’ Saif said smoothly.

Tati dealt him a suspicious glance before opening the boxes to reveal a diamond necklace and earrings. ‘These are...spectacular,’ she whispered truthfully, a fingertip reverently stroking the rainbow fire of a single gleaming gem. ‘But I shouldn’t—’

‘No. These are family jewels that my father once gave to my mother. My mother left everything behind when she left Alharia and it would please my father very much to know that his gifts are being worn again.’

‘Is your mother still alive?’ Tati asked gently, detaching the necklace from the box, feeling the cool of the beautiful gems against her skin as her reluctance to wear the diamonds melted away.

‘No, she passed away about three years ago in a helicopter crash with her husband,’ Saif explained.

‘Did you ever meet her again after she left your father? Or even see her?’ she prompted, intrigued by his seemingly calm attitude to his abandonment as a child.

‘I was devastated when I heard of her death,’ Saif heard himself admit, disconcerting himself almost as much as he surprised Tati with that declaration. ‘While she was alive I could toy with the idea of looking her up and getting to know her—should she have been interested—but once she was gone, that possibility was gone for ever.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Tati murmured wryly. ‘I wrote to my father when I was a teenager asking him to meet me and, even though it had been proven in court that I was his daughter, he wrote back telling me that he wasn’t my father and didn’t wish to hear from me again. It hurt a lot. My mother had tried to warn me that he wasn’t interested, but I was too stubborn to listen.’

‘My father told me that he didn’t think that my mother had many maternal genes. Some women don’t, I believe, and presumably fathers can suffer from the same flaw. Let me help,’ he murmured, crossing the room to remove the necklace from her fingers and settle it round her throat, his fingertips brushing the nape of her neck as he clasped it, sending a faint quiver of awareness through her.

Awesomely conscious of his proximity and the familiar scent of his cologne, Tati struggled to behave normally as she donned the earrings and finally turned to let him see her.

‘Perfect,’ Saif pronounced.

‘I’ll wait downstairs for you,’ Tati told him breathlessly, not sure that she could withstand the desire to watch him while he undressed, and mortified by the temptation. It was as though Saif had cast some weird kind of sex spell over her, she conceded shamefacedly as Marcel offered her a drink in the grand main salon.

It was normal, healthy lust, Tati supposed of her fixation and her growing obsession with Saif’s extraordinary eyes, Saif’s hands, what he could do with them, how it felt when he touched her...

Enough of this nonsense, she mentally screamed at herself. She was behaving with all the maturity of a schoolgirl with a first crush. None of it was any big deal, she told herself bracingly, deciding that she was only so bemused and off balance because she was a decidedly late starter when it came to the opposite sex. All over again, she wished she had acquired some of her cousin’s glossy cool and confidence. But, marooned on a country estate without money and with few social outlets, Tati had not enjoyed her cousin’s opportunities to meet men and date. In reality, Tati thought with regret, she probably was as naïve as an adolescent.

When she climbed into the limo with Saif she was, momentarily, tempted to pinch herself before accepting that the designer gown, the incredibly handsome man by her side and the opulent mode of travel could figure in her new lifestyle. It was even more ironic to know that her uncle and aunt would now be furious that she was the one benefiting from the marriage rather than their daughter. They had needed her to marry the Prince to gain access to that dowry, but it would still outrage them that their niece was now living in luxury. And for the first time, Tati acknowledged that she was grateful to have escaped her relatives’ demands, relieved to know that in many ways she was finally free and that her mother’s residence in her care home was secure. She would eventually be able to look towards her own future, unfettered by the limits imposed on her by others.

‘You’re very quiet this evening,’ Saif remarked as they crossed the pavement to the large illuminated mansion with its classic gardens that were equally well-lit to show off glimpses of women in elaborate dresses and men in dinner jackets, their necks craned as they watched the glorious fireworks shooting and sparkling across the night sky in a rainbow of colour and illumination.

‘Gosh, these people know how to party,’ Tati commented, hugely impressed by her surroundings as they stepped into a brilliantly lit hall and a crush of little groups of chattering people. And everybody, literally everybody, looked as though they might be a celebrity of some kind. In such company, neither her gown nor her magnificent diamonds could ever look like overkill. ‘Are the hosts close friends of yours?’

‘No. I owe this invitation to the relative whose house we are using,’ Saif admitted. ‘But I have no doubt that I will see familiar faces here.’

‘Yes. I suppose you get to meet a lot of people.’

‘Because the Emir doesn’t travel. I take care of Alharia’s diplomatic interests in his place. It entails attending formal receptions and dinners. You’ll be accompanying me to some of them,’ he declared, startling her.

‘Me?’Tati stressed in a low mutter of disconcertion as he curved a guiding hand to her taut spine.

‘The joys of marrying a crown prince,’ Saif murmured teasingly, his breath fanning her cheekbone. ‘Some of that kind of socialising is boring but, equally, sometimes it’s fascinating.’

‘I should’ve realised that there would be...er...duties to carry out in this role.’ Tati sighed. ‘It all happened so fast, though... One minute Ana was running for the airport and the next we were married.’

In the midst of that speech, Saif was hailed by two men, who addressed him in another language. It wasn’t French and it wasn’t English, and she was introduced and served with a drink of champagne by a passing waiter before they moved on into a room. ‘Could we go out and see the fireworks?’ she pressed once they were alone again.

Saif glanced down at her in surprise, for in his experience women in their finery avoided the outdoors like the plague. The unhidden eagerness brimming in her upturned gaze, however, made him laugh and for a moment she seemed much younger than her years. ‘Why do you want to see them?’

‘Mum was so terrified of fireworks that I never got to see them properly as a child. When she was young she witnessed a dreadful accident, which injured a friend at a firework event, and it put her off them for life,’ she explained. ‘Every Bonfire Night, we sat indoors with the curtains closed and then, the next day, Ana would tell me how much fun she had had at whichever party she had been invited to and I would feel madly jealous.’

Saif’s expressive lips quirked. ‘Naturally.’

They stood on the paved terrace watching the display until a low murmur of a comment made Tati turn her head. A very tall brunette in a startlingly see-through dress was stalking towards them. For a split second, Tati was guilty of staring, taken aback by a woman revealing that much flesh in public, showing off her bare breasts and her nipple rings below the thin white chiffon gown. Truly, however, Tati was forced to admit, the woman had a superb body. In haste she turned her head away from the conspicuous beauty, only to stiffen in astonishment when the woman appeared in front of them and greeted Saif with the kind of familiarity that no woman wanted to see her male companion receive in her presence.

‘Saif!’ she carolled, followed by a voluble gush of French as she walked her long, manicured fingertips up over his chest in a very inviting gesture.

‘Juliette,’ Saif murmured with rather more restraint. ‘May I introduce you to my wife, Tatiana?’

‘Your wife?’ Juliette gasped in consternation while walking her fingers down over his flat muscular stomach in unmistakable invitation.

Tati couldn’t stop herself. In a knee-jerk reaction, she reached out and pushed the brunette’s hand away from Saif. ‘His wife, sorry,’ she said with a smile that she was sure was unconvincing.

A split second later, Juliette having languorously taken the hint and strolled away, Tati was shattered by her own possessive and wholly inappropriate reaction to another woman touching the man she had married. Saif didn’t belong to her in the usual sense of married people. They weren’t in love either. She had come up with the label of friends with benefits but even that wasn’t a fair tag for them, because people in that kind of relationship were generally those who had had a reasonably long and close friendship before intimacy developed and she and Saif didn’t fit into that category either. The intense colour of mortification swept her cheeks and she felt as though she were burning alive inside her own skin.

‘I’m sorry... She was annoying me,’ she said uncomfortably.

‘It was unseemly for her to touch me in that way,’ Saif murmured, appraising her with gleaming green eyes fringed by black lashes. ‘There is no need for an apology.’

But regardless of what he said, Tati felt very differently. She had shocked herself with that little show of possessive behaviour. After all, she wasn’t entitled to be that territorial with Saif. She should not be experiencing any prompting to react as though she were jealous of another woman touching him. Of course, she wasn’t jealous or possessive of him, she told herself fiercely.

‘And it was sexy,’ Saif murmured in a husky undertone, gazing down at her with potent green eyes of appreciation. ‘Very, very sexy.’

Stunned, Tati looked back at him in wonderment and then she couldn’t help herself—she laughed, and all her discomfiture was washed away as though it had never been. Evidently, Saif took a very different view of her attitude, but as the evening wore on she continued to marvel at the way she had behaved. Clearly, she was possessive of Saif. Was that simply because she had gone to bed with him?

Brow furrowing, she attempted, during all the chatter, the dancing and the eating that comprised the lively party atmosphere, to pin down what she was feeling about the man she had married. It was surprisingly difficult. She had travelled at speed from raging resentment and frustration over her powerlessness to grudging acceptance that Saif had had little more choice than she had in their marriage. And somewhere along the line she had begun lusting after him, liking him, appreciating his calm, measured approach to life. It certainly didn’t mean that she was developing any kind of mental attachment to him, she assured herself confidently.

She wasn’t so naïve that she would confuse lust and love, was she? Admittedly, she was enthralled by the fluid movement of his hips against hers on the dance floor, the pulsing ache building between her thighs and the provocative awareness that she was having the same physical effect on him. Unlike her, he couldn’t hide his response. She was insanely conscious of his arousal. And that sheer reciprocity thrilled Tati because it made her feel powerful and seductive for the first time in her life, no longer a weak pawn in someone else’s game, but an equal. She was finally making her own choices and doing what pleased her, rather than someone else.

‘So, you and Juliette?’ Tati whispered as she stretched up to Saif. ‘Do share...’

Saif tensed, wondering why on earth she would ask such an awkward question before reminding himself that women were often morbidly curious about a man’s past. His three older sisters had taught him that, always prying where their interest was least welcome.

‘Was she your girlfriend?’ Tati prompted.

‘No. It was a casual connection.’ Saif shrugged in emphasis, hoping that her curiosity concluded there, long brown fingers skimming soothingly down the side of her face. ‘I can’t keep my hands off you,’ he breathed with a sudden raw edge to his dark, deep drawl that sent a responsive shiver of delight down her taut spine.

‘It’s mutual,’ she whispered.

Even so, she was still assailed by a sudden perverse attack of guilt and discomfiture because, try as she might to be a bolder version of her old self, being bold still felt sinful and brazen. She would have to work harder on that outlook, she told herself firmly, because being quiet, accepting and the person others preferred her to be had only served to deprive her of her freedom and her choices in life. Wanting Saif, allowing herself to succumb to that sizzling chemistry that went way beyond anything she had ever experienced, was probably the most daring thing she had ever done. And one of the best things about Saif, Tati reflected happily, was that he hadn’t known her as she used to be and, with him, she could be entirely her true self.

He curved an arm round her in the limousine on the drive back to the house. She was gloriously aware of the strength of his lean, powerful frame up against her and the subtle musky, fragrant scent of him that close. Her heart was pounding in her chest when he stopped on the landing halfway up the fabulous staircase of the town house and hauled her up against him to kiss her with all the fierce hunger she craved. The lancing touch of his tongue inside her mouth set her on fire and a choked moan escaped low in her throat.

Her whole body was surging with wild anticipation and, lifting her, he cannoned into the bedroom, pushing her back against the wall and pinning her there afresh to crush her lips hungrily beneath his again. Her heart was thumping, her pulses thrumming because that rocketing passion of his took her over and thrilled her to death. It was the exact match of her own, a wild, seething need that drove out every other logical thought, leaving only the wanting behind.

Saif turned her round to run down the zip on her dress, pushing it off her shoulders, stroking it down her arms until it dropped round her feet. Kicking off her shoes, heartbeat accelerating, she stepped out of the dress. His lips traced the line of her shoulder and every nerve ending in her body leapt to attention as she pressed back into the heat of him, breathless and boneless with need.

‘I like the lingerie,’ Saif husked with appreciation as he carefully lifted her and lowered her down onto the well-sprung bed. ‘But I think I’ll like you even better out of it.’

Flushed and wide-eyed, her eyes very blue in her face, Tati watched Saif shed his tailored dinner jacket and bow tie, standing over her while he unbuttoned his dress shirt, smouldering emerald-green eyes locked to the silvery-grey cobweb-fine bra and panties she sported and the firm, soft curves they enhanced. ‘Your eyes are so unusual,’ she whispered, and then wanted to cringe at herself for saying it just at that moment.

‘As I said, my only inheritance from my mother,’ Saif muttered, his shirt fluttering to the floor, exposing an impressive bronzed torso composed of chiselled abs and a flat, taut stomach and the intriguing little furrow of black hair that ran down below his waistband. ‘But I didn’t like being different as a child when everyone else’s eyes were dark. You occasionally see blue eyes in the desert tribes but never this shade.’

Something clenched almost painfully in Tati’s stomach as she looked up at him. He came down on the bed beside her, naked and aroused and, oh, so sexy to her riveted gaze. ‘I like your eyes,’ she framed unevenly, her chest lifting as she dragged in a sustaining breath.

His expert mouth toyed with hers while he released her bra and explored the pouting swells and hard tips eager for his attention. He trailed his lips down to tease those rosy, sensitive crowns and her hips rose and she gasped, her entire body shimmying on an edge of gathering anticipation, desire twisting sharp as a knife inside her, tensing every muscle. He skimmed away the panties, parted her thighs and she trembled, feeling shy, tempted to say no but too aroused to have that discipline.

And then he employed his tongue on her and exquisite sensation flooded her. He dipped a finger into her tight channel and her spine arched, the craving climbing again. Melting heat liquefied her pelvis, excitement gripping her taut, and before she could even work out what was happening to her, she became a creature only capable of response, so worked up to a peak that she could only moan and gasp while her body moved in a compulsive rhythm. When she reached a climax it was fast and furious, ripping through her quivering length in an explosion of raw heat and ecstasy, leaving her flopping back against the pillows, limp as a noodle.

Saif dug into the cabinet beside the bed and donned protection. ‘We will take no further risks,’ he murmured with a slanting, charismatic smile.

Relief filled Tati because she had been thinking that perhaps she ought to go out and look for an English-speaking doctor and ask for replacement pills. But wouldn’t Saif’s precautions be sufficient until she went back to England to see her mother and reclaimed her possessions from her uncle’s home? Convinced that she no longer needed to worry on that score, Tati wrapped her arms round him as he came down to her again. Her body was still pulsing with the aftermath of satiation and highly sensitive.

‘I’ve been thinking about this moment all day and all evening,’ Saif groaned, startling green eyes alight with desire.

‘All day?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why did we wait this long?’ she whispered as he shifted against her tender core, sliding into her in a sure rocking motion that sent her heart rate flying.

‘You tell me,’ Saif urged thickly, awash with surprise at the sheer mutuality of sex with Tatiana.

With a twist of his lean hips he pushed deep and fast into the tight, damp welcome awaiting him and he listened with satisfaction to his bride moan with a pleasure that only echoed his own.

His hard, insistent rhythm enthralled her in the wild ride that followed. Excitement roared higher for her with his every thrust. She moved against him, lost in the experience as her excitement rose higher and higher, the need tugging at her every sense pushing her to a frenzied peak where only mindless sensation controlled her. When the glorious wave of excitement tipped her over the edge, she cried out in writhing delight before the last of her energy drained away, leaving her limp and winded.

Saif thrust away the bedding and fell back from her. ‘I’m hot...’

Tati grinned and rolled closer, a possessive hand smoothing down over his heaving chest. ‘Yes, very hot.’

Saif sat up and pulled her to him. ‘And you’re joining me in the shower.’

‘Why? I’m not fit for anything else right now,’ she protested, shy about getting out of bed naked in front of him and knowing how silly that was after what they had shared.

‘I’m not ready to let go of you yet,’ Saif told her truthfully, his fertile imagination already arranging her in erotic positions round the marble bathroom and seeing possibilities everywhere. Cool off, his brain told him, step back, regain control, because he suddenly felt as though he were in dangerous territory, a territory without rules or boundaries and not his style at all.

That uneasy feeling, that sense of wrong, stabbed at him because Saif liked everything laid out neat and tidy, nothing left to chance. And yet here he was with a wife who wasn’t a genuine wife, a lover who wasn’t a simple lover and a friend who wasn’t a real friend. Where was he supposed to go next? What was his end goal?

And even though Tati knew in her heart of hearts that she shouldn’t go there, she was too curious to silence the question brimming on her lips. ‘And when will you be ready?’

Having switched on the shower, Saif swung back to her, startlingly handsome with his black hair tousled, his green eyes very shrewd, sharp and bright, his strong jawline defined by black stubble. ‘Ready for what?’ he queried.

‘Ready to let me go?’ she almost whispered in daring clarification, sliding past him to take refuge behind the tiled shower wall where he could no longer see her.

Saif froze. ‘You’re asking how soon we can decently go for a divorce without unduly surprising anyone?’ he murmured flatly, unprepared for that sudden far-reaching question and wishing she hadn’t asked before he had even had the time to decide on the wisest approach to their predicament. ‘Possibly six months...a year? I don’t really know yet. We should make it look as though we’ve given the marriage a fair chance before throwing in the cards.’

Six months to a year, Tati mused, thinking what a very short space of time that was. A mere blink and their relationship would be over, done and dusted, ready for the archives. Her tummy hollowed out and sank while she busied herself washing her hair, her movements slowing as she became aware of the little muscles she had strained and the ache between her thighs, the inescapable reminders of their intimacy. Friends with benefits, she reminded herself doggedly, but that tag no longer enjoyed the same exhilarating ring of daring that it had first seemed to have. Indeed, all of a sudden that style of thinking seemed a little sad and immature, she acknowledged ruefully. Saif was making it very clear that what they currently had was a casual fling with an ending scripted in advance.

An ending written and decided at the same instant they had married, she reminded herself. There was nothing personal about his decision, she reasoned, determined not to take umbrage. Saif could never have planned to stay married long-term to the bride his father had picked for him and she could hardly blame him for that, could she? Saif was way too sophisticated to settle for an arranged marriage with a stranger. And when the stranger was also an unsuitable foreigner, a divorce was a fairly predictable conclusion.

Of course, she wanted a divorce as well, Tati assured herself. Naturally, she wanted to reclaim her own life again. Yet it was a challenge for Tati to consider a future that she had never been free to consider before. And would she be free?

After all, for how long would her marriage to Saif ensure that her uncle would continue paying her mother’s expenses? Now that he had got the money he wanted, it was difficult to have faith in the older man’s word. Perhaps her mother would eventually have to be moved to a cheaper care facility, Tati reasoned unhappily. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. There were worse options, she reminded herself impatiently. Whatever happened, she would handle it and she would help her mother to handle it too. Although, had Saif meant it when he had said that from now on he would handle her mother’s care bills? But, for how long would he be prepared to do that? Would there be a divorce settlement that covered that need?

Tomorrow, she decided, she would phone the nursing home to check on the older woman. She would also ring her mother’s cousin, Pauline, who lived only yards from the care facility and who, as Mariana’s only other visitor, always had a more personal take on Mariana’s condition. She would discuss the possibility of a move with Pauline.

How could she possibly accept more money from Saif? Neither she nor her mother were his responsibilities. They could not acknowledge on the one hand that theirs was not a real marriage and then behave as though it were when it came to money. She had to grow up and stop looking to other people to support her, Tati told herself in exasperation. Saif didn’t owe her anything!