The Sheikh's Impatient Virgin (11 page)

‘Yes, she’s a charmer.’

Obeying a compulsion he could not resist, his hooded glance slid over the soft contours of her face, greedily drinking in the details. Her skin was softer and even whiter than he remembered. The dimple in her cheek, though, was absent; she was not smiling.

She had not been smiling except for a faint tragic flicker when he had met her on the tarmac. The greeting had borne no resemblance to the one in his head, the one where she had flung herself into his arms.

It was ironic that what had displeased him would have pleased the small but vocal minority in the capital he had spent the last week identifying. After identifying them he had made a point of explaining that he would not look favourably on people who spread tales about his wife’s past. They had been suitably chastened, but the situation would bear watching. It would be hard enough for Eva to adapt without the moral majority who thought a virgin bride was the only suitable mate for a future King talking behind their hands.

They could think what they liked, but he made no bones about how vigorous his response would be if he heard them.

Conscious that if he touched Eva his ability to pull back was in doubt, Karim had ignored the cheek she offered him. He had also ignored the discussion of the weather.

He had had more trouble ignoring her warm mention of Luke, who apparently had let her know that her tutor was extremely pleased with the final draft of her thesis.

If the man had been within his grasp he would have taken more than a little pleasure from spoiling his pretty face.

For a man who had always prided himself on his control it was shocking to suddenly have none, though not in the same shocking league as the almost audible sound of the floodgates that had held back his emotions for years buckling when he had seen her standing there on the tarmac.

Looking so small and lost and vulnerable, her hair like a beacon.

He had never wanted a woman in a way that defied logic and reason—he did now.

He had spent the previous three weeks since they had last been together—it would have been two if he hadn’t arrived back and found more than a little bad feeling directed towards his new wife—alternating between feeling furious that he had allowed himself to be trapped for a second time into a marriage that was not convenient for him, and being furious with Eva for choosing to spend that time with her family and not with him and more specifically in his bed.

The fact he had made no attempt to stop her and had not disagreed with King Hassan’s suggestion only increased the level of Karim’s sense of impotent fury.

It was a lot of fury.

And at one level Karim was conscious that it was a lot easier to be angry than actually examine his feelings in any great depth. As they had driven in silence in the car with three feet and a wall of silence separating them he had repeated to himself like a mantra, This is just sex, this is just sex.

And when it was more than
imagined
sex he would be sane again.

Even repeating it twice did not make it sound true.

‘And she’s well.’

‘Total remission,’ he confirmed, dragging his thoughts from her mouth.

‘That’s marvellous,’ Eva said, struggling to maintain a wary smile in the face of his grim forbidding expression. His body
language was so rigid she could see the fine muscles just under the surface of the golden skin in his neck quivering.

Someone had to break the ice.

‘I was wondering if perhaps we could…eat together tonight and…catch up?’ Tonight she would come clean and admit her sexual inexperience was a lead weight around her neck.

She also planned to admit that sex with him and only him was not something she would have a problem with.

Karim, feeling the tension that he always felt preceding a visit to his father, a tension on this occasion made a hundred times worse by the fact he wanted her so badly he could taste it, shook his head.

He would have delayed the visit had the nurse in charge of the team who cared for his father not confided her concerns about the King’s health. Just what did
deterioration
mean?

‘I’m afraid that I have plans. I’ll be away until Friday,’ he said, struggling to make small talk because he was seeing her naked and underneath him…and on top of him.

Eva swallowed and smiled through the rejection, determined he would never guess how much he had hurt her. The message could not have been clearer. First he had bundled her off to her grandfather, been back home a week before he bothered suggesting she join them, and now she had arrived he couldn’t wait to leave.

Well, this time she was taking the hint!

‘Would you like to see this garden? Amira has this idea that she—’

He was pretending to be polite. He had clearly spent the last three weeks wishing this marriage had never happened, comparing it no doubt with his first marriage, and Eva couldn’t bear it another second.

Her voice cold and crisp, she cut across him. ‘No…that is, actually I’m pretty tired. I could do with a nap…if you’ll excuse
me.’
Let it never be said I don’t have lovely manners,
she thought as she walked straight-backed from the room.

And lovely posture, and who, she asked herself, needs sex when they have posture? At least she could look royal even if she didn’t feel royal inside.

K
ARIM
hadn’t been away the three days he had said, but an entire week.

He had got back the day before the reception to introduce Eva to the great and good was scheduled. An event that had taken on awesome and daunting significance in her mind.

Now, about to accompany him to the reception, she said, ‘I can’t do this.’ And he was a selfish monster to imagine she could. Back and not a damned word about where he’d been or with whom!

Karim tore his eyes from her neckline and the creamy cleft between her breasts. ‘You don’t have to do anything. Just be charming.’

The instruction made her roll her eyes in angry despair that was not feigned. ‘How?’

‘If in doubt say nothing.’ It was not as easy as it sounded. Saying nothing when he had wanted to say all he could think about was sinking into her, or saying nothing when he wanted to tell her he wanted to kiss her and have her taste him in her mouth had not been as easy as it sounded.

It had been hell!

He felt simultaneously torn and guilty—torn between his duty to his father and his desire to be with his new wife, and guilt that the duty weighed so heavily.

He had arrived to discover that his father’s condition had
indeed deteriorated, to a degree that was painful to observe. To see the once robust man a broken and frail shadow of his former self had made him want to turn and run like a coward, but of course he had not followed his shameful base instincts—he had kissed his father and soothed him when he flinched.

It had taken time but after a week, and with several changes in his drug regime, he had left his father as well as he would ever be.

Now he was back and all the talk was of this damned reception.
Dieu,
he could not understand why he had arranged it. To make Eva’s transition easier by introducing her to his world had been his idea…Right now the last thing he felt like doing was sharing her. The hunger in his body roared like a furnace.

‘That should make a great impression—a dumb wife.’

It amazed her that as an intelligent man it hadn’t occurred to him that a simple confidence-boosting lie—
You look incredible
—would have worked fine and might have given her the courage and confidence she needed.

A kiss might have helped, but that wasn’t going to happen unless she asked…It had to be her choice, a choice made all the more difficult by the obvious fact—it was hard to interpret his disappearing act any other way—Karim intended to carry on with his life just as he had before he had married.

She had to face facts and not carry on clinging to a fantasy.

When she had asked Tariq outright where Karim was, to say the man had been cagey was an understatement. He had dripped guilt.

His response that
he wasn’t sure
would not have fooled a baby—Tariq always knew where Karim was. He was generally one step behind, so Karim wanted his privacy—to Eva’s way of thinking there was only one possible reason for his strange behaviour: Karim had been with a mistress.

It all fitted.

And yet last night she had gone to his room…what was wrong with her? Her cheeks burned with mortified heat at the
memory. Of course it had been with the intention of laying down some rules of her own—
her story and she was sticking to it.

He’d asked her to think about what she wanted and she had and she wanted an exclusive relationship or no relationship at all. Fighting talk, but who knew what she would have accepted? She had a tendency to forget she had any pride when it came to Karim, she thought miserably. He had entered her blood like a virus and she was consumed by the fever.

Well, she’d never know because she had gone to his room only to find his bed empty and untouched. She had returned to her own bed and lain there wondering where and, more importantly,
with whom
he had slept that night. It didn’t seem likely that a virile and highly sexed man like Karim spent any night alone.

She had predictably cried herself to sleep, hence the puffyeyed look today.

‘A dumb wife—that really would make me the envy of every man present.’ Karim knew he would already have the envy of every man present because they imagined that he was sharing a bed with his wife.

Not doing so was driving him slowly out of his mind.

Looking at him, tall and commanding, in his formal traditional clothes looking like the quintessence of virile masculinity, Eva knew she would be the envy of every woman present and also the focus of mass speculation.

There would be a lot more speculation if they knew that her husband didn’t share her bed.

Eva cringed inwardly at the idea of anyone discovering her secret.

‘Funny man,’ she drawled. ‘Do you have to work at being a total sexist?’

The question drew no reply.

As she walked with him towards the ballroom where the reception was being held she felt her resentment rise. No wonder
she had no confidence—not only did her husband not want to sleep with her, but he kept mistresses, possibly an entire harem! When she had walked into his study in her finery he had looked her up and down, and made no comment.

She had interpreted his silence as disappointment, which was a blow because frankly this was as good as it got!

Eva told herself that it wasn’t that she needed his approval, just a little support when she was facing the daunting prospect of being judged by, if not the entire world, his world.

‘Ready?’

Glancing in the full-length mirror behind Karim, she saw a total stranger standing there.

A stranger with upswept hair. She touched the stunning emeralds that Karim had casually presented to her as if they were no big deal to wear around her neck.

Panic growing in the pit of her belly, she started to shake her head…‘No, I’m not ready. I can’t do this…I…’

Karim knew she was speaking, he could see her lips, but he could not hear for the roaring of the pressure inside his head.

A pressure that had been building for the past weeks, but when she had appeared wearing that dress and he had wanted to do nothing but peel it off it had cranked up several painful notches.

He had been shaking so hard that he was amazed she didn’t appeared to notice; he had not trusted himself to speak. His control had teetered on a knife’s edge.

Now as he looked down into her beautiful face he knew that tonight he was going to spend the night in her bed; last night he had held back from going to her only because she had looked at him with such obvious resentment when he had offered no explanation for his absence.

He had wanted to, but a lifetime’s habit was hard to break and he didn’t know how to share his grief, but he did know that if he had gone to her last night the story of his week with his father would have come out.

Eva would have seen his pain…A man should be able to deal with what life threw at him. Karim had always viewed sharing private feelings and emotions as a weakness—would Eva see it as a weakness?

For the first time in his life he found himself caring about what a woman thought of him.

He pushed away the thought and slid his hands to her shoulders. He could see her lips stop moving. He carried on staring at the soft lush outline as in his mind he tugged down the bodice off her shoulders to reveal her perfect breasts.

He imagined the texture of her skin, the taste of it. He imagined moving inside her, hearing her cry his name.

Then imagination was not enough to silence the roaring in his head. He had not known a moment’s peace since they met and knew he wouldn’t until he possessed her. She was like a fever in his blood.

His chest lifted and with a groan he bent his head to hers.

He put all the weeks of longing and frustration into the kiss, bending her supple spine back over his arm with the pressure of it, causing the pins in her hair to loosen. He tangled his fingers in the silky curtain that spilled down her back and pulled her face to his as he kissed her with an almost frenzied desperation.

He felt the vibration of her throaty moan as he slid his hands over the curves of her slim body. She leaned bonelessly into him as he nipped and licked at her lush parted lips, tasting, sliding inside her mouth and meeting her tongue with his own.

Finally coming up for air, he lifted his head.

They stared at one another in stunned silence, a silence that was finally broken by Eva’s inarticulate whisper of, ‘My God! You…’

Eva sucked in a sighed breath and pressed a hand to her trembling lips. At night when she had lain awake wanting him she had told herself the kiss had not been that fantastic, it had
just been the overheated emotions of the day that had built it up into something exceptional in her mind.

‘Eva—’

‘You really are very
very
good at that.’

His eyes darkened.

It was Tariq at his shoulder, tactfully clearing his throat, that made Karim recall his surroundings.

‘Your absence has been noted.’

‘Yes, we will be there directly.’ He looked down at Eva. ‘You are ready now?’

She nodded. She was ready to do anything he wanted.

Her pliant state of shock lasted long enough for Karim to steer her in front of him into the glittering hall and the hundreds of waiting finery-clad people.

He’d definitely distracted her from her panic attack…that couldn’t be why he had kissed her, could it?

No, she told herself, he wouldn’t be that calculating, but once the seeds of doubt were planted they were hard to ignore.

The alternative explanation was impulsive lust or his feelings getting the better of him, but, as she knew only too well, he’d had no trouble controlling his lust up until now.

Did it matter? He’d kissed her and with any luck he’d do it again.

Karim, who was standing a little distance away, performing the hand-shaking, cheek-kissing, head-bowing ritual that Eva was, watched from the corner of his eyes until he was satisfied she was coping.

‘She’ll need your support tonight.’

Karim turned his head to acknowledge King Hassan. ‘She has my support, but you underestimate her. Eva can do more than she thinks. All she lacks is confidence.’

A little later, having watched his cousin monopolise her for ten minutes, Karim chose a lull to excuse himself and move to her side.

‘Are you all right?’

She shivered as his breath brushed her cheek. ‘I’m not sure yet,’ she admitted, his kiss still dominating her thoughts.

‘Me too.’ Before she could question the oddly cryptic remark her grandfather appeared at her side and Eva was obliged to give him her attention.

Her grandfather was not the only head of state present. There were a number of influential foreign guests, but most of his countrymen, like Karim, were dressed traditionally, and while many of the women’s clothes had a distinct Eastern influence most had a Western twist. About half of them wore their heads uncovered, though this did not make Eva feel any less conspicuous as she was the only redhead present.

This was not her sort of thing, though the mingling and smiling graciously was proving a lot easier than she had imagined.

Eva’s smile slipped when she was formally introduced to the possible reason for Karim’s absence from his bed.

The moment Eva saw Layla Al Ahmed she heard alarm bells, which she dismissed as paranoia, but when she saw the beautiful brunette look at Karim through her heavily made-up almond-shaped eyes things fell horribly into place.

Feeling sick to her stomach, she injected a few more volts into her forced smile as the thickset man with Layla stepped forward to present himself while the curvaceous brunette chatted animatedly to Karim.

‘Layla has a successful career in interior design,’ explained her proud father, who was, it transpired, one of Karim’s economic advisors, as well as the head of one of the country’s oldest and most powerful families.

Her credentials, as well as her curves, were impeccable.

‘My daughter is very talented. She could have done anything.’

And if her great career failed she could make a fortune in advertising uplift bras—not that the gorgeous brunette needed one, Eva thought, hitching her bodice a little higher on her more
modest cleavage and gathering the light embroidered silk stole she wore over it a little tighter.

‘She and Karim were virtually brought up together,’ he confided as they watched Karim kiss first one of her bejewelled hands and then her cheeks.

‘And some people,’ he continued, ‘thought that after Karim overcame his bereavement they might…’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘But Karim is a rule unto himself, as I am sure you know.’

He bowed and moved away, leaving Eva to wonder if he had intended to plant the idea that the pair had been virtually engaged in her head and was it true?

Had Layla been the reason that three days had turned into seven? Had he been unable to tear himself away from her side? Would Karim have married the lovely and very suitable Layla if things had not happened as they did?

Stomach churning, she pushed the question away and responded to the French Ambassador’s wife who had introduced herself as Julia and was admiring the emeralds and comparing them to Eva’s eyes.

When Karim appeared at her shoulder she greeted him like an old friend and repeated the compliment, adding, ‘Your wife’s French is quite, quite excellent and isn’t she coping well? I remember the first Embassy Ball I hosted—my smile had to be surgically removed.’

Eva felt warmed by the compliment, but the glow of pleasure faded abruptly when, after acknowledging that her French was
adequate,
Karim added, ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t take too long to master Arabic, Julia.’

Eva’s chin went up. ‘I hope so too. Then people will have to be out of earshot when they talk about me.’ She could not shake the conviction that the lovely Layla’s laughter had been aimed at her or the image of her in bed with Karim.

Karim arched a brow and said, ‘Paranoia, Eva?’ And left her standing there feeling like a total idiot.

Julia took her arm and patted her hand. ‘Layla is what I’d call a man’s woman…’

Eva shot her a startled glance. Were her thoughts that transparent?