The Sultan's Virgin Bride: A story of lust, loyalty and passionate resentment. (13 page)

“What do you want from me? An apology?” He ground his teeth in frustration. “I am sorry. I am sorry that I was weak and not able to resist you. I am sorry we slept together. I am sorry that I betrayed your trust. If I could, I would take it back.”

“What?” She exclaimed loudly. “You think I’m upset we slept together? That I feel betrayed in some way?” His bruise had turned a nasty shade of yellow. “I wanted that, Aki. I wanted you.”

He released her, realising what he had been doing, and stepped backwards. “You slept with me to express gratitude, and I saw your shame for those feelings afterwards.”

She frowned. “That’s not it at all. But for now, let’s say you’re right. Why did you sleep with me then?”

He banked down on the emotion that was on his face. “For reasons that do not bear examining.”

She felt as though a knife was being plunged into her heart. “What reasons?”

“What do you want me to say?” His temper snapped and he pulled her to him again, his lips crushed down to hers so hard that she tasted blood in the back of her mouth. His hands were pulling at her dress with almost as much desperate intensity as hers were at his. “Do you want me to tell you that I needed you? That I wanted you? Or to say that you were there, and available, and my body responded? Tell me what you want me to feel and I will sell it back to you.”

She sobbed against his mouth, the words she was thinking heavy in her mind. She wanted him to take away the hurt. To make everything okay. She shook her head. “I don’t care how you feel,” she lied, pushing his pants down and wrapping her fingers around his hard, firm length. “I just need you to not stop making love to me. You can hate me, for all I care. You’re my husband and sex is now very much a part of our relationship.”

He pushed her back against the wall and thrust inside of her, his whole body shaking with relief as he took possession of his wife. She enclosed him perfectly, her muscles squeezing him in immediate response. Her nails were like talons on his back, scoring his flesh with red lines of ownership. She cried out as her body responded; her soul soared as a euphoric sense of relief made her blood boil. They exploded together, their bodies as one and their minds never further apart than in that moment.

An eerie silence descended on them afterwards. A brief burst of passion that burned out and left only cold charcoal in its wake.

“I do not wish to stop making love to you,” he said honestly, his words uneven because of his breathlessness. “But nor do I wish to think my loyal little wife is sacrificing herself because she feels it is an appropriate way to repay me for my assistance. Do you not understand? I have been avoiding you, Eleanor, because I am an animal with you. I have no control. No ability to think about what you want. And you are too grateful to me. Always grateful. Too grateful, perhaps, to be honest with me about your own desires.”

“You’re unbelievable,” she said with a shake of her head. “Don’t you see what you do to me? What you’ve always done to me?”

He lowered her to the floor, and turned his back to her. His back that had tracks of red traced from shoulder to hip. “We are sexually in sync,” he said coldly.

“No.” She grabbed his shoulder, to turn him around. “Months ago, when we were in New York, and you first came up with this preposterous idea of marriage, do you know why I said yes?”

“For your father,” he responded immediately, his tone quashed of any emotion.

“Ostensibly, perhaps,” she said with a nod. She was completely naked, but she didn’t care. She swallowed past her self-consciousness. She knew this was an important point to clarify. “Before I met you, I thought that maybe I was just not interested in sex.” She shrugged, looking at the highly glossed desk rather than at him. “You know, I never found it hard to resist Arnaud.” Her smile was weak. “It was his idea, but I didn’t flinch at going along with it. Some people just aren’t sexual. You know?” He didn’t speak. He was finding concentration difficult to hold. His body was still flushed with adrenalin and hormones. “Then I saw you.”

He made a small sound of disgust. “What? Are you going to say you fell in love with me at first sight? I expected better of you than such trite nonsense.”

“No. Not love. Lust.” She wrapped her arms around his waist, so that their naked forms were pressed together. “Just sex. I wanted to rip your clothes off in the middle of the room. I had never felt anything like it.” And where she got the confidence from, she’d never know, but she reached for his hand and lowered it to her feminine core, holding it against her entrance. “I was wet. Just looking at you practically made me come.”

Aki’s eyes were wide with surprise, but he didn’t pull away.

“I would have done anything you’d asked, just to be with you. I would have flown to Talina and joined your harem, if that’s what it took.”

“Why are you saying this?” He groaned, moving his fingers over her nakedness, teasing and tempting, watching as her face flickered in sensual recognition.

“Because I thanked you, for New York, with my words. Not my body. I don’t want you to tarnish this one good thing we share by attributing a false motivation.” She pressed her lips against his chest. “Feel me now. I want you to make my body yours in every way, Aki. I want you to understand that when it comes to sex, you own me, and I am happy with that.”

Eleanor had walked herself so far out onto the plank, and she didn’t know if he was going to throw her a rope or tell her to jump.

He moved his other hand around to cup her rear, holding her against him while his fingers moved distractingly at her entrance. The visage of the orange butterfly, presenting itself to be trapped, appeared, and he wilfully shoved it aside. “And sex will be enough for you?”

It would have to be. Nothing else was on offer. “Yes.” Her eyes held his in a gaze that was filled with promise and hope. “I know I’m not the wife you would have chosen, Aki. I know you will never forgive me for having been born to your sworn enemy. And I don’t know how the hell I’m going to get around the fact that I’m married to a man who hates my father – someone I think more highly of than anyone on the planet.” She breathed out raggedly as her body shook with waves of passion. “But I still think there is good between us. That there is enough to hang a marriage on.”

“Sex.” He said again, his eyes scanning her face thoughtfully.

She nodded. “What do you say?”

His eyes glimmered in his face. “Go to my room. I will join you as soon as I am able.” She was at the door, her dress hastily replaced on her body, her hair tussled, when he called to her. “And Eleanor?”

“Yes?” She turned to face him, her eyes smudged with desire.

“I do not have a harem. I have you.”

She flicked him a half smile then turned and left, leaving the fragrance of gardenias and red-hot memories in her place.

His wife was a constant revelation. She had effortlessly broken through his reserves, and he couldn’t even bring himself to feel guilty about it. She was his perfect match; her body was a sort of heaven for him. But her words held a unique ability to surprise and injure him, and he couldn’t fathom why.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“We have to leave your room at some time,” she said with a yawn, stretching her arms above her head.

“I am ruler of Talina. I do not have to do anything I do not wish.” He reached out and ran a finger around her peach nipple, tracing the dusky hued flesh with fascination. “And right now, I wish to be here with you.”

Eleanor smothered her grin. “Forever?”

“Isn’t that the point of marriage?” He said, flicking her nipple with his fingertip so that she yelped in surprise.

“One of them,” she responded, pushing off the mattress so that she could straddle her legs over his waist. She felt him jerk beneath her satisfyingly. His voracious appetite was thrilling. His desire for her beyond doubt. How her feelings had changed in two days. Perhaps it was some kind of sexual fog, but Sultan Aki Katabi filled her entire field of vision.

He put his hands on her hips, easily lifting her body and moving her lower, so that she took his length inside of her. His strength was remarkable. She groaned softly as her body enveloped him as it always did, her muscles stretching to incorporate him into her being. Her whole body seemed to fire with a constant need for him. For two days, they’d stayed locked in his room, making love, dozing fitfully and coming together again, and Eleanor wasn’t sure she would ever have enough of Aki.

“It’s like you’re made for me,” she murmured, lifting herself on her legs and lowering herself again, feeling him fill her and own her.

“Perhaps I was,” he grinned, flipping her backwards with the strength of his thighs and moving over her. “I certainly feel we were made to do this.”

Eleanor grabbed the pillow from above her head and pulled it over her face to muffle her screams of delight. Aki laughed, wondering if he’d ever forget the sight of his wife gripping a white pillow until her knuckles were similarly pale.

Two days later, as he flew one of his fleet of choppers over the empty desert to the west of the country, his mind was barely on the controls. Eleanor. Beautiful, young, dutiful Eleanor. He felt his body stir when he thought of her. Even he could not have predicted the chemistry they would share. It was a surprise that was both welcome and thrilling. To desire a wife he had regreted the necessity of marrying was a very welcome discovery, he thought with a small smile.

But the certainty that Eleanor was a pawn in two men’s games was unsettling. He had not cared about her wishes before he’d married her. He had convinced himself that her father’s return to Talina would be enough for her. But now that he knew her, Aki was certain it would never be sufficient. The pleasure at having given her father such a gift would fade. And so too would her reason for marrying him.

Would remorse spring up in place of happiness? Would hate take over from gratitude? He flicked a switch, radioing to his security forces that he was bringing the bird back to the palace.

Even his annual tour of the sand lands had proven powerless to distract him from his wife. He was eager now to return to her. To find her, he hoped, in his bed where he’d left her. That morning, when he’d kissed her goodbye, he had not wanted to leave.  Stone had lodged in his chest, at the inevitability of parting from her. “When I come back, I would like to renegotiate the terms of our marriage further,” he had joked, running his fingers through her hair with wonderment. Like her, it was so soft and pure.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” she had promised, her cheeks flushing as she’d pushed up from the pillows to kiss him right back.

He pushed the helicopter to the edge of its capabilities, wanting only to be at home with her. A flash of white crossed his screen and the helicopter seemed to jerk in the air. It all happened incredibly fast. He had the impression of feathers; only a quick glimpse but enough to know that he’d run through a flock of birds. The rota blades were heavy weights on top of the unaerodynamic helicopter. There was no time to radio his ground team. With a grim shake of his head, he angled the vehicle forward, instinctively knowing that his only chance would be to get enough autorotation in the blades to make the machine slow its descent. He tilted it further forward, cursing as he briefly caught an updrift of wind before flying out of it.

Faster and faster it plummeted to the crisp white sand beneath, and in every direction, there was nothing around him but white desert and heat. He swore again, manoeuvring the chopper in the hope of restarting the stalled blades. When he had given up all hope, he felt it lift, the blades making a sickening churning sound as they began to turn. Faster and faster they moved – not enough to keep him aloft, but certainly enough to slow his fall to earth.

The last thought he had was of Eleanor. 

Then, it landed with a spectacular thud, making his head bang forward onto the controls. Darkness descended.

* * *

All day, she’d had an unshakable sense of unease. She’d read, she’d spoken to Michelle back in New York, and she’d even picked up her PhD thesis again, simply for the satisfaction of working on something that she had once loved. But the gnawing sensation in her gut wouldn’t abate.

The sun on her back was fierce, but she didn’t move. She sat on the balcony, staring out at the blue sky, and she tried to ignore the growing sense of concern. The horizon appeared to have waving lines across it; an optical illusion from the heat of the desert.

Time and time again, she tried to tell herself that she was only adapting to being back on her own. After days spent with Aki glued to her side, the sensation of alone-time was difficult to manage. Her smile was weak as she appreciated the irony of how quickly she’d come to depend on him.

“Ellie.”

She looked up, and she knew. Ryan’s expression was carefully guarded, but that didn’t matter. She stood, clasping her hands in front of her.

“What’s happened?”

There was no easy way to say what he had to say. “Aki’s chopper went down somewhere in the desert.”

Her knees buckled beneath her and she fell in a heap to the floor. Ryan lurched forward, and crouched before her. “What do you mean? Tell me everything.”

“We don’t know much. There is not much to tell. Listen, he trained with the Talina Air Force. He’s a confident, accomplished pilot.”