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‘It is late, lellah,’ she said breathlessly. ‘You have been out for so long, and Prince Raschid returned soon after you left.’
Since Polly had planned that nifty timing she had the grace to blush. Zenobia moved to take the single package which was all her mistress had to show for an entire morning in Jumani. For three weeks a silent war of attrition had been raging between Polly and Raschid. His five-day absence at a meeting of OPEC in Geneva had proved a much-needed breathing space for her fast fraying nerves. But now he was back.
If she could, she avoided him. If she couldn’t, she took refuge in a cool, offhand manner. Neither practice pleased. To a feudal male who took for granted that he should be the very centre of his wife’s universe anything less was an insult. At the heart of his detachment would always dwell that chauvinistic ambivalence. But Polly had no plans to play the doormat. After all, wasn’t she just riding out her time here in Dharein? Hadn’t he been the one to lay down the rules? If he was now discovering that philosophy and action had little in common, the problem was his, not hers.
‘I think,’ Zenobia’s dusky face was strained, ‘Prince Raschid was concerned that you were away, lellah. So unfortunate,’ she muttered.
Polly’s eyes gleamed. Raschid wouldn’t show her that he hadn’t been pleased. He would be as aloof and unfailingly polite as he had been before he left. Why not? Her paltry sense of satisfaction was short-lived. For every dismissive word, every deliberate avoidance, she had paid a thousandfold when the sun went down. He punished her for her defiance with exquisite finesse and ruthless expertise during the hours of darkness.
Heat suffused her unhappy face. As long as her heart hammered crazily to the intoxication of his kisses, she had nothing to congratulate herself on. Her stubborn elusiveness by day and her bitter attempts to withstand his seduction at night had not turned him from her physically.
She was watering her lush indoor plant collection when he appeared.
‘Oh, hello,’ she tossed in his general direction, dealing his tall, superbly masculine figure on the threshold the most sparing acknowledgement. But the inescapable weakness a glimpse of him always brought was invading her body, pulling every tiny muscle taut with sharp awareness.
She didn’t hear him cross the carpet. The first she knew of it, the dainty watering can was wrested from her and her feet were leaving the floor. He crushed her mouth under his, his tongue thrusting a fierce passage between her yielding lips with a passionate, searing urgency that currented through her with a lightning-bolt efficiency.
‘Hello…Polly,’ he derided.
Giddily recovering, she shrieked, ‘Put me down this minute!’
‘As you put the phone down on me yesterday?’ he gritted.
She was totally unprepared for the towering rage which made a mask of his darkly handsome visage. ‘I didn’t put it down. I was about to get in the bath, and I told you that!’ she argued, breathlessly involved in a struggle for release that was as undignified as it was unsuccessful.
Her eyes flew wide as Raschid kicked open the door of their bedroom.
‘And that…it came before me?’
‘Everything comes before you!’
‘I will teach you manners if it is the last thing I do,’ he swore, dropping her from a height down on to the mercifully well sprung bed.
Polly bounced back against the headboard, her green eyes ablaze, maddened by his treatment. ‘You touch me now and I’ll never forgive you for it!’
He sent the door crashing shut with a powerful hand and swung round. ‘I hear and I tremble,’ he scorned. ‘The next time I return you will be waiting for me.’
‘Behind the door with a brick, in all likelihood!’ she snapped.
‘And you will have something more to say to me than “Oh, hello”,’ he mimicked, and yanked off the gold agal, a predatory glitter illuminating his wrathful stare. ‘What fashion is that in which to greet your husband? You have sulked long enough. I won’t stand another day of it!’
‘I don’t sulk!’
He sauntered over to the bed like a sleek cat stalking an already cornered prey and calmly began to remove his clothes. ‘I am master in my own household.’
‘You can’t do this to me!’ she raged, violently thrown by his sudden unforewarned change of tactics.
He lowered his lean, sun-darkened body down beside her, pulling her to him with determined hands. His eyes roamed almost savagely over her. ‘If it pleases you…I missed you in my bed,’ he breathed less roughly. ‘Feel your body against mine. It speaks of welcome, and that is what I will have. I think you missed me too.’
‘Do cows jump over the moon?’
Disorientatingly laughter tremored through his long, muscular physique, making Polly unbearably aware of his potent masculinity. ‘Ah, Polly, what a talent you have for making me laugh when I’m angry! I should have lost my temper with you long ago.’
There were tears in her eyes. She was trying so desperately hard not to react to him. ‘Don’t,’ she pleaded, fast reaching a stage where she was no longer too proud to plead.
Raschid’s lips whispered provocatively over hers. ‘You want me,’ he murmured, ‘and there is no shame in that. For five days all I have thought about is this moment and the pleasure we will share.’
And this was now and tomorrow was another day. That insidious philosophy suppressed that terrible, aching despair, and she surrendered as she had feared she would all along. Five days stretched out over aimless hours and lonely nights could be a lifetime.
* * *
‘I think cows do jump over the moon.’ Raschid’s slumbrous gaze tracked mockingly over her when all passion was spent.
They didn’t, they went into orbit. Shifting away from him, she fiercely denied that misleading after-intimacy of togetherness and muttered venomously, ‘When I’m free I could make a fortune selling my story to one of the tabloids. I’ve got just the title! I was an Arab sex slave.’
The lazy arm which had predictably reached out to prevent her retreat tensed. With an appreciative laugh he dipped his mouth to the smooth curve of her pink cheek. ‘I think you are as likely to do that, aziz, as walk naked down a street.’
Damn you, don’t you ever take me seriously?’
‘A sense of humour helps.’ Coolly employing his superior strength, he turned her back to face him. ‘Do I have to repeat what I said earlier? From now on, you behave,’ he spelt out.
‘I’m not a child!’
Slowly he rested his dishevelled dark head back on the pillow and looked steadily back at her. ‘Only children play hide and seek.’
‘Because they want to be found,’ Polly countered shakily. ‘Well, I’m afraid there was no such ego-boosting motivation behind my wish to spend as little time as possible with you. Now if you’re…finished…I’m getting up.’
His hands swept up to close round her slender forearms. ‘You are not going anywhere, and you will listen to me. Do you think that the ridiculous lengths you have gone to in avoiding me have not aroused comment? Asif has a phrase,’ his brilliant blue eyes glittered up into the pale oval of her face, ‘fighting dirty…’
The blood rushed hotly to her face. Not once had it occurred to her that her conduct might embarrass him. Stubbornly engaged in what she deemed a private war of survival, she had forgotten the prying eyes and listening ears surrounding them.
> ‘Perhaps you think I enjoy having my father enquire if I cannot control my wife?’ An unhidden flash leapt in his eyes. ‘He finds it very amusing. I don’t, and while an English gentleman might turn the other cheek, I will not. Push me and you will discover that to your satisfaction if not to your pleasure.’
‘Let go of me!’ Polly breathed.
‘Am I hurting you?’
‘That’s not the point!’
‘That is exactly the point,’ Raschid overruled. ‘I am sorry if I wound your pride, but better that than any more lasting damage.’
She stiffened. ‘If you’re threatening me with violence…’
His nostrils flared. ‘No man who is truly a man needs to hurt a woman to make her see reason. If I have to hold you to make you listen to me, it is because you spend so much time running away from reality,’ he asserted drily. ‘While you are my wife you will behave as I expect my wife to behave, and whatever differences we have are not to be set up for public debate. Is that understood?’
Polly quivered with temper and chagrin. ‘I hate you!’
‘That wasn’t the question.’
‘You lousy bully!’
‘A bully would have cut out your tongue and shackled you to the foot of the bed with a chain by now,’ a disturbing quirk matched the sudden humour in his eyes, ‘but what a very dull life a bully would lead with a Polly cowed into submission! I believe you understand very well what I have said and I don’t think you will repeat those errors.’
‘I wonder where you get that idea!’
Slowly he smiled. ‘It didn’t work, did it? And it is not very comfortable to avoid someone all day and then go to bed with them at night. I believe you must now see the point of the relationship I was trying to establish with you, now that it is being made clear that you cannot embarrass me into sending you home.’
