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As for Ella, she was still head over heels happy in her marriage. When she and Zarif wanted alone time, they flew out to the Old Fort for a few days. Now it was their fifth anniversary and they were having a giant weekend party at the old palace attended by all their family and friends.
Cathy was now a mother as well with a toddler and she ran the thriving bookshop with her husband, since Ella had surrendered her share of the business. Soraya had had twin girls the previous year and had barely paused in her hectic career schedule. Ella and Soraya had become close friends while working together on the opening of the royal museum. Although the exhibits closely followed the rise of the al-Rastani dynasty, the central focus had become the history and civilisation of Vashir, which Ella had come to love almost as much as she loved her husband. But then she didn’t think she could ever love anything or anybody as much as she loved Zarif and their children.
Her ears pricked up as she heard a distant roar from the courtyard.
‘Your husband is home,’ Soraya remarked with a grin.
Through the doors open onto the stone balcony beyond the window, Ella could hear Zarif laying down the law to their sons, Hatim and Murad. Hatim was a boisterous and daring little boy and his little brother, a scant eighteen months his junior, tended to follow him slavishly into mischief. ‘A little military-style discipline keeps the boys in order,’ she confided.
She heard Zarif’s steps on the stairs and her face lit up as she instinctively looked towards the doorway.
‘It’s like Romeo and Juliet round here every day,’ Cathy muttered appreciatively as she caught that look.
Zarif strode in and lowered the two little boys clinging to him like monkeys to the floor. Evidently the military discipline had not been too tough this time around. ‘They were teasing the guards again, playing hide and seek round them, which is very dangerous,’ their father said sternly. ‘But they have apologised and now they are going to their rooms.’
‘Oh, but...right, OK.’ Ella bit back what she had been going to say about how overexcited the boys were waiting for their band of cousins to arrive. She had learned the hard way that two very lively boys were a handful and a staff who adored the little princes and could not do enough to please them didn’t help.
‘Mum?’ Hatim said pleadingly, a miniature Zarif with flashing tawny eyes and a killer smile.
‘Do as your father says,’ Ella told him coolly, hardening herself, knowing that Hatim had to learn about self-control and safety, young though he was. If he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps he had to learn about consequences.
Murad simply burst into floods of inconsolable tears and she could see even Zarif tense against the urge to offer comfort because Murad, cheerful and loving, was that kind of child. But it was Hatim who bent down and took his little brother’s hand and patted his back and led him off and Ella was proud of that.
‘We’ll go downstairs and see how the dinner arrangements are progressing,’ Soraya suggested tactfully to Cathy and, with a polite curtsy to Zarif, the two women left the royal couple alone.
‘Thanks for not caving in. I could see Murad pushed you close to the edge,’ Zarif told his wife with a gleam of appreciation in his beautiful dark golden eyes as he closed the bedroom door. ‘They need half an hour to think about what they did and cool off and then they can come out. My brothers and their families have just landed. By the way, is it too late to tell you that you look amazing?’
Ella smiled widely at him. ‘No.’
‘You look amazing but the dress has to come off,’ Zarif told her, hauling her close without the smallest warning and kissing her with passionate hunger.
‘Be careful with the zip. It’s a tight fit,’ Ella told him helpfully without a single word of protest. Yes, she would have to redo her make-up and get dressed again but one of the aspects she most loved about Zarif was the strength of his passion for her, his need for her.
‘I won’t have you to myself again until the early hours of the morning...if even then,’ Zarif lamented. ‘You and Belle and Betsy get talking and sit up half the night.’
‘You know you do the same with your brothers...that last holiday we had with Nik and Betsy, you came to bed the first night at dawn.’ Skimming off her lingerie with careless hands, Ella lay back naked on the bed but for the famous sapphires and watched her husband strip at even greater speed, enjoying every lithe bronzed and muscular inch of him that emerged from beneath his clothing. Five years hadn’t made him any less hot, she thought gratefully.
‘And you were in a temper and you got straight back out of bed and now I know what not to do,’ Zarif husked, his stunning eyes locked to her lush pale curves with hungry appreciation. ‘You’re so beautiful, habibti.’
‘But I’m going to get fat again,’ she countered, deciding that it was as good a time as any to break her news.
‘Fat?’ Zarif repeated blankly.
‘Cast your mind back to the shower at the Old Fort...no condoms,’ Ella reminded him ruefully. ‘We thought we’d take the risk—’
‘We’re pregnant again?’ Zarif exclaimed with a huge grin of satisfaction. ‘I love it when you’re pregnant! That’s not fat, that’s lush, curvy, sexy,’ he asserted with rich vocal approval.
Zarif came down on the bed with an even greater hunger for the woman who had transformed his life. He studied her with immense pride and tenderness. ‘Maybe this super fertility is a Ravelli thing and we have my father to thank for that one gift.’
‘And the “absolutely insatiable for sex” gift? Do we thank him for that too?’ Ella asked with a comic roll of her eyes, because she loved the fact that he still couldn’t keep his hands off her.
‘No, only you do that to me,’ Zarif told her, lowering his lithe, aroused length down over her prone body and lowering his head to lick at a perky rosy nipple. ‘I could eat you alive at any time of day or night—’
‘And frequently do.’
‘Can’t help it...I love you so much, habibti,’ he murmured with raw sincerity.
And she ran her hands through his luxuriant black hair, framed his spectacular movie-star cheekbones and told him that she loved him too. They were both fully dressed and respectable by the time their guests arrived. Hatim and Murad were released from captivity to mingle with their equally excited cousins and the noise of their games and the rising tide of chatter from their parents rang round the ancient palace walls, giving it more life than it had enjoyed in centuries.
