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Phoebe felt her self-control snap. She pushed at his chest, but he didn’t move. “I don’t want to be told what to do anymore! I’ve had it all my life! I’m fed up with it!”
He watched her face, as it flew into a rage, and had that sense of there being so much more beneath the surface. “Fine, Phoebe. Don’t marry me because I am telling you to. Marry me because your body burns for mine. Because you want to.”
“How can I want to marry you? I barely know you!”
He let out a sound of frustration. “We have already discussed that, Phoebe. To do so again is a waste of time and energy.”
It was a strange experience to argue with Hakim. Phoebe had the feeling that she was holding a dam together with her hands alone. Each comment he made was another torrent of water being pushed towards her. Somehow, inexplicably, he had taken the absurd, and packaged it up as something almost acceptable.
“I have something important I am working on. I would need to travel to England often.” As soon as she said it, she couldn’t believe she was giving him even an inch.
His face flashed with victory and relief.
“It can be arranged.”
What could he not arrange, she thought with a disgruntled frown.
“Could you really be happy, knowing you’d forced a woman to be your wife?”
“No.” He assured her. “I do not believe I am forcing you into marriage. Merely into being honest with yourself.”
“I need to think about it,” she said, though a sense of inevitability was wrapping around her. And it was not entirely unwelcome.
“You do not have time to think.” His lips were just a grim slash in his handsome face. “The palace has issued a proclamation. You have been announced as my Saleena, my betrothed. Our wedding is to take place in a week.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Phoebe didn’t know how long she lay there, staring at him in furious disbelief. “You had no right!”
“On the contrary, I had every right,” he demurred with easy dismissal. “When you agreed to become my lover, you agreed to be with me until I no longer wanted you. I want you for life. You are mine.”
“But I didn’t mean it!” She spluttered. “You know that! You know I only slept with you to hurt you. To hurt Etienne.”
His expression was ironic. “And how did that turn out for you, Phoebe?”
She glared at him angrily. “It didn’t,” she admitted. “But… you’ve completely gone against my desires.”
“I have, in fact, made your desires a reality.” He pushed aside the straps of her dress before she could recognize his intent. He lowered his mouth, and began to lay kisses along her collar bone. Phoebe shuddered as her body remembered his; sensations washed over her anew.
It wasn’t fair. The slightest touch made her turn to jelly in his arms. It was coercion of the most sensual kind. And it robbed her completely of the ability to so much as object. She whimpered quietly as he lowered his mouth to her sensitive, desperate breasts. She arched her back, providing him unfettered access to her body. He grinned against her skin, pushing her dress lower, to expose her torso completely.
“You desire this, do you not?” He asked, pressing his erection against her, his eyes hooded as he ran his strong, tanned hands over her shoulders.
“Yes,” she admitted. For there was no sense in lying. He could feel her shaking beneath him. He could see for himself the level of her attraction. In the flush of her cheeks, the goose bumps on her skin, the arousal of her nipples, she was utterly ready to join her body to his again.
“And I promise to give you this pleasure as often as you want.”
She smiled despite the way her own body was waging war against her. “That’s bribery, you know.”
“Yes,” he muttered darkly. For he knew what he was doing, and he disapproved of himself for it. He was using an inexperienced woman’s body against her. Making her writhe with red-hot need simply to make her crazy enough to give him whatever he wanted.
“How do I know,” she asked between snatched breaths, “that you’re the only man who can do this to me?”
He lifted his head, his face unusually serious.
“I only mean… I’m new to this. What if this is mind-blowing to me, but actually pretty ordinary.” She was baiting him, and it worked.
“Ordinary, huh?” He demanded, kissing her mouth forcefully. She lifted her hands and ran them over his back, seeking skin. “Believe me, Saleena, there is nothing or
