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As if he could sense the change in her, his eyes drifted lower, his smile curving arrogantly as he allowed himself an insolent inspection of her slim frame.
“I suspect you will come to accept our…arrangement.”
Her jaw dropped at his casual egotism, and her cheeks burned because damn it, he was right. But she wanted to fight him, to dislodge that look of smug sureness from his handsome face. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she snapped mutinously, crossing her arms over her chest.
He moved quickly, his large body coming to hers, large and strong, engulfing her in his hyper-masculinity, so her heart crashed against her ribs.
“I should have known you were inexperienced by the way you responded to me.” His fingers found the robe and unwrapped it easily, his eyes warring with hers as he let it slide down her over-sensitive body and fall to the floor. “You are not capable of artifice, Ella. When I touch you, it is as though you have caught fire.” And just like that, he lifted a hand to her breast, cupping it possessively, his eyes half-taunting, watching her intently for her reaction as he massaged her flesh so that a thousand flames seemed to be igniting beneath his touch.
She knew she should push him away, tell him to stop, but he was completely right: she had no artifice where he was concerned. The sexual needs he’d stirred to life were too powerful.
“Sex isn’t – enough,” she managed to mutter, even as she tilted her head back in surrender to what he was doing to her, staring at the clay ceiling until she had to squeeze her eyes shut on a wave of need.
“Are you so sure about that?” While her eyes were closed, he moved, his body big and heavy, so powerful, drawing her to him, holding her until she blinked up at him. Only the dark colour stained high on his cheek bones gave any indication he was as affected by lust as she was.
“You want me,” he said simply. “And this is a good place for our marriage to start.”
But it wasn’t enough. It never would be. All Ella had dreamed of, her entire life, was being loved. Of finally belonging somewhere, with someone. A family of her own. Elon wasn’t offering anything beyond shared parentage and chemistry.
“We’ll announce our engagement in the morning,” he commanded, clearly not realising how laced with doubts she was. “The sooner we are married the more plausible it will make our relationship, and the easier your acceptance as my wife will be.”
My wife. The words sent a spark of heat through her body, but oh, how she hated that! How she hated that even now she could feel a full rush of desire for a man who was railroading her into the exact kind of marriage she knew would destroy her. No one had ever wanted her. Not her father, not even her mother, really. Oh, Tasim had been very kind, but Ella had wondered, in her darkest moments, if he wasn’t simply exercising a form of damage control by bringing her to the palace where he could oversee her activities and manage her image, removing the embarrassment she’d sought to give their father. No. No one had ever wanted her, no one had ever seen her as a person, and now she was staring down the barrel of a lifetime with a man who would never want her besides for her role in the production of his much-needed heirs.
But maternal instincts were nothing to be trifled with, and even the very hint of the idea of a baby had Ella’s heart squeezing. In the midst of all this, perhaps a baby was exactly what she wanted after all – someone she belonged with, who she would live to love.
Only a naïve fool would ignore the situation they were in. She wasn’t simply a woman and he definitely wasn’t a normal man. They were royalty, with specific expectations resting upon their shoulders. Sleeping together so carelessly had opened a can of worms she couldn’t ignore.
But it was more than that.
Ella kept coming back to the idea of a baby, the lure of creating a life within herself, a little human she could finally pour all of her love into, spoil in a way she’d never been spoiled, adore with all of her heart. Her breath caught in her throat because every single cell in her DNA was telling her she should grab this with both hands. It was madness, and yet, at the same time, it made sense.
“Tasim will never accept this,” she murmured again.
“On the contrary, I think he’ll be glad to know you’re settling down. I presume he believes the fiction in the press, regarding your lifestyle?”
She jerked her head in a sort of admission.
“Then he will be relieved you are choosing this path. The stories will stop, and he can continue to govern without worrying about the trouble you’re getting into.”
Unconsciously, he’d reinforced one of her biggest doubts, taking any hope away from her that her brother had brought her to Mosar simply out of love.
A tear slid from the corner of her eye and she angled her face before brushing it away, loathed to let him see her emotions.
“And won’t you worry?” She whispered. “Won’t you worry about the kind of scandal I might bring to your palace?”
His hand cupped the back of her head, drawing her to face him, his touch firm and insistent, his eyes boring into hers with the heat of lava. “Your days of provoking the media are over.”
Why did she feel like he knew her so well, despite the fact they’d just met?
“Is that another order, your highness?”
His gaze narrowed and for the briefest of moments she thought she glimpsed something stirring in the depths of his eyes, something comforting and warm, but it was gone in an instant. “Yes,” he said simply, and yet she felt the steel of his statement, the force of his resolve. So far as he was concerned, there was no further conversation needed: They would marry.
