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The silence simmered like a haze of heat on a hot day, blurring her surroundings and the clarity of her thoughts but fully centring her attention on him.
‘Easier than yours... I think,’ Rafiq husked, springing upright with that lithe, fluid grace that stabbed her with a longing she could not control.
‘Easier?’ she questioned breathlessly.
Without the smallest warning, Rafiq bent down and scooped her up off the padded sofa into his arms. A startled sound of surprise was wrenched from her and she gazed up at him with huge sapphire-blue eyes. ‘Rafiq...what are you doing?’
‘What comes most naturally to me,’ he murmured, settling back on his seat to cradle her across his lean muscular thighs, his arms caging her in place. ‘You chose a pessimistic option.Ichoose a more positive one.’
‘Oh...?’ she gasped, heart hammering, body striving to melt into the pure heated allure of him that close in spite of her attempt to remain stiff and discouraging.
‘We continue as we are,’ Rafiq breathed in hoarse extension. ‘Last night wasn’t planned. Nothing that has happened between us has been planned. The attraction is too powerful to be ignored and too rare to be discounted or suppressed.’
‘A-attraction?Rare?’ Izzy exclaimed, sapphire eyes welded to glowing gold.
‘I have never wanted any woman as much as I want you,’ Rafiq confirmed without hesitation.
‘You said...continueas we are?’
‘Give our marriage a decent chance while we await the birth of our children,’ Rafiq extended. ‘We see if we can make it work and ifwework, we stay together to raise our family.’
‘You mean...like arealmarriage?’ she almost whispered as he stroked his fingertips across a slender ribbon-bound ankle.
Beautiful dark golden eyes held hers fast and hard. ‘I want to keep youandour children but there are still other variations on the same theme available, which, if you wish, we can discuss. I am prepared to be flexible.’
His hand was sliding up her calf and she was lost in the sensations darting to more tender areas of her body. Indeed, the stroke of his knowing fingers against the sensitive soft skin of her inner thigh fired up every sense. That fast she wanted to rip off his shirt and sink down on the male arousal pushing boldly against her hip. Her face flamed. Rafiq brought out every shameless urge she possessed, introducing her to a side of herself she had not known existed until he appeared in her life.
Variations on the same theme,though, God bless him, she thought helplessly, her soft mouth quirking, recognising that he had approached her armed with every possibility he could muster, like a businessman engaged in trying to finalise a very important deal.
He didn’t know how to do romantic, didn’t even try.Butwithout a doubt he wanted tokeepher, and that truth smashed down Izzy’s barriers and flooded through her defences to wash them away. The craving inside her, which she had been fighting to the very last ditch, was released like a sudden storm. Without a single word, she snaked up her hand to spear her fingers into his luxuriant black hair to drag his beautiful sensual mouth down to hers.
His lips smashed down on hers with an urgency that thrilled her to the marrow of her bones. He wanted her, he desired her as no man had ever desired or wanted her and, in that moment, the simple knowledge that he wanted her as much as she wanted him was sufficient to silence every other insecurity. Rafiq was going to be hers, absolutely hers for ever, because she wasn’t prepared to let him go. His tongue plunged deep into the damp interior of her mouth and she moaned low in her throat.
‘Dinner will be late tonight,’ Rafiq breathed raggedly as he leapt up with her still clutched in his arms and strode towards the lift below the arches. ‘Very,verylate.’
Her entire body still buzzing from the provocative stroke of his fingers, Izzy was simply out of her mind with the same desire that powered him. Only he had the nerve that she lacked, she acknowledged, burying her hot face in a wide strong shoulder as he stalked past the servants hovering on the terrace, unconcerned by their scrutiny, unashamed of his passion. In the lift, he pinned her against the mirrored wall and kissed her breathless and she rocked against him like a shameless hussy, craving the arousal he couldn’t hide from her, needing that physical contact in that instant as much as she needed air to breathe.
‘You’re amazing,’ he told her thickly, laying her down across his bed. ‘The most amazing woman I’ve ever met.’
It’s only sex,her brain warned her, but she silenced that voice at supersonic speed because she was living in the moment—revellingin the moment, if truth be told—as Rafiq stood back and stripped, all urgency and hunger and appreciation, revealing a lean bronzed torso taut with muscle definition, exposing long powerful hair-roughened thighs.
It didn’t get better than this, she told herself dizzily, it wouldneverget better than this...
CHAPTER NINE
THEFOLLOWINGDAYat Alihreza, Rafiq rose early, kissed her brow and headed for his office to catch up on work.
Izzy lay in bed feeling exceedingly foolish for her complete capitulation the night before. Her intelligence hadn’t featured much in that decision, she acknowledged with a wince. Reality was, however, now staring her in the face. She was falling in love with Rafiq. What had started out as an infatuation had transformed into something much deeper and more long lasting. The instant he had offered her the chance to stay and become a normal wife rather than a temporary one, she had snatched at the offer, hadn’t even hung back long enough to ask to hear theotheroptions. She raised cooling hands to her hot face and groaned in chagrin.
She had agreed to stay married to a man who didn’t love her and who would probably never love her. A man already familiar with the limits of a marriage of convenience, a man whose sole driving interest was in retaining custody of his unborn children. There it was: the awful truth she didn’t want to face. Rafiq’s primary objective was keeping his heir and spare in Zenara and raising them in his own home. She was a prized incubator to be tended, not a woman with thoughts and needs of her own. Realistically, Rafiq was likely to tell her whatever it took to keep her in Zenara. And how did that bode for their future? Or her happiness? Could she settle for that?
‘Of course, you can’t settle for that,’ her sister told her sternly on the phone an hour later. ‘I’ll be flying in to see you in a few weeks.’
‘The plane fares to Zenara cost a fortune!’ Izzy warned her twin.
Maya laughed but it was an almost bitter laugh that made Izzy frown because she didn’t get the joke. ‘Money’s not a problem for me now,’ her sister declared. ‘We have a lot to catch up on but I’m concentrating on the fact that I’ve settled Mum and Dad’s problems for all time and no sacrifice is too great to achieve that, is it?’
‘If you’re the sacrifice, I’m not sure,’ Izzy sighed. ‘Oh, Maya, do you trulyhatethis job?’
