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The term grated on Abby.
She glared at him through narrowed eyes. ‘I wasn’t playing.’
‘So you are helpless, then?’
Her exasperated glare morphed into confusion when instead of moving past her through the door he backtracked, heading towards the row of cupboards that lined the opposite wall.
‘What are you do...?’
She stopped, her mouth ajar, as he opened one of the doors and stepped through.
‘What the...?’ She followed him, pushing the door wider and seeing that there was no closet behind it, there was another room. As she walked through to it, it became obvious that the room was a bedroom on the same palatial scale as her own but much more sparsely furnished than the one allocated to her and very definitely masculine.
She stood there, frozen in the concealed doorway, as Zain went to a desk on one wall and shifted some papers to find what he was looking for. It took her a few seconds for the significance to sink in. When it did she experienced a flare of alarmed fury!
‘Got it!’
Her jaw tightened—was that all he had to say? ‘This,’ she said in a frozen voice, ‘is a bedroom?’
‘Hard to get anything past you.’
Her lips compressed. ‘Your bedroom?’ she added, her voice heavy with accusation.
‘Right again.’
Her chest swelled. ‘Was anyone going to tell me that there was a secret door in my room?’
The conversational tone didn’t fool him for a minute—he knew she was mad as hell and yet he appeared to enjoy watching her like this.
‘Oh, it isn’t a secret, cara, everyone knows it’s there. My great-great-grandfather had it put in when he moved his favourite mistress into the palace. And as we are married it is almost obligatory to share the same bedroom suite, if not the same bed...’ He paused, his gaze sliding down the long, supple curves of her body. ‘Unless, of course, you do wish to share...? Relax,’ he recommended before she could react. ‘There’s a lock on the connecting door. We can use it if you’re worried about your virtue.’
His mockery stung colour into her smooth cheeks, or maybe it was the thrill of illicit excitement low in her stomach.
‘I am perfectly capable of defending my virtue, thank you.’ The question that was becoming more relevant, considering that even his voice had the ability to make her quiver, was, did she actually want to defend it?
She lowered her gaze as the internal admission brought a rosy flush to her cheeks.
‘So I don’t need a lock.’ A bit of self-control might help though, she thought despairingly.
* * *
‘I do not doubt it, but the lock is on my side.’ The lock might be on one side but the attraction, the same attraction that had flared into life in the desert, was mutual, and stronger than anything he had ever experienced in his life.
If the circumstances had been different he would have enjoyed exploring it, and her. His chiselled jaw tightened as he reminded himself that they were to be together for eighteen months, and, while sharing sex might make the first couple of months easier and definitely more enjoyable, it still left the months that came after.
In his experience, when lust burnt itself out the very things that had attracted you in the first place became irritants, and then there was the boredom... Under normal circumstances the solution was walking away, but in this situation that was not an option.
Even this sobering thought did not stop his eyes making an unscheduled journey up the long, supple curves of her spectacular body once more, or the heat that pooled in his groin. Jaw clenched, he made himself walk past her before he did or said something he would definitely regret.
The lightning-quick return sliced through Abby’s veneer of bravado.
‘In your dreams,’ she said contemptuously.
He swung back without warning, the speed and fluidity of his action taking her unawares. He was standing so close, towering over her, and he could feel the heat of her body. She reacted instinctively to the force of his sheer male physicality, placing her palms flat and pushing hard against his chest.
Her strength was nothing compared to his resolve and as her eyes became locked with his he slid a hand to the small of her back and pressed her against his chest, trapping her hands between them and doing nothing to hide his arousal.
She struggled for breath, the air emerging from her parted lips in a series of stressed little gasps. Zain was breathing hard too, his breath warm on her face as he bent his head until there were only centimetres of air between their lips.
