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Naked, Claire squirmed in front of him, horribly conscious of her unclad self and every defect she had ever believed her body had. ‘I’m quite happy with fast...’
‘Think of yourself as a gourmet meal,’ Raif advised.
‘Right...’ Claire gasped as he pried her thighs apart and pressed his mouth to the heart of her because she hadn’t been expecting that. All the lamps were lit and she felt floodlit and embarrassed. ‘We could get into the bed—’
‘It looks like Count Dracula’s bed.’
‘He slept in a coffin,’ she incised.
Raif ceased his attentions and looked up at her. ‘What’s wrong?’
Claire winced. ‘I just feel a bit shy about standing here... Iknowit’s stupid—’
Raif sprang up and lifted her up into his arms to carry her over to the bed. ‘Nothing you feel is stupid. I’m afraid you’re dealing with a bridegroom set on living out every sexual fantasy he ever had...and almost all of those were about you and very recent.’
Her awkwardness melted away at that admission while her spine met the cool crisp white linen beneath her. Not a scrap of shyness in his bearing, Raif peeled off his trousers and his boxers and joined her on the bed. Hot, golden, muscular flesh met hers.
He stared down at his bride in fascination, thinking that hefinallyhad a family, someone who would look to him first and a child whom he would cherish. He had never really had anyone of his own. Claire and their son, however, would be wholly and absolutelyhisand that meant a lot to a man who had pretty much felt alone all his life.
He had loved his mother, but she had had too many other interests with her travel, her endless parties and affairs with unsuitable men to spend much time with the little boy in the nursery. And when he got older, she had tried to make him a friend rather than a son, which had often been very uncomfortable for him. Yet he had long understood why his mother had only found comfort in her life of excess: his father’s rejection had decimated her pride and when his father had swiftly chosen a much younger beauty as a second wife, Mahnoor had been absolutely gutted. Her wounded ego had driven her into the arms of other men.
‘You’re beautiful, Claire,’ he murmured softly, gorgeous black-lashed eyes locked to her smile. ‘And I’m incredibly happy about our son. I’ll be with you every step of the way.’
She drew him down to her, fingers sliding up into his luxuriant black hair, and his mouth crushed hers in a remarkably sensual and urgent claiming that made the blood chase through her veins faster. She arched up to him, her whole body craving his, the nagging ache pulsing at the heart of her almost unbearable to endure. As her legs wrapped round him Raif shifted against her with a roughened sound deep in his chest and sank deep into her, her body stretching to enclose him while a delicious friction burn rippled through her.
‘Slow!’ Raif reminded her in reproof.
And Claire laughed because he was so serious about the concept, as if they had to proceed from point A to point B to win the points and skipping a possible stage could be a hanging offence. ‘No, it’s win-win all the way for us the way I’m feeling.’
‘I wanted it to be perfect this time,’ Raif confided, his big strong body trembling over her as she shifted up to him in a quite deliberately inviting way.
Claire gazed up to his lean, dark, wonderfully handsome face and ran a thumb along the lower edge of his compressed lips. ‘I think it’s always perfect with you,’ she murmured softly. ‘I don’t want to go slowthistime. If you start treating me like an invalid here in bed as well, I’ll kill you.’
An unwilling edge of amusement tugged at the corners of his unsmiling mouth. ‘Is that so?’
Claire gave him another hip-tilting motion to urge him on. ‘Yes, because there is no such thing as perfect when we’re together. Being happy is a much better goal.’
Raif nodded and moved in a remarkably enervating way that sent the pleasure she craved winging through every sensitive nerve ending. Her head fell back because he had got the message and that was really all that mattered. Only later would she wonder if that was what Raif did to himself, held himself to some impossible, unsustainable high standard in every field of his life because someone somewhere at some stage of his growing years had made him feel as though he would never be good enough. And she understood that, because she had been made to feel the same way.
She strained up to him, her serious thoughts flying away as a new urgency gripped her. Raif was moving and every lithe thrust of his body into hers gave her so much sensation she felt as though she were drowning in the sensual waves building at the centre of her, tightening inner muscles she had not known she had, her tension rising fast. He shifted them over onto their side and slid a hand between them to find that tiny nub that controlled her and as he drove into her one last forceful time, the whole world splintered round her and she was flying high on such excitement that something uncommonly like a shriek was wrenched from her.
‘Oh, my goodness, did I—?’
‘Yes, and loudly, but there’s nobody else to hear in this wing of the embassy because below us are the offices,’ Raif told her, holding her gripped to him as if she were likely to make a sudden break for freedom. ‘I’m not sure I deserve you.’
‘That’ll teach you not to get naked in a public place again and use your beautiful body to tempt an innocent woman into what my father would have called improper behaviour!’ Claire teased, tickling his ribs because once again he looked quite ridiculously serious.
Raif started laughing. ‘My father would also have found our behaviour improper but without it I wouldn’t have you...and I can’t bring myself to feel a single atom of regret,’ he confessed ruefully. ‘Even though I plunged us both into a storm of trouble.’
‘It takes two to tango,’ Claire reminded him, throwing off the sheet, because Raif burned much hotter than she did, and she was roasting. ‘Is there any air conditioning in here?’
Raif let her go and sprang out of bed to stride back naked to the door and hit a switch. ‘I always leave it off...sorry.’
‘The heat doesn’t usually bother me this much. It may be because I’m pregnant...or because I have a very hot guy walking naked across my bedroom floor...a very hotarousedguy!’ she tossed at him irrepressibly, giggling at his arrested expression.
‘Well, since this wedding night doesn’t appear to be under my control,’ Raif intoned lazily as he flung himself back on the bed, ‘maybeyouwould like to tellmewhat we do next.’
‘I’m not about to tell you, I’m much more likely toshowyou,’ Claire declared, rolling closer to investigate every fascinating part of his body that she could see and touch.
