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She could see the wariness in his eyes, but for once she refused to be silenced or seduced into changing the subject. Even if their marriage wasn’t ‘real’ in the way that Sara and Suleiman’s was—didn’t her position as his wife give her some kind of right to know? To find out whether, beneath that cool facade, Gabe Steel had a few vulnerabilities of his own?
‘So tell me,’ she murmured and dropped a kiss on his bare shoulder. ‘Go on.’
Gabe sighed as he felt her soft lips brushing against his skin. He had never planned to marry her. He hadn’t wanted to marry her. Reluctantly, he had taken what he considered to be the best course of action in circumstances which could have ruined her. He had done the right thing by her. Yet instead of showing her gratitude by melting quietly into the background and making herself as unobtrusive as possible, she had proved a major form of distraction in ways he had never anticipated.
From the moment she opened her eyes in the morning to the moment those long black lashes fluttered to a close at night, she mesmerised him in all kinds of ways.
The way she rose naked from the rumpled sheets—a tall, striking Venus with caramel skin and endless legs. The reverse-heart swing of her naked bottom as she wiggled it out of the room. The way she slanted him that blue-eyed look, which instantly had his blood boiling with lust.
But he knew that women often mistook a man’s lust for love; and that lust always faded. In the normal scheme of things, that wouldn’t matter, but with Leila it did. He couldn’t afford to let her fall in love with him and have the all too predictable angry outcome when she realised it wasn’t ever going to be reciprocated. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want her to start thinking that he could feel things, like other men did. She was the mother of his child and she wasn’t going anywhere. He might not have wanted to become a father, but he was going to make damned sure that this baby was an enduring part of his life. Which he guessed was why he found himself saying, ‘What exactly do you want to know?’
‘Tell me how you first got into advertising,’ she said. ‘Surely that’s not too difficult.’
‘Look it up on the internet,’ he said.
‘I already have.’ She remembered how she’d checked him out before that fateful meeting in Simdahab. ‘And although there’s lots of stuff about you winning awards and riding motorbikes and being pictured with some of the world’s most beautiful women—there’s not much in the way of background. Almost as if somebody had been controlling how much information was getting out there.’ She stroked her finger down his cheek. ‘Is that down to you, Gabe?’
‘Of course it is.’ His response was economical. ‘I’m sure your brother controls information about himself all the time.’
‘Ah, but my brother is a sultan who rules an empire and has a lot of enemies. What’s your excuse?’
She saw the flicker of irritation which crossed his face—a slightly more exaggerated irritation than the look she’d seen yesterday when he’d discovered a dirty coffee cup sitting on the side of his pristine bathtub and acted as if it were an unexploded bomb.
‘My excuse is that I try to remain as private as possible,’ he said. ‘But I can see that you’re not going to let up until you’re satisfied. Where shall I begin?’
‘Were you born rich?’
‘Quite the opposite. Dirt poor, as they say—though I doubt whether someone like you has any comprehension of what that really means.’
His accusation rankled almost as much as his attitude, and Leila couldn’t hide her hurt. ‘You think because I was born in a palace that I’m stupid? That I have no idea what the vast majority of the world is like? I’m surprised at you, Gabe—leaping to stereotypical judgements like that.’
‘Ah, but I’m an advertising man,’ he said, a smile curving the edges of his mouth. ‘And that’s what we do.’
‘I think I can work out what dirt poor means. I’m just interested to know how you went from that to...’ the sweeping gesture of her hand encompassed the vast dimensions of the dining room, with its expensive view of the river ‘...well, this.’
‘Fate. Luck. Timing.’ He shrugged. ‘A mixture of all three.’
‘Which as usual tells me precisely nothing.’
He levered himself up against the pillows, his gaze briefly resting on the hard outline of her nipples. He felt the automatic hardening of his groin, wondering if that sudden flare of colour over her cheeks meant that she’d noticed it, too.
‘I left school early,’ he said. ‘I was sixteen, with no qualifications to speak of, so I moved to London and got a job in a big hotel. I started in the kitchens—’ He fixed her with a mocking look as he saw her eyes widen. ‘Does it shock my princess to realise that her husband was once a kitchen hand?’
‘What shocks this particular princess is your unbelievable arrogance,’ she said quietly, ‘but I’m enjoying the story so much that I’m prepared to overlook it. Do continue.’
She saw another brief flicker of sexual excitement in his eyes, but quickly she dragged the cotton sheet up to cover her breasts. She didn’t want him seducing her into silence with his kisses.
‘I didn’t stay in the kitchens very long,’ he said. ‘I gravitated to the bar where the buzz was better and the tips were good. A big crowd of guys from a nearby advertising agency used to come in for drinks every Friday night—and they used to fascinate me.’
She stared at him. ‘Because?’
For a moment, Gabe didn’t answer because it was a long time since he’d thought about those days and those men. He remembered the ease with which they’d slipped credit cards from the pockets of their bespoke suits. He remembered their artful haircuts and the year-round tans which spoke of winter sun—at a time in his life when he’d never even had a foreign holiday.
‘I wanted to be like them,’ he said, in as candid an admission as he’d ever made to anyone. ‘It seemed more like fun than work—and I felt I was owed a little fun. They would sit around and brainstorm and angst if they were short of creative ideas. They didn’t really notice me hanging around and listening. They used to talk as if I wasn’t there.’ And hadn’t it been that invisibility which had spurred him on—even more than his determination to break free from the poverty and heartbreak which had ended his childhood so abruptly? The sense that they had treated him like a nothing and he’d wanted to be someone.
‘They had a deadline looming and a slogan for a shampoo ad which still hadn’t been written,’ he continued. ‘I made a suggestion—and I remember that they looked at me as if I’d just fallen to earth. Some teenage boy with cheap shoes telling them what they should write. But it was a good suggestion. Actually, it was a brilliant suggestion—and they made me a cash offer to use it. The TV campaign went ahead using my splash line, the product flew off the shelves and they offered me a job.’
He remembered how surprised they’d been when he had coolly negotiated the terms of his contract, instead of snatching at their offer, which was what they’d clearly expected. They’d told him that his youth and his inexperience gave him no room for negotiation, but still he hadn’t given way. He had recognised that he had a talent and that much was non-negotiable. It had been his first and most important lesson in bargaining—to acknowledge his own self-worth. And they had signed, as he had known all along they would do.
‘Then what happened?’
Gabe shrugged as her soft words floated into his head and tangled themselves up with his memories. He had often wondered about the particular mix of ingredients which had combined to make him such a spectacular success, yet the reasons were quite simple.
He was good with words and good with clients. A childhood spent honing the art of subterfuge had served him well in the business he had chosen. His rise to the top had been made with almost seamless ease. His prediction that digital technology was the way forward had proved unerringly correct. He had formed his own small company and before long a much bigger agency had wanted to buy his expertise. He had expanded and prospered. He’d discovered that wealth begot wealth. And that being rich changed nothing. That you were still the same person underneath, with the same dark and heavy heart.
‘I just happened to be in the right place at the right time,’ he said dismissively, because thoughts of the past inevitably brought with them pain. And he tried not to do pain. Didn’t he sometimes feel that he’d bitten off his allotted quota of the stuff, all in one large and unpalatable chunk? He gave her a long, cool look. ‘So if the interrogation is over, Leila, you might like to think about what you want to do today.’
Leila stiffened, her enjoyment of his story stifled by the sudden closure in his voice. Was this what all men did with women? she wondered as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and grabbed a tiny T-shirt and a pair of panties. Tell them just enough to keep them satisfied, but nothing more than that? Keep them at arm’s length unless they were making love to them?
But she knew all this, didn’t she? None of these facts should have surprised her. She’d seen the way her father had treated her mother. She’d seen how quickly women became expendable once their initial allure had worn off. So why the hell was she grasping at rainbows which didn’t exist?
She tugged on the T-shirt and pulled on her panties before walking towards the window, suddenly unenthusiastic about the day ahead.
‘Why don’t you surprise me?’ she said flatly. ‘Since you’re the man with all the ideas.’
She didn’t hear the footfall of his bare feet straight away. She didn’t even realise he was following her until his shadow fell over her and she turned round to meet the tight mask of his face. She could see the smoulder of sexual hunger in his eyes, but she could see the dark flicker of something else, too.
‘What kind of surprise do you want, Leila?’
She could feel the beat of sexual tension as it thrummed in the air around them. He was angry with her for probing, she realised—and his anger was manifesting itself in hot waves of sexual desire. She told herself that she should walk away from him and that might make him realise that sometimes he treated her more like an object than a person. But she couldn’t walk away. She didn’t want to. And didn’t they both want exactly the same thing? The only thing in which they were truly compatible...
She met the smoulder of his gaze and let the tip of her tongue slide along her bottom lip. ‘If I tell you then it won’t be a surprise, will it?’
‘My, how quickly you’ve learnt to flirt,’ he observed softly, his eyes following the movement hypnotically. ‘My little Qurhahian virgin hasn’t retained much of her innocence, has she?’
‘I sincerely hope not,’ she returned, ‘because a wife who lacks sexual adventure will quickly lose her allure. The women of the harem learn that to their peril.’
Her assertion seemed to surprise him, for his eyes narrowed in response. His gaze drifted down to where the tiny T-shirt strained over her aching nipples.
‘You are dressed for sex,’ he said huskily.
She tilted her chin. ‘I’m hardly dressed at all.’
‘Precisely.’
He took a step towards her and backed her into the sitting room towards the L-shaped sofa which dominated one side of the room, and Leila felt excited by the dark look on his face, which made him appear almost savage.
She could feel the leather of the sofa sticking to her bare thighs as he pushed her down on it, and her heart began to hammer in anticipation.
‘Gabe?’ she said, because now he was kneeling on the ground in front of her and pulling her panties all the way down.
But he didn’t answer. He was too busy parting her knees and moving his head between them and, although this was not the first time he had done this, it had never felt quite so intense before.
‘Gabe,’ she said again, more breathlessly this time as his tongue began to slide its way up towards the molten ache between her legs.
‘Shut up,’ he said roughly.
But his harsh words were not matched by the exquisite lightness of his touch, and she couldn’t help the gasp of pleasure which was torn from her lips. Her eyelids fluttered to a close as she felt the silkiness of his hair brushing against her thighs. Her lips dried as the tip of his tongue flickered against her heated flesh and she groaned.
She felt helpless beneath him—and for a moment the feeling was so intense that she felt a sudden jolt of fear. She tried to wriggle away but he wouldn’t let her. He was imprisoning her hips with the grasp of his hands while he worked some kind of sweet torture with his tongue. And surely if she wanted him to stop, she shouldn’t be urging him on by uttering his name. Nor clutching at his shoulders with greedy and frantic hands.
She could feel her orgasm building and then suddenly it happened violently, almost without warning. Her fingers dug into his hair as she began to buck beneath him and just when it should have been over, it wasn’t over at all.
Because Gabe was climbing on top of her and straddling her—entering her with one hard, slick stroke which seemed to impale her. Gabe was moving inside her, and she was crying out his name again and tears were trickling down her cheeks—and what on earth was that all about? She wiped them away before he could see them.
Automatically, she clung to him as he shuddered inside her, his golden-dark head coming to rest on her shoulder and his ragged breath warm against her skin. She found herself thinking that one of life’s paradoxes was that intense pleasure always made you aware of your own capacity for intense pain. And wasn’t that what had scared her? The certainty that pain was lurking just around the corner and she wasn’t sure why.
She closed her eyes and it seemed a long while before he spoke, and when he did his words were muffled against her neck.
‘I suppose you’re now going to demand some sort of apology.’
She turned her head to face him. She saw his thick lashes flutter open and caught a glimpse of the darkness which still lingered in his eyes. ‘I’m not sure that making a woman moan with pleasure warrants an apology,’ she said.
His face tightened as he withdrew from her and rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling and the dancing light which was reflected back from the river outside. He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Maybe it does if that pleasure comes from anger. Or if sex becomes a demonstration of power, rather than desire.’
She didn’t need to ask what had made him angry because she knew. Her questions had irritated a man who liked to keep his past hidden. A man who recoiled from real intimacy in the same way that people snatched their hands away from the lick of a flame and she still didn’t know why.
Maybe she should just accept that she was wasting her time. Leila’s hand crept to her still-flat stomach. Shouldn’t she be thinking about her baby’s needs and the practicalities of her current life, rather than trying to get close to a man who was determined not to let her?
But something made her reach out her hand and to lay it softly over the thud of his heart. ‘Well, whatever your motivation was, we both enjoyed it—unless I’m very much mistaken.’
At this he turned his head, and his grey eyes were thoughtful as he studied her. ‘Sometimes you surprise me, Leila.’
‘Do I?’
‘More frequently than I would ever have anticipated.’ He stroked his hand over the curve of her hips. ‘You know, we ought to think what you’re going to do next week.’
‘Next week?’ She drew her head back and looked at him. ‘Why—what’s happening next week?’
‘I’m going back to work. Remember?’ He kissed the curve of her jaw. ‘Honeymoons don’t last for ever and I do have to work to pay the bills, you know.’
Suddenly she felt unsettled. Displaced. ‘And in the meantime, I’m going to be here on my own all day,’ she said slowly.
His grey eyes were suddenly watchful. ‘Not necessarily. I can speak to some of my directors, if you like. Introduce you to their wives so you can get to know them. Some of them work outside the home, but plenty of them are around during the day—some with young children.’
Her heart suddenly heavy, Leila nodded. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful and, yes, it would be good to meet women whose company she might soon welcome once her own baby arrived.
But Gabe’s words made her feel like an irrelevance. As if she had no real identity of her own. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister and, now, someone’s wife.
Well, she did exist as a relevant person in her own right and maybe she needed to show Gabe that—as well as to prove it to herself. Back in Qurhah, she had yearned for both personal and professional freedom and surely this was her golden opportunity to grab them.
‘I don’t want to just kill time while I wait for the baby to be born,’ she said. ‘I want a job.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘A job?’
‘Oh, come on, Gabe. Don’t look so shocked. Wasn’t that what I wanted the first time I ever met you?’ She lifted her hand and touched the dark-gold of his hair. ‘You thought my photos were good when I first showed them to you. You told me so—and I’d like to think you meant it. Wouldn’t your company have work for someone with talent?’
‘No,’ he said.
Flat refusal was something Leila was used to, but it was no less infuriating when it was delivered so emphatically by her husband. She felt the hot rush of rebellion in her veins. ‘I’m not asking you to pull any strings for me,’ she said fiercely. ‘Just show my work to someone in your company—anonymously, of course—and let them be the judge.’
‘No,’ he said again.
‘You can’t keep saying no!’
‘I can say any damned thing I please. You’re asking me for a job, Leila—remember? And I’m telling you that you can’t have one. That’s the way it works when you’re an employer.’
She stared at him mulishly and thought that, at times, Gabe’s attitude could be as severe as her brother’s. ‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘I’d like to know exactly what it is you’re objecting to. The accusations of nepotism, which won’t stand up if I get the job on my own merits? Or is it something else—something you’re not telling me?’
Gabe got off the sofa and began to walk towards the bedroom, shaking his head as if denying her question consideration. She thought that he was going to leave the room without answering when he suddenly turned back and it was only then that she realised that he was completely naked. And completely aroused. Again.
‘It’s your proximity I’m having a problem with,’ he declared heatedly, wondering how she managed to get under his skin time and time again. ‘I’ll have to be with you the whole damned time, won’t I? In the car. In the canteen—’
‘Standing by the water cooler?’ Her mouth twitched. ‘Or does some minion bring you water on a silver tray in a crystal glass?’
‘We’re talking about my life—not yours, princess!’ he iced back. ‘And how can someone judge your work when you don’t have it? You haven’t even brought your portfolio with you, have you? You left it in Qurhah.’
‘Yes, I did. But I have all the images on a USB stick,’ she said sweetly. ‘So that won’t be a problem.’
Gabe made a stifled sound of fury as he walked away towards the bathroom, wishing for the first time ever that he had a door to slam. But he had chosen the apartment because there were no doors. Because one room flowed straight into the next, each characterised by a disproportionate amount of light and space. He had chosen it because it was the antithesis of the places he’d inhabited during his childhood—and now the very determined Princess Leila Scheherazade was making him want to lock himself away. She was invading his space even more than she had already done. And there didn’t seem to be a damned thing he could do to stop it.
He would have someone show her portfolio to Alastair McDavid—at Zeitgeist’s in-house photographic studio. And he would just have to hope that Alastair found her work good—if not quite good enough.
He turned on the shower and his mouth hardened as the punishing jets of icy water began to rain down on him. Because something told him that his hopes were futile and that Leila would soon have her exquisite foot in yet another door.
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