Sheikh's Forbidden Queen: Zarif's Convenient Queen / Gambling with the Crown

Confronted with that blunt question, Ella felt her face burn as though he had slapped it hard because that was not an angle she could take into account when she was asking him for yet another favour. ‘Yes, you have paid dearly...we all have, but I do genuinely believe that you should have thought about what you were doing when you offered Jason that loan in the first place.’

‘Before you start blaming me for your brother’s dishonesty and awakening my anger,’ Zarif purred like a jungle cat, shimmering dark golden eyes settling on her with predatory force and shocking her into sudden silence, ‘think about what you are saying and what you are asking me for. Some form of forgiveness which, as I have already stated, is out of the question in this case? Or are you asking me to throw away more money on your family?’

Standing there, Ella turned very pale, shame and anxiety combining to stir nausea in her tummy. Her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. She absolutely got his point and she could not bring herself to outright ask him for money to aid her parents because that seemed so very wrong, indeed quite outrageous in the circumstances. For the first time she questioned why she had approached him in the first place and why she had allowed Jason to influence her attitude. Surely, had she taken the time to think things through, she would have recognised that to ask Zarif for further financial help would be indefensible?

‘I’m just asking you to show some compassion, not for Jason or me but for my parents,’ she completed limply, too mortified to even make an attempt to meet his slashing gaze, knowing that it would only intensify her awareness of the weak and humiliating role she had allowed her brother to browbeat her into accepting. For an instant, she almost burst into speech about her parents’ current health problems, but compressed her lips on the conviction that playing a thousand violins to invite Zarif’s pity would only shame her and her family more.

‘Nicely put,’ Zarif countered with sardonic bite, his dark eyes glittering like jet knives, so shrewd was the stab of his incisive gaze. ‘You know how wealthy I am and like many other people I have met you expect me to come to the rescue. And I would have to ask you, especially when you have the audacity to ask me to go against my principles, what am I to receive in payment?’

The suffocating tension was convulsing Ella’s dry throat. She turned away, dropped down into her seat again and lifted her coffee cup like a tiny shield. ‘In payment? Anything I can offer,’ she muttered unevenly, knowing she had nothing to offer but gratitude and seriously embarrassed by that reality.

‘Are you offering me sex?’ Zarif enquired lazily.

And for a split second in receipt of that shocking question Ella wondered if she would agree to such a belittling act of intimacy if it could magically return her parents’ lives to normal. The answer came fast and forthright in her mind. And colour surged across her cheeks and ran up in a tide of pink to her hairline while her coffee cup rattled on the saucer as her hand trembled.

‘I can get sex anywhere whenever I want,’ Zarif derided.

‘I wasn’t going to offer it,’ Ella told him with as much dignity as she could muster, her teeth gritting on his arrogant self-assurance. Nevertheless, she suspected that he was simply stating the situation as it was. He was exceptionally good-looking and shockingly rich even without considering the kick it would give some women to bed a reigning king. She was quite sure that willing women formed queues for the privilege of getting him into bed and her staunch conviction that he was a virtually irresistible package only incensed her more.

Surprisingly for a male so well aware of the high currency value of sex, Zarif believed Ella because he couldn’t credit that a truly sophisticated woman would still blush the way she did. But the imagery in his mind was far from sophisticated and he knew from the intensely male burn of his rapidly awakening libido that if she had offered, he would have said yes and to hell with whether or not such ignoble behaviour would be beneath him!

That discovery shook him because while sex was easily available to Zarif and an appetite he could not ignore, he had never viewed it as a special or even greatly prized pleasure. But for some reason when he looked at Ella Gilchrist his body hummed with the expectation of extraordinary pleasure because it was the passion in her volatile nature that had drawn him to her from the first. He crushed that exciting fantasy at source, reminding himself that he needed a wife and a child much more than he needed a passionate mistress.

On that thought, he stiffened, unable to overlook the reality that had she said yes when he asked her to marry him he most likely would have been a father again by now. All the old dark anger and bitterness he had buried stirred deep inside him once more, razor-edged thoughts of his unresolved desire for her taunting his ferocious pride.

He had never wanted a woman as much as he had once wanted Ella Gilchrist and she was the only woman he had ever desired whom he had not enjoyed. Perhaps that was the secret of her persistent attraction, he reasoned with inherent self-loathing at the concept of such a personal weakness, and it would naturally follow that familiarity would soon breed contempt. That conviction soothed him, offering as it did the promise that in the future he would forget about her and the way she had once adversely affected him. Life was too short for regrets and ‘what ifs’. He would get bored with her. He always got bored in the end because women could be very predictable. She would be his very last rebellion against the staid and respectable married future that awaited him. He would have some fun and then he would do his duty by settling down again with a wife and having children, he swore to himself.

‘That’s unfortunate,’ Zarif responded in reply to her proud declaration that she had not been offering him sex. ‘Because what you say you would not offer is the only thing that I want from you.’

Extreme disconcertion slithered through Ella while she mentally unpicked his words several times to persuade herself that she had not misunderstood his meaning. He was telling her that he still found her attractive and that the only thing he wanted from her was sex? How dared he admit that with such smooth and utterly shameless cool? Heat warmed her cheeks afresh and speared down between her breasts as she bit back furious words of reproach and fought to breathe normally.

‘I can’t believe you can say that to me.’

‘Duplicity would be of little use to you at this point,’ Zarif countered quietly. ‘Whatever else I may be guilty of, you can trust me to always tell you the truth.’

For an instant, Ella froze, recalling the last unforgettable occasion when he had told her the truth that he did not love her and would never love her: a hauntingly savage moment that had coloured her every memory of him with pain and a deep sense of humiliation. She had often thought that lies would have been kinder, only then she would have married him and ultimately would have ended up being very unhappy.

‘I want you in my bed,’ Zarif admitted with unblemished cool. ‘In return I would ensure that your parents’ financial status is restored to what it was before Jason’s mismanagement ruined their security.’

I want you in my bed. A tingling sensation curled like a tongue of flame low in her pelvis and Ella shifted uneasily on her seat, trying not to imagine what it would be like to share Zarif’s bed. Wide-eyed and hot inside skin that suddenly felt tight over her bones, she focused on the undoubtedly handmade leather shoes on his feet and kept her ready tongue clamped firmly between her teeth. She was fighting her own natural instincts harder with every second that passed. She could have asked him if he was joking and instantly rejected such a shocking proposition. She could have made a scene and stormed out in an impressive temper. But Ella had a strong streak of caution and practicality and she was all too well aware that Zarif al-Rastani was the only possible individual in a position to help her family.

‘That’s immoral,’ she declared half under her breath, unable to resist making that accusation. ‘You’re inviting me to sell myself to you.’

‘I’m offering you the only rescue bid you’re likely to receive. It is for you to choose whether or not you will accept my proposition,’ Zarif contradicted, shutting out every protest emanating from his clean-living conservative soul and refusing to listen. One final act of rebellion, he reminded himself doggedly. And didn’t she deserve it for the games she had played three years back when she had lured him in with the promise of her passion and her beautiful body and falsely encouraged him to believe that she genuinely cared for him?

‘How long would you envisage this...arrangement lasting for?’ Ella prompted, her voice high and tight with strain for she could barely credit that after three years apart she could even be having such a conversation with him.

‘A year...’ Zarif murmured, disconcerted by the speed with which that time period had suggested itself to him and wondering where that idea had come from. After all, he had never kept a single mistress for as long as a year. His interest in a woman faded within the first few weeks of bedding her even though he saw comparatively little of his lovers. At the same time he tried and failed to picture Ella in the Dubai apartment while wondering if word of an Englishwoman’s presence there would be more likely to be leaked to the press. Just as quickly, he realised that the Dubai option would be a very bad idea. And that indeed he had a much better idea in the offing and one indeed that would make the punishment fit the crime.

‘For the sake of appearances, we will get married,’ Zarif decreed without hesitation.

‘Married?’ Ella exclaimed with stark incredulity.

‘I don’t want a scandal and if I marry you, even when it ends in divorce after a year, it will be a safer and more acceptable option to my people. Marriage would also have the advantage of allowing me to see as much of you as I want to,’ Zarif completed smoothly, his mind made up, the stirrings of his conscience magically washed away. If he married her, after all, he wouldn’t be breaking any rules or taking advantage of her. It was wonderful, he thought with a rare lightness of heart, what a little thinking outside the box could achieve.

Feeling rather as though she had gone ten rounds with a champion boxer, Ella stood up and set down her coffee cup. Marry Zarif? Embrace all that she had rejected three years earlier? Her entire being shrank from such a challenge. ‘I couldn’t do it...I couldn’t marry you.’

Raw anger roared like a hurricane through Zarif’s lean powerful frame and gleamed pure, startlingly bright gold in his tawny eyes. ‘You have twelve hours in which to consider that position,’ he breathed in a raw-edged undertone. ‘If you don’t phone me within that period, I will assume that the negative answer stands.’

Ella’s feet were locked to the carpet, her eyes flying wide on his hard, darkly handsome features. Dismay was piercing her with little warning stabs and reminding her that rejecting her parents’ only rescue option was not a good idea. ‘Twelve hours is ridiculous,’ she said nonetheless, playing for time.

‘It is more than generous,’ Zarif contradicted.

Ella was pale as a white sheet. ‘Even when you know you’ve already won?’ she whispered, because all the pros and cons were piling up like an avalanche inside her brain and she could not evade the obvious answer.

Zarif could turn the clock back for her parents, returning their lives to the safe cosy routine that had been theirs before Jason’s interference. Zarif was the only person with the power to do that. Her father’s staff would also be protected from unemployment. How could she possibly turn her back on such important results and walk away, leaving her parents and everybody else concerned to sink or swim? All the cons, after all, would be on her side of the fence, making the payment one of personal sacrifice.

Zarif stalked closer with all the grace of a prowling black panther. ‘Have I won?’

‘How could I turn down an offer like that?’ Ella asked shakily. ‘My parents don’t deserve what they’re going through right now. It’s bad enough for them to be forced to face the kind of person Jason really is without facing financial ruin at the same time.’

Zarif stretched out a slim tanned hand and closed it round hers to tug her closer. ‘So, you will marry me?’

‘But it won’t work...even for only a year,’ Ella protested weakly. ‘I won’t fit in.’

Eyes golden as the heart of a fire flamed over her troubled face. ‘You will fit in my bed to perfection,’ Zarif assured her and as panic and sexual awareness clenched her every muscle with raw tension Ella registered that that was really the only thought in his mind.

She stared up at him, almost mesmerised by his stunning gaze, and he lowered his head. His wide sensual mouth nuzzled against the corner of hers and she shivered, suddenly hot and cold inside her skin while little tingles of sexual awareness snaked through the lower part of her body. The scent of him was in her nostrils, a hint of some exotic spice overlaid with clean, husky male that was both familiar and dangerously welcome. His wide mobile mouth drifted across hers, his tongue breaking the seal of her lips and darting within, plunging deep in a single measured stab of eroticism before he pressed his hard mouth urgently to hers. That kiss was like being hit with white lightning, desire exploding within her like a fire ball, fiery tendrils of heat reaching low in her belly, and her knees trembled, her breasts swelling and nipples pinching tight.

Zarif lifted his handsome dark head and slowly drew in a deep breath to look down at her with hot possessive appreciation blazing in his golden eyes. ‘Yes, you will fit into my bed as though you were born to be there.’

In the aftermath, rage gripped Ella and she wanted to smack him across the face. For a split second she had lost control, indeed lost sight of everything because he had thrown her straight into that disturbing world of exciting sensation that she had almost forgotten. And she could have wept at that knowledge for she had diligently dated more than one attractive man over the past three years and not one of them had made her heart leap and her body tremble with a single kiss. At the same time she had no doubt that that brief embrace had affected Zarif on a much less high-flown level.

‘No, I wasn’t born to be in your bed... Azel was,’ Ella murmured flatly.

Disconcerted by the mere mention of Azel’s name, Zarif froze and shot an icy look of censure down at her. ‘You will not mention the name of my late wife or that of our child ever again,’ he warned her forbiddingly.

Well, at least she didn’t need to have any doubts about exactly where she stood in her future husband’s affections, Ella reflected grimly. But then that had been exactly why she didn’t marry the man she had once loved. Even seven years after her passing, Azel still ruled Zarif’s heart.

CHAPTER THREE

‘NO,’ ELLA TOLD her brother with quiet determination. ‘If you want to ask Zarif anything, you go and see him.’

‘And what use is that going to be? For goodness’ sake, you’re marrying the guy!’ Jason reminded her angrily. ‘Obviously you’ve got more sway with him than anyone else. Mum and Dad are over the moon and everything in everybody’s garden but mine is coming up roses. What about me?’

Ella studiously averted her gaze from her sibling’s furious face. Over the past three weeks everything had changed within the family circle. Once her father had heard his daughter’s news, he had made a steady recovery and had gratefully accepted Zarif’s contention that he could hardly let his future wife’s family either go bankrupt or lose their home. Zarif’s business manager, Yaman, had booked into a local hotel and the two men had worked out a viable rescue plan for the ailing firm. But right from that first day, all financial assistance on offer had been subject to the assurance that Jason would resign from the partnership and that her father would promise not to hire him again in any capacity. Gerald Gilchrist had duly given those guarantees and Jason had now officially left the firm. Her father had also insisted that Zarif’s aid be given in the form of a loan, which he intended to start repaying as soon as he could.

‘I’m sorry, Jason,’ Ella breathed uncomfortably. ‘Zarif isn’t a forgiving person.’

‘I’m out of a job and Dad thinks it would be easier all round if I move out of this house before your bloody ridiculous wedding!’ Jason snapped out resentfully. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘Look for a career that suits you. Something that isn’t financially orientated,’ Ella suggested ruefully.

Her brother stomped off. Ella’s mother, Jennifer, emerged from the kitchen and winced at the slam of a door overhead. ‘Thank you for taking the heat off me and your father. I don’t have the patience to listen to Jason’s bitter rants right now and I don’t want him making your father feel guilty again,’ she confided.

The older woman had lost weight since her heart attack, which was hardly surprising if one considered her mother’s new walking regime and healthier diet, Ella acknowledged fondly, relieved and proud of the way her mother had adapted to the challenge of changing her lifestyle.

‘I’m so looking forward to the wedding,’ Jennifer admitted happily. ‘It’s wonderful to have something to smile about again.’

And that was her parents’ attitude to her nuptials in a nutshell, Ella conceded wryly. They thought it was wonderful news that she was marrying Zarif. She had lied to them and they hadn’t suspected a thing was amiss. She had told them that she had turned down Zarif’s first proposal because she didn’t feel up to the challenge of the public role he was offering her and they had completely understood and accepted that explanation. In the same way it had been quite easy to persuade the older couple that once Zarif and their daughter had met again, they had recognised that their feelings were unchanged and had reconciled while deciding to waste no further time in getting married.

Ella’s personal feelings were exactly that: strictly personal. Jason, of course, who thought everybody thought the way he did, assumed she was marrying Zarif for his money. And, of course, in a twisted way, she was marrying him for his money, Ella acknowledged shamefacedly. Marriage was the price of protecting her parents from a nasty wake-up call at an age when they no longer had the time and strength to deal with such a colossal challenge. Ella was, however, willing and able to pay that price for the mother and father who had surrounded her with love from the day of her birth. As a boy, Jason might have been the favourite but Ella had never been short-changed when it came to parental care and attention.

The phone rang and her mother, still mistily smiling at the prospect of her daughter’s wedding, which was only three days away, answered it. ‘The wedding planner,’ she said, passing the receiver straight over to Ella.

Ella breathed in deep. Zarif had instructed his aide, Hamid, to put all the wedding arrangements in the hands of a top-flight professional, able to work to a very tight schedule and stage the wedding within weeks. A fixed smile tightening her tense lips, Ella listened to the planner’s dilemma on whether the napkins should be purple or plum in colour before admitting that she didn’t care which colour was chosen.

‘You’re the most easy-going bride I’ve ever worked for,’ the planner told her and not for the first time.

No, Ella was simply an unwilling bride, who, while prepared to play along with appearances for the sake of her parents, refused to pretend otherwise when it came to all the bridal decisions. A woman in love would want everything perfect and would have her own ideas. But Ella was not in love and no longer the dreaming romantic girl she had been at the age of twenty-one when she had fantasised about walking down the aisle clad in blinding white to greet Zarif.

She had taken the phone into the drawing room, which her parents only used when they entertained. As she hovered there she remembered her twenty-first birthday and the night when Zarif had first deigned to notice that she was alive and female. To her surprise, he had come to her party and he had given her a very pretty contemporary silver necklace and matching bracelet. Her heart had been hammering fit to burst while he stood there chatting to her and when he had invited her out for a meal the following evening, virtually announcing his new interest in her, it had been like her every dream coming true at once.

It was ironic, she had often thought, that Azel had been Zarif’s first love and that Zarif had then become Ella’s. Nobody knew better than Ella how desperately hard it was to shake free of the trappings of adolescent fantasy. Zarif had first come into her life when she was only seventeen and she had taken one dazed look at him and fallen like a ton of bricks. At that time, he had given her not the smallest encouragement. His eyes hadn’t lingered on her, he hadn’t flirted with her and he had never been alone with her but Ella had still lived for the weekends that Jason brought Zarif home with him. The boys her own age who paid attention to her had seemed like immature kids in comparison to Zarif, who had spent five years in his country’s army as a soldier before he came to the UK to study for a physics degree. His spectacular good looks, wonderful manners and exotic background had enthralled her.

On their first date he had kissed her and a whole other level of attraction had surged through her in response. She had felt things she had never felt before; she had felt her whole body light up like a blazing torch in his arms and afterwards that had become the bar other men had had to reach to impress her. Only none of them ever had, she conceded reluctantly. And that last kiss, the one in his hotel suite, had proved that Zarif still had the power to make her want to rip his clothes off. Uneasy with that reality, Ella paced the floor.

She had only spoken to Zarif a handful of times on the phone since she had agreed to marry him. He had returned to Vashir while she had been busy running after her parents, dealing with the wedding planner and persuading Cathy to hire someone to take her place rather than asking Ella to sell her share of the business to her. At least she would still have the shop to come home to in a year’s time, she reflected ruefully.

Would it even take a year for Zarif to decide that he had had his revenge and was now bored with it and her? What else could possibly be motivating him? She was the woman who had said no and evidently her value in his estimation had leapt sky-high at the same moment. She was convinced that had he slept with her three years earlier, he would no longer have wanted her. But what drove him hardest? Sexual hunger or a need for revenge?

Three years earlier he had been icily outraged by her gauche foot-in-the-mouth refusal of his proposal. He hadn’t been prepared for it, hadn’t foreseen that even though she was in love with him she had had doubts about whether she could successfully live in his world. So, although she had worded her misgivings clumsily and insulted him, her concerns had been genuine, and layered over the disappointment of learning that he had buried any ability to become emotionally attached to a woman in the grave with his first wife and child.

It totally amazed her that Zarif’s desire for her body could act as such a powerful incentive on him. How would he react when she proved inexperienced in his precious bed? Was sex really that important to him? And to offer her marriage on such a score? That was crazy, she thought ruefully, particularly as he presumably had no intention of working to establish a normal marital relationship with her. After all, in a year at most it would be over and she would be a divorcee back at home with her disappointed parents, probably using the excuse that her marriage had broken down because it had just been too difficult to surmount the differences between them in background and culture.