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

A year was such a short time, she told herself, surely it would pass quickly. Though a split second later she conceded that time never passed quickly though when you were unhappy. She would just have to hope that Zarif was prepared to put more effort into being married to her than his approach had so far suggested...

* * *

‘You need to get up,’ Cathy urged Ella, shaking her awake from a deep dreamless sleep.

Ella looked up drowsily at her best friend, a blonde with a spiky short haircut and bright brown eyes that were currently frowning. She was bemused by her tone of urgency. Cathy had stayed over and they had sat up late relaxing and talking. ‘What time is it?’

‘Only seven,’ Cathy confided ruefully. ‘My father came over with the morning papers and then the phone started ringing and that four-letter word has really hit the fan.’

Ella sat up and grabbed her dressing gown. ‘What are you talking about? It is my wedding day...isn’t it?’ she queried in a daze.

‘You should go downstairs. I’ll be tactful and stay up here,’ her friend told her uncomfortably. ‘My dad’s already gone home. There’s an utterly preposterous story about you in the newspaper and your parents are upset. There’s also a pack of photographers standing out on the drive and I think one of them has his finger stuck in the doorbell. I don’t know how you’ve slept through it all.’

‘Blame the large glasses of wine we shared. A story about me? Photographers? What on earth?’ Ella exclaimed, blundering into the bathroom to steal a moment in which to freshen up before starting down the stairs, noting that the curtains were still pulled in the lounge and also over the glass-panelled front door, cocooning the house in dimness. The phone was off the hook and the doorbell was ringing but seemingly being ignored.

There was a deathly hush inside the kitchen where a newspaper was spread open on the table. Her mother was mopping tears from her reddened eyes and her father was tense and flushed with annoyance.

‘What on earth has happened?’ Ella whispered.

‘Read that,’ her father told her, directing a look of angry revulsion at the newspaper.

It was a double-page spread in the Daily Shout, the most downmarket tabloid sold in the UK, and generally full of celebrity exposés of cheating married men and women. Scandals sold newspapers but Ella could think of absolutely nothing in her own life, aside of her upwardly mobile wedding plans, which could possibly have attracted such salacious media attention. She froze by the table, recognising the photos scattered at random across the article.

‘Where did they get those photos?’ she demanded in consternation, because they were family photos. There was one of her aged eighteen wearing a bikini on a Spanish beach holiday, another of her as a fair-haired toddler in her mother’s arms, yet another of her aged about ten in school uniform.

‘Jason must’ve taken them from the albums in the trunk in our bedroom,’ Jennifer Gilchrist opined heavily, ignoring her husband’s instant vocal denial of such a possibility. ‘It’s the only possible explanation for this. Nobody else would have known where to find those photos or had access to them.’

‘Why the devil would Jason launch a vicious character assassination on his sister on the very day of her wedding?’ Gerald Gilchrist demanded.

‘Because he’s very bitter and selling a sleazy story like that would have got him a lot of money,’ Ella’s mother breathed in a pained undertone. ‘Of course, he told a lot of lies to spice it up—it probably got him a bigger pay-out.’

‘Let’s not judge without proof,’ her father urged uneasily.

‘How much proof do you need, Gerald? He’s moved out into a flat we didn’t know he owned and he texted you to tell you he’d gone skiing yesterday.’ Jennifer Gilchrist sighed. ‘Where did he get the money to pay for an expensive holiday when he told us he was broke?’

In growing dismay, Ella was studying a more colourful image of herself, racily dressed in a short black leather skirt and a low-necked lace top with fake black wings attached. It had been taken at a Halloween fancy-dress party the previous year. Cathy by her side, the two girls were giggling and slightly the worse for wear. As well as a large photo of Zarif looking very forbidding there was one of a man she didn’t recognise and that snapshot was labelled ‘Ex-boyfriend, Matt Barton’. Who on earth was Matt Barton? Ella finally took in the headline: THE SEX EXPLOITS OF A FUTURE QUEEN.

Exploits? What exploits? Her tummy executing a sick somersault, Ella thrust back a chair and began to read. The salacious content of the article sent shock reeling through her in waves. This Matt Barton claimed she had attended sex parties with him and he called her ‘an adventurous woman with a voracious appetite for sex and new experiences.’ She was gobsmacked.

‘Is it all lies?’ her father queried darkly. ‘I mean, who’s this Matt Barton chap? Why have we never heard of him before?’

‘Probably because I’ve never heard of him either...in fact I’ve never seen him before and I’ve certainly never gone out with him,’ Ella declared between compressed lips as she read. ‘Apparently he owns some London nightclub that’s just closed down... I do hope Zarif doesn’t take this newspaper,’ she concluded weakly.

But that was a hope destined to end in instant disappointment when a large dark man in a suit knocked loudly on the back door for entry. As her father lurched forward to deal angrily with what he assumed to be another reporter Ella glanced out, only to be totally transfixed by the sight of Zarif poised squarely in the middle of their large back lawn, clearly having used the back entrance to avoid the photographers on the doorstep. ‘It’s Zarif,’ she framed warningly.

‘Oh, well, the more the merrier...but the bridegroom is not supposed to see the bride before the wedding.’ Her mother twittered in consternation while she unlocked the back door.

Five men as big and bulky as army tanks and clearly bodyguards ringed Zarif. Immaculate in an exquisitely tailored grey pinstripe suit cut to enhance every line of his tall, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped body, he settled grim dark golden eyes on her. He still looked unutterably gorgeous. She had realised that his mood made little impression on his heartbreaking good looks the day he first proposed and stood there silently seething at her rejection without losing a single ounce of his charismatic attraction. He stalked into the kitchen, uttering a strained but polite acknowledgement of her parents’ presence while her father noisily bundled up the offending newspaper and thrust it into the bin. His real attention, however, was locked to Ella.

Ella reddened, caught barefoot in her comfy tartan pyjamas and ancient fleece dressing gown without a scrap of make-up to hide behind. Damn him for not phoning first, she thought initially, because though the landline might be off the hook he had her cell number and he had chosen not to make use of it. Had he deliberately chosen that element of surprise? Sex parties? After reading that ludicrous claim, Ella was convinced that nothing in life would ever surprise her again. She had not the slightest doubt that Zarif had read the same newspaper. Was he now planning to call off the wedding? Consternation filled her, teaching her that, without even knowing it, she had become accustomed to the idea of becoming his wife.

‘Ella...may we talk?’ Zarif breathed grittily, running eyes as bright as polished black jet over her somewhat bedraggled appearance. Her golden mane fell untidily round her shoulders, framing the luminous oval of her face and somehow magically highlighting her beautiful eyes.

Sex parties, he thought with a rage beyond anything he had ever experienced—a rage that was only held in restraint by a lifetime of iron discipline. The very thought of other men seeing her naked, not to mention the image of her lying beneath another man, sent an energising charge of pure violence roaring through Zarif’s tall powerful frame. He wanted to beat someone up, shoot something, smash his fists into walls and shed blood. The idea that there could have been a whole legion of men already well acquainted with the leggy perfection of her slender, curvaceous body sent Zarif into a towering rage.

Ella rose from her seat and led the way into the little-used dining room, turning only when she reached the head of the table to look back at him, her chin set at a mutinous angle as he thrust the door firmly shut behind him. He was going to do it; she knew he was going to do it. He was going to ask the one unforgivable question.

Zarif released his breath on a slow hiss. ‘Is it true?’

There he was, bang on target, she thought crazily, almost drunk with the sudden rush of anger and disappointment that he could, for even one moment, credit such wild and fantastic stories about her. ‘Which bit? The insatiable desire for sex and the latest kink? Or the sex parties?’ she questioned tightly. ‘Choose your answer...it’s all the same to me.’

Taken aback by her boldness, Zarif shot her an incredulous appraisal, his strong jawline hardening. ‘Don’t take that attitude with me. I have the right to ask.’

‘No, you don’t have any rights over me. I’m not married to you yet. You didn’t question my past when you had the opportunity and I didn’t question you about yours either... It’s a little late in the day to start changing your mind now.’

His ridiculously long black lashes screened his gaze and a dark flush rose to accentuate the exotic line of his high cheekbones. Something she had said had really hit home hard with him but unfortunately she didn’t know which part of her brave speech had struck him like an arrow hitting a bullseye. Indeed she only grasped that she had, for once, inexplicably achieved the feat of putting Zarif out of countenance.

‘Unhappily I do not have the freedom to overlook a wife’s colourful past. I have too many other considerations to take into account, not least the royal status I would be granting you,’ Zarif bit out, lean tanned hands clenching into fists by his side. He could give her up; of course he could give her up if he had to. He could revisit the idea of putting her in the Dubai apartment though, couldn’t he? The choking tightness banding his chest receded just a little, comforted by that reflection.

What was she playing at? What the heck was she playing at? Ella asked herself in sudden disconcertion because with a few defiant, well-chosen words she could easily blow her parents’ rescue plan right out of the water and she had no wish to do that. But Zarif had disappointed her expectations, demeaning and offending her by asking her that inexcusable question.

Is it true?

But she could see his point; she could really see and understand his point. Vashir was a conservative country and a scandal-besmirched queen would be about as welcome there as snow in the desert. Jason had played a blinder, she thought painfully, for how could she possibly defend herself against such accusations? Didn’t mud always cling to such victims? But, hell roast it, she was nobody’s victim and certainly not her greedy brother’s!

‘Surely you had my lifestyle checked out before you proposed?’ Ella prompted, because it would have struck her as incredibly reckless of him to have proposed without first assuring himself of her continuing suitability and she refused to believe that Zarif had a single reckless bone in his body. ‘Surely you already know the answer to your own question?’

‘Regrettably not. I had no thought of marriage in mind when we met at the hotel,’ Zarif admitted stonily, furious that she wasn’t giving him a straight answer.

‘My goodness, that was very irresponsible and quite unlike you,’ Ella told him in dulcet surprise, her golden head tilting to one side as if she was taking special note of that fact.

His dark-as-molasses eyes flamed tawny gold, his outrage at her mockery unconcealed. ‘Answer me!’ he instructed her rawly, his tone cracking like a whip in the smouldering silence.

‘Exactly what sort of a past did you think I might have?’ Ella enquired in a brittle voice, striving not to yield an inch at the intimidating mien of granite-hard purpose and authority that had hardened his darkly handsome face. He could be tough but she could be tough too when it came to self-defence.

‘Nothing out of the ordinary. Obviously I’m not expecting you to be a virgin. I assume you’ve had the usual adult experiences and I have no desire to pry any more intimately than that into your past. But that,’ Zarif breathed with harsh emphasis, ‘would be my personal outlook. In my public role I have to take into account my people and what they expect from their royal family. We are an old-fashioned people and my family is expected to set high standards. I would also like to know how all this got into the hands of the press.’

‘Family photos appeared in that article... Mum and I think that Jason sold the story.’

Zarif frowned in disbelief. ‘Jason has done this to you?’

‘You seem surprised. But Jason is burning with resentment and bitterness right now. He’s not going to profit in any way from our marriage and that has enraged him.’

‘I had assumed he would take the benefits to your parents into account.’

Ella rolled her eyes at that principled view. ‘My brother has a vengeful streak. Since you’re cut from the same cloth, you should understand that.’

Fresh outrage roared through Zarif. ‘In no way can you compare me to your brother!’

‘Blackmailing me into marrying you to get me into bed is revenge,’ Ella informed him shortly. ‘Maybe you still think it’s a big thrill and an honour for me but I don’t feel the same way.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question about the veracity of that newspaper story,’ Zarif reminded her with stubborn grit, furious that she had labelled his generosity as blackmail when he saw it as something else entirely.

‘Because...really, you don’t deserve an answer,’ Ella condemned with an angry bitterness she couldn’t hide. ‘And you should be ashamed that you even asked. You knew me three years ago. Can you really credit that I’ve changed that much?’

A forbidding edge hardened Zarif’s jawline. ‘I have lived long enough to accept that people do change in unexpected ways. Events can make people act out of character,’ he pointed out flatly, refusing to yield an inch on that score for he himself had once behaved in such a way.

‘I bow to your superior knowledge, but choosing not to marry you three years ago didn’t push me into trying out the lifestyle of a porn queen,’ Ella declared with licking scorn, blue eyes mutinously bright. ‘I’ve never heard of Matt Barton before, never even met him. I suspect he’s someone Jason paid to malign me as, being my brother, it would be odd for Jason to have made sexual allegations against me and it would also have meant exposing the fact that he sold me down the river in the first place.’

A small tithe of the tension holding Zarif rigid eased. ‘You’ve never even met the man who is referred to as your ex-boyfriend?’ he pressed. ‘You’re saying the whole story is a lie? Don’t tell me that just to impress me because I will investigate this matter further.’

‘Right at this moment,’ Ella proclaimed, tossing back her head so that rumpled golden hair tumbled in glossy disarray round her shoulders, ‘I haven’t the smallest desire to impress you.’

‘But you do need to ensure that our wedding goes ahead,’ Zarif reminded her in a roughened undertone because he was noticing that the well-washed cotton of her pyjama jacket was snagging on her pointed nipples, vaguely delineating the firm, full curves of the breasts he longed to explore. He swallowed back a curse, infuriated by his loss of focus and the suspicion that he was behaving like a sex-starved teenage boy.

Zarif’s reminder was unnecessary because Ella was painfully aware that her parents’ future security was reliant on what she did next. He had gravely offended her but he was the one in the position of power, not she, and, while she refused to grovel, she also saw that she had to fully defend herself to clear her name. ‘I’m telling you the truth. I’m not guilty of any of it. I would never go to a sex party. I’ve been set up for a fall and horribly slandered in newsprint.’

‘If you are certain that this is the case, I will sue,’ Zarif asserted, dark golden eyes welded to her flushed and indignant face with satisfaction. ‘But be warned, if I do sue any intimate secrets you have in that line will inevitably be exposed by the proceedings.’

‘I have no such secrets,’ Ella parried curtly, sucking in a deep sustaining breath. ‘My conscience is clean as a whistle. You go ahead and sue.’

‘Should I be prepared for genuine disclosures to emerge from any of your former lovers?’ Zarif enquired between visibly gritted teeth.

CHAPTER FOUR

ELLA’S EYES GLINTED. Of course she could have told Zarif the truth that she had yet to have a lover but he didn’t deserve that revelation. Her eyelids lowered secretively while a smile that was amused, but came across as saucy, unexpectedly curved her lips. ‘No. In that line you’re safe. I’ve always been cautious about who I choose to date.’

Zarif’s gaze burned gold when he saw that smile because he was convinced that she was fondly recalling one of her lovers. He breathed in slow and deep. He was not the jealous, possessive type—what was the matter with him? Other men had slept with her, discovered the secrets of that slim, curvaceous body, listened to her cries of pleasure... Get over it, he told himself impatiently, fighting the tide of destructive X-rated imagery threatening to engulf him. ‘This has been a most unlucky start to our wedding day.’

‘Yes—’ Ella shrugged a careless shoulder ‘—but let’s not pretend it’s a real wedding day or that we’re people who care about each other like a normal bride and groom.’

His nostrils flared. ‘I can assure you that it will be a real wedding and that I do care about your well-being.’

‘Not convinced...sorry about that.’ Beneath his disconcerted gaze, Ella lifted a slender hand and screened an uninterested yawn in a disdainful gesture as she moved towards him, keen to show him out of the house. ‘If you’d cared, you would have offered me support and felt angry on my behalf.’

Even less accustomed to censure than he was to scorn, Zarif squared his sculpted jaw. ‘That is unjust. How would I know whether it was the truth or not when I haven’t had any contact with you for years?’

Unimpressed, Ella raised a delicate honey-coloured brow. ‘Do you think you could leave now so that I can have breakfast and go do the bridal stuff?’ she asked sweetly.

Zarif shot out a lean brown hand and closed it round her wrist to stop her in her tracks. ‘You will not speak to me like that or try to dismiss me like a servant,’ he told her angrily.

‘Does that really matter as long as I go to bed with you?’ Ella asked in a brittle voice. ‘Do you honestly also expect me to be servile like some sort of medieval sex slave?’

Zarif glowered down at her in seething frustration. She was being childish, her immaturity spelt out in cheap gibes and he was tempted to shake her. ‘Stop it.’

He towered over her, so close that she could smell the faint spicy tang of designer cologne that was achingly familiar to her. Suddenly tears stung the backs of her eyelids as a tide of almost forgotten memories threatened to drown her: deceptively romantic moments three years earlier when he had held her hand, given her thoughtful little gifts, listened carefully to her concerns, acted in a way that was protective and caring. And it had all been a lie, she reminded herself bitterly, because his true feelings for her had gone no deeper than a lusty desire to take her to bed and ensure that she became conveniently pregnant with the required son and heir.

‘Eleonora...’ Zarif chided huskily, running his finger down her cheek to trace the path of an escaped tear. ‘You’re upset, angry.’

Ella looked up at him, involuntarily enthralled by the beauty of his dark fallen-angel features, the sheer richness of his stunning amber-gold gaze framed by luxuriant ebony lashes. She shivered, inordinately aware of the brush of his finger across her cheek. ‘Don’t—’

‘I must,’ Zarif growled hoarsely, his hand dropping to her chin to push it up to enable his mouth to come down with hungry driving dominance on hers. Taken by surprise, Ella reeled dizzily, mouth opening to receive the erotic plunge of his tongue. He tasted so wonderfully good, a knot tightened in her pelvis and she gasped, feeling the scandalous dampness of desire surge between her taut thighs in treacherous contrast to her anger with him. The comparison shocked her and broke through the mesmeric power of his mouth on hers.

‘No, don’t,’ Ella protested, squirming against his lean, powerful frame in a manner that only stretched his control thinner than ever.

‘Tonight you’ll be mine,’ Zarif pronounced with unashamed satisfaction, lifting her up against him as though she were a doll and planting her on the edge of the table, pushing her knees apart to stand between them, leaning forward to thrust his aroused body into the apex of her thighs.

Tingling awareness bubbled like a volcano low in her body. Her bright blue eyes widened, pupils dilated as she stared back at him because for once they were on a level. He had sinfully sexy eyes. Her top felt scratchy and uncomfortable against her tender breasts and her breath was catching in her throat. A voice was screaming in the back of her mind, telling her to get a grip, but what kept her still was the warm liquid melting sensation steadily spreading through her lower limbs and most pressing of all, at its pinnacle, a downright unbearable physical ache for the fulfilment she had never known. ‘And you’ll love every moment of what I do to you,’ Zarif forecast hoarsely.

Ella heard his voice through the wall of sensation caused by the outrageous stroke of the long, lean fingers encircling her hips just below her top, the touch of his fingertips across her skin alerting her to an innate sensuality she had not had the chance to experience with him before. She could feel his erection through the fine barrier of his pants and the knowledge that she aroused him even in her pjs and without make-up was ridiculously empowering. She struggled to draw another breath past her tight throat as he pressed his mouth hungrily against the tender skin between her neck and her shoulder and her head fell back without her volition, a tiny gasp escaping her parted lips.

His hands slid up beneath her top and cupped the full globes of her breasts and excitement sent her heart racing so fast she felt light-headed. The surge of heat and wetness between her thighs as he tugged at her straining nipples sent shockwaves through her as his mouth found hers again with a raw passion that thrilled her. Her hands clutched at his arms, nails biting into his sleeves, frustration hurtling through her that she couldn’t touch him the way he was touching her.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry...!’ The sound of her mother’s voice and the door opening and closing again in fast succession roused Ella from her sexual stupor as nothing else could have done. She opened her eyes, not even recalling when she had closed them.

Infuriatingly, Zarif had regained control first and had already stepped back from her. She clashed with burning golden eyes and snatched in a shuddering breath, her face crimson as she acknowledged what she had allowed to happen between them. And when she was furious with him too? That was the most galling admission of all: that Zarif could touch her and every other consideration could simply melt away.

‘I will see you later, habibti,’ Zarif murmured tautly, a flush lining his hard cheekbones.

Ella slid off the table like an electrified eel and hauled open the door. Her mother beamed at her from the hall. ‘The beautician’s here and you haven’t had breakfast yet,’ she fussed. ‘Will Zarif be staying?’

‘No...’ From behind her, Zarif took over the conversation with effortless ease and not the smallest hint of discomfiture.

* * *