‘I knew you’d see sense.’
He was drawing her towards him as he spoke. No force, but he didn’t need force—just a gentle, persistent pull that seemed to make her feet move without her volition, her eyes fill with him, her face lift to his for the kiss she knew was coming. The kiss she wanted. So much. If this was all he had to offer her of himself, then she would take it.
The alternative was nothing at all.
‘And what would you get out of it?’
Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? Why did she have to ask the sort of question that could only land her in even more trouble? She knew what he wanted—all he wanted—from her. Why did she have to push him to state it bluntly?
‘I told you—I get you. In my bed.’
His head had bent and his mouth was trailing hot kisses all over her face, down the side of her cheek, heading for her mouth. Immediately, all the blood rushed to the surface of her skin, waking every nerve, making her shiver and ache deep inside for the heat of his touch, the demand of his possession. She was swimming on a hot sea of need, finding thought impossible, knowing only the hunger he aroused in her simply by existing.
‘Is—is that enough?’
His response was a raw, shaken laughter against the side of her throat, hot breath feathering across the hollow where her pulse beat hard and rapid in response.
‘Oh, ma belle, what do you think?’
His hands skimmed her body, lingering at the curves of her breasts and hips. His teeth took hold of one of the narrow straps of her sundress, tugging it to the side, away and down her arm.
‘But it…’
Was she questioning him or herself? This was what he was offering her. All he was offering. But was it enough for a lifetime?
‘Damn it, Imogen, stop arguing.’ It was a rough mutter against her skin. ‘If I say it’s enough, then it’s enough. After all, Adnan was prepared to go ahead for no more.’
‘Adnan…’
Could he feel her tension, the shock that ricocheted through her? Could he read her panic, the way her mind reeled away from letting him know the truth?
‘He…’
‘He what? What the hell else were you offering Adnan as your husband?’
Raoul’s tongue slid over the skin he had exposed, tracing an erotic path over the exposed tops of her breasts, making her sigh in swooning response. She didn’t want to talk, she just wanted to give in to the molten sensations that were flooding her body, swamping her brain.
‘Adnan wanted an heir…’ It escaped without thought, without rational control. ‘I promised him an heir.’
The shockwave of his reaction was like an atomic explosion close at hand, rocking her sense of reality. He froze, not even breathing against her neck. His very stillness was so terrifying that she was sent scrabbling through her thoughts, trying to work out what she had said.
It burst on her like an ice shower, cascading over her heated skin and taking all the warmth from it in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
‘You promised…?’
Raoul’s voice wouldn’t work. His throat seemed to have been scratched raw so that words would have to force their way past the scars that filled it. He couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. All that was inside his head was a white-hot roar of fury, one that was slowly turning to ice as it slid through his veins, freezing his heart.
‘An heir.’
At least, that was the way it was supposed to sound. But the way he had to force it out tangled the words up, his accent turning them into something that even he couldn’t quite make out. The way Imogen turned, as if to question him, was like a bullet right between the eyes. He couldn’t repeat the words; couldn’t believe what he was hearing. And yet, deep down, he realised he had known all along. Wasn’t this what had brought him here in the first place? An instinctive, unconscious awareness of the only reason why Adnan Al Makthabi would marry at all?
He had wanted to stop the wedding, but he had told himself it was because he couldn’t stand by and watch as Imogen got her gold-digging claws into another man. But Adnan was no fool. So why would he have wanted to do it? What could Imogen have promised him in order to win his support?