As he held her to him, his heart pounding against hers, Elinor blinked back sudden tears, for she felt very emotional. She also felt incredibly tender towards him and strung a line of kisses across a broad brown shoulder. She fiercely fought off the sense of shame and awkwardness that she guiltily knew was waiting to pounce on her. He made her feel special and she was desperate to hold on to that reassuring sensation.
‘I should go back to my own room,’ she mumbled, however, a few minutes later.
Jasim’s arms tightened like bars of steel round her. He had every intention of fully satisfying his desire for her. ‘Tonight you are mine and you stay here with me,’ he spelt out thickly.
And she was his now, he reflected in male triumph, his hungry body already quickening against hers again. One stolen night, however, was all he could dare to take beneath a roof that also housed his niece. Anything more would be an insult.
Elinor wakened in the early hours of the next morning when light was filtering with increasing strength through the curtains and illuminating the magnificent unfamiliar room. In that first instant of reason after a very eventful night, she knew only pure terror when she thought of the unknown that faced her.
What the heck had come over her? Complete insanity? It was barely thirty-six hours since they had met and she had spent the night in Prince Jasim’s bed, letting him make love to her over and over again. In truth she wasn’t sure she would be able to walk if she got out of bed, since he had proved a very demanding and seemingly tireless lover.
She lay watching him in the half-light, dreamily, tenderly admiring the strong classic bones of his profile and the way blue-black stubble enhanced his wide stubborn mouth. While her body might ache from his attentions, familiarity had not bred contempt. He was beautiful. He still took her breath away and that scared her, because she had never believed in love at first sight.
But what else was she to make of the powerful emotions assailing her? He had not been out of her mind for a second since they’d met and she felt remarkably comfortable with images and reflections of him fully occupying her every waking thought. On a horse and in bed he was her every dream come true
. Yet she hardly knew him and surely he could only think less of her because of the ease with which she had fallen into his arms?
Content to be the full focus of her admiration, Jasim was wondering if he dared take her one more time. He couldn’t get enough of the sweet, tight release of her warm, willing body. But the servants would be up and about soon, and a lifetime in a royal palace had taught him how fast scandal hit the household grapevine and went places one would prefer it did not reach. The deed was done, accomplished in record time too, he savoured with ruthless satisfaction. His brother would never look at her now. Too warm, he sat up and tossed back the duvet and saw the blood stain on the white linen sheet.
‘Good morning,’ she whispered, looking all shy and flushed and utterly adorable.
Unlike his unlamented Sophia, Elinor had been a virgin, Jasim registered in substantial shock. Yet he had taken her with all the finesse of a stallion covering a mare. A virgin: quite a statement for a young woman of twentyone in a world where casual sex was commonplace. A twinge of rare guilt pierced Jasim; he would never have chosen to seduce a virgin. But even had he known beforehand, would he have left her untouched while he was aware that Murad would have found such purity a mouthwatering temptation? He had now contrived to smash the possibility of a relationship that could well have driven his brother into setting Yaminah aside and replacing her with Elinor as a second wife. For all his extramarital affairs, Murad was a staunchly traditional man and Jasim was convinced that, had Elinor slept with Murad, his brother would have offered her marriage. Well, at least that disaster could not be enacted now.
Jasim reached for Elinor and pulled her into his arms. ‘Good morning,’ he husked, cupping her pouting breasts and gently teasing the swollen pink buds that crowned them.
Elinor was very tense. ‘I need to go back to my room—’
‘One of the servants will bring you clothes and pack for you,’ Jasim intoned, arranging her against the tumbled pillows and letting his tousled dark head swoop down to capture a straining nipple. One more time, he was thinking, just to get him through the day ahead.
Elinor went from being all soft and purring and quivering with response to sudden rigidity. ‘Pack…for me?’
Jasim wished he had taken more thorough advantage of her before he broke that news. He lifted his handsome dark head and met the anxious questions clouding her green eyes. ‘You can no longer stay at Woodrow Court.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Elinor gasped in bewilderment, pulling away from him and yanking the duvet up over breasts that suddenly felt indecently bare.
Jasim released his breath on a slow hiss of impatience. ‘Of course you can’t stay here now that we have shared a bed. It would be most inappropriate for you to continue caring for my niece.’
Elinor was so shocked by that announcement that she felt the blood drain from her face and leave her pale. ‘You mean that having sex with you is grounds for giving me the sack?’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite as crudely as that.’
Elinor hugged the duvet to her with furious defensive hands, her eyes prickling with stinging tears. She could not credit what he was telling her, or that he could say such offensive things in that smooth low-key style, as though he were merely making polite conversation. ‘Then how would you put it?’
‘Our relationship will enter another phase,’ he drawled, smooth as polished glass and with a decided hint of warning ice in his tone.
Deaf to that loaded hint of icy withdrawal, Elinor stared straight ahead and worried at her full lower lip with her teeth. ‘What sort of a phase?’
‘I want you to move to London so that we can see more of each other.’
Now horribly conscious of her nudity below the bedding, Elinor flung him as frozen a look as she could contrive. ‘But I like working here. I love looking after Zahrah.’
‘It’s unfortunate but it can no longer continue. I cannot conduct an affair with you in the presence of my family.’
‘Because you’re ashamed of your association with me!’ Elinor condemned, and she flung herself out of bed in a passion of self-loathing regret and snatched up the towelling robe.
‘No, it would be indiscreet and unacceptable behaviour on my part. In London I can do as I like and what I would like is to see more of you,’ Jasim declared, brilliant dark eyes welded to her angry bemused face as he willed her to accept the change in her status. ‘We can’t turn back the clock on our intimacy. You must trust me. Say your goodbyes to Zahrah and I will have you out of here by lunchtime.’
Elinor snatched up her discarded swimsuit with a shaking hand. She was in shock and deeply confused. Throughout the night hours he had been the passionate lover of her dreams but, all of a sudden, he was laying down the law and making non-negotiable demands that threatened to tear apart her entire life. ‘And if I was to say, no, I’m not going anywhere and let’s forget we ever crossed the boundaries?’