Her wooden pretence of composure cracked and her pale head swivelled, green eyes flashing defensively. ‘Am I that obvious?’
His dense black lashes screened his gaze. ‘No. I am attuned to your mood now.’
The royal couple waved, and the silence stretched like an elastic band being yanked to breaking point.
‘Don’t keep me in suspense,’ Kirsten breathed between clenched teeth.
‘I do not find it easy to talk about feelings,’ Shahir confessed in a driven undertone. ‘But I do know that I should never have told you that I loved Faria.’
‘Well…how were you to know that you were going to end up married to a woman with a memory like an elephant’s?’ Kirsten muttered waspishly, and it was awful because she could feel the tears gathering up behind her eyes like a dam ready to break.
‘That is not the reason why I should not have made that statement. Since that day I have come to appreciate that I was mistaken about what I believed I felt,’ Shahir disclosed tautly, his accent fracturing his words. ‘I am not in love with her. I have never been in love with her. It was…I now see…no more than a foolish fancy.’
‘Really?’ Kirsten prompted chokily, thinking that he really had to think she was the stupidest woman in Dhemen to be telling her such a story on their wedding day.
Yet she understood what he was doing. When he had admitted that he loved Faria he had never dreamt that Kirsten would one day become his wife. Naturally he now wished he had kept quiet, and was keen to cover his tracks. Some dark secrets were better left buried. And how could she blame him for trying to hoodwink her? Recognising how jealous and insecure his bride was feeling, he was attempting to defuse the situation in the only way he could. He had told her a little white lie, the way well-meaning people lied to children sooner than reveal the cruel truth.
‘You need never think of the matter again,’ Shahir asserted with conviction.
‘I won’t.’ At least not around him, she thought tragically.
A helicopter ferried them to the palace at Zurak. She gazed in wonder at the picturesque stone building. Surrounded on all sides by desert, the palace sat in the middle of a lush oasis of trees and greenery like a mirage.
‘When my ancestors were nomads they stayed here in the heat of summer. My grandfather met my grandmother when she drew water from the well for him. It was love at first sight for them both. His father asked her father for her hand in marriage and that was that.’ Shahir laughed and linked his fingers firmly with hers. ‘Life was very much simpler in those days.’
‘As long as you didn’t have to draw the water from the well,’ Kirsten could not resist pointing out.
‘In all the great poems of the East men are portrayed as the more romantic sex,’ Shahir informed her without skipping a beat. ‘From the first moment I saw you, you were never out of my mind.’
That was lust, not love, she almost told him morosely. Did he think she had forgotten that every time he had touched her he had regretted it? Didn’t he realise she still remembered that he had proposed marriage out of guilt at having taken her virginity? But their lives had moved on and they were married now. Furthermore, he was clever and he was practical. He wanted their marriage to be a success and naturally he was trying to make her feel good. Romance and compliments were part of the show, she reasoned.
She asked herself if that really mattered. Although he did not love her, she loved him, and she too wanted their relationship to work.
A fountain was playing in the centre of the tiled entrance hall. It was deserted. He pulled her gently round to face him and kissed her slow and deep, until she was dizzy with longing. She discovered that she no longer wanted to think about the fact that he was laying sensible foundations for a successful royal marriage.
Hand in hand, they walked up a wide marble staircase. Their footsteps echoed in the hot still air and the silence was magical after the noise and bustle of their wedding celebrations.
He thrust wide the door of a room at the end of the long gallery
, and swept her up into his arms to carry her over the threshold. ‘You look amazing in that dress…like you belong in a fairytale.’
He kicked shut the door in his wake and strolled almost indolently across the huge room to deposit her on a big four-poster bed. Silk and lace frothed round her in a highly feminine tangle of fabric.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ she gasped, tipping her head back to survey the map of the heavens painted on the vaulted ceiling far above.
‘A bed with a view.’ In the act of unbuttoning his military jacket, Shahir came down on the bed on one knee to claim her lush pink lips again, with a hunger that jolted her right down to her toes. ‘But it will be morning before you have the time to admire it.’
‘Is that a promise?’ she asked breathlessly.
He unclasped the sword and set it aside with care before removing his jacket. ‘Come here…’
Entrapped by the scorching gold of his scrutiny, she slid off the bed and approached him. He lifted the pearl circlet from her hair, gently turned her round and unzipped her gown. The dress tumbled round her knees and he lifted her free of the folds, hauling her back into the hard muscular heat of his masculine frame. The fine silk shift pulled taut over the pouting fullness of her unbound breasts and clung to skin that felt smooth and sensuous.
‘You’re so perfect, Your Serene Highness…’ He sighed, his expert hands roaming over the pert mounds, massaging the rosy crowns into a swollen sensitivity that drew a breathless moan from her parted lips. Her head angled back, her silvery blonde hair falling like a sheet of polished silk across his shoulder. His mouth blazed a roving trail from her delicate jawbone to the pulse-point below her ear that made her jerk in response.
‘Your Serene Highness…?’ Kirsten echoed weakly, incomprehension gripping her at his form of address.
‘My princess…my beautiful princess.’ Shahir bent her forward to undo the tiny fasteners on the shift. ‘The title comes courtesy of my father.’