Jane nearly spat out her coffee but composed herself in time. Her hand was trembling as she put the cup down on the table beside the bed and sat up. ‘What right do you have to ask me a question like that?’
‘Because you just told me to! And because I’m your husband.’
‘Not my real husband! You’re one half of a sexless marriage.’ She glared at him. ‘Why are you so interested?’
‘Many reasons. Natural curiosity, for one. Perhaps because I’ve never spent the night with a virgin before. I’ve certainly never had sex with one.’ He narrowed his eyes as if running through his memory. ‘Or if I have, I wasn’t aware of it.’
She screwed up her face. ‘You’re disgusting.’
‘So you keep telling me,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve been called many things in my lifetime, Jane—but never that.’
‘Probably because people are always treading carefully and kowtowing towards you because you happen to be a desert king.’
‘It’s possible,’ he conceded, his gaze travelling over her, but there was open interest in his eyes rather than any element of flirtation. ‘You think it’s disgusting to talk about sex? For me to ask you something which I’d already suspected? That you are an innocent, which is rare enough in this day and age—but almost unheard of in a western woman of almost twenty-eight years. I admit I find it difficult to believe but my intention was not to make you feel like some kind of freak.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not what’s making me angry.’
‘Then what is?’ he challenged.
‘You! The way you talk! The arrogant statements you keep coming out with. Telling me that you’ve never...had a virgin before! As if women were some kind of sport. What kind of a boast is that, Zayed?’
‘It was a statement of fact,’ he corrected. ‘It was not intended as a boast. But talking about sex clearly bothers you.’
His voice had grown thoughtful and Jane looked down to see where his gaze was directed, horrified to notice that the sheet had slipped down to her waist, revealing breasts covered only in the delicate white silk of her nightgown. Breasts which seemed to have grown in size as well as in sensitivity. She could feel the aching hardness of their tips as she grabbed at the sheet to cover herself, trying to ignore the sound of his mocking laughter. Suddenly she felt hot and flustered and pleased that he hadn’t woken up to discover her trying to comfort him.
‘Are you trying to embarrass me, Zayed?’ she demanded.
‘No, Jane, I’m not. I was trying to establish a fact and to decide where we go from here. But I discover that I now find myself in a somewhat invidious position.’
She gazed at him suspiciously. ‘Which is?’
He shrugged, and as he moved the billowing white silk shirt whispered against his skin. ‘This is a marriage of convenience and you were chosen specifically because I did not find you attractive.’
‘But suddenly you do?’ she questioned sarcastically, hoping that would detract from her crushing insecurity.
‘Actually, yes. Inexplicably and inconveniently, suddenly I do,’ he agreed, and then he sighed. ‘Perhaps it was the sight of you with Kafalahian emeralds in your hair, wearing that bridal gown which seemed to cling to every pore of your body.’
‘How very superficial.’
‘But men are superficial, Jane,’ he argued. ‘We are simple creatures, programmed to respond to very obvious stimuli. The tremble of a mouth stained with berries...the flutter of lashes around eyes which have been darkened with kohl. A body which you had never seen before—suddenly outlined as if by the loving detail of an artist’s brush and revealing something underneath which is quite exquisite. Quite spectacular, if you must know. You looked beautiful on your wedding day and that is the image which has replaced the one I had of you before—of the woman in the shapeless clothes with her hair in a bun.’ He shrugged in an apologetic gesture but the dark glint in his eyes didn’t look remotely apologetic. ‘And now I find that I cannot look at you without a hard and painful throbbing in my groin. It is a very...uncomfortable feeling.’
She would have chastised him with the most withering words in her vocabulary, if her cheeks hadn’t been so red and if she hadn’t suspected that it would fall on deaf ears. Because he wasn’t seeking her praise or her approval, was he? He didn’t care if she disapproved of the way he spoke to her. He was simply telling her what was on his mind. And yes, he was doing it in a manner which was brutally blunt—he certainly hadn’t lifted his words from the pages of a diplomatic handbook! He made his physical reaction to her sound almost anatomical, which in a way, she supposed, it was. It shouldn’t have been in the least bit flattering and yet...
Jane licked her lips. She couldn’t deny the unexpected thrill of pleasure it gave her to know she was capable of arousing such a reaction in the Sheikh. To think that she, of all people, should make such a man experience desire. Was it that which gave her a brief taste of her own power? Which filled her with a sudden cool confidence as she tilted her chin to look at him? ‘So deal with it.’
‘How?’
‘You’re the expert. How do you usually deal with it?’ she said, aware too late that she’d walked into some kind of trap, which she might have noticed if she hadn’t been trying to distract herself from the squirmy feeling which was making her want to wriggle her bottom against the mattress.
His eyes glinted. ‘My virgin bride is really asking me a question like that?’
‘Stupid of me. You find a woman, I suppose. Only this time you can’t because you’ve sworn off sex.’
‘Often sex is a solution, yes.’ He shrugged. ‘But a woman is not always available—especially when I am in the desert.’
Another question she shouldn’t have asked, but right then her heart was pounding so fast that she didn’t really think it through.
‘So then what?’