‘That’s right.’ She nodded her head, spurred on by a determination that he should know the strength of her resolve. ‘I don’t want to marry you, be your wife. I told you that repeatedly, Rashid but, as usual, you wouldn’t listen! You ordered me over here in spite of my objections. You want your own sweet way and you’re determined to get it—just like you always do!’
‘You flatter me, Jenna,’ he said sarcastically.
‘No, I don’t—and what is more I never will! Everyone else around here does, and that’s half your trouble!’
‘Half my trouble?’ he repeated dangerously. ‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’
‘That you’re arrogant!’ she offered.
Black brows were raised in imperious question, as if she had just rather stupidly stated the obvious. ‘And?’
His lazy acknowledgement filled her with the courage to tell him what was really going on in her mind. ‘And I don’t want to marry an arrogant man! I don’t want the kind of marriage you are offering me!’ she declared. She saw him open his mouth to object, but she shook her head and carried on, not caring that no one ever interrupted Rashid! ‘When I get married, I want it to be as an equal!’
‘An equal?’ he repeated faintly.
‘Yes! It’s an interesting word, isn’t it, Rashid? One which I learnt in America! Go and look it up in the dictionary if you really don’t understand it!’
‘I think you forget yourself!’ he said tightly.
‘I think not!’ she contradicted, and for a moment her vulnerability and sense of regret were washed away by an overwhelming wave of power! She was no longer bound by an ancient promise to him! She was free to say exactly as she pleased—and maybe some long-overdue home truths wouldn’t go amiss.
‘I don’t want the kind of marriage your parents had. All Quador men consider it to be their unquestionable right to…’ She clamped her lips together firmly.
‘To what, Jenna?’ he questioned silkily.
As if he needed telling! She shivered with distaste. ‘To have mistresses!’
‘Mistresses?’
Her pent-up anger and frustration exploded in a fit of temper she hadn’t seen in herself for a long, long time. ‘Oh, please don’t insult my intelligence by playing dumb with me, Rashid!’ she snapped. ‘I’m not stupid, and neither is everyone else! I read the newspapers, you know!’
He noticed the ragged breathing which was making her delightful breasts rise up and down quite enticingly, and thought fleetingly that if it had been any other woman he might have taken her straight back to bed there and then.
But then if it had been any other woman he doubted he would have lost all control and left her unsatisfied. A fact which was surely contributing to her magnificent temper—a temper which was making her look fiery and beautiful and almost formidable.
Neither men nor women lost their temper in front of him, and in this woman the novelty value was proving highly erotic. But enough was enough; she needed to know who was the master.
‘Explain yourself!’ he commanded.
Jenna pursed her lips together. ‘The whole world knows that you have many women,’ she began, and when she saw the slight shrugging of his shoulders her blood pressure threatened to shoot through the ceiling. ‘You see! There you go again! Looking as though it’s something to be proud of!’
‘Many men do it,’ he commented quietly. ‘But mostly they don’t have the paparazzi waiting around to capture the moment on film!’
She sucked in a breath of outrage that was directed as much against her own behaviour as his. How could she have just let him have sex with her like that? How could she?
‘Even in yesterday’s newspaper in New York I saw that you had been pictured leaving your friend’s apartment in Paris only the day before!’ she raged. ‘Cutting it a little fine, weren’t you, Rashid? You must have some stamina—to have made love to her and then to come back to repeat the experience with me!’
He was contemplating giving her an insight into the real extent of his stamina, when he saw the faint glimmer of tears which had turned her eyes into liquid gold and he cursed aloud. What right had he to make any kind of boast in view of what had just happened?
His voice was as soft as she had ever heard it, and it soothed her as if it were a lullaby. ‘I had not intended to make love to you today!’ he murmured. ‘As my bride, you would have come to me a virgin—and I would have been so much slower with you. So much more gentle! And now I have ruined your first experience of making love.’
‘Maybe we both ruined it,’ she argued quietly, and then turned her eyes up to his. ‘Oh, why did you have to follow me here, Rashid? Why didn’t you just leave me alone?’
Not follow her? Rashid shook his head. His anger and his desire for her had reached a point of total combustion that could not have been denied. He hadn’t asked himself what had guided him so inexorably towards her room because he had been eaten up with a gnawing kind of jealousy which had blinded him to all thought and reason.
Until he had walked into this bedchamber and seen her wrapped into nothing but a towel. And then a primitive hunger had taken over completely.
‘But I could not let you go just like that,’ he declared heatedly.