A Whisper of Disgrace

chapter NINE


KULAL STROKED HIS fingertips over the silken curtain of dark hair which lay spread all over the pillow and felt the inevitable hardening of his body.

‘I know you’re awake, Rosa,’ he said softly. ‘So why don’t you open your eyes and kiss me?’

Rosa stirred as the sheikh’s voice penetrated her dreamy thoughts and, obediently, she let her eyelashes flutter open. He was lying next to her, propped up on one elbow—deliciously naked and gloriously virile, studying her body as if it was the most beautiful body he’d ever seen, which was what he had told her in the early hours of this morning as he had pulled her hungrily into his arms. Each morning she woke up to a similarly appreciative reaction, but it still took some getting used to.

She pushed the blanket of mussed hair away from her face and yawned. ‘But I might have been asleep,’ she objected.

He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘It’s nearly midday.’

‘And it’s Saturday. Or are you saying that it’s impossible for someone to be asleep if it’s nearly lunchtime?’

‘I knew you weren’t asleep because you’ve been wriggling that delicious bottom—’ he smiled as his arm snaked around her waist and he turned her around, so that his erection was pressing hard against her belly ‘—against me for the past half-hour. So it was a toss between going for a cold shower, or seeing if I might be able to get you to do something more interesting than sleeping.’

She leaned forward, brushing her mouth against his and feeling the instant shimmer of lust which flamed over her skin. ‘You can always get me to do that,’ she said, her voice sounding almost shy as he cupped her buttocks to pull her closer. But wasn’t it insane to feel shy, when in the few short weeks since their marriage Kulal had stripped her bare in just about every way there was?

He had taught her so much. He had shown her that sex was something to be enjoyed and savoured, not something furtive and shameful. In short, he had liberated her from a lot of her own hang-ups and all she was trying to do now was avoid getting too dependent on a man who was never intended to be anything other than a temporary fixture. ‘In fact, you can get me to do just about anything,’ she finished softly, and saw his eyes darken.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And I’d be happy with pretty much anything you’d care to do to me right now.’

‘Oh, Kulal.’

‘Oh, Rosa,’ he murmured back, and lowered his head to kiss her. He thought that her lips felt cool and tasted of the peppermint tea she’d brought back to bed when they’d first woken. Her arms tightened around him and the desire he felt grew stronger—his heart beating out a crazy rhythm as he pushed one hard thigh against the fleshy softness of hers. He thought how perfect she was in his arms, how their lovemaking just got better and better and pretty much took his breath away every time. And he thought how their honeymoon had surprised him in all kinds of ways.

At first, they had barely left the apartment—with only the occasional trip to a theatre or a restaurant punctuating their lazy days and long nights of sexual exploration. For the first time in his life he had cleared his diary and turned off his phone—because he never took a holiday. Never. He told himself that it would be a useful experiment to see if his charitable foundation could function well without him, but deep down he knew that wasn’t the real reason. The truth was that he didn’t want to leave Rosa’s side. He couldn’t get enough of her; he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her. And when they had ventured out, he had felt like a tourist in his adopted city. She’d made him do things he would normally never have dreamt of doing, like climbing as far as it was possible up the Eiffel Tower—with his bodyguards trailing behind them. And when he had remonstrated that he did not wish to join in with other sightseers, she had halted his objections simply by kissing him.

‘You’re never too cool to see the whole of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower,’ she’d giggled against his lips. And later that week they had taken a riverboat down the Seine and she had looked up the name of all the bridges in her guidebook and recited them to him. They’d sat and drunk coffee incognito at the famous Café de Flore and made two similarly unrecorded trips to the theatre. In fact, they’d managed to avoid a single press photographer capturing any honeymoon images and to Kulal this had felt like a small triumph—especially when he’d realised that she actually hadn’t been interested in being photographed with him.

He’d even taken her shopping—something he’d never done before, although he’d picked up plenty of inflated bills in his time. But with Rosa it was different. She didn’t seem bothered about the cost of things and he enjoyed dressing his new wife with clothes which befitted a princess. Just as he enjoyed buying—and removing—the outrageous scraps of silken underwear which could barely contain her luscious curves.

He still couldn’t get his head around it. What was the appeal of lying next to her and just watching her—as if the sight of the slow inhalation and exhalation of her breath was the single most fascinating spectacle in the world? Usually he absented himself pretty early, because he didn’t like women hanging around him in the morning. He liked his space and his privacy. He liked the feeling of being alone—the way he’d always been.

But not with Rosa—and he was still trying to work out why.

Was it because she gave herself to him so completely? Because she was all his and only his—like a newly minted coin which had been held by no other person? With her, he felt primeval. Something possessive and powerful gripped him whenever he held her, something which battered at his senses like a raging storm. Perhaps that was the ancient power of the marriage vows—that no matter how carelessly the words had been spoken, they still managed to convey a profound significance to the couple involved.

He moved his head down between her thighs, hearing her breathless little gasp of anticipation as he began to lick her. He revelled in the taste of her sweet-sharp stickiness and the way that his fingers sank into her soft hips—just as he revelled in her orgasm as she bucked helplessly beneath his tongue. He stayed there for a while, his lips pressed hard against her until at last she grew still and then he moved over her, and into her. He closed his eyes as he lost himself in her slick heat. Allowed the urgent rhythm to spiral them both up to a place so high that the slow and incredible fall back to earth left him breathless, and spent.

He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes it was to the smell of strong coffee and the sight of Rosa sitting on the window seat in a silken robe the colour of claret, with the glory of Paris framing her like an Impressionist painting.

‘I’ve made you some coffee,’ she said.

‘I can smell it.’ He sat up as she placed it on the table beside the bed. ‘You make the best coffee in the world.’

‘This is true,’ she said seriously. ‘Because I’m Sicilian and we do the best of everything.’ But as Rosa lifted the pot to pour her own coffee, she was aware of how hollow her words sounded. She used to revel in her Sicilian roots and identity, with the fierce pride which had been drummed into her ever since she could remember. Being born and raised on the beautiful Mediterranean island had always given her a feeling of belonging. She’d felt part of her family and also part of the bigger island community, which had always existed there. But not any more. Her mother’s betrayal seemed to have had even wider-reaching repercussions than she’d originally anticipated. Not only had her relationships within the family been dramatically altered, but a wall of silence seemed to have descended since Rosa’s dramatic flight from her homeland.

‘Have you heard anything from your family?’ he questioned softly.

Had he read her thoughts, or had her wistfulness shown on her face? She didn’t want to show him she was hurt because she was trying very hard not to be. But it did hurt that neither of her brothers had been in touch, even though she’d emailed them her new phone number and told them she was now married and living in Paris.

‘I’ve heard from Lia,’ she said slowly. ‘She’s the half-sister I never knew I had. The one I insulted after my mother had dropped her bombshell. I wrote and apologised for the way I lashed out at her and she was so sweet. She said she understood. She also said she’d always wanted a sister—she just hadn’t been expecting to find one quite so dramatically! But I guess we’ll never get to know each other now.’

Kulal frowned. ‘There’s nothing stopping you going back to Sicily, you know—if you wanted to speak to them face to face,’ he said. ‘I could take you there, if it would help.’

Rosa shook her head. And have everyone cluster round and want to find out about her glamorous new husband? She wasn’t that good an actress and somehow she couldn’t bear the pity she’d have to endure when her family discovered the truth of why they’d married. ‘I told you—I can’t imagine me ever wanting to go back. There’s no place for me there now. The person I used to be doesn’t exist any more.’

Because the new Rosa was now a princess, even if it was only a very temporary role. She didn’t get to wear a crown but she got to share the bed of a man who was a real-life prince. A desert sheikh—a man who couldn’t seem to get enough of her … and much as she revelled in his attention, she knew it was getting dangerous. She’d been feeling that for days now. It happened every time she opened her eyes and saw him lying next to her and it continued throughout the day. She hugged the memory of their lovemaking to her like a delicious present. She’d never felt so contented—nor ecstatic—in her whole life and she knew that it would be madness to allow her feelings for Kulal to grow.

But how did you stop yourself feeling something when your heart was determined to do the opposite? She picked up her cup and sipped her coffee. She could not afford to get too attached to her husband, because one day they were going to split. She knew that. She’d signed that damned pre-nup, hadn’t she? The one which offered her a massively generous amount of money, in exchange for a ‘clean break’ settlement? She just needed to train herself to get used to that bald fact and to maintain some kind of emotional distance.

She tried telling herself she was okay with it, when Kulal announced that their honeymoon was over and that he was planning to return to work at his foundation the following Monday. But the reality was that she’d wanted to cling to him and beg him not to go and that feeling had scared her more than her very real dilemma—about how to usefully spend her days while he was working.

‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do all day in Paris, with you back at the office full-time,’ she said.

He glittered her a smile. ‘Do more of what you did in Sicily. You were a lady of leisure there, weren’t you?’

Rosa didn’t let her smile slip, even though it wasn’t the most flattering way to describe her former life. It was true she hadn’t had a career, though she’d been awarded a respectable languages degree from the University of Palermo. But it had been difficult to find a job which hadn’t been vetoed by her controlling family. She’d done bits of interpreting work whenever she could, but opportunities were scarce. So she’d ended up with a part-time administrative job at the university where she’d studied—and it had felt a bit like stepping back in time. As if she hadn’t progressed much beyond the student she’d once been.

‘I wasn’t exactly a lady of leisure,’ she defended. ‘I did have a part-time job—’

‘Well, there’s no need for you to have a part-time job now,’ he said, a touch impatiently. ‘Just enjoy your days and let me pick up the bill.’

Rosa tried not to feel offended by his dismissive words just as she tried to throw herself into her new life as a stay-at-home Parisian wife. She explored more of Paris and the many attractions it had to offer. She walked everywhere—always tailed by the ubiquitous bodyguard—and began to gain the confidence which came from learning the geography of a once-strange city. In the mornings she took in a gallery or an exhibition, and in the afternoons she went to see a film and her once-fluent French began to improve as a consequence.

But she got a distinct sense that she was simply filling in time, that she was becoming like many of the other rich expatriates who counted away their hours with culture. She began to look forward to Kulal’s homecoming with more enthusiasm than she told herself was wise. He didn’t want an eager woman throwing herself at him like an underexercised puppy whenever he came home from work, did he? He wanted a woman who’d had an interesting day, because surely that way she’d be more interesting herself.

One evening, he came back late from the office and went straight into the shower, and when he walked into the bedroom, Rosa was sitting in front of the dressing table in her bra and pants, blow drying her hair.

‘You haven’t forgotten we’re out to dinner tonight?’ he questioned, momentarily distracted by the sight of the lace-covered globes of her breasts.

‘No, of course I haven’t.’ She put the hairdryer down and watched his reflection as he began to rub a towel over his damp body. ‘We’re seeing someone from a TV company, am I right?’

‘You are. Actually, the executive producer of one of France’s most successful independent companies, who wants to make a documentary about Zahrastan.’

She met his eyes in the mirror. ‘Maybe that’s a good thing—to place it in the minds of the public.’ She leaned forward and slicked some lipstick over her mouth. ‘I’d never heard of Zahrastan until I met you.’

‘Precisely.’ Roughly, he rubbed at his hair. ‘We need to let the world see that we’re not some big, bad oppressive dictatorship. The biggest problem was persuading my brother to allow a foreign crew to enter the country in order to film.’

‘And he was agreeable?’

Kulal laughed. ‘Oddly enough, he was very agreeable—since he’s notoriously prickly about foreign opinion. But I think he’s decided that Zahrastan has to be seen as embracing the modern world.’

‘And do you.’ She hesitated, because since that first night, when he’d poured out the blame and guilt he’d felt about his mother’s death, he’d barely mentioned his brother. In fact, the frankness of that night had not been repeated, even though she had tentatively tried to get him to open up on more than one occasion. But he had blocked her moves with the skill of a seasoned chess player. She got the feeling that he had allowed her to see a rare chink in his armour and had no intention of repeating it and it frustrated the hell out of her. Because wasn’t it natural to want to chip away at that armour and see more of the real man beneath? Didn’t that kind of intimacy feel just as profound—maybe even more profound—as anything which they shared during sex? She sucked in a breath as she watched him pull on a white shirt. ‘Do you talk to your brother much?’

He raised his eyebrows, as if she had somehow overstepped the mark. ‘Obviously we’ve spoken about the film crew. How else would I know his feelings on the subject?’

The faint sarcasm which edged his words was new but Rosa wasn’t going to give up, because this was the first opportunity she’d had in ages. ‘I don’t mean about that. I mean, about … about what happened to your mother.’

She saw him stiffen before his eyes suddenly became cool and watchful. Like a snake’s eyes, she found herself thinking as a little flutter of trepidation whispered over her skin.

‘Sorry?’

‘I just thought—’

‘Well, don’t,’ he snapped. ‘Because there’s nothing left to say on the subject, Rosa. I thought we’d already decided that.’

His words were steely—they sounded like a metal door being slammed—but Rosa wasn’t going to give up. She knew the danger of locking away painful things. You locked them away and they festered and then one day they all came bubbling out in a horrible mess. Wasn’t that what her own mother had done? ‘I just get the feeling that there’s so much between you which isn’t resolved. That maybe—’

‘Maybe nothing,’ he clipped out, and now his words were coated with ice. ‘I told you those things because.’ Kulal felt a brief flicker of anger, but it was directed at himself as much as at her. What the hell had possessed him to tell her all those things? To open up his heart in a way which was unheard of? ‘Because you’d given me a brief glimpse into your own sorry family saga and I decided it was only fair to try to redress the balance. But I didn’t tell you so that you could suddenly decide to “fix me.”‘ He stared at her. ‘You have enough things to worry you, Rosa—and if you feel the need for some sort of redemptive programme in your life, then I suggest you might try working on your own stuff first.’

His attack had come out of nowhere and it startled her. Rosa stared into his hawk-like face and thought that his expression looked cruel and almost … unrecognisable. Except that wasn’t strictly true, was it? He had looked at her that way when she’d woken up in his villa. When she’d found herself alone in his bed and discovered him staring at her as if he didn’t like her very much… .

She fished around for something to say. Something which wouldn’t involve bursting into tears and demanding to know why he’d felt the need to spoil everything with his cruel words. But instead, she fixed him with a questioning look which was very polite and utterly shallow. ‘What kind of documentary?’

He nodded, as if approving her sudden change of subject. ‘A groundbreaking one, with not a camel in sight.’

She gave the smile she knew was expected of her before walking into her dressing room to choose something to wear. Her hands were shaking as she pulled open the closet door, but she tried to tell herself that she couldn’t heap all the blame on Kulal.

Because in a way he was right, wasn’t he? She hadn’t worked out any of her own stuff. She still felt bitter and hurt by what she had learnt about her parentage. She had run away from her family, but it seemed that her family had been happy to let her go—and she was surprised by the sharp pain she felt as a result. Had she thought she was still their precious Rosa who could do no wrong? That they’d come seeking some kind of reconciliation or to comfort her, when the reality was that they would have been furious and humiliated by her desertion?

She began to riffle her way through her clothes, picking out an ankle-length dress, which Kulal had chosen for her himself. It was a simple red dress, but the beauty was in the fabric which clung like molten syrup to her curves. Skyscraper heels in ebony leather and loose hair completed the look, though impulsively she clipped a scarlet silk flower behind her ear at the last minute.

Kulal’s reaction to her appearance was gratifying, although she had to reapply her lipstick after he’d kissed it all away, and still glowing from the sweetness of that kiss, she decided that she was going to forget the bitter words he’d spoken. What was the point of ruining the evening ahead, especially when he looked so … gorgeous. His dark, sculpted features were highlighted by the fact that he was newly shaved and his ebony hair gleamed in the early-evening sunshine as they stepped into the official car.

Was it normal to feel this way? she wondered. To want to touch him at every given moment and run her fingers over each inch of his body? But she didn’t give in to her desire—just sat serenely beside him on the back seat of the large car, asking him intelligent questions about the proposed documentary, so that by the time they arrived in the trendy Marais area of the city she felt composed. As if she had been born to walk into swish restaurants by the side of a man who had caught the attention of every person in the room.

The TV executive was called Arnaud Bertrand, and if she’d been with anyone other than Kulal, Rosa might have found him attractive. His chiselled jaw and sensual mouth hinted at his earlier career as an underwear model, before he’d realised that it was far better to rely on his brains, rather than his beauty. Or so he told Rosa, during a lull in the conversation, when Kulal was busy talking to the location manager about the practicalities of taking a film crew to Zahrastan.

‘Whilst you,’ he mused, his eyes moving to the bright flower she wore in her hair, ‘could rely on both, I think. Brains and beauty.’

‘I’m not beautiful,’ she said quickly.

‘You don’t think so?’ Arnaud narrowed his eyes. ‘With that lustrous hair and perfect skin, you remind me of Monica Bellucci. And you are the wife of one of the world’s most powerful men, a man who could have any woman he chooses. That in itself speaks volumes about you.’

Rosa bit back a wry smile. If only he knew why Kulal had ended up with this too-curvy Sicilian with a complicated past! ‘And I’m certainly no academic,’ she said, swiftly changing the subject and wondering if he paid such lavish compliments to every woman who entered his radar.

‘But you’re a linguist, right? You speak French and English—and Italian, of course.’

Rosa shrugged. ‘Plenty of people do.’

‘But plenty of people do not look like you, Rosa. You have a freshness about you—and a vibrancy too.’ Arnaud lifted his wine glass to his lips, and over his shoulder Rosa thought she could see a faint frown appearing on Kulal’s brow. ‘Tell me, would you be interested in taking a screen test?’

Rosa blinked. ‘You mean for television?’

‘Of course for television—that’s my medium.’

‘I don’t act,’ said Rosa bluntly. ‘And don’t they say that the camera adds ten pounds? I’m completely the wrong shape for the small screen—I’d fill it!’

‘Ah, but I believe in smashing stereotypes,’ said Arnaud softly. ‘I’m trained to recognise that certain je ne sais quoi which the camera loves and I think you have it. I’m not expecting you to act, just do a brief test. Would you be interested?’

Telling herself that it would be rude to refuse his offer—or maybe that it would simply be easier to go along with it—Rosa took his card and slipped it into her handbag.

‘Ring me,’ he said, and then turned back to talk to Kulal.

The dinner was delicious and the wines kept on coming and Rosa felt wonderfully replete as their car arrived to take them home. But even though she made a few predictable comments about how well the evening had gone, Kulal merely answered her in clipped monosyllables. His powerful body seemed tense and forbidding, but she was feeling expansive—and more than a little bit randy—so she trickled her fingertips over his forearm. But he didn’t react and, feeling foolish, she quickly removed her hand as if it had been contaminated. He didn’t say another word until they were back at the apartment and the lights which bounced nightly off the Eiffel Tower were flickering over the huge sitting room, making it seem as if they were standing in the centre of a silent fireworks display.

‘You seemed to hit it off very well with Arnaud,’ he said slowly.

‘That was the whole point, surely?’ She clicked on one of the lamps, telling herself she was imagining the scowl of accusation on his face. ‘I was there as your wife, to support you—and the best way I could do that was to be friendly.’

His black eyes bored into her. ‘Did being friendly involve thrusting your breasts in the face of the executive producer?’

Rosa tensed as she heard an ugly and unmistakable note in his voice. It was a note she knew too well from having grown up in a family of powerful men. Men who had an overabundance of male testosterone and an overinflated sense of their own importance. It was possession—pure and simple—and it made her skin turn to ice.

She tried to keep the tremble of outrage from her voice. ‘That’s a completely unreasonable thing to say.’

‘You think so? Then why did he give you his card? You think I didn’t notice that?’

The card was buried at the bottom of her handbag and Rosa honestly didn’t think she would have given it another thought if Kulal hadn’t challenged her, but his attitude was riling her. More than riling her—it was making rebellion stir up inside her. Because hadn’t she fled Sicily precisely to avoid this kind of domineering attitude? To stop people treating her as if she was some puppet whose strings they could pull at will.

‘He asked me if I was interested in taking a screen test.’

‘You?’

‘Yes, me, Kulal—is that such a bizarre thing for him to have said?’ she demanded, pushing aside the nagging voice which reminded her that he was only echoing her own initial reaction.

‘And you told him no?’

She heard the certainty in his voice and drew in a breath as her emotions began to wage a sudden and dramatic war. She knew what he wanted and she knew she could please him by telling him exactly what he wanted to hear—but then what? You caved into a bully once and that was giving him carte blanche to bully you all over again. She had planned to do nothing about Arnaud’s offer of a screen test, but now she was beginning to have second thoughts. She stared at her husband, not liking the Kulal she was seeing tonight, knowing that he had no right to dictate what she should or shouldn’t do. Because surely he hadn’t forgotten that this marriage wasn’t real?

‘I haven’t told him anything,’ she said. ‘At least, not yet.’

There was a pause as Kulal stared at her. ‘But you’re going to tell him that you’re not interested,’ he said.

Rosa’s mouth dried as she felt the sudden tension in the room. Because that had been a statement, not a question. Or rather, it had bordered on being an order.

Rebellion flared up inside her once more. ‘I’m going to hear what he has to say,’ she answered stubbornly.

Kulal could feel a tight knot of anger but he could feel something else too. A flicker of something which burned beneath the anger and which was growing like a weed inside him. Something painful and intolerable. Something unfamiliar and yet horribly recognisable. He rammed his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers—something he couldn’t remember doing since he’d been a schoolboy and had been sent to that terrible prep school in England. But he didn’t want her to see the bunched tension of his knotted fists. Because wouldn’t that reveal the fact that he was in pain—and he didn’t want to be in pain!

He gave a tight shrug of his shoulders. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said coolly. ‘I’m going to bed.’

Rosa watched him go. He’d sounded so dismissive, as if he didn’t want her to share his bed that night. She licked her lips. So was she going to let herself be intimidated? Crawl off to sleep in one of the empty bedrooms as if she’d done something wrong, when all she’d done was to consider a perfectly reasonable offer which had been made to her.

Like hell she was!

She went to the bathroom and stripped off her dress, then brushed her hair and washed her face—and when she had removed every trace of the evening, she heard something behind her and glanced into the mirror.

Not something.

Someone.

Kulal stood behind her—completely naked and completely aroused by the look of him. On his face burned an expression she’d never seen there before. Was it anger or desire, she wondered, or a potent mixture of both? She saw the heat in his black eyes and instinct was telling her that maybe sleeping in one of the spare rooms was a better idea than slipping into the marital bed when he was in this kind of mood. Anything would be better than having to face that undiluted rage on Kulal’s face.

But that was before he put his arms around her. Before he dropped his lips to her shoulder and traced a line there—the words he uttered made indistinct by his kiss. But they were not tender words. They were words of want, not words of need. They were graphic words about what he wanted to do to her, and although the baldness of his erotic wish list made her feel that she should beg for sleep and ask him to wait until morning, Rosa did no such thing.

His hands were far too clever to let her escape. His fingers made her weak with longing and so did his lips, so that by the time he entered her from behind, she was as turned on as he was. Turned on enough to watch their dual reflections in the mirror when he urged her to do so. Turned on by the sight of her own orgasm—and just as turned on by the sight of his.

But even though the kiss he gave her afterwards was lazy and sticky, he disentangled himself sooner than she wanted him to. She wanted him to stroke her and comfort her; to tell her to forget about the hurtful things he’d said. But he didn’t. The only thing he told her was that he needed to do some work before he slept.

And he didn’t follow her to bed.