Sheikh's Convenient Marriage

She felt in that moment as if anything was possible.

‘Gabe,’ she moaned, her body beginning to tense.

His mouth grazed hers. ‘Tell me.’

‘I c-can’t.’

‘Tell me,’ he urged again.

‘Oh. Oh!’

Gabe felt her buck beneath him in helpless rapture. His mouth came down hard on hers as her back arched, his fingers tightening over her narrow hips. He became aware of the softness of her belly as he pressed against her and then he let go—spilling his seed into her with each long and exquisite thrust.

For a while he was aware of nothing other than the fading spasms deep within his body and a sense of emptiness and of torpor. Automatically, he rolled away onto the other side of the bed where he lay on top of the rumpled sheet and sucked mouthfuls of air back into his lungs. His eyelids felt as if they’d been weighted with lead. He wanted to sleep. To sleep for a hundred years. To hold on to a sensation which felt peculiarly close to contentment.

But old habits died hard and he fought the feeling and the warm place which was beckoning to him, automatically replacing it with ice-cold logic. All he was experiencing was the stupefying effect of hormones as his body gathered up its resources to make love to her again. It was sex, that was all. Surprisingly good sex—but nothing more than that. How could it ever be more than that?

Meeting her bright blue gaze, he flickered her a non-commital smile.

‘What a perfect way to begin a honeymoon,’ he drawled.

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_a349b479-1ae7-5f58-9471-72b6c89944c2)

IT WAS A honeymoon of sorts.

Leila supposed that some people might even have considered it a successful honeymoon. With time and money at his disposal, Gabe set about showing her a London she’d only ever seen in films or books—and the famous city came to life before her eyes.

They visited Buckingham Palace and the famous Tower where two young princes had once been imprisoned. They took a ride on a double-decker bus, which thrilled Leila since she’d never been on public transport before. They went to galleries and museums and saw some of the long-running West End shows.

He showed her a ‘secret’ London too—a side to the city known only to the people who lived in it. Restaurants with flower-filled courtyards which were tucked away behind industrial grey streets and intimate concert halls where he took her to hear exquisite classical music.

And when they weren’t sightseeing they were having sex. Lots of it. Inventive, imaginative and mind-blowing sex, which left her gasping and breathless with pleasure every time. She told herself she was lucky—and when she was kissing her gorgeous new husband, she felt lucky.

But while she couldn’t fault the packed schedule Gabe had arranged for her, sometimes it felt as if she were spending time with a tour guide. Sometimes he was so...distant. So...forbidding. She would ask him questions designed to understand him better. And he would find a million ways not to answer them. He would change the subject and ask her about growing up in Qurhah. And although he seemed genuinely interested in her life as a princess, sometimes he made her feel as if she was a brand new project he was determined to get right.

He remained as enigmatic as he’d done right from the very beginning. She had married a man who kept his thoughts and feelings concealed and inevitably, that made anxiety start to bubble away beneath the glossy surface of her new life.

It was only during sex that she ever felt on the brink of a closeness which constantly eluded her. When he was making love he sometimes looked down at her, his face raw with passion and his eyes flaring with pewter fire. She wanted him to tell her what it was that kept him so firmly locked away from her. She wanted to look within his heart and see what secrets it revealed. But as soon as his orgasm racked his powerful body, she could sense him distancing himself again.

Oh, he would hold her tightly and bury his lips against her damp skin and tell her that she was amazing. Once he even told her that she was the best lover he’d ever had. But to Leila, his words seemed empty and she was scared to believe them. As if he was saying them because he knew he ought to say them, rather than because he meant them.

She would lie there hugging her still-trembling body while he went off to take a shower, forcing herself to remember that she was only here because of the life growing inside her. A life so new that sometimes it didn’t seem as if it were real...

One morning they were lying amid a tumble of sex-scented sheets after a long and satisfying night of lovemaking, when she rolled onto her stomach and looked at him.

‘You know, you’ve never even told me how you made your fortune.’

He stretched out his lean, tanned body and yawned. ‘It’s a dull story.’

‘Every story has a point of interest.’

He looked at her. ‘Why do you ask so many questions, Leila? You’re always digging, aren’t you?’

She met his cool gaze. ‘Maybe I wouldn’t keep asking if you actually tried answering some of them for a change.’

She could see the wariness in his eyes, but for once she refused to be silenced or seduced into changing the subject. Even if their marriage wasn’t ‘real’ in the way that Sara and Suleiman’s was—didn’t her position as his wife give her some kind of right to know? To find out whether, beneath that cool facade, Gabe Steel had a few vulnerabilities of his own?

‘So tell me,’ she murmured and dropped a kiss on his bare shoulder. ‘Go on.’

Gabe sighed as he felt her soft lips brushing against his skin. He had never planned to marry her. He hadn’t wanted to marry her. Reluctantly, he had taken what he considered to be the best course of action in circumstances which could have ruined her. He had done the right thing by her. Yet instead of showing her gratitude by melting quietly into the background and making herself as unobtrusive as possible, she had proved a major form of distraction in ways he had never anticipated.

From the moment she opened her eyes in the morning to the moment those long black lashes fluttered to a close at night, she mesmerised him in all kinds of ways.

The way she rose naked from the rumpled sheets—a tall, striking Venus with caramel skin and endless legs. The reverse-heart swing of her naked bottom as she wiggled it out of the room. The way she slanted him that blue-eyed look, which instantly had his blood boiling with lust.

But he knew that women often mistook a man’s lust for love; and that lust always faded. In the normal scheme of things, that wouldn’t matter, but with Leila it did. He couldn’t afford to let her fall in love with him and have the all too predictable angry outcome when she realised it wasn’t ever going to be reciprocated. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want her to start thinking that he could feel things, like other men did. She was the mother of his child and she wasn’t going anywhere. He might not have wanted to become a father, but he was going to make damned sure that this baby was an enduring part of his life. Which he guessed was why he found himself saying, ‘What exactly do you want to know?’

‘Tell me how you first got into advertising,’ she said. ‘Surely that’s not too difficult.’

‘Look it up on the internet,’ he said.

‘I already have.’ She remembered how she’d checked him out before that fateful meeting in Simdahab. ‘And although there’s lots of stuff about you winning awards and riding motorbikes and being pictured with some of the world’s most beautiful women—there’s not much in the way of background. Almost as if somebody had been controlling how much information was getting out there.’ She stroked her finger down his cheek. ‘Is that down to you, Gabe?’

‘Of course it is.’ His response was economical. ‘I’m sure your brother controls information about himself all the time.’

‘Ah, but my brother is a sultan who rules an empire and has a lot of enemies. What’s your excuse?’

She saw the flicker of irritation which crossed his face—a slightly more exaggerated irritation than the look she’d seen yesterday when he’d discovered a dirty coffee cup sitting on the side of his pristine bathtub and acted as if it were an unexploded bomb.

‘My excuse is that I try to remain as private as possible,’ he said. ‘But I can see that you’re not going to let up until you’re satisfied. Where shall I begin?’

‘Were you born rich?’

‘Quite the opposite. Dirt poor, as they say—though I doubt whether someone like you has any comprehension of what that really means.’

His accusation rankled almost as much as his attitude, and Leila couldn’t hide her hurt. ‘You think because I was born in a palace that I’m stupid? That I have no idea what the vast majority of the world is like? I’m surprised at you, Gabe—leaping to stereotypical judgements like that.’

‘Ah, but I’m an advertising man,’ he said, a smile curving the edges of his mouth. ‘And that’s what we do.’

‘I think I can work out what dirt poor means. I’m just interested to know how you went from that to...’ the sweeping gesture of her hand encompassed the vast dimensions of the dining room, with its expensive view of the river ‘...well, this.’

‘Fate. Luck. Timing.’ He shrugged. ‘A mixture of all three.’

‘Which as usual tells me precisely nothing.’

He levered himself up against the pillows, his gaze briefly resting on the hard outline of her nipples. He felt the automatic hardening of his groin, wondering if that sudden flare of colour over her cheeks meant that she’d noticed it, too.

‘I left school early,’ he said. ‘I was sixteen, with no qualifications to speak of, so I moved to London and got a job in a big hotel. I started in the kitchens—’ He fixed her with a mocking look as he saw her eyes widen. ‘Does it shock my princess to realise that her husband was once a kitchen hand?’