CAROL MARINELLI - Sheikh's Forbidden Queen - Zarif's Convenient Queen / Gambling with the Crown

‘You seem surprised. But Jason is burning with resentment and bitterness right now. He’s not going to profit in any way from our marriage and that has enraged him.’

‘I had assumed he would take the benefits to your parents into account.’

Ella rolled her eyes at that principled view. ‘My brother has a vengeful streak. Since you’re cut from the same cloth, you should understand that.’

Fresh outrage roared through Zarif. ‘In no way can you compare me to your brother!’

‘Blackmailing me into marrying you to get me into bed is revenge,’ Ella informed him shortly. ‘Maybe you still think it’s a big thrill and an honour for me but I don’t feel the same way.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question about the veracity of that newspaper story,’ Zarif reminded her with stubborn grit, furious that she had labelled his generosity as blackmail when he saw it as something else entirely.

‘Because...really, you don’t deserve an answer,’ Ella condemned with an angry bitterness she couldn’t hide. ‘And you should be ashamed that you even asked. You knew me three years ago. Can you really credit that I’ve changed that much?’

A forbidding edge hardened Zarif’s jawline. ‘I have lived long enough to accept that people do change in unexpected ways. Events can make people act out of character,’ he pointed out flatly, refusing to yield an inch on that score for he himself had once behaved in such a way.

‘I bow to your superior knowledge, but choosing not to marry you three years ago didn’t push me into trying out the lifestyle of a porn queen,’ Ella declared with licking scorn, blue eyes mutinously bright. ‘I’ve never heard of Matt Barton before, never even met him. I suspect he’s someone Jason paid to malign me as, being my brother, it would be odd for Jason to have made sexual allegations against me and it would also have meant exposing the fact that he sold me down the river in the first place.’

A small tithe of the tension holding Zarif rigid eased. ‘You’ve never even met the man who is referred to as your ex-boyfriend?’ he pressed. ‘You’re saying the whole story is a lie? Don’t tell me that just to impress me because I will investigate this matter further.’

‘Right at this moment,’ Ella proclaimed, tossing back her head so that rumpled golden hair tumbled in glossy disarray round her shoulders, ‘I haven’t the smallest desire to impress you.’

‘But you do need to ensure that our wedding goes ahead,’ Zarif reminded her in a roughened undertone because he was noticing that the well-washed cotton of her pyjama jacket was snagging on her pointed nipples, vaguely delineating the firm, full curves of the breasts he longed to explore. He swallowed back a curse, infuriated by his loss of focus and the suspicion that he was behaving like a sex-starved teenage boy.

Zarif’s reminder was unnecessary because Ella was painfully aware that her parents’ future security was reliant on what she did next. He had gravely offended her but he was the one in the position of power, not she, and, while she refused to grovel, she also saw that she had to fully defend herself to clear her name. ‘I’m telling you the truth. I’m not guilty of any of it. I would never go to a sex party. I’ve been set up for a fall and horribly slandered in newsprint.’

‘If you are certain that this is the case, I will sue,’ Zarif asserted, dark golden eyes welded to her flushed and indignant face with satisfaction. ‘But be warned, if I do sue any intimate secrets you have in that line will inevitably be exposed by the proceedings.’

‘I have no such secrets,’ Ella parried curtly, sucking in a deep sustaining breath. ‘My conscience is clean as a whistle. You go ahead and sue.’

‘Should I be prepared for genuine disclosures to emerge from any of your former lovers?’ Zarif enquired between visibly gritted teeth.

CHAPTER FOUR

ELLA’S EYES GLINTED. Of course she could have told Zarif the truth that she had yet to have a lover but he didn’t deserve that revelation. Her eyelids lowered secretively while a smile that was amused, but came across as saucy, unexpectedly curved her lips. ‘No. In that line you’re safe. I’ve always been cautious about who I choose to date.’

Zarif’s gaze burned gold when he saw that smile because he was convinced that she was fondly recalling one of her lovers. He breathed in slow and deep. He was not the jealous, possessive type—what was the matter with him? Other men had slept with her, discovered the secrets of that slim, curvaceous body, listened to her cries of pleasure... Get over it, he told himself impatiently, fighting the tide of destructive X-rated imagery threatening to engulf him. ‘This has been a most unlucky start to our wedding day.’

‘Yes—’ Ella shrugged a careless shoulder ‘—but let’s not pretend it’s a real wedding day or that we’re people who care about each other like a normal bride and groom.’

His nostrils flared. ‘I can assure you that it will be a real wedding and that I do care about your well-being.’

‘Not convinced...sorry about that.’ Beneath his disconcerted gaze, Ella lifted a slender hand and screened an uninterested yawn in a disdainful gesture as she moved towards him, keen to show him out of the house. ‘If you’d cared, you would have offered me support and felt angry on my behalf.’

Even less accustomed to censure than he was to scorn, Zarif squared his sculpted jaw. ‘That is unjust. How would I know whether it was the truth or not when I haven’t had any contact with you for years?’

Unimpressed, Ella raised a delicate honey-coloured brow. ‘Do you think you could leave now so that I can have breakfast and go do the bridal stuff?’ she asked sweetly.

Zarif shot out a lean brown hand and closed it round her wrist to stop her in her tracks. ‘You will not speak to me like that or try to dismiss me like a servant,’ he told her angrily.

‘Does that really matter as long as I go to bed with you?’ Ella asked in a brittle voice. ‘Do you honestly also expect me to be servile like some sort of medieval sex slave?’

Zarif glowered down at her in seething frustration. She was being childish, her immaturity spelt out in cheap gibes and he was tempted to shake her. ‘Stop it.’

He towered over her, so close that she could smell the faint spicy tang of designer cologne that was achingly familiar to her. Suddenly tears stung the backs of her eyelids as a tide of almost forgotten memories threatened to drown her: deceptively romantic moments three years earlier when he had held her hand, given her thoughtful little gifts, listened carefully to her concerns, acted in a way that was protective and caring. And it had all been a lie, she reminded herself bitterly, because his true feelings for her had gone no deeper than a lusty desire to take her to bed and ensure that she became conveniently pregnant with the required son and heir.

‘Eleonora...’ Zarif chided huskily, running his finger down her cheek to trace the path of an escaped tear. ‘You’re upset, angry.’

Ella looked up at him, involuntarily enthralled by the beauty of his dark fallen-angel features, the sheer richness of his stunning amber-gold gaze framed by luxuriant ebony lashes. She shivered, inordinately aware of the brush of his finger across her cheek. ‘Don’t—’

‘I must,’ Zarif growled hoarsely, his hand dropping to her chin to push it up to enable his mouth to come down with hungry driving dominance on hers. Taken by surprise, Ella reeled dizzily, mouth opening to receive the erotic plunge of his tongue. He tasted so wonderfully good, a knot tightened in her pelvis and she gasped, feeling the scandalous dampness of desire surge between her taut thighs in treacherous contrast to her anger with him. The comparison shocked her and broke through the mesmeric power of his mouth on hers.