Society Weddings by Sharon Kendrick, Kate Walker

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 factwhich 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 thenturned 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.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘And let you take your leave of me with those your final words?’ His question was incredulous. ‘That you, as my betrothed, had taken another lover?’
    She bit back the obvious remark that he had not acted like her betrothed for the past few years—that might smack of desperation of a different kind. And, whatever else happened today, Rashid would remember her as having some kind of innate pride.
    ‘But there remains a question, Jenna,’ he continued quietly. His deep voice sounded reflective, though the hooded black eyes told her precisely nothing of his true feelings. ‘Just what do we do next?’
    She stared at him, then shrugged. ‘As planned,’ she said steadily, ‘I would like a car to take me to my father’s house, please.’
    His lips compressed together and he threw her a look of impatience. ‘As if this had never happened?’
    ‘I think that is probably best, under the circumstances.’
    ‘Best?’ He gave a short, hollow laugh, and then spoke