Modern Romance June 2019 Books 1-4. Кейт Хьюит

alliances when he was in his early twenties. Since he did his duty in the marital line you can understand why he expected me to be willing to do the same eight years ago.’

      ‘Yes, but he grew up during a very unsettled period of Maraban’s history when there was constant war and strife. It was different for you because you didn’t live through any of those wars or periods of deprivation,’ Zoe told him calmly, her retentive memory of what she had read about Maraban’s history ensuring that she had a clear picture of past events. ‘Now tell me about your mother and why she was nobody in the eyes of others.’

      ‘She was a commoner, a nurse. My father had heart surgery in his fifties and she looked after him in hospital.’

      Zoe smiled in approval. ‘So, it was a romance?’

      ‘Well, no, for most of my life I assumed he simply took my mother as a third wife in the last-ditch hope that a much younger woman could give him a child,’ Raj confided with a twist of his full sensual mouth. ‘That was the perceived reality. It never occurred to me that he had fallen in love with her until he admitted that to me only a few days ago. Now I am shamed by my prejudice but, in my own defence, my mother was a very unhappy wife and I remember that too well.’

      ‘Why was she unhappy?’ Zoe pressed.

      ‘Picture the situation, Zoe,’ Raj urged with rueful emphasis. ‘Two childless older wives of many years were suddenly challenged by a much younger new arrival and they didn’t like it. They didn’t think my mother was fit to breathe the same air as their husband and when she quickly fell pregnant, as they had failed to do, their resentment and jealousy turned to loathing. They bullied her cruelly and treated her like dirt. My father likes a quiet life in his household and he did not interfere between his wives. He ignored the problems.’

      ‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured, registering that Raj must have been old enough to understand how his mother was being abused and that his troubled relationship with his father and Ayshah probably dated from that period.

      ‘By the time I was nine years old, she was so depressed that she took her own life with an overdose. It happened here in the old original house. Perhaps that is also why my father had it demolished,’ he admitted in a driven undertone. ‘There, now you know the whole unhappy story of my childhood.’

      Zoe reached for him, her small fingers spreading to grip his much larger hand in a natural gesture of sympathy, finger pads smoothing over the sleek brown skin. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ she whispered. ‘I wouldn’t have pushed so hard if I’d known it was a tragedy.’

      ‘She was a wonderful, loving mother but it was many years before I could forgive her for leaving me,’ Raj confessed in a rueful undertone.

      ‘I have no memory of either of my parents. I was only a baby when they died in a car crash,’ Zoe told him with regret. ‘Cherish the memories you have, try and build a bridge with your father. Everybody needs family, Raj.’

      ‘I prefer not to need anyone. Independence, in so far as it is possible, is safer. Do you want something sweet to finish?’ Raj enquired in casual addition. ‘There is a fridge hidden in that cupboard over there. The maid filled it with desserts.’

      Listening to him, Zoe had lost much of her appetite, but she scrambled upright and fetched the desserts to serve, knowing that Raj would welcome that distraction. It seemed that she always, always put her foot in it with him. She should have been more patient, should have waited until he was willing to talk, instead of forcing the issue. Beating herself up for her nosiness soon led to her faking a yawn and saying she was going up to bed.

      Raj worked on his laptop for an hour, giving Zoe time to fall asleep. He mounted the stairs as quietly as he knew how and then he saw her, lying on the bed in something diaphanous, the pool of light surrounding her veiling her entire body in soft gold. She looked up from her book, green eyes wide, little shoulders tensing, petite breasts pushing against the finest cotton to define the pointed tips and that was the moment that Raj finally lost the battle. Hunger surged through him with such power it virtually wiped out conscious thought. She was there, she was where he wanted her to be and, in that moment, she was irresistible.

      Zoe was fiercely disconcerted when Raj simply stalked like a prowling jungle cat across the room and bent down to snatch her up into his arms. ‘Raj?’ she exclaimed uncertainly, all the breath from her body stolen by that action.

      ‘I want you... I burn for you,’ he breathed rawly. ‘Tell me to put you down and I will walk away. I will not try to railroad you into anything you don’t want.’

      Zoe stared up into his silvered eyes and her entire body clenched while her heart pounded in her ears. ‘I want you too,’ she admitted breathlessly, barely able to credit that she had the nerve to admit that and yet if he could admit it, why shouldn’t she?

      As he cradled her in his arms, a faint shudder of relief racked his lean, powerful frame and he claimed her parted lips with so much passion he took her by storm. Head swimming, mouth swollen, she plunged her fingers into his silky black hair, revelling in the crisp luxuriance of his curls and holding him to her. There was no sense of fear, no sense of threat and she rejoiced in that freedom, pushing up into the heat of him as he brought her down on the bed. She yanked at his shirt as he reached for her nightdress, their combined movements ending up in a tangle.

      ‘We’re behaving like teenagers!’ Raj rasped in disbelief, gazing down, nonetheless, at her flushed and lovely face with ferocious satisfaction. He had never craved anything as much as he craved her hands on his body and he leant back from her to pull his shirt up over his head and discard it.

      Zoe looked up at him, secretly thinking that she was behaving like a teenager because her experience of men was probably about that level. She truly was a case of arrested development, cut off from normality at the age of twelve when everything to do with men and sex had frightened her into closing down that side of her nature. Now she wondered if she should warn him that she was a virgin, but wasn’t there a strong chance that her inexperience would turn him off? Or, at least, make him pause to consider whether they should be having sex in the first place? She didn’t want Raj to stop and ESP warned her that if cautious, logical Raj got in charge again, her desire to have sex for the first time could be thwarted.

      Raj, however, chased away all her apprehensive thoughts simply by taking his shirt off. As he leant back over her to toss it away, his abdominal muscles flexed like steel girders and she gazed up at his superb bronzed torso with helpless appreciation. Heat flowered low in her pelvis, making her press her thighs together on the resulting ache. Exhilaration flooded her at the knowledge that she was finally feeling what other women felt when they desired intimacy with a man.

      ‘I thought you didn’t like sex,’ Raj breathed in a driven undertone.

       And then I met you.

      But she wasn’t going to frighten him off by telling him that, was she?

      ‘It’s time I tried again,’ she muttered obliquely.

      ‘I will endeavour not to disappoint you,’ Raj growled, his lips ghosting in a whisper of a caress across her collarbone that made her shiver, lean brown hands tugging up the nightdress inch by inch, fingertips lightly glossing over her slender thighs and finally her narrow ribcage. The butterflies fluttering in her belly took flight.

      The nightdress fell away and Zoe sat up to embark on his jeans. It might be her first time but she wasn’t about to lie there like some petrified Victorian virgin and let him do everything, she told herself squarely. Her hands were shaking so much though that she could hardly get the zip down and he closed a steadying hand over hers, pressing her fingers against him before arching his hips to snake lithely out of his jeans. His boxers went with them and she stared at the evidence of his arousal and then, dry-mouthed, reached out to stroke him, her heart already racing as though she had run a marathon.

      The instant she touched him, Raj tugged her up against him with a hungry groan and crushed her mouth under his again, his tongue prying apart her lips and skating across