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Chrissie was scarlet to her hairline, could feel her very cheeks throbbing with unwelcome heat. ‘I’ll use the other shower,’ she said quietly.
‘We are married. There is nothing to be embarrassed about,’ Jaul murmured soothingly.
He strode into the bathroom releasing Chrissie from paralysis and she fled from the bed, snatching up clothes, pulling them on any old way before creeping from the room and literally tiptoeing into the bathroom next door to make use of the facilities. But washing didn’t noticeably make her feel any better. She had insisted that she wanted a divorce and then fallen into bed with him again and now he thought he had her exactly where he wanted her. Was that so surprising?
Chrissie would not have put it past Jaul to have deliberately set out to get her horizontal. He was no slowcoach with women, no fool when it came to what mattered. His passion was irresistible but he would know perfectly well that she would feel tormented by what had just happened between them and he probably felt quite self-satisfied because he had proved his point: she did still want him and crave him in the most basic of ways.
That meant more to Jaul than it meant to her though. When she had first met Jaul he had been a sexual predator, programmed to take advantage of willing women even though he had not behaved that way with her. In fact, although they had hit astonishing highs in the lesser intimacy stakes, Jaul had married her before he actually had full sex with her, making her appreciate even back then that in some ways Jaul was much more anchored in his own culture than she had ever properly appreciated. It had also made her wonder in low moments after he had disappeared if she had won Jaul purely by saying no for so long and thereby acquiring all the glorious lustre of a challenge and a worthwhile trophy. Was that the simple explanation of why the heir to a Gulf throne had chosen to deem an ordinary Yorkshire girl special enough to marry? But then had he ever planned on it being a permanent marriage?
But that past was long gone and she was over it, Chrissie reminded herself as she got dressed again. Just not as over him as she had thought she was, a little inner voice reminded her deflatingly. Jaul would think he had won now, would assume she would become his wife again. It probably was just that basic for him, his belief that if she had sex with him again it meant he had her back.
And whose fault was it that he would now be thinking that? Chrissie boiled with regret inside herself. Pure naked lust had overwhelmed her. It was a fallacy to believe that only men could react like that, she ruminated unhappily, a nonsense to assume that a woman couldn’t feel the same way. She had never been with anyone other than Jaul but she had learned a lot about that side of her nature even in the short time they had actually lived together and knew that she was a passionate woman. And the only reason she hadn’t slept with anyone else since Jaul was that she had yet to meet any male who had the same highly charged sexual effect on her that he did.
* * *
Jaul towelled himself dry after a shower with a reflective look on his lean, strong face while he tried to work out whether he had made the right or wrong move with Chrissie. She was so stubborn, so unforgiving. Did she have genuine cause to feel that way?
He refused to believe that his late father had lied to him, so what point was there in making enquiries at the embassy? Such an investigation into King Lut’s behaviour would be downright disloyal and it would be sure to spawn unpleasant rumours and damaging gossip. His features sombre at that prospect, Jaul cursed below his breath. He had a wife. He had two children. He might have spent two years in ignorance of those facts but the reality was that now he had to live with his wife and his children in the present and not in the past, harking back to old disruptive issues that only roused bitterness and aggression in both of them.
She had taken the money and run. Did he continue to hate her for that even when he now knew that she had been pregnant and in dire need of financial help? She was younger than he was, less mature and all of a sudden he hadn’t been there for her. A woman of greater selfishness might have had a termination rather than raise two children she had not planned to conceive. Whether he liked it or not, fate had ensured that he had let her down by not being there for her when he had been needed.
