Page 51 of Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride\The Spanish Husband\The Bellini Bride

‘I think we are talking of locked doors and eunuchs again,’ Evie pondered sagely.

‘Preceded by kidnap, of course,’ Raschid added. ‘Which is exactly what I am about to do to you right now…’

As he spoke a helicopter came swooping low around the side of the house, gleaming white against the summer-blue sky and forcing the women to clutch at their hats as its rotor blades churned up the air around all of them.

It set itself down on the lawn several hundred feet away. ‘Our transport away from here,’ Raschid announced.

‘I’ll go and get changed…’

‘No need.’ Raschid stopped her by capturing her hand. ‘You look perfect as you are. Come—say your goodbyes quickly. We are working to a very tight schedule.’

‘I wish you would tell me where we are going,’ Evie complained. ‘I may have packed all the wrong things!’

He didn’t answer, his attention already diverting to Evie’s mother who was coming towards them and looking tearful.

She hugged Evie tightly. ‘Look after yourself,’ she said. It still amazed Evie how tactile her mother had become since she’d witnessed her daughter’s near-death experience. But a bit of the old Lucinda appeared when she turned towards Raschid. ‘I suppose you’re expecting a motherly hug too, now,’ she remarked coolly.

‘Not unless it is genuinely offered,’ he threw back.

Lucinda’s eyes flashed, with irritation or appreciation, Evie wasn’t entirely sure. But the curt, ‘Just you take precious care of her!’ was issued alongside a blow-softening kiss brushed against one of Raschid’s lean cheeks.

‘I think she is reluctantly beginning to like me,’ Raschid confided as they settled into the helicopter.

Shame the same could not be said of his own family’s feelings towards her, Evie thought—and just like that she felt her mood flip over from light to heavy.

He noticed, this sharp-eyed Arab of hers. ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded. ‘What did I just say to cause you to look like that?’

‘Nothing.’ She found a smile from somewhere that only just made it. ‘I’m tired, that’s all—missing the nap Asim daily forces upon me.’

Asim was sitting up front with the pilot. Evie wasn’t surprised to find he was coming with them. Everywhere Evie went these days, Asim was right there with her. He hadn’t been bluffing when he’d told her that this child she was carrying was now his responsibility.

‘Then as soon as we board the plane that is exactly what you will do,’ Raschid ordained.

They transferred to one of the Al Kadah personal jets at a private airfield not many minutes away from Westhaven. The moment they were up in the air, Raschid released them both from their seat belts and pulled Evie to her feet.

‘Time for the lady’s rest,’ he explained, drawing her along the luxury main cabin and in through a door that turned out to be a fully equipped bedroom.

‘Oh, very decadent,’ Evie teased, looking curiously around her as Raschid moved over to the double bed that dominated the cabin, complete with passion-purple silk sheets and mounds of richly coloured silk pillows.

Picking something up from the bed, he tossed it negligently over his shoulder. It was a short silk nightdress in a very sensual dark red colour.

‘Turn around,’ he commanded, ignoring the taunt. ‘So I can release you from this exquisite creation.’

Evie did as he bade her. ‘I feel I must inform you that as a full-blooded Arab I am feeling very cheated at this precise moment,’ he said lightly as his deft fingers dealt with the long zip that ran down the length of her spine. ‘I was expecting those seed-pearls decorating your front to be my one hundred and one buttons—as is the traditional way Arab women drive their new husbands crazy while they are forced to unwrap their prize inch by painful inch.’

‘But you don’t want what’s beneath this gown,’ Evie pointed out. ‘So why bother to mention it?’

‘Is that what you really think?’

The dress was eased away from her shoulders, and allowed to slither to the floor. Evie reached up to pull off the skullcap while kicking off her white satin slip-ons at the same time. She felt Raschid’s fingers at the clasp of her smooth satin bra, and quivered slightly as his warm flesh touched her flesh.

‘Yes,’ she said.

She heard his soft laugh as he bent down to deal with the only piece of clothing she had left. Seconds later, she was naked, and his hands were gently clasping her slender hip bones. The brush of his mouth against the curving cheeks of her bottom made her spine arch in stinging response.

‘Liar,’ he drawled. ‘You know I adore every single inch of this delectable body.’

Then he was turning her to face him, his hands still holding her there in front of him while he continued to squat at her feet. In a slow, slow, agonisingly sensual drift of his heavy eyelids, he inspected her from bare toes upwards.

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