The Desert King's Blackmailed Bride by Lynne Graham

The Desert King's Blackmailed Bride by Lynne Graham

Author:Lynne Graham [Graham, Lynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarlequinUKLtd
Published: 2017-01-01T05:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER SEVEN

‘EVERYTHING HERE IS unfamiliar to me. Your lifestyle, the customs, the language,’ Polly murmured quietly as they walked along the battlements past stationed guards to take advantage of the aerial views. ‘When you add you and a new marriage into that, it can occasionally be overwhelming.’

That made remarkably good sense to Rashad, who had been braced to receive a quiet emotional outpouring of regrets and accusations. Relief rising uppermost, he squared his broad shoulders and breathed in deep. ‘I can understand that.’

‘And I’ve barely seen you since the day I agreed to marry you. I realise that with your schedule you had no choice but it made me feel insecure.’

Rashad was downright impressed by what he was hearing, it never having occurred to him that a woman in a relationship with him could speak her mind so plainly and unemotionally. In silence he jerked his chin in acknowledgement of the second point.

‘Yesterday was a very challenging day for both of us.’ Polly’s voice shook a little when Rashad settled an arm to her back to steady her on the uneven stones beneath their feet, long fingers spreading against her spine to send a ridiculous little frisson of physical awareness travelling through her all too susceptible body.

‘It was...’

‘I’ve never been in a serious relationship before...’

Rashad stopped dead. ‘Never?’ he questioned in disbelief. ‘But you are twenty-five years old.’

Polly explained about her grandmother’s long, slow decline into full-blown dementia and the heavy cost that had extracted from her freedom while her sister was away at university. ‘So, if I’m a little inexperienced in relationships, you’ll have to make allowances on that score,’ she told him tautly.

A frown line was slowly building between Rashad’s ebony brows. His fingers smoothed lightly up and down her spine as if to encourage her to keep on talking as he stared down at the top of her pale blonde head, far more engaged in what she was telling him than she would have believed.

Polly could feel the heat of embarrassment rising into her cheeks in a wave. Gooseflesh was forming on her arms, the hairs at the back of her neck prickling while the warm hand at her spine had tensed and stilled. ‘And I think that may be why I sort of freaked out last night because I was a bit nervous...of course I was...and you hadn’t made me feel safe or special or anything really!’ Conscious her voice was rising in spite of her efforts to control it, Polly looked up at Rashad in dismay and discomfiture.

And for the very first time, Rashad understood his bride without words and he felt like the biggest idiot ever born because he had been guilty of making sweeping assumptions without any grounds on which to do so. It had not once crossed his mind that Polly might be less experienced than he was. Indeed he had even worried just a little that he might not be adventurous enough or sophisticated enough to please her. With a sidewise



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