A Whisper of Disgrace(25)

Rosa pursed her lips together, although she conceded that he did have a point. ‘You want this to be our first time together?’ she questioned. ‘When any number of your crew could walk in and discover us?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he snapped. ‘My crew have strict instructions not to disturb me whenever I have a woman on board. No one will dare to come in.’

Rosa felt sick. Was he setting out to humiliate her, as she had seen men humiliate women so often before? ‘You make a habit of having sex on this plane, do you?’

‘No, Rosa, you’re the first,’ he drawled sarcastically. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think that as your fiancée, I should be shown a little respect.’

‘Having sex with you doesn’t show a lack of respect.’

She shook her head, because how could you shake off a lifetime’s indoctrination in a couple of minutes? ‘And what if I told you that it would make me feel cheap?’

He leaned back and surveyed her, one finger slowly tapping his lip. ‘But acting cheap didn’t particularly bother you when I made you come just a few minutes ago, did it?’ He saw her blush with what looked like intense embarrassment but he did not heed it, his own intense frustration making him want to drive his argument home. ‘Nor did you seem to feel cheap the other night, when you shamelessly flaunted your body at the club for all to see.’

She swallowed. ‘I was drunk.’

‘And do you make a habit of getting drunk? Is this something I should know?’

She met the accusation in his eyes and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t make a habit of it,’ she said quietly. ‘In fact, I’ve never been drunk before that night.’

His gaze grew thoughtful. ‘So something led you to drink from the champagne bottle, like a workman slaking his thirst in the heat of the midday sun? Something which disturbed you enough to behave in a way which you say was uncharacteristic?’

His perception was appealing and Rosa wondered how much to tell him. She’d never been close enough to a man to even think about admitting what was on her mind before, though come to think of it, she hadn’t known real intimacy with anyone. Her relationship with her mother had always been strained—and her two brothers would have run a mile if she’d started talking to them about feelings. They were Corretti men and they did that Corretti thing of buttoning up all their emotions—that was, if they even had any emotions.

Rosa had never known what it was like to speak from the heart, and as she looked into Kulal’s cool black eyes she wondered if she could trust him enough to dare.

Yet what did she have to lose?

‘I had just discovered something about my family,’ she said.

Kulal forced himself to look interested in what she was about to say, even if the last thing he was interested in was talking about her family. But he had learnt much about women during an extensive career spent seducing them, and had discovered that a little patience shown at the beginning paid dividends in the long run. He injected just the right amount of curiosity into his voice. ‘And what might that have been?’

Rosa hesitated, knowing that she risked making her mother sound like some sort of slut if she told him the truth—and that women were inevitably compared to their mothers. But she had to remember that she wasn’t trying to impress him. It didn’t matter what he thought of her, not when her place in his life was so temporary.

Even so, she felt the painful twist of her heart as she said the words out loud and the bitter memories came flooding back. ‘I discovered that my father was not really my father.’

Kulal shrugged. ‘I imagine that must have been disturbing.’

‘Yes, Kulal, it was disturbing,’ she said drily.

‘But you must realise that such a situation as yours is not terribly unusual. Don’t they say that one in twenty-five children in the west are brought up by a man who is not their biological father?’

She blinked, because the last thing she had expected from him was a careless kind of acceptance. ‘How strange that you should know something like that.’

‘Not strange at all.’ He shrugged. ‘I happen to be something of an expert on these matters, since I’ve been the subject of several paternity claims.’

Her eyes opened wide and she felt the sudden anxious beat of her heart. ‘You mean, you’ve got … children?’

He gave a short laugh, because she might as well have asked him if he had ever taken a trip to the moon. ‘No, Rosa, I do not have any children—though one of the downsides to being a sheikh is that women have tried in the past to get themselves impregnated, in order to secure themselves a place in my life.’