Forbidden: The Sheikh's Virgin (12 page)

‘You did that to protect me?’

Her eyelids parted on dark eyes filled with pain. ‘I was afraid—too afraid of what might happen if I did otherwise. He scared me.’ She shuddered where she sat, her teeth biting her bottom lip white, the involuntary action telling him more than any words could.

‘It’s okay,’ he said, taking her by the shoulders, coaxing her to her feet. ‘It’s all right.’

But she was shaking her head. ‘It’s not okay. You were supposed to be away for a year. I thought you might forget about me in that time. I thought it might not be so bad. When you turned up unexpectedly at the ceremony I had to do something to make you hate me. Something to make you accept what had happened. And so I lied. I acted like I loved him, like I wanted to be with him. But I never did, I swear.’

Her liquid eyes looked too huge for her face, the misery they contained too much for any one person to have to bear. ‘And so you did love me. All along.’

Slowly she nodded, her lips tightly clenched between her teeth, tears once more flooding her eyes.

And he wanted to roar with possession, howl at the moon. For she had always been his. He had known it. She had been his from the very first moment they had laid eyes on each other.

And tonight he would take what had been rightfully his—would take what he had been denied, so long ago.

H
E TOUCHED
two fingers to her lips, smoothing away their tightness, taking her chin in his hand and guiding it higher. She was afraid, he could tell, her dark eyes filled with trepidation, her breathing jerky.

And her fear was no doubt his fault too, because every time she had tried to explain, to make amends, he had been blinded to her words and had refuted her every argument. He was the reason she had fled into the desert. It had been his words that had put her very life at risk.

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her, and her fear turned to confusion as he slid both hands over her slim shoulders into her thick black hair. ‘I would not listen to you yesterday when you tried to explain. I made no attempt to understand. And it was from me you felt you needed to escape. It was me who put you in danger. Is there any chance you might forgive me?’

Her eyes wavered with uncertainty, colour rising like a tide in her cheeks, and her lips parted, closed, parted again, as if she were searching for words. ‘I might,’ she managed tentatively, pausing for air. ‘If you… Do you think there is any chance you might still want to…kiss me again?’

And his lips turned into a smile as his eyes were drawn to her mouth, to her lips, lush and ripe, just as his body was drawn to
hers, as it had been every single moment since they’d passed each other outside his mother’s suite. ‘You know that I want you,’ he whispered, his mouth hovering scant millimetres above hers.

This time when her eyes widened, their dark depths stirred with something other than fear. ‘I know.’

‘And you want me.’

A pause, a blink, and then came the halting response, ‘It’s…true.’

‘Because, like I said before, the next time I kiss you I won’t stop.’

A hitch in her breath, a flare of her nostrils. ‘I know. I’m scared, Rafiq. I’m scared I can’t do this.’

He had her in his arms before his blood had stopped its tidal surge through his veins, his lips on hers before the crashing had stopped in his ears.

And this time it was neither a kiss of anger, wrenched from her, nor a kiss of spontaneous relief, but a deliciously anticipated act that spoke of mutual need and mutual pleasure, a journey of rediscovery and shared desires and ten long years. His lips moved over hers in an unchoreographed dance that she somehow knew, matching him move for move. Fitting him perfectly. Suiting him perfectly. Hot breath and the sweet taste of Sera filled his senses and he could not get enough, could not think straight beyond wanting her. Except for knowing they could not stay here.

He growled, low in his throat, the vibrations rumbling into the kiss as he untangled his hands from her hair, battled to untangle himself from the kiss. Sera felt them through the hard wall of chest, rippling through her as he swept her into his arms. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘tonight you need not be afraid.’

And, suddenly uncertain, she felt the first seeds of panic worm their way into her bliss. ‘Rafiq, there is something—’

But he had no use for words. Not any more. Not when he
had seen they could be used to distort and corrupt and crucify with such devastating effect. ‘Shh,’ he whispered as he parted the curtains to his tent with his elbow. ‘Enough of words.’

And so she fell silent. Except for the tiny mewls of pleasure that escaped unbidden when his mouth descended once more, this time to plunder hers with an even greater hunger.

He was right, she thought in one fleeting moment of clarity amidst a whirl of sensation. Why ruin this perfect moment, this perfect night? For maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t even know.

He lowered her to a bed, plush and welcoming, and richly adorned with pillows of satin and brocades in Bedouin shades, a combination rich in texture and colour. A lamp at the bedside was turned low, casting shadows around the room, turning colours deeper, accenting both the blue-black of his whiskered cheeks and the glint in his sapphire eyes.

He looked massive standing above her, tall and impossibly good-looking, and she caught her breath at the look in his eyes, at the raw desire she saw there.

Desire for her.

Desire that ramped up her own need tenfold.

It was surreal that after everything between them, after all the years and the angst and the pain of coming together again, this day had finally come. It would only be for a night. She knew it couldn’t last. But neither did she know what she had done to deserve this moment.

‘Beautiful,’ he growled, and it wasn’t just the word or the gravel-rich tones of his voice that moved her, but the way his eyes, dark with desire, drank her in, and the rigid set of his jaw and throat, as though it was taking every bit of control he possessed not to throw himself on top of her.

Time lost all meaning as he stood there. It could have been just a minute. It could have been an hour. But it was a moment
of connection she recognised, a moment that had been inevitable from the very first moment they’d set eyes on each other.

I do love him
, she acknowledged, in that one crystal-clear moment. And this time there was no fear to accompany it, no shame, just a rolling tide of heat that coursed through her. For she was with Rafiq, and it was right.

He smiled then, a tight, hard-won smile, as if he enjoyed the way her body reacted to him, before he pulled the pristine robe over his shoulders and tossed it unceremoniously aside.

Her brain shortened.

Her mouth went dry.

For he was magnificent.

Once upon a time she’d known him, ridden horses with him, swum with him. He’d been fit, his body muscled and toned, but he’d been a youth then, still a teenager. Whereas now…

Now he was a man in his prime. He had the same rich golden skin that she remembered, but the shoulders were broader, and dark hair patterned in whorls across his chest, circled his navel and sent an arrow pointing down his hard-packed stomach before disappearing under the band of his boxer shorts.

She swallowed.

His
massively distended
boxer shorts.

She shuddered, suddenly unsure, a new fear assailing her even as the prospect of taking him—
that
—inside her body thrilled her at some primeval level she couldn’t quite comprehend. She wanted him—oh yes, she wanted him—but what if she couldn’t? What if he was too big?

‘Rafiq,’ she started breathily, caught between nervousness and heady excitement, her voice no more than a gasp as she contemplated the impossible. ‘I’m afraid.’

And he smiled the smile of a man who was used to being complimented. ‘There’s no need to be afraid,’ he said, before he placed one knee on the bed beside her, slipping the sandals
from her feet and sliding one hand up her foot from toe to ankle, so slowly, so intimately, that she almost cried out with the sheer pleasure of his touch.

Pleasure or need? Both, she decided, as he trailed a line along her calf through the silk of her gown, the heat from his fingers warming her flesh and igniting fires under her skin as his voice washed warm like velvet over her. ‘I know it’s been a while, but it’s like riding a bicycle. You never forget.’

Assuming you’d ever learned
. Should she tell him outright? And then his long fingers swept over her thigh, his thumb perilously close to touching her
there
, and the sensations he generated, the raw hunger that met her touch, made her think that maybe she might just be able to bluff her way through it after all. The flesh she’d hitherto been so ashamed of, the flesh she’d numbed into non-existence for so long, was willing, even if she herself was weak.

The bones at her hip had never felt so special, nor had the dip in her waist felt so curved as his hand slipped past, and she was breathless now, breathless with his slow ascent, and through it all he watched her, blue eyes on black, his smile like a victor about to enjoy the spoils. And then his thumb grazed one tight breast and she cried out with the unexpected and unfamiliar pleasure, her spine arching against the bed. He dropped himself over her and smiled. ‘You see? Like riding a bicycle.’

She blinked up at him and her brain shorted, with not a clue why he should be talking about bicycles, knowing only that Rafiq’s mouth was descending again, knowing that he would kiss her again and that it had already been too long since the last one.

The touch of lips, the nuzzle of noses, the rasp of whiskered skin against her cheek—how could such simple things feel so good? Even the heat emanating from the man hovering over her warmed her soul and pleasured her senses, driving her need.

She mewed and sighed as sensation rippled into sensation,
her fingers curling into the coverlet as he kissed her throat, suckled at her flesh, turned her inside out with desire. Why had nobody warned her it could be like this?

And then his mouth ventured lower, his lips closing over a breast, his tongue circling her aching nipple. Two thin layers of cloth were no barrier. The shockwaves were spearing down to her core.

Or had she just forgotten how good it could be to feel?

All those years when she’d buried everything. Her needs. Her desires. And especially her memories of a dark-haired youth who’d made her feel like a woman. Beautiful. Desirable. The woman he had promised not to take until a wedding night that would never be.

Even then he had set her alight with his touch, just the trail of his fingers down her arm, the feel of his hand in hers. Even then, in her youth, she’d known how good one special man could make her feel.

One special man.

That was Rafiq.

And he was here now
.

She shrugged off her inexperience as Rafiq peeled away the layers of her shame and his hot mouth devoured her breasts, her stomach, and then moved back to suckle at her rock-hard nipples. Gasping, breathless, she let her useless hands find a purpose after all. She reached for him, found him, felt the jolt that moved through him as her fingers spread, taking the measure of his chest and sliding down his sides before letting her fingers trail back up the sleek wall of muscled flesh.

Air whooshed out of him as her fingers found the tight nubs of his nipples, hard as pebbles on the beach, and flicked over them with her thumb, and there was something empowering knowing that she had caused his reaction. Oh, he felt so good—
the sculpted planes of his chest rippling under her hands so perfect! She thought briefly about all those wasted years when she’d felt nothing but humiliation. Nothing but shame. Then she thought fleetingly about all those wasted minutes and seconds when she’d been lying here, too tentative to reach out and touch the man above her who was making her feel again. Making her blood fizz.

Wasted years. Wasted moments, every one of them.

She would waste no more.

Starting now.

Drowning under his kisses, she let her palms follow the sculpted arch of his back, finding the band of his boxers and pressing her fingernails beneath, her fingers tracing the line that circled his firm hips, until her hands were almost between them and the only place to go was down…

A hand snared her wrist.

‘Not so fast.’ She blinked up at him, wondering if she’d done something wrong, wondering if she’d just revealed the extent of her inexperience, to see eyes wild with want, his features taut with control. ‘If you’re going to touch me there, I really need you out of that dress.’

He was just the man to peel it from her. He rocked back on his knees, his hands at her ankles before they started the slow ascent once more, each leg getting the special treatment, skimming the fabric of her gown from her skin and gathering it at his wrists as he went.

He peeled the silken fabric away, uncovering her, exposing her inch by slow inch, and yet still his eyes never strayed from hers. When his thumbs grazed her inner thighs, and her muscles clenched and jerked, he simply smiled with satisfaction—and she understood, because of the moment her hands had grazed his nipples and he had started, and she had realised the power of her own touch.

He wanted her to feel good. He delighted in it. There was no need to feel apprehensive or afraid. She was in safe hands.

She lifted her hips before he had to ask, allowing the swish of bunched stone-encrusted silk to slide past her until his hands gathered at her waist, his thumbs performing lazy circles around her navel.

Lazy circles that felt anything but. Lazy circles that turned her insides to jelly.

He leaned over then, pressed his mouth to the physical reminder of her birth and kissed it reverently before he rose. ‘We need to get this off,’ he muttered, sounding strangely troubled, his voice as thick as the sinking sands that had swallowed her car. And then leaned down and drew her into his embrace as he kissed her again, and she let him draw the garment over her head.

She heard a sound like a waterfall as the bejewelled gown pooled on the rug, felt one brief moment of regret for its unfair fate—and just as swiftly forgot it as Rafiq chose that same moment to look down upon her body.

‘I thought you were beautiful last night, in the moonlight, emerging from the sea,’ he said. ‘But tonight you are perfection.’

Her heart swelled in her chest. She was so close to tears—but tears of euphoria and not of sadness. For he was a god and he was calling her perfect! She thanked whatever kind fortune had brought her this moment, this night. For she would remember it for ever.

He lowered himself over her, so that their bodies met length to delicious length, their mouths enmeshed, their tongues tangled, their bodies skin to skin apart from the underwear they both wore—the underwear Rafiq was already intent on removing. He kissed the line of her bra straps, sliding them from her shoulders in the process. And then, with a skilful hand, the reason for which she didn’t want to dwell on, he
snapped open the closure at her back. With a flick of his wrists, even that scrap of material was gone.

The lamplight threw crazy shadows across the room—crazy shadows that merged with the crazy ideas in her mind and the crazy feelings in her heart. She had loved Rafiq once. He had loved her. Could he love her again?

Then his hot tongue circled one nipple, sending spears of pleasure down to her very core, and she didn’t care what he felt.