The Playboy Sheikh's Virgin Stable-Girl (14 page)

‘The man is about sixty,’ she said coldly.

Their eyes met. ‘You think that a virile man’s sexual desire is ever diminished by age?’ he questioned, on an arrogant boast.

Eleni swallowed. ‘I hadn’t given it much thought,’ she said listlessly.

His eyes narrowed. What was the matter with her now? Did she not realise that her place was to smile and to please him—not to stand before him creasing her creamy skin with a frown? Perhaps he would just have to show her and drive the lesson home. ‘Come on. Let’s go. I’m taking you home to bed,’ he said roughly.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘K…KALIQ! Oh, Kaliq! Oh!’

Waiting until the last of her breathless spasms had shuddered against his tongue, Kaliq moved up over Eleni’s naked body and looked down at her flushed face.

‘You liked that, I think?’ he murmured.

Her flush deepened, her lashes fluttering down to conceal her embarrassment. ‘Y-yes.’

‘Look at me,’ Kaliq commanded.

How could she possibly look at him after what he had just done to her? But knowing that he would insist until she capitulated, Eleni reluctantly stared into the mocking ebony of his gaze, scarcely able to believe that the sheikh had been kissing her there and what gasping pleasure it had brought her. Another shudder racked through her naked body and she swallowed. ‘Oh, Kaliq—is such a thing not…not…’

‘Not what, my beauty?’

‘Oh, I don’t know…I don’t know.’ She didn’t seem to know anything any more. ‘Wr-wrong, I suppose.’

He stroked her breast and felt its bud tighten against his questing finger. ‘Why should it be wrong?’ he queried softly.

‘Because it seems wicked, somehow.’ She wriggled her shoulders. ‘And because it feels so good.’ Just as everything they seemed to have spent this past week doing had felt good. Too good, really. Once again she felt the cold wash of fear which had begun to increasingly haunt her. How on earth was she going to be able to cope once her time with Kaliq was over?

Reflectively, he stroked a long wave of dark silken hair from her damp cheek. ‘But sex sometimes does feel wicked,’ he agreed. ‘That is part of its allure. The sense of the forbidden. The illicit.’ And the unexpected, he thought suddenly. Because Eleni had confounded him. He had never expected it to be this amazing. By now he should be growing bored with her body. Her voice should be sounding shrill to his ears. He should be looking for excuses to increasingly avoid her except for night-time—when, perplexingly, the opposite was true.

He found himself seeking her out. Luring her back into bed when they had only just left it. And discovering that she was learning the skills of sex with astonishing speed.

Her words cut into his thoughts. ‘And does it always feel this good?’

Now it was his turn to close his eyes, mainly to block out the irresistible question in hers. Her innocence was part of her own allure, as was her endless curiosity and willingness to learn. He could never recall being so relaxed and easy in a woman’s arms.

When he asked her opinion—even though asking a humble stable girl was in itself madness—she expressed it honestly. With Eleni it was as if he had stumbled upon a dark stone in the desert sand and had cleaned it up to discover that a precious gem lay beneath.

There was true intimacy between them, he realised—with something approaching dismay. And wasn’t there a part of him which wished she had experienced other lovers? So that this sense of sweet wonder she displayed in his arms did not exist—and he could have mocked and taunted her with questions about how the other men matched up to him. So that he would be spared any fleeting guilt when the time came to cast her aside.

‘You ask too many questions!’ he complained.

‘But I thought you liked me to ask questions.’

‘Not always. Now you must return the favour,’ he instructed, without opening his eyes.

Sensing that she had somehow displeased him, Eleni wriggled down and began to butterfly her lips over his torso the way he had taught her to do. She felt him writhe as she touched her tongue to his salty hardness—and he groaned and tangled his hands in her hair.

But even as she put her new-found sexual skills into practice she felt a wrench of heartache which was never too far from the surface. For it was bittersweet to acknowledge the topsy-turvy element which her life had taken on since she had become the sheikh’s lover. Physically, she was glowing like a lamp and feeling on a constant high—but emotionally, she was all over the place.

A week in England had been like a whole lifetime in miniature—a lifetime she never wanted to end. She shared the prince’s bed and ate her meals exclusively with him—and in between times, he had shown her a little of England. On his luxury jet they had flown to York and to Cambridge—when Kaliq took her to look over some of the other horses he was thinking of adding to his stables.

‘I want my polo club to be the most prestigious in the world,’ he told her. ‘To bring the best kind of tourism to Calista—and to benefit its people.’

And then what? Eleni wondered—though she didn’t dare ask. His nature was so restless she suspected that nothing—no achievement in the world—would ever satisfy him.

His life was full of acquisitions, she realised. The garage full of gleaming cars. The light aircraft he kept on a nearby airfield was rarely used and neither was the yacht which was moored down on the south coast, kept perfectly ready and waiting for one of his infrequent visits.

‘When do you sail?’ she asked him one day.

‘When the sea is at its most challenging.’

His answer did not surprise her. Risk was his most constant partner, she realised forlornly—as much a part of his character as his passion and lust for life. Was that why he refused the services of bodyguards wherever possible? Why he drove too fast and jumped his horses too high?

She kept wondering when he would take her back to Calista, but she was too scared to ask that, too—terrified that a wrong word would make it come to pass even sooner. Deep down she recognised that her time as his lover was surely coming to an end. For a man used to the most beautiful and wealthy women in the world—wouldn’t he soon begin to grow bored with his country girl? Especially now that she no longer even had the lure of her virginity to commend her. Maybe the sooner that day came around, the better it would be for her.

Because now, as she lay in his bed, pleasuring him, with the light from the afternoon sun gilding their naked bodies, Eleni realised she had fallen into the very trap he had warned her about. Somewhere along the way she had fallen in love with him. Except that Kaliq had made it sound like a reaction—a woman justifying sex by convincing herself that she was in love.

But this didn’t feel like justification. It didn’t feel like a woman who was ashamed of her behaviour and so tagged on an acceptable label to it.

It felt real. As real as the rain on her face, or the wind streaming through her hair when she galloped along the hard desert sands.

The feelings she had for him felt as powerful and as constant as the sun. Feelings she had to spend most of her time fighting. She found herself wanting to shower his skin with tiny kisses and to stroke away the deep grooves which sometimes creased his brow when he was deep in thought. To pull his beloved dark head to her breast—to comfort and to love him, as well as to gently run her fingers through his ruffled black hair.

I love him, she thought helplessly. I love him with a power which makes the rest of life seem inadequate.

She tried to talk herself out of it, telling herself that she had simply become bewitched by the unbelievable position in which she found herself—of being the prince’s lover. Beneath her supposedly practical, horsey exterior—perhaps she was really one of those women who were secretly swayed by wealth. Who liked all the fine things which money could buy. The hot water running from the shiny taps. The pure silk robes. The best horses to ride, and food served on golden plates.

Maybe she wasn’t so down-to-earth as she’d always thought, but was secretly entertaining unrealistic dreams about her future. Was she contemplating what it might be like to be a permanent fixture in the life of her sheikh?

But even as she allowed the thoughts to filter into her mind, Eleni knew that they did not represent the person she really was, or what she really felt deep inside. If Kaliq turned around and told her that he was going to turn his back on all his royal riches and privilege—wouldn’t she more than happily take his hand and walk off into the unknown future with him? In fact, didn’t part of her long for just such an unlikely scenario? Knowing that would be the only way for her to have any kind of future with him.

But, in reality, there wasn’t going to be a future.

Pleasure overtook him and Kaliq groaned as his seed spilled into her mouth, then he pulled her up to lie on top of him as she licked her lips like a kitten. ‘Who taught you to do that?’ he shuddered.

‘You did.’

‘What else did I teach you?’

‘This.’

Boldly, she leaned over and planted her lips on his and he could taste his own muskiness on her mouth as she kissed him so sweetly that it felt uncomfortably close to poignant. He certainly didn’t remember teaching her to do that. Kissing was something he always kept to a minimum. It brought up feelings he had pushed away or long forgotten. Kissing was almost too intimate—far more intimate than sex itself. Too close to emotion and he didn’t do emotion. And yet…

He lay back against the rumpled bedsheets—and, for once in his life, remained passive to the soft ministrations of her mouth. Just this once he would allow her a moment of tenderness and allow himself to become tangled in its dangerous web.

Just for a moment, he kissed her back—without restraint or reservation—a soft warmth beginning to heat the blood in his veins as he did so. With a moan of delight she wrapped her arms and her legs around him and deepened that silent kiss.

On and on that sweet kiss continued, until he moaned her name softly into her mouth, and as the sound of the phone jangled loudly on the bedside table Kaliq pulled away from her with something approaching relief.

‘I thought you told Zahra you didn’t want to be disturbed by anyone,’ blurted out Eleni before she could stop herself, aware that the tantalising spell had been broken.

His black eyes glittered out a distinct warning—sending out the unspoken message that it was not her place to question him. ‘It is obviously someone who’s insisting on speaking to me. Which must mean one of my brothers.’ Raking his fingers through his ruffled black hair, he lifted up the receiver and listened.

‘Oh, it’s you, Zakari,’ he said drily. ‘Are you disturbing me? Well, yes—as a matter of fact, you are.’ He fixed his gaze on Eleni’s bare and rosy breasts and his eyes narrowed. ‘Would you like to call back later? No, I thought not.’ He listened for a few moments, and then gave an odd kind of smile as he replaced the phone.

‘Is everything…okay?’ asked Eleni.

He yawned and stretched his arms above his head. ‘That depends on how you feel about the imminent arrival of my elder brother.’

‘Sheikh Zakari?’ Eleni’s eyes widened in horror as reality began to close in like a vice clamping around her throat. ‘You mean he’s coming here?’

‘Apparently. He’s been in London speaking to some diamond expert, heard that I was in the country and has decided to call in for dinner.’

Eleni sat bolt upright, her hair tumbling down over her breasts, her heart beating out a frantic rhythm. ‘Then I will hide myself away until he is gone!’

Kaliq looked at her. At that moment she looked uniquely lovely—all flushed and rumpled from an afternoon in bed but with that natural grace and elegance which was all her own. Someday soon she would no longer be his lover, but in the meantime it seemed a little unnecessary that he shouldn’t be able to feast his eyes on her while he still had the opportunity. And suddenly an audacious idea occurred to him.

‘Why not stay and meet him for yourself?’ he questioned slowly.

Eleni blinked at him in disbelief but his words only reminded her of her situation. That she was nothing but a lowly servant and Calista’s most powerful man was coming for dinner! She meet Zakari! Was Kaliq out of his mind to suggest such a thing?

‘Meet the Sheikh Zakari? But I could not possibly do that!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because…because he is the king and he will not approve of a lowly stable girl having…having…’ she searched around wildly for the right word—because surely relationship was far too presumptuous a term ‘…sex with his younger brother.’

It was a curiously insulting and bald little phrase for her to have used, Kaliq thought, with a flicker of irritation. ‘I wasn’t planning to announce it over dinner,’ he said sarcastically.

‘N-no. No, of course not,’ she stumbled, aware that now she had been presumptuous.

‘Of course, we could always play a little game,’ he suggested carelessly.

‘A game?’ Eleni looked at him suspiciously. ‘What…what kind of game?’

The black eyes glittered. ‘Look at how relaxed you have become in my company,’ he murmured. ‘So why not see how far your undoubted talents can stretch. Do you think you can play hostess for me while I entertain my brother for dinner?’

She stared at him. ‘But surely he would not approve of a…stable girl playing hostess to the ruling family!’ protested Eleni.

‘Then don’t tell him. Imply that you’re a Calistan noblewoman—perhaps the daughter of one of our diplomatic staff. Be vague. I can assure you that he will not be interested enough to pursue the matter.’

‘But is that not…dishonest?’ questioned Eleni uncertainly.

Kaliq’s lips curved. ‘Less dishonest surely than hiding you away with the rest of the staff as if you are nothing at all to me.’

She could read the challenge in his black eyes. But I am nothing to you, she reminded herself—and the painful understanding helped make her mind up. In bed at least, she was his equal—so why not grab at this chance to pretend she was equal in all ways? An evening of make-believe. For once she could pretend to be a real princess. A glimpse of the life she would never get a chance to lead.