He lifted his head from hers and gazed down at her, feeling the heated flush of desire as it snaked its way across his cheekbones. Saw her matching response and the longing which darkened her eyes into twin eclipses.
He drew a long, shuddering breath. ‘I have to tell you something,’ he began unsteadily.
But Rose was proud. And she was also perceptive—they both knew that. She shook her head. ‘I know.’
‘You can’t know!’ he protested.
She wanted to say it her way—because she suspected that his words could wound her more deeply than any dagger. ‘There can’t be any future for us; I know that. This is this, and nothing more than this, and I mustn’t read anything else into it.’ She actually smiled at his expression of perplexity, recognising that this was a man who was used to calling the shots! ‘Don’t worry, Khalim,’ she finished huskily. ‘I won’t.’
He shook his head and made a silent curse. By withdrawing emotionally, as she had just done so neatly, she had succeeded in making him want her even more! Impossible! And his need was made all the more poignant by knowing that he could never really have her!
She saw the look of pain etched on his features, and lifted a wondering hand to smooth it down over the hard jut of his jaw. ‘Khalim?’ she questioned softly. ‘What is it?’
He gave a muffled groan as he bent to kiss her neck, his fingers moving to swiftly unbutton her thin shirt, his groan deepening as his hands found and cupped the curved perfection of silk-and lace-covered breasts.
He peeled the shirt open and levered himself up to stare down at her, his eyes as wild and as black as the stallion they had just ridden. He didn’t speak another word until he had slithered down the jodhpurs past her ankles and impatiently removed each sock, until she was lying there in just her bra and panties.
‘Lace.’ He swallowed as his gaze raked from her face, down over her bosom, and down further still until it came to rest with rapt fascination at the flimsy little triangle of silk and lace which was all that kept him from her greatest treasure. ‘I always knew you would wear lace, Rose.’
‘And you?’ She turned the tables as she reached her hand up and scraped her fingernails against his nipples through the white voile of the billowing shirt. ‘What about you, Khalim?’
He was used to complete mastery. ‘Me?’ he questioned unsteadily, an unmistakable note of surprise in his voice. ‘What about me, Rose?’
‘Take it off,’ she ordered softly.
Her words sent the blood coursing heatedly around his veins. ‘Is that a…command?’ he demanded unsteadily.
She revelled in the
sense that something here was different for him. ‘It most certainly is.’
The sight of her head pillowed on the flaxen satin of her hair, and her big blue eyes and soft pouting mouth, was almost as much of a turn-on as her near-naked body. Khalim began to unbutton his shirt with fingers which threatened to tremble.
‘You have me in your thrall, sweet Rose—see how my hands shake,’ he murmured as the shirt was flung onto the desert scrub. ‘Now name your next command.’
‘Take it off,’ she instructed, revelling in the heady sensation of having such power over this man. This man.
‘What?’ But the attempted tease came out in a kind of strangled plea.
‘Everything.’
His long black riding boots were kicked off, and then he fingered the button of his jodhpurs, seeing from the automatic thrusting of her breasts that she was hurtling towards a stage of almost unbearable excitement. You and me both, he thought, with a helpless kind of rapture.
He made his undressing as slow and as deliberate as he could, and Rose was shocked, startled and unbearably aroused to see that he wore nothing beneath the jodhpurs, absolutely nothing. Nothing to disguise the awesome power of his erection. She swallowed, wondering whether…whether…
He read the expression in her eyes as the jodhpurs joined the shirt. ‘You worry that I am too much of a man for you?’
She laughed in soft delight at the arrogant boast. ‘Maybe you worry that I am too much of a woman for you!’
For answer he pulled her panties down with more speed than grace, and then his hand reached behind her to unclip her bra with one deft movement, freeing the tumultuous splendour of her breasts.
He took one breathless look at her nakedness, before coming to lie on top of her, dipping his head to suckle greedily at her breasts, his fingers moving between her thighs to flick at her slick heat.
Rose’s head fell back. ‘Oh! Khalim!’
‘You want me to stop?’ he suggested, lifting his head away from her nipple so that she almost fainted with disappointment.
‘Yes! No!’