Surrender to the Sheikh

She would bear him fine Marabanesh sons and in time she would grow fat and he would grow bored. Had his mother and his father noticed his distraction with the idea? he wondered now.

‘So is she going to be the lucky one?’ asked Rose, only just preventing herself from snarling.

‘No, she is not.’

‘Oh? Did she discover how you’d spent your afternoon, then? Lying with me under the hot desert sun? Making love to me?’

The taunt triggered memory, fused and exploded in a fury of anger and almost unbearable passion. He pulled her roughly into his arms, though he saw from the instant dilation of her eyes that she was not objecting. Not objecting one bit, he thought as he drove his mouth down hard on hers.

And only when he had slaked a little of his hunger for her did he lift his head and gaze down into her dazed face as her eyelids fluttered open to stare up at him.

Her lips opened to frame his name, but no word came.

‘Rose,’ he said gently, his breath warm and soft on her face. ‘How can we be lovers if you make such unreasonable demands on me?’

Her fingers bit into the hard strength of his shoulders beneath the sapphire silk. ‘Most people wouldn’t call them unreasonable!’

‘Most people, most people,’ he chided. ‘Rose, Rose, my sweetest Rose—I am not most people. We both know that. I told you that right from the very beginning.’

She shook her head sadly. ‘No, not right from the beginning, Khalim. You told me just before you made love to me, when making love had become as inevitable as night fol

lowing day. You did everything in your not inconsiderable power to get me to arrive at that point. You played me as you would—’ memory flashed into her subconscious as she recalled something he had told her about his schooldays, his love of fishing ‘—a fish! That’s what you did! Yes, you did, and don’t deny it! Teased me and tempted me, and—’

He cut short her protests with a forefinger placed softly on her lips, feeling them tremble beneath his touch, and he felt a surge of something far greater than mere desire. How well she knew him! How was this possible in so short a time?

‘Yes, I plead guilty to your accusations,’ he admitted slowly. ‘Every one of them.’

Her anger was mollified by the triumph of knowing that she understood him a little too much for his liking, and her fingertips curled spontaneously into the nape of his neck, like a kitten’s claws.

He felt her capitulation in the instinctive sway of her body, her hips folding into his, where fire and desire were building and burning, and he groaned.

‘So can we not just enjoy this…now, my sweet, sweet Rose? To take what many pleasures are ours?’

It was, she recognised, an expression of need as much as lust, and the closest that Khalim would ever come to…not begging, exactly, because a man like Khalim would never, ever beg. But beseeching, certainly. She stared up into his face, and all her objections withered into dust.

‘Yes, my darling,’ she said shakily. ‘We can.’

His hand was unsteady as he traced a slow line with his finger, from neck to navel, the filmy white material of her blouse moulding itself to the slim curves beneath.

‘I want to see you naked,’ he said huskily. ‘Properly naked against satin, not sand.’ He drew the cotton top over her head, his breath freezing with pleasure as he saw the unfettered lushness of her breasts and the flaxen hair which streamed down over them. He bent his head to kiss one puckered, rosy nipple.

‘Oh!’ she sighed, squirming her hips in helpless pleasure. ‘You are a wicked, wicked man, Khalim.’

‘You bring out the wickedness in me,’ he murmured.

‘The feeling is mutual,’ she murmured back. ‘So, so mutual.’ Rose’s hands slid underneath the sapphire silk of his gown, fingertips feasting on the feel of the satin skin which lay over the muscular definition of his torso. She felt him shudder beneath her touch and knew another moment of triumph, suspecting that once again he was close to the edge. And that was a heady feeling. This man of control and power—hers!

‘I wanted to make this a long, slow undressing,’ he said, bending his head to whisper in her ear.

‘I sense a “but” coming.’

‘Mmm. I think it will take many days before I can bear to prolong the pleasure in that way. Shall we…?’ He paused, and trickled a finger down to rest possessively in the small dip of her navel. ‘Shall we quickly remove these constraining garments, so that we can come together without barrier?’

But the word stirred an uncomfortable thought which had occurred to him over dinner that very night.

‘And I have brought with me—’ he scowled as he forced himself to say the abhorrent word, but only abhorrent when used in connection with Rose ‘—condoms! We were too reckless and too hungry for one another earlier.’ When, for the first time in his life, he had made love without protection. It had also occurred to him that she might have become pregnant, and an intense and primitive yearning had swept over him. Only to be replaced by a fervent prayer that it should not be so.

For it would be impossible if Rose Thomas were carrying his child. Impossible!