Monarch of the Sands

‘Zahid!’ She gave a soft gasp as he tightened his hold on her.

‘Relax,’ he instructed throatily as he began to move inside her. ‘Let go.’

‘Oh, Zahid,’ she said again, more brokenly this time.

He’d never known love-making like it—even though it tested every reserve he possessed. Time and time he held back from giving into his orgasm—determined that her first time would be memorable for the right reasons. Or at least some of the right reasons, he thought grimly as his fingers gripped the satin of her thighs to drive into her even deeper.

Her head turned wildly against the pillow as she began to make soft, moaning sounds—and when at last he sensed the change in her, he drew back to watch it happen. Saw the slow arching of her back and the rosy flowering over her breasts. Heard the fevered entreaty gasped from her parted lips as her orgasm captured her.

Even before her spasms had stilled, he sensed the inevitability of his own release and felt it like nothing he had ever felt before. Everything paled in comparison to those fleeting moments of pure pleasure. Every milestone of his life, every battle fought and victory won—he would have traded them all for this one moment of delicious weakness with Francesca O’Hara.

But afterwards, when his body had begun to quieten, his thoughts began to race. Slowly, he withdrew from her—taking a moment to compose himself before turning her towards him, steeling his heart against the trickle of a tear which slid down her cheek.

It was long moments before he could bring himself to speak and when he did, his words shot out like bullets. The only woman he had thought he could trust—and she had deceived him in the most fundamental way of all.

‘So,’ he said heavily. ‘Are you going to give me some kind of explanation?’

She heard the sudden coolness in his voice and Frankie’s heart sank as some of her joy began to evaporate. Couldn’t the interrogation wait? Couldn’t he just let her revel in this feeling—let her enjoy the sense of warmth and closeness she was experiencing right now? Surely she was allowed to spin out her hopeless fantasies about her dark and brooding lover for just a little longer.

‘You mean about—’

‘Please don’t make it worse by playing games with me, Francesca. It seems you’ve done enough game-playing to last a lifetime.’ Angrily, he wiped away the tear which shimmered on her cheek and which seemed to reproach him. Why hadn’t she told him before it was too late? ‘You know exactly what I mean.’

‘About me being …’ Her voice tailed off because the word seemed like an unwanted intruder and the dark look on his face filled her with trepidation.

‘A virgin. A virgin!’ He shook his head in disbelief as he rolled away from her, reaching down to grab the cashmere throw, which had tumbled to the floor during their love-making and thrusting it at her, not wanting to look at her pink and white nakedness. He saw her move one milky thigh to reveal the secret, dark fuzz of hair and felt the rapid escalation of his heart. ‘Cover yourself up!’

Frankie was grateful for the blanket, tugging it over herself with trembling fingers as she stared at him with apprehensive eyes.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he demanded.

‘Because I knew you would stop if I did—’

‘Damned right I would have stopped!’

‘And I didn’t want you to,’ she said, in a small voice.

Her wide-eyed honesty took him aback and almost made him melt, until he reminded himself of what she had done and the repercussions of her actions. ‘You didn’t have sex with Simon?’ he queried, then gave a short laugh as he realised the ridiculous nature of his question. ‘Clearly not, as I’ve just discovered for myself.’ He looked at her, trying to steel himself against the softness of her lips and the blue temptation of her darkened eyes. ‘The question is, why not?’

She felt as if she were on a witness stand—suddenly expected to mount her own defence with little or no preparation. And her only defence was the truth, Frankie realised—even if it opened her up to the charge of being too trusting and too vulnerable.

‘Because I was … nervous whenever Simon touched me.’ Awkwardly, she wriggled her shoulders. ‘I sort of … froze.’

‘You didn’t act very nervous just now.’ And she certainly hadn’t frozen.

She swallowed but the candid question still sparked from his black eyes. Did he want her to spell it out for him, detail by cringe-making detail—and inflate his already over-inflated ego into the bargain? Did she admit that she’d been stupid enough to get engaged to a man who hadn’t made her feel a modicum of what she felt for the brooding sheikh? That she had only just discovered what real passion and desire could feel like?

‘You made me feel relaxed,’ she said simply. ‘No, maybe that’s the wrong word. You made me feel …’ She gave another rueful shrug of her shoulders—for surely there was no place for coyness now. ‘Wanton, I guess. Which he never did. He told me that day when I went to see him that I was basically … frigid. And I believed him.’ She stopped while Zahid said something very profound in his native tongue, her heart beating hopefully as he pulled the cashmere throw over him as well, so that she could feel the heat from his body as he drew closer. ‘Anyway, maybe I should be grateful that we didn’t have sex.’ Her voice wobbled a little. ‘Not if he was sleeping with somebody else at the time.’

Zahid gave a ragged sigh as he stared at the ceiling, cursing the man who had hurt her and cursing his own hot-blooded impetuosity. How bloody complicated life could be at times, he thought. The best sex he’d ever had and it had been with his oldest friend—who had now wasted her virginity on him and given him a whole new layer of unwanted responsibility towards her. Was this not the most impossible of all situations?

‘You know what kind of man I am, Francesca,’ he said furiously. ‘As King, I will be expected to marry a virgin—but it will have to be a woman from my own culture,’ he ran on hastily, in case she should think that she now qualified for the position. ‘Not a foreigner.’

Frankie was glad that he was looking at the ceiling because otherwise he might have seen the hurt which had criss-crossed over her face. How unwittingly cruel he could be. Did he think she was now angling for marriage, simply because he had been the first man she’d had sex with? Did he imagine that she had withheld the information from him in order to put herself in a powerful position?

But it took her only moments to compose herself. Why should he feel guilt about what had just happened, when in a way—she had misled him? Yet she hadn’t kept quiet about her innocence because she had some form of agenda. She had done it because she’d wanted Zahid more than anything else in the world. She had wanted him to be the man to introduce her to the world of sex. And she had done it because she … well, she liked him. That was all. Surely that was something which could be celebrated instead of regretted?

Beneath the superfine cashmere, she stretched her glowing b