She pressed close, so that she could feel his erection hard between them. ‘Make love to me, Salman. I need you so much.’
He waited for a long moment, as if expecting her to laugh in his face, tell him she hadn’t meant it, and then with a growl of triumph his head swooped down and his mouth burnt hers in a searing brand. His arms wrapped tight around her and triumph coursed through Jamilah too, as if the two warring sides of her psyche had battled it out and the stronger side had finally won. She knew in some dim place that she would have to deal with the fallout of this decision, but not right now.
Right now she needed Salman with a pulsing intensity she’d never felt before. And the vulnerable chink he’d just shown her was the most powerful aphrodisiac in the world.
With one swoop he smashed aside all her resistance, lifted her up and carried her over to the bed, where he laid her down as if she was the most infinitely delicate and precious thing in the world…
A couple of hours later Salman was lying on the silken sheets, wide awake, with Jamilah’s hair in a silken caress over his chest and her breasts pressing into his side. One arm was wrapped around her, holding her to him, his fingers near the enticing swell of her breast. Even though he’d never felt more sated in his life, his body was already responding with predictable force. He sighed deeply.
Jamilah had capitulated, but it didn’t make him feel triumphant or complacent. He’d never known such an unremitting hunger for one woman. The more he got of Jamilah, the more he wanted. And it sent tentacles of faint panic through him. Because how could he leave and get on with his life when Jamilah’s life was here? Seeing her tears earlier had been like a punch in the gut. He knew he shouldn’t have pushed her—knew he shouldn’t have brought her here. But he was weak, and he needed her, and the depth of that need stunned him.
He refused to believe that his need had grown more acute since the night he’d spilled his guts in Paris, but he was very much afraid that was the case. She was the only person he’d ever told about what had happened to him, and yet his fear of how she might have used that knowledge was eclipsed by this insatiable desire. And of course she hadn’t used the knowledge.
Jamilah was a slice of sun he was indulging in, and he knew he was on a finite time with her—because she would want a normal life. With someone who didn’t harbour the worst images of degradation and pain. How could she not? His heart clenched ominously when he thought of the children she would have with someone else, and he quashed the scary yearning feeling that rose up.
When he felt a telling change in Jamilah’s breathing across his skin, he shifted her subtly so that she lay heavily over him, her legs spread on either side of his hips, just above where his arousal ached for more intimate contact.
The hitch in her br
eathing grew more pronounced as he drew her legs up. Reaching down, he found the sweet moist apex of her thighs, and her chest expanded deliciously against his when he explored her desire.
‘Salman…’ she shuddered out on a low, sleepy, husky moan, and that alone nearly drove him over the edge. He found her mouth and plundered the sweet depths, revelling in her sleepily sexy response.
With a subtle movement he replaced his fingers with his erection and, holding her hips fast, rocked up and into her, thrusting in and out with ruthless precision until her stunning eyes were open, looking into his. After long minutes of stringing out the torture for as long as she could last, Jamilah bit her lip and with her head thrown back splintered around him, sending him careening into an explosion so intense it took long minutes to float back down.
Sex. He could deal with this. Not the other. He just had to keep it all about sex.
CHAPTER TEN
TWO evenings later Salman looked at Jamilah across the table, and she flashed him a teasing glance. He felt something intensely light bubble up in his chest, even as that ever-present desire pounded through him in waves.
He cursed himself for the clothes he’d brought for her. She was dressed tonight in a softly ruched silk dress, with thin spaghetti straps and a low neckline. It clung to her curves and fell in folds to her knees, revealing her shapely calves and slender bare feet. She was all the sexier for not wearing shoes. Her hair was piled untidily on top of her head and she wore not a scrap of make-up.
Only that afternoon, as they’d lain in a secret glade by a nearby pool, naked after a swim, she’d leant over him and taken him into her mouth, sending his mind into orbit even as he’d tried to stamp a control on his body that he’d never had to enforce before. But despite his ragged entreaties she hadn’t stopped until he had lost all control and had been at her mercy completely. He’d never forget that self-satisfied sexy grin on her face. As if it was her mission to punish him for bringing her here in the first place.
Jamilah looked at Salman with wry impatience now, bringing him back to the present with a jolt. ‘Every time I talk about anything remotely personal you clam up.’
Salman sent her a warning look from across the lavishly decorated and heaving dinner table. ‘I think I’ve already spoken far too much.’
‘Yes,’ Jamilah persisted with a gentle voice, ‘about something that happened to you when you were a child… But what about everything else? Nadim? Your life so far?’
Salman found himself constricting inwardly. He knew he’d been avoiding talking about anything too personal—he already felt as if Jamilah knew far too much. His voice was brisk. ‘There’s nothing to tell. It’s quite mundane and boring. I wanted to get out of Merkazad since I was eight years old, I’ve blamed Nadim on some level my whole life for what happened, which I know is irrational, and I’ve made a disgusting amount of money.’
He smiled then, and Jamilah shivered slightly.
‘Don’t try and psychoanalyse me. My life so far is exactly as you once said: soulless. And that’s the way I like it.’
Jamilah knew she should stop and take the hint, but she couldn’t. ‘So, what? You won’t be hurt again? That’s impossible, Salman. We open ourselves to hurt every minute we’re alive, but also to incredible joy.’
Salman was stuck for words for a moment. The concept of incredible joy was an alien one to him, and yet hadn’t he caught a glimpse of it here with Jamilah? He shook his head mentally. Joy was not for him. He didn’t deserve it. He was determined to wrest back some of his sorely lacking control. She was pushing him too close to an edge where his whole world threatened to drop away into an abyss.
Salman came out of his chair, and in a smooth move Jamilah never saw coming plucked her effortlessly out of her chair, into his arms, and over to the bath behind the screen which had been prepared while they’d been eating.
Jamilah blushed to imagine what the villagers must think of them. Even though she knew she was putting on a good show of confident bravado to Salman, she was still quaking inside—sure he’d seen through her gauche attempts to make it appear as if she was in control of what was happening.
The past two days had slipped by with such deceptive ease that it scared her. They truly were cocooned in a tiny bubble of sensuality. The outside world could be going up in flames for all they knew or cared. And did Jamilah regret giving into Salman for one moment? As he undressed her now, with delicious intent, she felt some dim and distant regret, but told herself once again that she would think of it when this was over and she was back in Merkazad, in the real world, getting on with her life. She would have the rest of her life to regret.
Salman instructed her to get into the bath with a note of steel in his voice, and Jamilah responded with a delicious shiver of anticipation.