No!’ His voice was a muted roar of disapproval and she blinked.
`No, habibti. Do not touch. Not yet.’ His fingers clamped around her wrists and dragged them away from him. She looked into his brilliant eyes and felt the burn of raw desire in his stare. It was incendiary, igniting the flames of secret need within her.
How could he ask her not to touch him? It was unthinkable. She had opened her mouth to object when he put one arm round her, lifting her up a fraction so he could slide her shirt from her shoulders and toss it away. Then her loosened bra disappeared too.
He settled her back on the bed, and this time she lay still, pinioned by the hot, possessive light in his eyes. Her breasts peaked shamelessly under his scrutiny, and a flood of searing heat scorched every inch of her skin.
`You are even more beautiful than I expected,’ he whispered as he stroked a light touch across first one breast than the other. Her breath hitched in her chest at the incredible sensuality of that barely there caress. Then she gasped as his touch slowed, stilled, sharpened, his fingers tugging on her nipple so that darts of luscious sensation speared down to her very core.
`Rafiq! Please.’ She squirmed beneath him.
`Do I hurt you, Belle?’ Already his touch had altered, his palm slipping flat across her skin.
`No, you don’t hurt. I just..
Her words died as she registered his predatory smile. His head lowered till his lips caressed her with tiny kisses. When he moved to suckle at her breast she couldn’t contain the jolt of delight that made her stiffen beneath him. It was so much, so wonderful. But not enough. She wrapped her arms round his shoulders, tilted her hips towards him. He was propped beside and above her and she needed his weight on her now.
Her hands grew urgent as his teased and pleasured her. Did he have any idea what sort of torture this was?
Oh, yes, she decided, remembering the glint of powerful knowledge in his eyes. He knew and reveled in her need for him.
Here she was, helpless and yearning, wild for his touch, laying her heart as well as her body open for him, just as she’d feared she would if she lost:. the strength to resist him. But somehow, now it had happened, now she had given in to her feelings, she couldn’t regret it. Not when he was taking her to paradise. She’d craved him incessantly and it had been only fear holding her back. A fear he had banished with a single touch.
She slid her hands down to his shirt and managed to slip a couple of buttons undone, to feel the raw heat of his bare flesh against her fingers before he moved again.
`Soon,’ he said, and she saw the slumberous promise in his eyes.
`But not yet.’
She almost cried out her protest, but then he was undoing her trousers with quick, decisive movements, stripping the last of her clothes away so she lay naked and trembling before him.
There was a flash of something fierce and untamed in his face as he surveyed her, spread out before him like some waiting harem slave. His eyes burned and the planes of his face grew more pronounced, as if tension pared his features to their stark, elemental beauty.
In that instant Belle knew fear, and something else, some-thing stronger. Triumph. His need for her was blatant in the rigid control she read in his face and in the taut, dangerous lines of his broad shoulders and clenched fists.
And suddenly she didn’t feel vulnerable any more. Lying naked before him wasn’t embarrassing or demeaning. It was liberating, intoxicating. The balance of power between them had shifted, and she reveled in the knowledge that he was frozen still with the effort of control. She could seduce as well as be seduced.
`Rafiq,’ she whispered, surprised at the throaty, knowing sound of her voice. `Won’t you touch me?’
She watched him swallow down hard. He shuddered. His knuckles whitened.
Belle smiled, confident that in this at least they were equals. He might not love her, but his body craved hers just as badly as hers did his.
Slowly she reached up to the traditional headdress he’d worn for the desert ride. She fumbled, and he lifted a hand to untuck one end of the long piece of linen. She took it from him and smiled, a trembling curve of the lips, as she unwound the scarf. Her eyes locked with his but she could read nothing there now; they were too closely shuttered.
At last the cloth came away in her hands and she let it drop, absorbed instead by the swing of shining black hair that fell about his shoulders. Fleetingly she wondered how it could so enhance his hard masculinity.
Then she dropped her hands to his shirt, swiftly dispensing with the buttons till she’d bared enough to be able to slip her hands in against his firm chest, luxuriating in the heat of his skin against hers, the teasing rasp of his chest hair against her fingers.