‘I do not believe in coincidences of that nature. And if you have not the courage to admit that you were involved right up to your pretty throat in your stepfather’s intrigues, we have nothing more to discuss.’
‘But—’
Tariq lifted his hands. ‘I will not hear any more. I gave you the chance to tell me the truth and you wasted the opportunity. Your stepfather is a crook and he raised you without principles. Yet it is pointless for you to plead innocence in face of the facts as we both know them.’
Hurt resentment filled Faye. Here she was telling the truth but he would not accept it. He refused to believe that she could have had nothing to do with Percy’s sudden appearance at the worst possible moment that awful evening. She was willing to admit that the facts did make it hard for her to argue a convincing case in her own defence but, nevertheless, she was telling the truth. Her stepfather had always insisted that his arrival that night had been pure coincidence and how was she to prove otherwise? Only Percy knew the whole story and, Percy being Percy, he was unlikely to stage a confession.
Eyes strained, Faye lifted her head again and then froze. While she had been lost in thought, Tariq had been discarding his clothes. How could she have forgotten for even one moment what was about to happen between them? Well, there was little chance of her forgetting a second time, she conceded in shock, violet-blue eyes now wide on the sight of Tariq shorn of his shirt.
Her shaken scrutiny roamed over his wide brown shoulders, strong arms and broad, muscular chest. A triangular haze of curling dark hair emphasised his powerful pectorals and then thinned into a silky line that arrowed down over his taut abdomen and disappeared beneath the low-slung waistband of his black briefs. Warmth prickled up from the very heart of her, making her shift on the bed and suddenly clasp her hands round her upraised knees. An enervating mix of fascination and embarrassment had her in its grip. She watched him stroll over to the dresser and discard his watch, every movement fluid with natural grace. He had the most extraordinary predatory sex appeal. Her breathing started to seize up at source at just the thought of him getting into bed with her.
Lowering her knees again, she grabbed at the sheet already turned back in readiness for them and pulled it up over herself. Her whole being was humming with raw tension. Wanting…but still seeing what a trap the wanting was, how it would ultimately smash her pride and hurt her. Yet when she focused on the stunning lure of those hawkish tawny eyes, she could hardly breathe, much less think.
He came down on the bed, all dominant male, steely contours and hard muscle. He was very much aroused. Mouth dry, pulses racing, Faye’s startled gaze skittered over him and off him again double quick. His virility was not in question. Panic and wicked excitement combined as he reached for her.
‘We have all the time in the world,’ Tariq asserted softly. ‘I’m not a selfish lover.’
He captured her mouth with a passionate thoroughness that took her by storm, only to linger with the knowing eroticism of restraint and let his tongue delve into the tender interior and, with a smooth flicker, imitate a far more intimate penetration. She shivered with helpless anticipation, her heartbeat racing. He made her want more, with effortless ease he made her want so much more.
He lifted his head, his hair already tousled by her fingers. She stared up at him, wholly absorbed in the hard planes and angles of his lean, dark, devastating face. For a split second, nothing existed but the rising swell of her own unguarded emotions and her fingertips smoothed along a sculpted cheekbone, dropped to stroke in wonderment along his beautiful mouth.
‘What?’ Tariq husked.
‘Nothing,’ she framed, her voice the merest thread of sound, for in that moment she recognised the strength of her own feelings and felt terrifyingly vulnerable.
He tugged her up to him and kissed her again. Her eyes slid shut, all thought suspended for the potent hunger was more powerful. Heart hammering, her eyes flew wide as he drew back from her again, smouldering golden eyes pinned to her as he cast aside her bra. She gazed down in abstracted surprise at the swell of her own bare breasts.
‘You are even more beautiful than I imagined…’ Tariq curved his hand to the pouting flesh he had revealed, catching a pert pink nipple between stroking fingers, sending such a shard of sensation through her that a muffled moan was wrenched from her.
Face burning but every skin cell alive and begging for his touch, she fell back on her elbows against the pillows, one feminine part of her glorying in his unconcealed appreciation of her body, some other tiny part of her standing back in shock at the growing completeness of her own surrender. ‘Tariq…’
Her voice died in her throat as he bent his arrogant dark head and teased at a prominent peak with his lips and his tongue. Seductive pleasure stopped her breathing and tensed her every muscle. He laid her down again with sure hands. As he employed greater sensual force on the tender buds, exploring the firm contours of swollen flesh, her teeth gritted and her fingers clenched, tiny cries of response escaping her parted lips. Nothing mattered but that he continue that sweet torment which was so totally addictive.
‘This was meant to be,’ Tariq told her with husky satisfaction. ‘This was meant to be the first day I saw you. Inshallah, we say…as God wills.’
She collided with the burning gold of his eyes, aware of him with every thrumming skin cell in her body. There was no room for pride or principle in what he could make her feel, what he already knew he could make her feel. He wound long brown fingers into her tumbled pale blonde hair.
‘Fate…’
‘But you like to tempt fate. Why else did you run into the desert?’ Tariq let the tip of his tongue trace her reddened lips, part them, dip, tease, making love to her mouth, his breath fanning her cheekbone. ‘Don’t you know that had you got anywhere near the airport I would have closed it and grounded every flight…don’t you know that, when I set my heart on anything, I will stop at nothing until I achieve it?’
‘But I didn’t want this…’ Even in the grip of a desperate hunger that mounted higher with his every caress, she knew that. Even as she opened her mouth, turned it under his, driven by an instinct she could not resist, she knew that. But as he drove her lips apart with electrifying passion, she refused to think.
‘You do now.’ Glittering golden eyes rested on her as if daring disagreement.
‘Yes…’
He swept her up to him and tugged off the panties clinging to her damp skin. She trembled. He ran his hands over her, toyed with the straining sensitivity of her nipples, traced the taut curve of her quivering stomach and parted her thighs to let his expert fingers trace the infinitely more tender and private place below the soft pale curls. Her heart slammed suffocatingly fast inside her, her excitement intense. His touch controlled her, made her writhe and moan and sob for breath. She twisted her head into his shoulder, drowning in the hot male scent of him, the power of every sense heightened. Her fingers tangled with his hair, clutched restively over a brown shoulder, clenched there.
Tariq groaned something in Arabic.
‘English,’ she begged.
Fierce dark golden eyes held hers in an almost aggressive gaze. ‘You excite me more than any woman I have ever known…’
The restive burning heat inside her was like a twisting, spiralling ache she could no longer withstand. ‘Please…now.’
Without hesitation, his strong-boned face feverishly intent, he pulled her under him, pushed up her thighs and came down on her. As she felt the hard satin probe of his arousal against her softest flesh, she tensed. He smoothed her hair back from her damp brow. ‘I’ll try not to hurt you but you are very tight…’
And then he was there where she most ached for him to be. He eased himself just barely inside her, the sensation of his bold shaft stretching her, enthralling her, seeming to promise that nebulous fulfilment she so craved but had yet to experience. Then his hands lifted her and he tipped her back, shifting his lithe hips and thrusting deep. Sudden burning pain jolted her
but almost as swiftly the hot, heady rush of pleasure returned and blanked out the memory of the first sensation.
‘Assuredly paradise must be like this…’ Tariq growled.
And she had no argument to make, indeed was so lost in the intoxicating world of scorching physical enjoyment, she could not have strung two sensible words together. She moved under him, skin flushed and damp, heart pounding, head thrown back, out of control and not caring as the wild surge of excitement built. She caught the age-old rhythm she had not known until he’d taught her it. She gloried in the raw dominion of his powerful body over and inside hers. She clung to him, reached a climax with a startled cry, soaring to a breathtaking peak and then writhing in the timeless ecstatic release of satiation.
Afterwards, Faye was just in shock. In shock at her own body’s capacity for that much pleasure. In shock at her own hot, frenzied abandonment. In shock at the incredible sense of intimacy she felt still lying in the circle of his arms. His heart was still thumping at an accelerated rate against hers and he was struggling to catch his breath. She kept her arms wrapped round him, wanting the silence and the lack of eye contact to continue for ever, so that she could pretend that everything was bliss, everything normal…loving?
Loving? Faye stiffened at that impossibility, ironically provoking what she had wished to avoid. Tariq lifted his tousled dark head, lustrous golden eyes lingering on her as though magneticised. ‘I am very pleased to be your first lover.’
Faye tensed even more and said nothing.
‘But then that is justice.’ With an appreciative hand, he touched the long silky streamers of her hair where it trailed across the pillow. ‘Your hair is the same colour as the moonlight.’
‘How romantic…’ Something tight and painful knotted inside her, making her feel all kinds of a fool and she responded in a wooden tone, twisting her head away.
‘Once you made me feel very romantic…’