Shehab felt as if a stinging slap had landed on his cheek.

And every preconceived opinion of her crashed back on him, blasting away her spell, jogging him back to ugly reality.

Here she was, the woman who’d treated him to such a kaleidoscope of emotions for the past ten hours, sitting before him, her future lover, talking to her current one, lying to him, to them both, without batting a lid.

She slid shut her phone and looked at him, elation sizzling in her eyes, looking like a little girl who’d just done something naughty for the first time in her life.

He struggled to empty his gaze of aggression, to access the desire that was independent of his opinion of her. He felt it only becoming fiercer without the shackles of softness, the brakes of empathy, until he struggled not to rise and pounce on her. He had no idea how he only smiled, opened his arms wide.

She rose and rushed to throw herself into them, all fairy-tale gown, overpowering femininity and undetectable pretense. But one thing she wasn’t pretending about.

She couldn’t wait for him.

He’d make her wait. And when the time was right, he’d end the waiting. He’d sate himself with her. Then, when she’d served her purpose, even as they continued their sham of a marriage, he’d discard her. And he wouldn’t feel bad about it.

She deserved whatever he did to her.

Shehab was doing things to Farah she hadn’t known there were to be done.

All through their flight, he’d proved to her there was no ceiling to the sensations he could make her experience.

He was now examining her hand as they talked. Shaping each finger with his fingertips, sliding up and down their length, following the outline of each bone and joint, mapping the pattern of each crease and line, testing the resilience of each pad of flesh. She lay back, enveloped in his sister’s cool, white cotton sundress, drenched in the cold sweat of stimulation, tormented, hypersensitive and praying that he’d never stop exposing her to his attention and appreciation.

Suddenly she interrupted his account about the neighboring Damhoor. “I had no idea hands could be erogenous zones…”

She started to bite her lip, stopped, sighed. They’d been talking almost nonstop for the past twenty hours, all but for the half hour she’d left to change and shower, followed by two separate half hours when he’d left her to do the same and then take care of other details. He was beyond certain by now that she had no filtering system in her brain to stop inappropriate comments from gushing through uncensored-and he kept assuring her he loved it.

His smile knocked her breath from her. Ever since she’d accepted his invitation to go home with him, she’d sensed some change in him. A new intensity. As if he’d been holding back and had let go. It had worried her. For about a nanosecond.

She trusted him, wanted him to feel as intensely about her as she did about him. And his intensity had so many levels and textures, it felt like a deep ocean she could plunge into forever, exploring and experiencing, and never come close to fathoming.

“And I had no idea just holding your hands could awaken new erogenous areas, in both my body and brain.” Her heat shot up another notch at his confession. She was already addicted to how open he was about his feelings, too. He took her hand to his lips, flicked his tongue lightly along her lifeline. She hoped he wasn’t shortening said life’s expectancy. He had her squirming before he withdrew. “And by the way, we’ve arrived.”

She twisted around to peer out the window. They were descending, approaching his island. It was shaped like an irregular kidney, with its concave side harboring bright emerald waters, its outer curve surrounded by much darker ones. In the noon sun its wraparound beaches shone almost silver, pristine except where mangroves covered them in areas on the convex side. The jet was now flying over one apex of the island, just above a low, huge building that overlooked a bay. Dense palm trees and what looked like all sorts of desert flora surrounded it on three sides. The jet was flying over other annexed structures heading to the other end of the island when it hit her.

She turned to him, exclaimed, “It’s a real island.”

His smile grew wicked. “That was the general idea when I said it was. You know, land surrounded on all sides by water.”

She gave him a playful poke. “So I’m geographically challenged, but not to that extent. I thought it would be one of those tiny morsels of land advertised on the Internet as private islands. But this is just…just wow. How big is it?”

She had no idea why, but her eyes dragged down his body until they stumbled on the bulge in his pants. She snatched them up only to find his gaze had been investigating the path of her fascination before it came up, steamy, challenging.

“How big do you think it is?”

“Big.” And there was no doubt what her croaked adjective was referring to, not when her blush must be suffusing the air around her with a reddish glow.

He decided to take pity on her, to pretend they weren’t talking about his endowments. “It’s around 150 square miles.”

“That’s more than the combined size of the Maldives!”

“So you’re not that geographically challenged after all.”

“I only know that because Bill has recently expanded his shipping interests to those islands.”

His face remained smiling, but it now felt like the frozen, eerie smile she got when she hit Pause on a video. And again unease slithered down her spine.

This had happened every time she’d mentioned Bill. Could he have heard that Bill had a younger mistress, and either realized or suspected it was her? She’d just die if he had.

But he wasn’t one to let something like that go unverified. And she was certain he wouldn’t come near another man’s woman, mistress or whatever.

No. He couldn’t know. Thank God. And she would rather skydive without a parachute than explain how this charade-which she intended to end as soon as she saw Bill again-had started.

So what did the stillness that came over him when she mentioned Bill mean? Was the businessman in him shoving aside the passionate man every time anything or anyone connected with business was mentioned?

Whatever it was, she shouldn’t try to analyze it. She now recognized that any apprehension she felt originated within her, was triggered by her inability to believe her luck.

She still couldn’t hold his gaze, turned away to watch the ground zooming closer. And suddenly realized what else was wrong with this picture. She hadn’t thought…“…we’d be landing here!”

Tags: Olivia Gates Throne of Judar Billionaire Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net