His Defiant Desert Queen

Jemma looked at Mikael, uncertain. “What is that?”

“A massage table. I’m going to give you a massage,” he said. “You’ll lie there, face down—”

“Why?”

“Most massages start with the back.”

“Yes, but why are you giving me the massage?”

“I think you’d enjoy it. And it would help you relax. I want you to relax. I want you to realize that everything that will happen here in the Bridal Palace will feel good. I will never do anything you don’t want. And if I do something that does make you uncomfortable, all you have to do is speak up.” He drew the top sheet back on the table. “Any questions?”

Jemma tugged on her dress. “Do I wear this?”

“No. You’ll take that off—everything off—and then lie down between the sheets, naked.”

* * *

He’d turned around to give her privacy while she disrobed, but she was on the massage table now, tucked between the sheets.

He looked down at her on the table, her dark glossy hair tumbling over one shoulder.

The massage was for her, not him. He wanted her now. He wanted her naked in his bed now. But she wasn’t ready, and he’d meant it when he told her that she had to be comfortable. She had to want him before anything would happen between them.

He placed his hands over the sheet covering her back, letting her feel the pressure of his hands, letting his hands warm her.

After a moment he smoothed his hands over the sheet covering her back.

She felt good. Warm, solid but smooth.

This wasn’t going to be a sexual massage. He’d told her that before they started. It was to show her he could be trusted. He wouldn’t hurt her, or force her to do anything she didn’t want to do.

This massage was simply to help break the ice.

Develop awareness. Create ease between them. Stir the senses, too, so that she’d be comfortable with him physically. You couldn’t impose desire. It must come from within.

He concentrated on learning the shape of her back through the sheet, the sheet protecting her, giving her a sense of safety. He had told her that at any point she could stop the massage. If at any point she felt uncomfortable or threatened, she just needed to speak up and the massage would end. But he didn’t expect her to stop it.

Moving from her shoulders down, he ran his palms from her spine out, smoothing tension away, relaxing the muscles, letting her continue to warm, encouraging her to breathe more deeply.

After several minutes he drew the sheet down, folded it low on her hips, leaving her lovely back exposed. His eyes followed the line of her body, the narrowing of her waist to the soft swell of her hips. The sheet rested on her bottom, hiding the cleft of her cheeks, but again, he knew it was there. He wanted to see it. Touch it. Touch her.

And he would touch her, but not there, not today.

He drew her long hair into his fist, and quickly braided it, before draping the braid over her shoulder, leaving her back bare.

As he stepped away to reach for the oil he could see her profile. Her eyes were closed, her full lips softly parted. Her pale skin gleamed, and his gaze dropped to the side of her soft breast, and then lower to the gentle curve of hip.

He hardened. He’d wanted her for hours. He felt as if he lived in a constant state of arousal around her.

He’d desired many women, and knew how to pleasure his women, but this one made him ache.

Or maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t have her, not today, or tomorrow, or even the day after that made him hurt.

Pouring warm oil into his hands, Mikael rubbed his palms together, spreading the oil, thinning it, and yet the slippery texture was so sensual that he wasn’t sure he could do this. It was to tease her, but he was teasing himself and he hated it.

He placed his hands in the middle of her back, where he’d rested them a few moments ago when the sheet still covered her, and then he began to stroke her back, with smooth, firm deliberate strokes to relax her.

She was tense but he was patient, and as he worked on her back, he focused on the satin texture of her skin, the supple muscle beneath the skin, and the long elegant lines of her—shoulder, upper arm, spine, hip, thigh to calf.

For the next two hours he rubbed and kneaded, massaging every muscle group, working on her back, and then massaging her front, her arms, shoulders and the upper planes of her chest. Aware of the stiff peaks of her nipples beneath the loosely draped sheet his own body tightened in response. He wanted her.

He would wait until she gave herself to him. Would wait until she asked—no, begged—for release.

His hands stopped moving. He leaned over her, whispered that he was done, and told her to hold the sheet.

She did, and he scooped her up, carrying her into the Chamber of Innocence where he laid her in the big bed.

“Good night,” he said, smoothing the hair back from her forehead. “Sleep well. I will see you in the morning.”

* * *

He’d carried her into the bedroom and then left her.

Jemma rolled over onto her tummy, and pressed her face into the pillow, her body aching.

She ached for more. Ached to be filled, satisfied.

Hopefully she wouldn’t have to lie here like this tomorrow night feeling so...tense. Frustrated. It wasn’t a good feeling. Hopefully tomorrow it would be different. Hopefully tomorrow she’d sleep contented. Because wasn’t that the sheikh’s promise? He was to fulfill her needs, give her pleasure?

Yes, the massage had been nice.

She’d very much enjoyed being rubbed and stroked with warm fragrant oils.

And he’d been a great masseuse, the best she’d ever had. He’d been extremely thorough, taking his time, making the massage last for hours. But that was the trouble.

The massage was supposed to be the start of something. A preliminary to foreplay. She’d expected more. The feel of his fingers working knotted muscles, made her imagine his fingers doing other things...

She’d lay on the massage table knowing that soon he’d touch her, and it wouldn’t be just relaxing, but exciting. Stimulating.

She couldn’t help daydreaming during the massage, couldn’t help fantasizing.

She’d entertained the fantasies, too, because surely she’d need them for the next thing. Sex.

But there had been no next thing.

Just the deliciously long massage by a man who obviously had quite a bit of expertise, and then a good-night.

Most cordial of him. If she’d gone to a spa she’d expect him to be waiting on the other side of the door with a lovely chilled glass of lemon water for hydration purposes. But she wasn’t at a spa. She’d expected the massage to...deliver...

It hadn’t.

The sheikh knew exactly what he was doing.

Turning her on, leaving her high and dry, leaving her wanting more.

Jemma would have something to say to Mikael Karim in the morning.

CHAPTER NINE

IT TOOK HER a long time to fall asleep the night before, and when she woke in the morning, it took her a long time to want to leave her bed.

The massage hadn’t just stirred her body, it’d somehow stirred her emotions. She woke up feeling unsettled. Undone.

Mikael had promised her that he’d make her happy in their eight days together, but she felt far less comfortable and optimistic now than she had yesterday before he’d carried her across the threshold of the Chamber of Innocence.

But maybe it was this room, she thought, her gaze sweeping the white marble chamber. It was too formal and too cold.

Too lonely, too.

She hadn’t imagined that the eight nights of pleasure would start with her sleeping alone. She understood why he’d done it—he was trying to put her at ease—but it was isolating here in this room. The cold marble and silk panels might appeal to someone else, but not to her.

She grabbed her pillow and hugged it. She suddenly missed her family very much and that was saying something because Jemma had been independent for years.

When she’d moved to London at eighteen, her sister Victoria had teased her, saying Jemma would never last in London, and predicted that she would be back within a matter of weeks.

Victoria was wrong. Jemma had never returned, and it had actually been surprisingly easy to leave her family. Maybe it was because as the youngest, she’d grown up watching the others move on and move out. By the time she’d reached her teens, it was just her, and her mom, and her mom was ready for freedom, too.

And London had been a good fit. Once Jemma had moved there, she’d found it easy to embrace her new life, seizing every opportunity, taking every decent job, whether home or abroad. She liked to travel, was comfortable in hotel rooms, didn’t mind the long hours, either. Being the youngest, and having to learn to entertain herself, proved beneficial. Jemma was self-reliant. She told herself she needed nothing, and no one.

But that wasn’t true, either.

Of course she needed people. She needed good people, loving people, people who wouldn’t abandon her the moment things got difficult.