Hidden in the Sheikh's Harem: Christmas at the Castello

‘Does that feel like I think you’re too dark?’ he growled.

Confused and confounded by the depth of her feelings for this man, Farah didn’t know what to say without revealing how she felt.

‘Does it?’ he repeated gruffly.

She shook her head. ‘No. But you could be...you could be thinking of someone else.’

The growl turned rough and came from deep in his chest. One of his hands fisted in her hair and brought her eyes to his in the glass. Then he slid his other hand over her belly until it met the snap on her jeans. One flick and the button was released, followed by the zip, and then his hand was on her and in her, and Farah’s head fell back against his shoulder as she surged between the firmness of his fingers in front of her and the ridge of his erection behind her.

‘Yes,’ he growled, the fingers of his other hand going beneath her T-shirt to rub across both her nipples at once. ‘You’re mine, Farah. All mine.’

Her climax built almost instantly and, just when she was reaching for it, he removed his fingers and worked her jeans down her hips.

‘Not without me.’ Within seconds he had his own jeans open and then he was there, bending her forward, her hands splayed once more on the glass, as he pushed into her in one powerful thrust. ‘Look at me,’ he demanded, surging hard. ‘Look at me when I take you.’ His eyes never left hers as he established a driving rhythm that left her in no doubt as to who was in control. ‘Watch my face while I’m inside you. See for yourself that it’s you who does this to me, it’s you who makes me so damned out of control it sometimes scares me.’

He groaned as Farah pushed back and shattered in a shower of sensation, her body pulsing around his flesh and sucking him in deep. ‘Hell, Farah.’

He spilled his release inside her and Farah collapsed limply against the glass, her only support the man breathing heavily at her back who had one arm wrapped around her middle and the other planted against the window.

He leaned forward and nuzzled the sweaty hair that stuck to the nape of neck. ‘I didn’t mean for that to happen. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘I’ve just wanted you all damned day and to hear you say what you did—’ He stopped abruptly and adjusted his jeans before picking her up in his arms and carrying her across the room to their darkened bedroom.

He placed her on the bed and stripped off her clothing before switching on the bedside lamp, bathing them both in a golden glow. Then he stripped off his own and came over the top of her, all dominant and elementally male. Farah felt her heart kick behind her rib cage; she’d never seen him so wildly masculine before, so completely out of control.

Holding himself off her with the strength in his arms, he stared down at her. ‘I want you to trust me, Farah.’

Trust him...

‘I want you to rely on me.’

She didn’t doubt she could on some level, but one day he would see that she wasn’t enough for him and what then? ‘Relying on others isn’t easy for me. It’s—’

‘I’m not asking you to rely on others,’ he said fiercely. ‘I’m asking you to rely on me. I won’t hurt you, Farah.’ He rolled to the side and took her with him. ‘In fact you need to know that, if you ever want to leave, you only have to say so.’

‘Leave?’ She was in such a confused state she wasn’t sure that he wasn’t asking her to leave.

He smoothed the hair back from her forehead. ‘I mean, I won’t chase you or force you to stay like my father would have done. Like he tried to do with Nadir’s mother.’ Farah had heard the story about Nadir’s mother, who had been trying to leave the sheikh with her daughter and had died in a tragic car accident when he’d had them followed. ‘If we can’t make this marriage work, you are free to go.’

Farah’s mouth suddenly felt dry. ‘You really mean that?’

‘Yes.’

‘But how? Under Bakaani law a woman is not free to leave her husband.’

‘Not yet she isn’t. But that is another ancient law that is in the process of being changed.’

She stared up at him. ‘And my father?’

‘Your father goes free from this moment on.’

His words were a pledge that Farah knew he would keep and once again she felt overwhelmed by the depth of her emotions for this man. She buried her head against his shoulder knowing that there was nothing she could give him that equalled all that he could give her. All that he had given her.