The Sheikh's Redemption (Desert Nights 1)

She grabbed him, climbed onto him, wrapped her legs around his buttocks, digging her high heels into his flesh as she bunched her hands in his hair and brought his lips crashing down on hers.

“Roxanne.” His growl was that of a predator at the end of his tether. She pushed against him, making him stagger back and sit down on a couch with her on top. Before he could drag in another breath, she was tearing open his shirt, sinking her teeth into his chest and sucking his flesh.

He bucked beneath her, the pleasure of each nip and suckle acute distress. “Roxanne, let me…”

She slipped from his hold, ended up on her knees between his splayed thighs, her hands as feverish as her lips on the buttons of his jeans.

He watched her, his brain, every inch of him overheating from the sight of her beautiful hands dragging down his pants, dipping into his briefs to greedily surround his erection.

His mind hazed, his body hurtled beyond his control with the first touch of her lips on the oversensitized head.

How he’d missed her touch, her mouth, her breath on him. How he’d hungered for her answering hunger, for her delight in him, in all the liberties he gave her with his body.

But this was spiraling out of control. He had to…needed to slow down, savor it, stop her…

Her hot, moist mouth engulfed almost half of him, the tip hitting the back of her throat.

“Ya Ullah, kaif betsawwi hada?” he raved, mindless now, his hands frenzied in her silken hair. “How do you do that? Make every touch ecstasy?”

She gazed up at him, let him see how she took him, loved it, how her lips and hands milked his hardness. A hot tide surged upward from his loins, outward to his every skin cell. His buttocks and thighs tightened with holding it back. He pulled at her, needing to have this completion within her, with her.

She moaned her refusal to let go, the vibration an electrocuting surge of stimulation from every inch she devoured to his every nerve ending.

He collapsed back, surrendered to her demand, liquid fire flooding from the depths of his loins. He froze in the intensity of the moment, trapped in the excruciating pleasure that had him on the verge of splintering into a million pieces.

Just before he exploded, he tried to wrench himself out. She held on, her lips and hands making insistent sweeps, inciting him to madness. And he lost the struggle.

He shouted her name, threw his head back, dug his hands in the depths of her silk fire and spilled his seed on her tongue.

She held his eyes as he bucked again and again into her hold, as she drained him to the last drop.

A long, long moment passed before she let him slip from her reddened, swollen lips. He lay there, gulping air, staring into the depths of her magical eyes and instead of satisfaction, passion roared again, consuming his body in a fiercer fire. Hers. She’d always been what ignited him. What satisfied him.

He tried to pull her up, bring her over him. She pushed his hands away. Before he could move, she stood up, her eyes smoldering down at him, her voice husky.

“I owed you one. Now we’re even.”

Then she turned and walked away.

Seven

Haidar’s paralysis lasted only seconds. Then he was on his feet, shoving himself back into his pants and bounding after her.

She was buttoning her blouse as she strode away, then finger-combing her tousled hair. He knew she heard him coming. She clearly had no intention of stopping, or letting him stop her.

He did. By taking away her means of walking.

He swept her off her feet, smiled down at her. “Though that was almost literally mind-blowing, who says we’re even? You owe me eight years’ worth of pleasure.”

“Eight minutes’ worth is all you get from this gal. Now put me down before I give your perfect nose some crooked character.”

He gathered her hands in one of his. “You have to regain the use of your hands first.”

He strode to the bedroom suite he’d picked as theirs, expected her to struggle, make good on her threat. She just looked up at him, her normally communicative eyes empty of expression.

How he wanted her. The pleasure she’d just given him had only intensified his need for her. His need to pleasure her in return was also reaching critical levels. He wanted her naked and hot and writhing beneath his hands, his lips, bucking under his body, convulsing around him, her release wrenching his from his depths.

He reached the bed he’d bought just for her, huge and firm and covered in sheets a darker shade of her eyes. He hadn’t thought she’d be here this soon. Someone out there must believe he deserved something fantastic for a change.

Laying her down, he descended on top of her, groaning at the feel of her cushioning him, the only flesh he’d ever felt a part of his own. His lips sought hers. She turned her face away.

He trailed his lips down her face, neck, down to the swell of her breasts. “Do you know how many nights I lay awake, craving to feel you like this? Hearing your moans, your sighs and cries, the memory of your body enfolding mine echoing in my cells until I felt they’d burst?”

Her answer was tight-lipped. “How many? Two?”

A spasm twisted inside his chest. “More like two thousand.”

“And did you feel that way on those nights, before or after you had sex with another woman? Or three?”

He rose on both arms, frowned down at her. “We’re not going there. What we did or didn’t do in the past eight years isn’t relevant. We’re going to enjoy each other now, as we are today.” His lips spread again at the sight of her beneath him, ripe and trying not to arch into him. “And from today onward, I am all for any kind of game you want to indulge in.”

She pushed at him. “The only game I want to try is hide-and-seek, where you hide, and I don’t seek you ever again.”

His frown returned. “You’re…angry?”

Her eyes spat emerald daggers at him. “Give the man a medal.”

“I thought it was part of this sensual game you started. You were always all for those, too.”

“Are you high on something? Like insensitivity and arrogance?”

He rolled to his side and watched in confusion as she scrambled away from him. “But I apologized and promised our liaison will never compromise you again.”

She rounded on him as she rose from the bed. “And as a first step in assuring this, you had your driver leave me with you in an empty house. The news will be all over Azmahar by now.”

“I flew Haleem in from Zohayd. He’s fully Zohaydan and wouldn’t reveal anything about you at gunpoint. It’s why I insisted you come alone. I told my visitors I had informed you they had to leave, so you ‘wouldn’t bother coming.’”

She tore her gaze away, looked around the spacious room as if noticing it for the first time. He tensed as he waited for her reaction. He’d spent most of last week preparing it.

It was he who felt rewarded. A wave of pleasure washed over him as she stood bathed in the gold-tinged lights he’d carefully installed to showcase her, framed by the color scheme of fire and emerald he’d meant to reflect hers. Gauzy curtains billowed at the balcony doors behind her like swirls of magic, and her hair stirred in the evening sea breeze like tongues of dark flame.

His fiery goddess in all her glory. At least, in her still exasperatingly clothed one. Soon he’d have all that voluptuousness displayed for his pleasure, his worship.

Thankfully, the sensual ambience he’d tailored for her had an as-clear effect on her.

She was more flushed, less steady as she turned to him. “You put a lot of thought and effort into this, didn’t you?”

If only she knew how much. Even he was still smarting from parting with that much cash. “Anything to help you relinquish your worries and inhibitions. And after what you just did to me while still suffering from both, I don’t know if I’ll survive when you let them go completely.”

Her face hardened. “This new discretion is for yourself.”

He exhaled, perplexed by her continued resistance. “It is also for me, since I get to have you. But—”

She cut him off. “You recognized you were being a self-defeating idiot. I bet it took seeing Rashid to make you realize that, and that the throne isn’t in your pocket no matter what scandals you cause. You have to clean up your act if you’re to have a prayer against him. Now you’ll play the committed, conservative contender and shove me back into the dirty-secret slot.”

He found himself on his feet, facing her across the bed, memories unraveling with a sick charge along his every nerve.

“What’s this? Anyone would think it’s you who have a grievance against me, that I’m the one who walked out on you. May I remind you that you are the one who left when I outraged your sense of independence, sinned in believing I was more than an ‘exotic fling’ to you? And are you pretending that keeping our relationship secret wasn’t exactly what you wanted, then and now? I’m giving you what you always wanted. No demands on my side, no obligations on yours, only no-consequences indulgence. What more do you want?”

* * *

Why? How?

She’d long known that he felt nothing for her. So why and how did getting confirmation of that tear her apart all over again?

He came around the bed, raven hair raining down his forehead, the shirt she’d torn hanging open to reveal the magnificent sculpture of his torso, which she’d barely had a chance to worship.