by Heidi Rice
But as he let go of her wrist and slammed the door behind them, it wasn’t the view that made her breathless.
Her whole body began to shake as she wrapped her arms around her waist.
He tugged his bow-tie loose and shrugged off his jacket, throwing it over the back of a three-seater sofa. Then he undid the top buttons of his shirt. She could see the edge of the serpent tattoo on his collarbone, the red and black ink coiling over his skin—and the forceful reminder of the night they had spent together brought with it another devastating truth.
He nearly died.
The information in Cat’s letter that morning reverberated in her skull.
His pursuit of her had nearly killed him. No wonder he wanted answers. But little did he know she had much more to answer for now.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she blurted out, backing away from him as he stalked towards her across the silk carpet.
‘What for?’ he asked.
‘Cat wrote to me and told me how ill you were. That’s because of me. I never should have run away like that, but I never meant—’
‘Stop.’ He pressed his hand to her mouth to silence her. Then captured her waist and pressed her back against the silk-papered wall of the suite. Instead of fury she saw the same riot of emotions on his face that were churning in her stomach—desire, confusion. But most of all need.
He took his hand away from her mouth.
‘That’s not because of you.’ His forehead touched hers as his fingers gripped the silk of her dress. Reaction shuddered through him and echoed through her. Powerful and unstoppable. ‘I should not have ridden through the pain for three days to get to you,’ he murmured, his lips touching her earlobe.
He had ridden for three days to follow her? Risking his health in the process? Agony and ecstasy echoed through her body. Why did his actions seem romantic, instead of foolhardy or simply insane? Maybe because no man had ever cared about her enough to do such a thing?
His lips closed over her earlobe. She arched against him, instinctively encouraging the contact, her whole body revelling in the response as he buried his face in her neck. The remembered ache became real and vivid again and a tortured moan escaped her lips.
‘It was madness and I paid for it,’ he said, his warm breath sending shivers down her back, his palms rubbing her waist, the silk feeling like sandpaper against too-sensitive skin. ‘I’m not here for an apology.’
She pressed her palms to his jaw to draw his head up. His dark gaze was tortured, as tortured as she felt.
‘Then why are you here, Raif?’ she asked, around the knot of fear and joy in her throat.
‘Because I still want you, dammit. And I can’t make it stop.’
* * *
It wasn’t what Raif had meant to say. Not even close. But once the words left his lips, he knew they were true.
He’d spent the last week—after finally managing to convince his brother and his brother’s doctor and his brother’s wife that he was fit enough to travel again—catching up on the million and one things that had been neglected during his illness while also planning this event.
He’d wanted to lure her to London. Had used the promise of funding a scholarship programme to control the interaction and had settled on a public meeting to ensure he didn’t lose his temper with her. Where Kasia Salah was concerned, he already knew his ability to be rational had deserted him long ago. Why had he seduced her, why had he tried to bully her into marriage—a knee-jerk reaction that he had regretted after the week spent in his brother’s home with far too much time to think—and why had he put his pride and dignity and his health in jeopardy by pursuing her to the Golden Palace like a lunatic?
But as soon as he’d seen her again, the fury, the desire for revenge had turned into something a great deal more volatile.
In a grubby T-shirt and shorts she had been exquisite; in the silky red dress, which clung to her slender body, accentuating her high, full breasts and subtle curves, she was irresistible. Her amber eyes, the lids smudged with glittery make-up, had met his and all he’d wanted to do was feast on her again, and make her moan. His tongue had thickened at the thought of licking the side of her neck. His fingertips had itched to find the pins holding the waterfall of curls on top of her head and pull them out until the vibrant mass fell into his palms. And the blood had surged straight to his groin, the desire to pump into her tight heat all but unbearable.
But more than that, and somehow worse, when she’d searched his face a moment ago, her eyes filled with shame and remorse, he had wanted to take her distress away. To protect her, to hold her, to take all the blame, when this situation was more her fault than his.
He’d made some stupid knee-jerk decisions, but she’d made more.
Her gaze widened with shock at his revelation, but the flare of desire told him all he needed to know.
Why was he complicating this? He had planned this meeting precisely to take this yearning, this longing away.
This was about sex—it had always been about sex. Maybe it had become complicated by her virginity and his illness. But now he was here, in London, and fully recovered, why should they be bound by an ancient ritual that meant nothing outside their homeland?
He’d tried to do the right thing, to honour his culture and to honour her—and to show her the respect due to her after some warped reading of what he had discovered about his mother’s situation with his father several years ago.
But this situation was not the same as what had happened to the woman who had died giving birth to him. A woman who he had refused to think about, until Zane had insisted he read his father’s journals.
Given his overreaction to Kasia’s virginity, he wished he had never read the damn journals. Never discovered the truth. What did the circumstances of his birth have to do with who he had become anyway? He had never known the girl his father had exploited and his father had never acknowledged him, her child.
The truth had messed with his head, his sense of self, or he would not have made that stupid declaration about his honour, about having to marry Kasia. And even if an elemental part of who he was and had always been made him feel responsible for her virginity, and the loss of it, surely the point was that her virginity had no bearing on where they were now.
They were both a continent away from their culture, those rituals. The Law of Marriage of the Sheikhs did not apply in London, even if it ever had in that tent.
Kasia Salah had chosen to leave Narabia five years ago. After four years of living—and succeeding—in this world as well as his own, he knew how it worked, too. So why should he not treat her as he would any other woman he desired? She certainly looked the part in that provocative dress and her high heels.
She wasn’t a virgin any more. And they weren’t in the desert now.
He cradled her cheek, traced with his thumb the spot where her pulse fluttered against her collarbone and adjusted his stance so she could feel the thick erection and know exactly what she still did to him.
‘The only question I need an answer to is do you still want me, Kasia? If not, you can leave now, and I will never seek you out again.’
It was a promise that it would kill him to keep, if he had read the flare of arousal, her passionate response to him wrong. But he would keep it. Because he wasn’t the barbarian she had assumed he was. And he’d debased himself enough already to have her—not just travelling across a desert in his frenzy, and leaving himself at the mercy of his brother, but travelling across an ocean, across continents. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his head for a whole month; his whole damn life had been thrown into turmoil because of his association with her.
But he didn’t need Kasia, he just wanted her.
‘Answer me,’ he demanded. ‘Do you still want me?’
Her breathing was ragged, her features tense, but he could already see the truth in her
eyes, and the rush of arousal surged.
‘I...I do still want you,’ she said at last, her tone anxious but not unsure.
It was enough.
‘Good,’ he murmured in the Kholadi dialect as he bent to scoop her into his arms.
He marched through the suite’s living area and into the palatial bedroom—the light from streetlamps outside flickering over her dark skin. He didn’t turn on the bedroom light before stripping off her clothes then tearing off his own. He watched her watch him as he rolled a condom on the massive erection.
He would have her now and he would find a way to keep her, for as long as it took to feed this hunger and take this inexplicable yearning away.
And then they would part, and he would never have to feel so unsettled or desperate again.
He cupped her breasts, licked the areolas, then sucked the swollen peaks into his mouth as he tested her readiness with his fingers. She sobbed and arched into his hand, the feel of her slick folds, the swollen nub enough to drive him a little crazy as he grasped her thighs, positioned her hips. He sank to the hilt in one thrust. Her muscles contracted around him in spontaneous orgasm. He set up a deep driving rhythm, wanting her to come again, to come apart in his arms.
He wasn’t that little boy any more, alone and afraid, marked and then discarded by his own father and made to feel he was nothing.
He was a man, a chief, a prince, a business tycoon and everything he wanted he could have—if he fought hard enough for it—until he didn’t want it any more.
He picked up the pace, going deeper, taking more. He wanted all of her. All her pleasure, all her desire, all her passion. Her moans turned to frantic sobs as she clung to his shoulders. Her nails raked over the slight scar from the wound she’d caused, but he welcomed the sting as he held onto the edge and ruthlessly worked the spot he knew would drive her wild.
The madness—to own her, to possess her—overtook him as the climax gripped the base of his spine. She massaged his length, the spasms of her second orgasm forcing him over the edge. The titanic climax exploded along his nerve-endings as he buried himself deep one last time and let himself tumble.
But as he rolled off her, his body shaky, his mind dazed from the intensity of the orgasm, he could hear the cry of that forgotten child clearly inside his head begging...
Don’t leave me.
Before he managed to smother it again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
KASIA TREMBLED, feeling dazed and disorientated and exposed as she watched Raif stand up.
He didn’t speak to her, didn’t even look at her, as he strolled to the door of the bathroom then disappeared inside. She heard the toilet flush, could see his reflection in the wall of mirrors as he washed his hands, having discarded the condom.
The sudden rush of insecurity she’d thought she had conquered a lifetime ago made her shiver.
Maybe you are not as unlike your mother as you want to believe?
How could she have given in to the rampant desire—again—when so much between them was in turmoil?
Not so much. Everything. Everything between them was in turmoil.
He hadn’t wanted her apology for the wound she had caused—and genuinely didn’t appear to blame her for all the pain and suffering he had endured after his ride to follow her, even though she was finding it hard not to blame herself—and he hadn’t repeated his demand that they marry.
But what would happen when she told him about the pregnancy?
He wasn’t the same man he had been when she’d left Narabia five and a half years ago. In many ways this man was even more of a stranger than the man to whom she’d given her virginity.
Why hadn’t he told her about the drastic change in his circumstances while they were in the desert? She sat up and wrapped the bed sheet around her naked body, taking in the luxury suite, the magnificent views of London’s landmarks across the Thames.
She lifted her dress off the floor with shaking fingers. She really ought to leave. She needed more time to consider how she was going to break the news to Raif about his impending fatherhood and shore up her own defences.
‘What are you doing?’
She whipped around, her dress slipping through her fingers. He stood silhouetted in the bathroom doorway, his broad shoulders cutting out the light, completely unconcerned by his nakedness. She noticed the livid scar above his right hip from the emergency operation he had required and shuddered.
‘I thought I should go,’ she said, wanting to sound adamant but strangely conflicted about her course of action.
‘Don’t.’ His bare feet padded on the carpet as he crossed the room. He sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I don’t want you to,’ he added, as he curled his fingers around her neck and tugged her closer.
Her choice wasn’t about what he wanted. But when he placed a kiss on her temple, the tenderness of the gesture was so compelling her resolve faltered.
‘Stay with me tonight,’ he said, running his thumb over her cheekbone, his watchful gaze so intent on her reaction she felt it echo at her core.
His sensual lips quirked in an assured smile. ‘We left a lot unfinished. I think you agree.’
The heat climbed from her core into her cheeks. How did he do that? How did he read her responses so easily? But before she had a chance to feel embarrassed or, worse, threatened by how gauche she must appear to him, his gaze drifted to her hair.
‘Your hair is lopsided,’ he said.
She pressed a hand to the up-do and discovered it had tumbled down on one side.
‘I should...I should really go,’ she said, but as she attempted to scoot backwards off the bed, he captured her wrist and halted her getaway.
‘No, you shouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Let me help. It must be uncomfortable,’ he added. It wasn’t really, but as he proceeded to locate the pins holding her hair aloft, pluck them out and throw them away, her heart began to pummel her ribcage.
She watched him as he concentrated on the task, the care he was taking making her heart melt.
‘How did you tame it?’ he asked with a frown—as if he preferred it wild.
‘A curling iron,’ she said, her breathing catching again.
‘An iron! Does that not hurt?’ he said, his frown becoming concerned.
Her heart rate jumped, but still she smiled. ‘No.’
He sank his fingers into the mass of curls she’d spent an hour arranging that afternoon as she’d practised the speech she’d never had a chance to give him. A moan escaped as he massaged her scalp, lifting and dividing the heavy weight.
She shivered, the delicious sensation rippling through her and reawakening the heat at her core that she’d thought would be sated for ever only minutes before.
‘It feels good?’ he asked.
‘Yes, very good.’
Too good.
She didn’t want to go now, she wanted to stay. But could she risk it?
‘Turn around,’ he said, and she did as he’d commanded.
He tugged on the sheet she had wrapped around her torso and she tightened her grip, but he only chuckled. ‘Let it go, you do not need it. I promise not to ravage you again until you ask.’
She let the sheet fall, but crossed her arms over her naked breasts, brutally aware of her reflection in the window.
She sat on the bed naked, his large silhouette behind her as his thumbs dug into the tight muscles of her neck. She had to bite off another groan as his fingers worked their magic, finding each knot and releasing it, melting her resistance as they went.
At last he reached her bottom and the moan escaped.
He gave her butt a playful slap. ‘Stop that, or I will not be responsible for my actions.’
Her eyes flew open. She met his gaze in the glass. He was smiling, but his jaw was tense. And she could feel his erection against her back.
> She swung around, not as wary as she had been.
She would tell him about the baby soon. But there was no reason to tell him tonight. Would it be so wrong to enjoy this time with him, while he was relaxed—or more relaxed than usual—and playful?
Reaching out, he ran his thumb under her nipple and made her gasp. She felt it squeeze and tighten, instantly responsive to his touch.
‘It is strange, but they seem larger than I remember them,’ he said.
Because they were.
She thanked God for the shadows in the room so he couldn’t read the guilty look that crossed her face. He dipped his head, ready to take the aching peak into his mouth and build the hunger again, but she drew back.
‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, instantly alert to her hesitation.
Her heart pounded hard. How could this man be so aware of her needs, her wants?
‘Could we...? Is it okay if we just talk for a minute?’
His eyebrows rose. ‘This is not what a man in my state likes to hear,’ he said boldly, but his lips had quirked in a strained half-smile and she knew he was joking. Or mostly joking.
Climbing off the bed, he found the boxer briefs he had discarded earlier and put them on, then walked to the bathroom and returned with a fluffy robe. ‘You had better put this on.’ He threw the robe to her and she stuffed her arms into it, wrapped the belt around and tied it.
He had picked up the phone next to the bedside. ‘Are you hungry?’
She nodded. The truth was she was ravenous, and for much more than food. He looked ridiculously gorgeous standing there in his boxer shorts, but she wanted to speak to him and food felt like the perfect distraction. Also, she hadn’t eaten since before she’d done the test that morning, thanks to her nerves.
‘Is there anything you don’t eat?’ he asked.
‘Sheep’s eyeballs,’ she said, knowing it was a delicacy of the Kholadi, and he laughed at her joke.
‘You do not know what you are missing,’ he said, then reeled a selection of delicious items off the room-service menu.