by Lynne Graham
The searching flicker of his tongue against the roof of her mouth made her shiver and gasp. She angled her head back so that he could plunder the tender interior. His lips were warm and skilled, and unbelievably sensual. One kiss left her craving the next with helpless impatience.
‘You are as eager for me as I am for you,’ Shahir growled, taking her swollen pink mouth again, with a demanding urgency that she found irresistible. Lifting her, he brought her down on the hard cradle of his thighs. Deft fingers released the zip on her overall and pushed the garment from her shoulders to free her from it.
‘Oh…’ Her dazed green eyes flew wide open as he let an exploring hand travel over the pouting thrust of her small breasts beneath the dark blouse she wore. The straining tips of her tender flesh tightened and swelled within the cups of her bra.
‘Oh…’ Shahir mimicked her with a sensual mockery that felt as unreal as everything else that had so far happened between them.
But, unreal or otherwise, she was already in thrall to the insistent demand of her own body. He pressed his knowing mouth to the tiny pulse-spot below her ear and nuzzled the sensitive skin there. Startled by the resulting leap of sensation, she clenched her fingers convulsively into his sleeves.
‘I’ve never been into discomfort.’ With that husky declaration, Shahir gathered her up into his arms and stood up as if she weighed no more than a china doll. ‘And as a rule I prefer to make love in bed—although I am not saying that I could not be tempted by a more adventurous venue.’
Bed? Never had a single word seemed more graphic in its connotations!
Kirsten tensed in dismay, for she had not thought beyond the defiant act of enjoying kissing and getting close to him. But Shahir chose that exact same moment to bend his well-shaped dark head and let his tongue dip between her parted lips in a provocative and incredibly enervating sneak invasion. Kirsten melted like ice cream on a hot griddle, and did not surface from the grip of that all-encompassing loss of rational awareness until she found herself standing positioned between his splayed thighs while he sat on the edge of a bed. He had already undone the clasp at the nape of her neck to release her hair from confinement.
‘I desired you the first time I saw you,’ Shahir confessed, skimming lean brown fingers slowly through the shimmering fall of her pale silvery blonde hair. ‘Every time I saw you from that moment I desired you even more…’
She was so tense that her knees wobbled beneath her. ‘Truthfully?’
‘Though you do not seem aware of the fact, you are extraordinarily beautiful.’
The clear green eyes clinging to his lean dark features clouded with sorrow. Her hand fluttered up to touch the ugly bruise. ‘Not today, I’m not…’
Shahir enclosed her thin hand in a firm grip. His dark golden eyes were as bright as the heart of a fire. ‘Today you seem even more beautiful to me.’
A laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all was wrenched from Kirsten. Her eyes glimmered and her throat worked. Suddenly she was tipping herself forward and claiming his perfectly moulded mouth for herself, with passionate urgency. He unbuttoned her blouse, and the fastener on her trousers, tugging her down on to his lap to extract her with smooth expertise from her clothing while his kisses held her imprisoned.
‘You wear so many clothes,’ he censured thickly, one hand knotted in her silky hair to tip her head back so that his marauding mouth could trace an enterprising trail across the sensitive skin of her throat.
As her bra fell away, and cooler air brushed her nipples, Kirsten went rigid with shock and closed her hands over her exposed breasts.
Shahir stilled and tipped back his handsome dark head. He swept her up and settled her back against the pillows, straightening again by the bed to look searchingly down at her. ‘I assumed that you were no stranger to sex. If I am mistaken, tell me, and you can leave without reproach,’ he murmured tautly. ‘I don’t seduce virgins.’
Her lashes lowered over evasive green eyes. She hugged her knees to her chest, silvery fair hair falling round her like a screening veil. Her thoughts were in turmoil.
Growing up in Angus Ross’s home had made her familiar with constant disappointment. Virtually everything that might give her pleasure had been denied her. Now she wanted Shahir more than she had wanted anything in her whole life. His candour gave her a choice. If she told him the truth, he would send her away from him, and she could not face that conclusion.
‘I’m not a virgin.’ she muttered in a rush, telling the lie before she could think through what she was doing and lose her nerve.
Shahir was very much in the mood to be convinced. Though in every way that mattered she was different from every other woman he had ever known. ‘You seem very shy…’
Kirsten focused fixedly on her bare toes. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’
He surveyed her delicate profile with smouldering golden eyes full of appreciation. ‘No.’
‘Then could you please close the curtains?’
Taken aback, Shahir raised a questioning brow. ‘Do you only make love in the dark?’
Kirsten nodded vehemently.
Torn between a desire to laugh and an uneasy stab of tenderness that discomfited him, Shahir hit the buttons that closed the blinds and the curtains.
In the sudden darkness, Kirsten slid nervously off the bed. Her toes tangled with the garments scattered on the floor and she fell over her own feet.
Winded, she lay there until Shahir picked her up, saying, not quite steadily, ‘You may make love in the dark, but I don’t think you have night vision.’
‘Obviously not…’ The lamps on either side of the bed lit up and she blinked rapidly at the sudden restoration of light.
His attention zeroed straight down to the prominent rosy nipples that crowned the pert thrust of her breasts. ‘Why would you seek to hide such perfection?’
He closed his hands over hers before she could cover herself again, and backed her down on to the bed with masculine purpose. He cupped and stroked the small tempting mounds, and let his thumbs rub over the straining crests. She gasped as liquid heat snaked down to her pelvis and pooled there to form a knot of intense physical longing. He lowered his dark head and let his hungry mouth play over the distended pink buds.
She moved trembling fingers into the dense luxuriance of his cropped black hair. ‘Shahir…’
‘I like the way you say my name…’ With a groan of reluctance he vaulted upright and proceeded to strip off his suit jacket and his tie.
Passion-glazed eyes widening, Kirsten watched him pull open his shirt to reveal a bronzed and muscular slice of chest. Off came the shirt, to reveal the hard contours of hair-roughened pectorals and the corrugated flatness of his stomach. He was all male, from the satin-smooth strength of his broad shoulders to his narrow waist and long, powerful thighs.
As he shed his well-cut trousers and stood revealed in black boxers she could feel her face starting to burn with hot colour. She wanted to look and she didn’t want to look. The jersey boxers left little to the imagination, and her imagination was already running riot. He peeled them off, and for a split second she stared in apprehension, then quickly shut her eyes tight in mortification. There was too much of him, she thought in a panic. There was no way he was going to fit her, or she was going to fit him.
‘I’m not shy,’ Shahir confided, quite unnecessarily.
‘I know,’ she mumbled, not looking within six feet of him and scrambling below the sheet.
‘But I find your shyness appealing,’ he murmured in a surprised tone of discovery. ‘It’s very sexy.’
‘Oh…’
‘Oh…’ Shahir mocked again, thrusting back the sheet.
Dark eyes slumberous, he leant over her and ran a slow, possessive hand over the silken swell of her breast down over her quivering tummy to the taut line of a lissom thigh. He let his tongue lash a tantalising pink peak and the breath hissed in her throat as she flung her head back, her back arching.
Th
e knot of desire low in her belly twisted tighter. He parted her legs with gentle resolve, explored the silver curls that screened her feminine mound, and traced the slick smooth folds at the heart of her, where she was tender and swollen. She couldn’t stay still. Her hips jerked and shifted on the bed. The hunger was back with a vengeance, fiercer and stronger than she could stand.
‘Oh…yes,’ Shahir breathed with raw satisfaction against her reddened mouth, and he eased a finger into the hot wet welcome that awaited him.
‘Please…’
‘It’s too soon,’ he husked.
He toyed with her melting body until whimpers of need were torn from her lips and she was writhing beneath the onslaught of an almost agonising tide of pleasure. Only then did he rise over her and plunge his hard male shaft into the sweet, tight depths of her receptive body. She was aching for him, eager—and completely unprepared for the sudden sharp tearing pain that made her cry out.
Abruptly, Shahir stilled. A lean hand turned her face up to his. Burnished golden eyes clashed with hers, his astonishment unhidden. ‘You lied to me? You are a virgin?’ he bit out incredulously.
Hot-faced, Kirsten shut her eyes tight shut and said nothing.
Shahir gazed down at her in disbelief. Never until that moment had he been aware of just how young she was, and never once had it crossed his mind that she might not tell him the truth. ‘Kirsten…’
‘Don’t stop…’ she mumbled, arching up to him in a shamelessly inviting movement that made her face flush with embarrassment. But she couldn’t help it; she really couldn’t. Somewhere down deep inside her there was an unrelenting throb of desire that was driving her crazy, and she knew that only he could satisfy it.
Torn between anger and a desire that was burning at fever-pitch, Shahir hesitated, his powerful muscles straining with the force of the self-discipline he was exerting over his powerful libido. But, on the edge of withdrawal from the sweet allure of her body, he rebelled against all restraint and slammed back into her with a harsh groan of satisfaction.
She cried out in excitement, sensation rippling through her in heady waves as pain became pleasure. He pushed up her knees, to deepen his penetration, and sank into her over and over again. She abandoned herself to a passion that was pagan in its wildness. He took her to the dazzling heights of sensual ecstasy and a climax of shattering intensity.
Lethargic and happy, stunned by her own capacity for physical enjoyment, Kirsten could barely think straight in the aftermath of her first experience of lovemaking. He held her close, kissed her brow.
She got to revel in that glorious intimacy for perhaps sixty seconds before he pulled back from her again.
At a moment when Kirsten was still floating on mental clouds of bliss, Shahir looked down at her, his stunning dark golden eyes cool and intent. ‘Don’t ever lie to me again.’
Wholly unprepared for the dynamic verbal condemnation and warning combined in that one pungent sentence, Kirsten gaped at him.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘YOU don’t have to make such a fuss about it!’ Voicing a spirited defence, Kirsten pulled herself up against the tumbled pillows and hugged the sheet to her bare curves, which suddenly felt sinfully naked and exposed.
‘Do I not?’ Shahir demanded wrathfully, not backtracking a single inch—indeed, seizing the chance to argue the point with the stubborn resolve that was the backbone of his character.
‘No, you don’t.’ Her discomfiture was pronounced. ‘I told a little white lie—’
‘There is no such thing!’ Shahir tossed back the sheet and vaulted out of bed. ‘I said I would not touch you if you were a virgin, and you chose to lie rather than tell me the truth. That was an act of deceit, and unfair to me.’
Taken aback by his cutting candour, and by the aggressive masculinity of his naked bronzed body, Kirsten flushed a deep guilty pink and averted her eyes from his powerful physique. ‘It was my choice.’
‘But it would not have been my choice to destroy your innocence. That was a betrayal of the principles that I respect,’ Shahir imparted grimly, striding into the dressing room to gather up clean clothes and then continuing on into the adjoining bathroom.
Kirsten heard the sound of a shower running. She still had a convulsive grip on the sheet. A surge of stinging moisture was washing the back of her eyes and she swallowed the painful lump in her throat. She had acted wrongly, and the punishment for her misbehaviour was coming even faster than she had feared it would. She had surrendered her virginity to a man who didn’t want it and who did not feel even remotely appreciative of the fact that she had given it to him because she felt he was special.
In what way was he special now? She crushed back that daunting reflection of her own ignorance when it came to men and tried to concentrate.
But it was a challenge. Here she was, desperate for some reassurance from him, even a little warmth and affection, and he was acting as if she had murdered someone. He had also called her a liar and, while strictly speaking that might be true, she really wasn’t in the habit of telling lies. Unfortunately she had been upset, and she was very attracted to him, and somehow those two things had combined to wash away her usual level-headed and honest approach to life.
Shahir reappeared, looking formidably elegant and intimidating in yet another dark and beautifully tailored suit.
Kirsten spared him a skimming glance before fixing her attention on the foot of the bed. ‘I’m sorry I lied, but I really wasn’t thinking about what I was doing,’ she admitted in a small, tight voice. ‘Now that I am thinking, I wish I hadn’t lied to you.’
His brooding gaze lightened several shades at that acknowledgement, but he was determined to drive home his point that he would not tolerate dishonesty. If, as he planned, she became a semi-permanent feature in his life, it was a lesson she needed to learn. ‘Lies damage trust,’ he pointed out levelly. ‘How long do you think it will be before I am prepared to trust your word again?’
Kirsten wasn’t listening to him. Having opened up the box of her own regrets, she was now steadily drowning in them. She not only wished that she hadn’t lied to him, but was beginning to wish that she had not slept with him. ‘I really just wish this hadn’t happened—’
‘We are not children, Kirsten. We chose to allow it to happen.’
‘There’s no need to rub it in! It’s the worst mistake I ever made in my stupid life…’
‘We were both unwise.’ Shahir was struggling to silence his conscience while at the same time telling himself that there was no point in agonising over what could not be altered. He had wanted her. Now he had her—in more ways than one. He would be a liar if he overplayed the show of regret. ‘But an apparent mistake may yet be turned into a more positive development.’
‘I don’t see how…’ Wrenching the sheet from its moorings, Kirsten wrapped it clumsily round her and clambered off the bed, her lovely face tight with unhappiness.
She longed to have the ability to close her eyes and magically escape from the scene of their intimacy. Why on earth had she not had the sense to flee while he was in the shower? She felt much too ashamed to look him in the face as she stooped to pick up her discarded clothing, piece by mortifying piece. How could she so easily have disregarded every moral rule that had been drummed into her from childhood? She hardly knew him, and yet she had gone to bed with him. She was shattered by that reality, for in her right mind such an act seemed unthinkable to her.
She could see the sheer, terrifying power of her own emotions had combined with sexual attraction to destroy her self-respect. He had looked at her and he had touched her and all her common sense and self control had vanished. How could she continue to deny that she had feelings for him? Was she infatuated with him? Was she in love? He had haunted her thoughts and her dreams from their very first encounter on the hill. But she did not see that as an excuse for what she had allowed to happen between them.
‘Stop this…’ Catching her slender hand in his, Shahir gent
ly detached her blouse from the fierce hold she had on it.
‘But I have to get back to work—’
‘No, you do not.’ Shahir pressed her down into an upholstered chair. ‘I want you to listen to me.’
‘I really do need to get dressed—’
‘Look at me,’ he urged huskily. ‘We are lovers now.’
Kirsten froze, the reminder deeply unwelcome. A flush of pained colour washed her cheekbones. She felt utterly wretched. She linked her trembling hands tightly together and made herself look up at him. ‘Why do you have to throw that at me? Don’t you think I feel bad enough as it is?’
Shahir dropped down in an athletic crouch so that his brilliant dark-as-midnight gaze was on a level with her. ‘You should not feel unhappy about what has happened between us—’
‘Well, I do,’ she cut in unevenly.
‘This could be the beginning of a new life for you.’
Her smooth forehead indented. ‘How?’
‘Obviously after this you can no longer work here. But I won’t let you go home to your father again either. From now on I will make myself responsible for you.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘That you can simply get dressed and walk out into the limo with me and never return here.’
Her lashes fluttered up on bewildered green eyes. ‘You’re asking me to leave Strathcraig with you?’
Shahir wondered why it was that he was finding it difficult to come to the point. ‘I’m asking you to continue being my lover.’
Kirsten sucked in a startled breath and attempted to master her astonishment. ‘But—’
‘Hear me out before you speak. I have an apartment in London. You can live there until you have had the time to choose a new home, of your own. I’ll buy you that home and take care of all your needs.’
Shock was rippling through Kirsten as she understood what he was offering her—shock, and the beginnings of anger. ‘You really don’t have any respect for me, do you? Is that because I work as a cleaner? Or because I went to bed with you before we even got as far as a first date?’