by Lynne Graham
Heart hammering at the charged appraisal she was receiving, Lily parted dry lips. ‘I should warn you…I still haven’t…er…done this before.’
Taken aback by that unlikely claim, Rauf screened his sardonic gaze and tried not to wince for her. Surely she didn’t still expect him to believe that she was pure as driven snow? But then, as he had chosen not to confront her about her liaison with Gilman, she might feel that she had to keep up that pretence. But even after several years had passed?
In the taut silence, Lily worried anxiously at her lower lip. ‘Does that put you off?’
‘Nothing could do that.’ Relieved that she had said something he could answer with honesty, Rauf took the easy way out. Bringing her back to him again, he crushed her inviting mouth under his own and kissed her breathless.
Reeling from that impassioned onslaught, Lily lay back in his arms, quivering at the hot, hard weight and lure of his muscular body lying half over hers. She collided with shimmering golden eyes as he moulded the tender swell of her breasts and her spine arched, pushing her sensitised flesh up into shameless, satisfying contact with his palms. Sweet sensation fired her with a wicked, restive impatience that embarrassed her. Without pause, he captured a straining pink nipple between his lips and an audible gasp was dragged from her. An insistent throb had begun at the very heart of her. Suddenly her body was in control of her, desperate and hungry for more of that tormenting pleasure and unable to conceal the fact.
‘Never have I wanted a woman as I want you now,’ Rauf admitted with a ragged edge to his dark drawl. It was the truth, but a truth he bitterly resented.
But that confession thrilled Lily and her eyes shone and she had not a doubt in her head from that moment that she was doing the right thing: giving where once she had been afraid to give and sharing in the same way. ‘It’s the same for me,’ Lily whispered, looking up at him with complete trust.
Only it had not always been the way and Rauf was all too well aware of that fact. A dangerous smile curved his expressive mouth. ‘Now that Brett’s gone?’
Lily blinked, unable to grasp the connection and then suddenly wondering in shrinking dismay if Rauf had suspected all along that there was something odd about her relationship with her sister’s ex-husband. But she shrank from the idea of telling Rauf about Brett’s loathsome behaviour towards her when she had been a teenager. Brett might never have touched her, but he had left her feeling soiled and she was convinced that Rauf would be disgusted, repulsed…or, worse, that he might even wonder if in some way she might have invited or encouraged that attention from the other man. Either way, she believed that Rauf would think very much less of her.
‘Sorry…I don’t follow,’ Lily muttered in a discomfited rush.
She was pale, blue eyes awash with strain and conflict that Rauf interpreted as guilt. A guilt that gave him no satisfaction but that sent sudden ferocious anger flaring through him. If he ever got his hands on Gilman, he knew he would hammer the bastard into a pulp.
Veiling his fierce, glittering scrutiny, he just pushed himself up and reached out to yank Lily back across the small space that separated them into his arms again.
‘It may be a big bed,’ Rauf quipped, ‘but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to stray.’
It was pure caveman but she melted into the lean, hard heat and strength of his muscular frame. Even as relief that he had not said any more about Brett washed over her every nerve-ending she possessed went on red alert at the renewed force of desire that overwhelmed her that close to him.
She burned with a helpless mix of nerves and anticipation as she felt the hot, hard length of his arousal against her belly. He rearranged her, teased the throbbing peaks of her breasts with his tongue until she writhed and gasped, and she was lost in sensation again long before he sought out the slick dampness between her slender thighs. He caressed the most sensitive spot of all and she moaned out loud, startled by her own feverish response. The intensity kept on building until she was panting for breath, pitched to a torment of wanting by his merest touch.
‘Rauf…’ she gasped, and she didn’t even know what she wanted to say, only that the hunger was almost unbearable, the ache consuming her a growing torture to withstand.
Scorching desire blazed in the golden eyes that scanned her as he donned protection. He sank his hands beneath her squirming hips and came over her in one lithe move. He entered her with a smooth, expert thrust and wanton little tremors of pleasure assailed her at that initial sensation of his fullness stretching her tight.
Then he said something in his own language, surprise darkening his heated gaze as he had to lift her and tip her up further to sheathe himself in her fully. A sharp stab of pain jolted Lily at the height of that manoeuvre and for a split second she went rigid and wasn’t quite quick enough to bite back a startled yelp of complaint.
Rauf felt that resistance too late. He stopped, in fact he froze as if a fire alarm had gone off, but his own powerful momentum had already carried him through that delicate barrier. ‘Lily…?’ and his voice just failed him for the first time in his life.
‘It’s all right,’ Lily mumbled dizzily, adjusting with admirable speed, ease and appreciation to a category of sensation that her body sensed harboured the promise of possibilities she had not even dreamt might exist. ‘I’m getting used to it…oh…oh, yes…’
Eyes tight shut, Lily wrapped both arms round him, shifted her hips experimentally and was seized by such a blinding wave of delicious sensation that she was left breathless and craving more. Hunger for her reignited to fever pitch but, fighting it, Rauf moved to withdraw, but she arched up to him in encouragement and at that point he succumbed by sinking back into her with an earthy groan. Her excitement mounted with every fluid thrust of his lithe body into hers, his primal rhythm driving her pleasure to uncontrollable heights. Then she hit a glorious peak and broke up into a million tiny, ecstatically happy little pieces. She coasted down from that dazzling experience with a sense of profound wonderment.
Tension would not allow Rauf to reach the same rewarding climax. He withdrew and stared down at her happy, innocent face and it was like having a knife plunged into him to the hilt. Releasing her from his weight, he rolled over. Lily scooted back into connection with him, dropped a kiss on the bunched muscles of one wide shoulder, drank in the sexy scent of his damp, hot skin with dizzy satisfaction and the heady sense of being a real woman. Rauf flipped back, curved an arm round her slight length and drew her close again.
‘I feel so…so happy,’ Lily finally admitted, still on a self-preoccupied high unlike any she had ever experienced. The world at just that moment encompassed Rauf and there it stopped. She was in his arms. She loved him. She had finally made it into bed with him and been rewarded beyond her wildest hopes.
‘I need a shower…’ Rauf breathed grittily.
And as Lily opened her eyes to watch Rauf stride towards the door on the far wall she noticed, really could not have helped noticing, that he was still…unsatisfied. The sheer extent of her own alarming ignorance of why that should be preoccupied her. Her sunny sense of achievement died there. Only then did she recall that in the aftermath of their lovemaking he had initially pulled away from her, had not spoken, had indeed only put his arms round her after she had swarmed all over him first.
A hollow, sick sensation in her tummy, Lily sat up and hugged her knees, anxious eyes dark with pain and mortification. Obviously, Rauf hadn’t got much of a thrill from taking her to bed and, even though he had still been aroused, he hadn’t wanted to continue either. That latter fact seemed the lowest blow of all. The shower seemed to exert more charisma than she did. Why, though? What had she done wrong?
CHAPTER FIVE
RAUF was having a very long cold shower.
Lily had been a virgin. Rauf was still transfixed by the shock value of that discovery. In fact, he was so stunned by that revelation and by the equally disturbing experience of having been proven wrong in his every convi
ction that it was an intellectual challenge just to surmount that and move on into more practical mode of what to do next. He would have to be honest with her. That was his first decision.
He then attempted to picture a scene in which he would tell Lily that he had once believed that she was sleeping with her sister’s husband. What was more, he had believed that of her right up until he had shared a bed with her himself. Rauf grimaced. No, he definitely didn’t want to run with the unvarnished truth. She would be horrified and offended beyond forgiveness. How could he distress her by admitting that he had credited the existence of such a very sleazy affair? That he had ditched her because of that same belief? That he had believed she had betrayed not only his trust, but also her own sister’s?
And all the time, Lily had been all that she herself claimed to be, everything she had seemed on first acquaintance and everything he had once accepted her as being. So, when she came off with things like, ‘Can’t we still be friends?’, she really, truly meant it. In the cleanest sense. That had not been a subtle sexual hint that this time around she was willing to spread herself on his bed.
At that point, Rauf groaned out loud, raked long brown fingers through his wet black hair. A dozen once strictly censored and cynically dissected and despoilt memories bombarded him in their restored and original form. Memories of Lily that summer before they broke up. In all of those recollections, Lily featured as being especially nice, especially soft-hearted and especially unmaterialistic.
For a start, she just adored little children and lavished phenomenal patience on even the irritating yappy ones. She was a pushover for every tramp or homeless person that came within twenty feet of her and she had cried when he’d told her about his dog dying when he was eleven. She had even worried that he was spending too much money on her and had kept on making up picnics so that they could eat alfresco. It was getting very cold in the shower but Rauf was looking back three years in time with an unfamiliar sense of appalled bewilderment at the colossal depth of his own misconceptions about Lily. Shivering, he finally grabbed a towel.
The more he examined his own behaviour, the worse it seemed. He got no brownie points on any score. At every juncture, he had assumed worst-case scenario and treated her accordingly. Therefore, candour really wasn’t a viable option. Off that particularly challenging hook, Rauf breathed again. She never had known the way his mind had worked and now he knew that he never, ever wanted her to find out. He was a ruthless, cynical guy with, it seemed, a mind as naturally given over to intrigue and seething suspicion of his woman as that Shakespeare character who had done away with his wife. He didn’t want any living soul knowing that and Lily, who scared easy, least of all!
Just one small inconsistency continued to nag at him. What had she been doing in that hotel with Brett Gilman? And why had she lied about being there? Furthermore, why had she stopped being so nervous around him? What miracle had brought about that refreshing change? Quit wondering stuff like that, Rauf’s new caution control centre warned him. He strode through the connecting door to the dressing-room and yanked out fresh clothes. Lily looks like an angel, she is an angel, stop doubting your good fortune at landing the one woman you do not deserve to have!
As Lily listened to Rauf’s shower running, she told herself that she would get up and get dressed in just a minute. Lying in his bed naked now felt shameless and all her intoxication with her own daring had shrivelled on the vine. Foolish love and even sillier hopes had led her astray and she hadn’t had to wait long to pay a price for her stupidity. Why didn’t she just face it? All Rauf had ever wanted from her was sex and, having finally got it, he had been disappointed.
But then, one way or another, hadn’t she always disappointed him? Her mind roamed back to when she had first met Rauf Kasabian…
The glorious flowers he had sent in apology for the fracas over the red wine being spilt had merely heralded Rauf’s reappearance at the bar later that same day. He’d wasted no time either in making his intentions clear. Throwing back his handsome dark head, he had treated her to that riveting smile of his and murmured, ‘I think we both know I’m only here to see you again.’
‘But you have a girlfriend—’
‘No…I don’t date women who scream at other women in public. I’ll wait until you finish your shift.’
Never had she met a male less aware of the possibility of rejection. Automatic refusal trembled on her lips but remained unspoken, for when she met his gorgeous dark golden eyes the thought of him walking away and never coming back just silenced her. When she had to serve the table beside Rauf’s, a drunk put his hand on her bottom and she brushed it away. When the drunk then asked her who the hell she thought she was, Rauf intervened.
‘She’s mine,’ Rauf drawled with perfect equanimity. ‘So hands off…’
He took her back to her apartment in a taxi to get changed and Annabel followed Lily into her tiny bedroom to snipe, ‘All right, so you’re not gay and you’ve snagged him. But that guy will expect more than a hug at the end of the night, so don’t say you weren’t warned!’
‘Meaning?’ Lily was apprehensive enough without that assurance.
‘He’s a real sexy stud. It’s written all over him. Enjoy yourself tonight because you won’t see him again,’ Annabel forecast. ‘You’ll say no. He won’t waste any more time on you…after all, why should he? Girls always come across for guys like him.’
He took her to dine in a wonderful Turkish restaurant and they talked for hours. Well, mostly he talked and she listened. He was working on the launch of a news magazine and he would be in London all summer. That first night he didn’t even try to kiss her but he booked her every free hour for the entire week ahead.
The second night he did kiss her but she coped because it was broad daylight and in a public place and she did not feel threatened in any way. She also discovered that she liked it when he kissed her. The third night, he asked her to come back to his hotel and spend the night with him, as if sharing her body with a male she had only known a couple of days was the most natural thing in the world.
‘I don’t do stuff like that,’ she told him.
‘Of course you do,’ Rauf traded. ‘You’re only trying to play that time-honoured female game…make him desperate before you say yes. But I was desperate within seconds of first laying eyes on you.’
‘I haven’t ever slept with anyone,’ Lily finally mumbled.
There was a very long silence. Startled tawny eyes gazed deep into hers. ‘You’re saying you’re a…?’
Hurriedly she nodded, face flaming.
‘I suppose I ought to say that seducing virgins isn’t my style but, to be very frank,’ Rauf husked, those smouldering eyes turning slumbrous with anticipation, ‘I’ve never been in this situation before and the idea of being your first lover just blows my mind!’
That was not the understanding response she had been hoping to receive and she muttered in considerable embarrassment, ‘What I’m trying to say is that I really want to wait until I’m married.’
‘But I’m not looking for a wife. I doubt that I’ll ever marry,’ Rauf informed her steadily. ‘I come from a family where for several generations marriage at a very young age was the norm. I’ve been fending off potential brides since I was eighteen. I like my freedom. So if you want more, I’m the wrong guy.’
She wished he had told her all that on the first date. By then it was too late to stop loving him. But the night died there and at the end of it she told him she didn’t want to see him again. And, even now, she remembered the dark, incredulous fury in his lean, devastating features and the fright it had given her to see what a temper he had. He hadn’t said or done anything to demonstrate that anger but that memory had lingered. For forty-eight hours, he didn’t call and then he turned up at the bar, still furious with her but trying to hide it and, just looking at him, she knew that, even if their relationship had no future, he was still her fate. That same week he found her another job as a receptioni
st in a beauty salon owned by the wife of a friend of his and she was very grateful.
For a few weeks, they had a wonderful time together most of the time. Things only went wrong when sex entered the equation. On three separate occasions, she steeled herself to go back to his hotel with him. The first time, he said to her, ‘You’re not ready for this,’ because when he tried to move beyond kissing she just froze on him. The second time she drank too much in the hope of losing her inhibitions and he took her home in brooding silence. The third time, she told him he made her feel scared sometimes and he looked so shaken she felt the most awful guilt because she knew that she was the one with the problem, not him.
But then, surprisingly, for a while, he just accepted how she was and he was very gentle and caring and she loved him more than ever. Yet when Hilary begged her to bring Rauf home, she continued to make excuses. Then Brett turned up at her student flat one night just before Rauf was due to pick her up.
‘It’s time we buried the hatchet,’ Brett announced with a creepy smile while she shrank behind the door and kept it on the chain. ‘Hilary is gasping to meet this Rauf Kasabian character and I swear I’ll be on my best behaviour if you bring him home for the weekend.’
‘Why? Why would you swear that?’
‘Hilary’s hurt that you hardly ever visit. That makes me feel bad.’
Rauf was amazingly keen to meet her family and, although she was surprised by his interest in investing in Harris Travel, it was a terrific weekend. A week later, they made a second visit because Rauf’s accountant had flown over from Turkey to look at Harris Travel’s accounts and the contract Rauf’s London lawyer had already drawn up in readiness was then signed by Rauf and her father. But during those same forty-eight hours, everything that could go wrong did go wrong…