The Sheikh's Impatient Virgin

by Kim Lawrence

  God, but she loved him.

  ‘If you know where they are you can see them from our apartments. They are only yards from the palace boundary.’

  ‘Yards! I was only yards away…’ She leaned back on her heels and gave an incredulous smile.

  Karim had been fighting a losing battle to contain his anger since they had arrived in their sanctuary, but the smile broke him.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’

  She stared at him, startled by the abrupt change in his manner.

  ‘Do you not appreciate how close you were to dying?’

  Eva felt a wave of shamed contrition. It wasn’t just her that nearly died. No wonder he was mad—she hadn’t even thanked him.

  ‘I’m really very grateful and I’m sorry I ruined the reception. I know there were a lot of important people there and I can’t have made the best impression…and I ruined the dress and I know it cost a fortune.’ She lifted a hand to her ear and added, ‘One of my shoes is gone and I’ve lost an earring too, which is probably an heirloom.’

  He regarded her with incredulity and dragged a not quite steady hand through his dusty hair. ‘You think I care about earrings?’ He shook his head and gritted, ‘Do you lie awake thinking of ways to make me lose my temper?’

  Fists clenched, her eyes sparkling, she glared up at him. ‘No, I lie awake thinking…’ She stopped, her eyes drifting to his mouth before they slid from his face.

  ‘Thinking of what?’

  Still unable to look at him, she could hardly tell the subject of her wakeful thoughts that all she thought about day or night was him…‘What can I say? You’re so pretty when you’re mad.’

  The fire died from his face as he arched a questioning brow.

  ‘It was a stupid thing to do. I suppose my grandfather is imagining me lying dead somewhere.’

  ‘No,’ Karim lied, thinking that Hassan probably was beside himself by this point. ‘He knows you would be safe with me. Why, Eva?’

  She lifted her tear-stained face to his and sniffed. ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why did you leave?’ He couldn’t bring himself to ask if it was connected with the kiss. The thought his kiss made her run was something he could not contemplate; it was something that made every bad thing that life had ever thrown at him pale into significance.

  Eva thought of lying, but in the end she didn’t have the energy.

  ‘Everyone was watching you dance with Layla and they were probably wondering why you didn’t marry her.’

  ‘Layla?’ he echoed, looking at her blankly.

  ‘I know ours isn’t a marriage in the real sense, but you might at least be discreet. You were all over her like a rash and I suppose you spent the last week with her too.’

  ‘You’re jealous!’ The discovery did not appear to displease him.

  Eva gritted her teeth and regarded him with a contemptuous scowl. ‘I suppose you like the idea of women fighting over you. Well, sorry, but I don’t give a damn who you sleep with, but it’s quite a different thing to flaunt your mistress in front of me. Given the circumstances of our marriage I didn’t expect you to be monogamous,’ she said, trying to sound reasonable. ‘How would you like it if I flaunted my lover that way?’

  ‘I would not like it at all.’

  Eva, very conscious of the fact he had not denied having a lover, failed to notice the iron note of warning in his quiet voice.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t do that to you.’

  ‘Are you planning to take a lover any time soon?’ he enquired in a conversational tone that was in stark variance to the gleam in his eyes.

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  The red mist dancing before his eyes made it a struggle for Karim to concentrate. ‘It is very much the point, Princess,’ he contradicted with a face like stone. ‘There will be no lover.’

  Eva brought her teeth together in an incredulous smile; his hypocrisy was staggering. ‘So you’re going to be celibate too, are you?’ she enquired in a conversational tone.

  He paused, an expression she couldn’t quite decipher flickering across his lean face, before he responded. ‘I find that celibacy doesn’t suit me!’

  This virtual admission he intended to take a mistress sent a wave of white-hot fury through Eva. ‘Great, so you can start a harem but I have to take up knitting. That’s what I love about you—you’re such a modern man!’

  His lips twitched. ‘You like knitting?’

  Her eyes narrowed as she glared up at him. ‘I hate knitting—it gives me a headache.’

  ‘I would imagine that a harem would give me a headache. I can only cope with one woman at a time. You know, I do not think that celibacy suits you, either, Princess,’ he observed, studying her flushed face.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Everything is about sex with you!’ she yelled even as she acknowledged her own hypocrisy.

  Karim arched a brow. ‘Everything is about sex with me? Possibly because it is something I am not getting.’

  ‘Sure you’re not!’ she snarled with a contemptuous sniff. ‘Well, you should be less cranky and distracted now that Layla is back in town,’ she observed sourly.

  ‘Layla Al Ahmed is an old family—’

  Eva cut across him. ‘Were you going to marry her?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  Eva shrugged. ‘It seems to be the consensus of opinion.’

  ‘Well, opinion is wrong. There was never any possibility of my marrying Layla.’

  She searched his face and he returned her scrutiny calmly. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘But she is your mistress?’

  ‘I have no mistress. I am married, Eva.’

  She swallowed and found she believed him; the rush of relief was weakening. ‘I thought you might have forgotten. I don’t feel married.’

  ‘And how might I make you feel married—?’ He stopped mid-sentence and said in a voice that lacked any inflection, ‘Do not move.’

  She opened her mouth to ask why not when he lunged towards her and slapped her open-handed on the shoulder. Her eyes opened wide in startled indignation that faded when she saw what he had in his fingers.

  Eva shuddered. ‘Is it poisonous?’ The scorpion was certainly ugly.

  Not responding to her question, Karim held the squirming bug at arm’s length and said, ‘I’ll get rid of this.’

  In the adjoining cavern he heard the distant but unmistakable sound of running water. Disposing of the scorpion, he followed it to its source.

  The appearance of the toxic creature on Eva’s bare skin had made his heart stop, but if nothing else it had driven home the bad taste of making love to your wife for the first time on the cold floor of a dusty cavern teeming with poisonous animal life.

  The first time should be romantic. Such things he knew were important to women. For his part the place was irrelevant, and each extra second of waiting took a year off his life—but he would wait. He wanted it to be perfect.

  Chapter Twelve

  EVA, waiting eagerly for his return, gave a sigh of relief when she heard his footsteps.

  ‘This is all I could find,’ Karim said, placing the earthenware bowl he carried on the table.

  Eva saw it was full of water.

  ‘You might like to wash…?’

  The idea was appealing; the sand had got everywhere. ‘Where did you get the water?’

  ‘The water supply was cut off when the last occupant vacated, but deeper in the cave system there is an underground spring—it never dries up.

  ‘Perhaps you could use these?’ he suggested, producing as if by magic a pile of cotton sheets. ‘They are rough but clean,’ he said, placing them beside the earthenware bowl. He left without a word, pulling the thin curtain across the doorway as he did so.

  Eva dipped her hand into the basin. The water in the basin was ice cold, but not as cold as his remote manner. The tears she was struggling to hold back stung the backs of her eyelids.

  I will not cry, s
he told herself as she pulled down what remained of her zip and stepped out of the shredded dress.

  Unclipping the strapless bra she wore under it, she leaned over the basin and splashed the cold water over her face and neck. It took her breath away, but felt good.

  She tore a section off one of the rough cotton sheets and, using it like a facecloth, dipped it in the water and began to wipe the sand from her skin.

  The process was painstaking and not exactly comfortable, leaving her skin tingling and pink.

  Karim paused. There was no door to knock on.

  His intention to tell her the storm was abating fled his brain the moment he pushed aside the curtain and stepped inside.

  She stood with her back to him, naked but for a pair of pants that clung to the firm curves of her rounded behind.

  Nailed to the spot, he stared. Her body was more perfect than he had imagined—and he had imagined. The desire that he had spent weeks constantly battling flared up, hot and out of control.

  He made no attempt to subdue it, but allowed his hungry gaze to roam over the soft gentle flare of her hips, the soft, round, peachy perfection of her bottom and the shapely length of her slim, elegant legs.

  He thought about those legs wrapping around him, pulling him tight into her, and a low moan was wrenched from his throat.

  The sound made Eva start and spin around. He saw the shock on her face as she stood there, a wet cloth pressed to her breasts, covering most but not all; one tight, pouting nipple, pink and glistening with water droplets, peeped out.

  The pulse of lust that slammed through his body drove the breath out of Karim’s lungs in one gasp.

  Eva met his stare and hot colour rushed to her cheeks as her lips parted in a silent gasp. ‘I…’ She stopped, lifted her chin and, with her eyes holding his, allowed her hands to slowly fall to her sides.

  For a long moment their eyes stayed locked. Mesmerised by the burning heat in his bold, hungry stare, Eva felt her knees buckle and grabbed the table for support.

  Karim’s eyes dropped. He heard the groan but did not connect it with himself. The tight pink buds on her small but perfect breasts reacted to the brush of his eyes.

  Eva saw the muscles in his golden throat work as he said something hoarse in his own language.

  Desire roared like a furnace in his veins. The need to possess her pushed aside every other thought in his brain…It consumed him.

  Her hands moved, but went back to her sides, and as he walked towards her, she regarded him steadily, her green eyes grave and almost scared.

  When he was standing close enough to see the visible tremors that ran through her body he reached out and touched the side of her face.

  Eva’s resistance and pride melted away in the heat of the desire that roared in her blood. If he wanted her to beg she would; she could not bear the ache any longer…she was burning for his touch.

  ‘Karim, I…’

  As she tilted her face up to him Karim placed a finger on her lips before she could form her sentence.

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. His treatment of Eva was not something he was proud of. Now, as he recognised he had allowed his attitude to be coloured by his experiences with Zara, he felt ashamed.

  ‘But you said it was my—’

  His hand moved to frame her face. ‘I know what I said, ma belle,’ he said thickly.

  ‘I…’

  He bent his head to her so close she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. She swayed into him as though pulled by an invisible string, her stomach muscles clenching violently in response to the warm, musky male scent of his body. ‘Let me say it.’

  Their glances sealed. Mesmerised by the searing heat in his eyes, she whimpered and shivered as he stroked a finger down her cheek. Eva was so close she could see the gold tips of his eyelashes.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘I will beg, Eva. I will beg for your hands on my skin…’ He tilted her face to one side, his eyes running with a compulsive need over the contours of her heart-shaped face.

  Holding her eyes he took her hand, wrapping his fingers in hers as he raised it to his lips. ‘Touch me, Eva,’ he husked, uncurling her fingers. ‘Please, Princess,’ he added, turning her hand over and brushing his lips across the exposed skin of her small palm.

  A distracted frown creased his brow. ‘You have lovely hands.’

  Eva, who felt as if she were floating some place out of her body, cleared her throat. Did he really just ask what she thought he had? Or was she about to wake up?

  ‘I like your hands too,’ she responded abstractedly.

  ‘Touch me, because if you don’t I think I might lose my mind.’ He looked down at her, his eyes drawn to her parted lips, and the hunger in his veins roared. He had never wanted a woman this way in his life.

  Eva blinked, squeezing tears onto her cheeks as she lifted her free hand and touched his lean cheek. ‘I think I lost mine some time ago,’ she breathed, her expression one of fascination as she trailed a finger down his hard, stubble-roughened jaw.

  He caught her hand and held it where it was and, taking the other, lifted it to his lips. ‘I have dreamt, every night since we met I have dreamt of feeling your hands on me.’

  The husky admission sent a fresh jolt of paralysing lust through her already shaking body. She caught her trembling lower lip between her teeth. Her passion-glazed eyes meeting his, she felt as if she were burning up from the inside out.

  ‘I want you too, Karim.’

  She watched the flare of male satisfaction blaze in his eyes before he bent his head and covered her mouth.

  His heavy-lidded eyes holding her wide passion-drugged gaze, he nipped and tugged softly at her full lower lip, sliding his tongue along the soft, sensitive flesh before whispering throatily, ‘You taste so sweet.’ Hand on her hips, he drew her to him.

  Eva gasped as his erection ground into the softness of her belly. She wound her arms around his neck as he began to kiss her, first with slow sensuality and then with a raw, driving hunger that drew a moan of pleasure from her throat.

  ‘You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,’ he slurred.

  A tiny choked sigh left her lips as she turned her head, rubbing her cheek into his palm.

  ‘Kiss me, Karim.’

  He did as if his intention were to drain her; she went limp in his arms as a debilitating weakness invaded her limbs and seeped into her brain.

  Eva didn’t have another coherent thought until he stopped kissing her, and then her mental coherence did not get beyond wanting him to do it again.

  ‘Don’t stop…what are you…?’ Eva, finding herself excluded from the protective circle of his arms, began to protest.

  The remonstration died on her lips as he proceeded to drop to his knees. Eva was briefly distracted by the sheer fluid animal grace of his action.

  She could be riveted watching him do the most mundane of things.

  Not that anything that was happening right now was mundane…She couldn’t shake the feeling that she had slipped into some weird alternative reality and this was all happening to some other Eva.

  Then as he settled in front of her, his eyes level with her bare breasts, from the place it had retreated to a strand of self-consciousness surfaced. The colour ran up like a rosy rash under her skin and she instinctively lifted her hands to cover herself.

  Karim’s reactions were quicker.

  Before she had completed the action he grabbed her wrists and dragged them firmly back down to her sides.

  Eva’s hands clenched into fists as, with a groan of distress, she squeezed her eyes tight shut.

  ‘Open your eyes and look at me, Eva.’

  Obeying the command with extreme reluctance, Eva did so.

  ‘Look at me,’ he repeated.

  She responded to the last instruction with even more reluctance. Karim, looking up at her with a stern expression, held her eyes and said, ‘You will never cover yourself from me.’

/>   Eva gulped. ‘But—’

  He shook his head. ‘This is not negotiable. You are my wife and I wish to look at you and I…’ His eyes swept downwards and he stopped speaking. His hands fell from her wrists as he sucked in a deep shuddering sigh.

  The world around him seemed to slow as the molten heat and gnawing anger in the pit of his stomach solidified into a desire so primal that his core temperature jumped several degrees in the space of a single heartbeat.

  Karim’s breath came fast as he struggled to cling to the shreds of his fast disintegrating control; hunger roared in his blood like a furnace flame. They were right in front of his face: small, perfect, pouting perfection.

  He dragged his eyes from the tempting curves and kissed her stomach.

  Eva gasped at the touch of his tongue, then gasped again and whimpered when he traced a path with sensuous slowness up over the soft curve of her stomach, inscribing a wet line with his tongue from the hem of her pants to the valley between her heaving breasts.

  The slow erotic progress drew a series of throaty moans from her aching throat. Her eyelashes fluttered against the curve of her flushed cheeks as she looked down.

  ‘This is…Oh, my God!’ she gasped, spearing her fingers into his silky dark hair. She had no conscious recollection of crying out his name, but she knew that the erotic image of his dark head against her body was burned into her brain for ever.

  Hands curving around the feminine angle of her hips, he leaned back on his heels and turned his face up to her. A faint sheen of moisture covered his skin that seemed drawn tight across his incredible bones, the bands of colour along his cheekbones highlighting their prominence.

  As she looked at him she was conscious of the heat pooling in her groin. ‘You’re…’

  ‘What am I, Princess?’’

  She shook her head mutely, but her eyes communicated her feelings.

  His princess, she was all woman, flesh and blood and so warm that he just wanted to lose himself in her. ‘Your skin is like satin,’ he husked.

  The sight of her standing there above him, her perfect heaving breasts right in front of his face, took his breath away. His heart was thudding so hard he could barely hear anything above it. Part of him wanted to prolong this moment, another wanted to pull her down and slide into her welcoming heat and wetness.