The Sheikh's Impatient Virgin

by Kim Lawrence

  Eva’s head fell back and she released a broken moan as he drew her to him, fitting his mouth to one engorged nipple and drawing it into his mouth while his long fingers stroked the creamy white flesh of her quivering breast.

  She bit her lip as he tugged gently at the tight bud with his teeth before lashing the glistening pink skin with his tongue, back and forth, sending white-hot stabs of sensation through her body.

  A feral moan of sheer pleasure. ‘That is…Oh…!’

  She had reached the point where she thought she really could no longer bear the exquisite sensual torment when he lifted his head.

  He took her hands and pulled her down to him until she was on her knees facing him. One big hand slid to the small of her back, the other to the back of her bright head as he pulled her to him and slowly bent her backwards over his supporting arm.

  The pressure as her sensitised breasts were crushed against his hard chest sent stabs of desire through her shaking body.

  ‘The floor is hard,’ he said, cushioning her head with his forearm. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she panted.

  Karim watched her breath coming in a series of shallow uneven gasps as with his free hand he fought his way out of his robe.

  His body, curved over her in the lamplight, gleamed gold. He looked like a statue made flesh and blood. She laid her hands palms flat on his chest and closed her eyes to heighten the tactile appreciation as she allowed her fingers to glide over his skin. She reached the muscle-ridged flatness of his belly.

  His gasp forced her eyes open. ‘Karim, there’s something I need to tell…’

  Raising himself on one elbow, he curved a hand around Eva’s chin and looked into her face; the flames dancing in his eyes made her dizzy.

  ‘Later, ma belle. I need too—I need to kiss you. I need to taste you.’

  She moaned helplessly into his mouth and writhed beneath his weight. The raw leashed power in him excited her more than she would have dreamed was possible.

  His hands moving over her skin left a burning trail of desire and as his hands slid between her legs she felt no hesitation in parting them for him and pushing herself into his hand.

  After a few minutes of increasingly frantic caresses he rolled a little from her and, taking her hand in his, curved it around the engorged smooth column of his erection.

  ‘This is how much I want you, Princess. I can’t wait.’

  ‘Then don’t wait,’ she pleaded. ‘Just please do it, Karim. I need you to do it.’

  Breathing hard and holding her eyes with his, he moved over her. The moment of shock as he slid into her sucked the breath from her lungs and then as her tensed muscles relaxed and she felt him inside her, filling her, she closed her eyes.

  ‘Oh, you are…This is so-o-o good!’

  Conflicting emotions raged inside Karim, but as she tightened around him the shocked expression on his face morphed into a mask of sheer driving need.

  A need to be one with her, her first. Her only, said the voice in his skull.

  ‘Slow, sweetheart…slow,’ he murmured, slowly moving deeper into her, then retreating again and again bringing her to the brink and thrusting deep and hard, driving her over that brink and into the dark abyss beyond.

  She was vaguely conscious of Karim shuddering above her as the height of the wave of contraction hit her, drawing a shocked cry from her throat.

  For a long time she floated, just letting it happen; when it stopped every cell of her body was bathed in the golden afterglow.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?’

  Eva gave a grunt of complaint as he raised himself on one arm, dislodging her head from its comfortable position on his chest.

  She opened her eyes and saw the accusatory note she had heard in his not quite steady voice was stamped on his dark lean features, along with a certain amount of strain that, expert that she wasn’t, she didn’t associate with post-coital bliss.

  ‘I told you we didn’t have sex. You didn’t believe me,’ she reminded him.

  He dragged a not quite steady hand through his dark hair that obviously grew fast, because if he’d been wearing a collar it would have touched it.

  But he wasn’t, he wasn’t wearing anything, and Eva was having trouble concentrating because he really was utterly perfect; every hard line of him was faultless.

  ‘How is this possible?’ He struggled to get his head around his astonishing discovery.

  ‘I was never really into casual sex.’

  ‘The things I said to you.’

  Her lips quivered. ‘It seemed to make you happy.’

  ‘It did not,’ he retorted, thinking of the images that had tortured his dreams.

  ‘I don’t think I’m a prude or anything. It’s probably a low-sex-drive thing,’ she mused, trailing a fascinated finger slowly down his flat muscle-ridged stomach. She felt the low rumble of laughter in his chest and lifted her head.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  Her genuine puzzlement made him laugh again, this time he followed it with a long slow kiss. ‘You are.’ As he appeared to like funny she could, Eva decided, live with being the butt of his private jokes.

  ‘Is there anything else I should know?’

  ‘Well, after that stupid row in the hospital…’ She bit her lips and admitted, ‘I was shocked at the idea of children, but…’ her eyes fell from his ‘…the idea has sort of grown on me, but you seemed not to want me around.’

  ‘I was with my father, his condition…’

  Her eyes flew to his face. She saw the anguish he struggled to hide in his strong features and her heart bled for him. She lifted a hand to his cheek. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I am not in the habit of…sharing such things.’

  ‘You not sharing makes me feel surplus to requirements.’

  He looked visibly struck by the comment.

  ‘Plus it made me imagine you in bed with other women.’

  ‘There has been no room in my bed or thoughts for anyone but you lately.’

  Lately—but what about the future?

  Eva pushed away the intrusive thought and admitted, ‘I’ve been thinking a little about you too.’

  ‘You wrote a thesis!’

  The indignation in his voice brought a smile to her lips. ‘I polished a thesis. I even worked up the guts to come to your bedroom last night, but you weren’t there.’

  ‘You…?’ The wasted opportunity drew a groan from him. ‘I was out trying to sublimate my needs as I have every night since I got home.’

  ‘With who?’ she asked in a small voice.

  ‘It depended whichever horse had not been exercised.’

  ‘You rode.’

  ‘Like a madman,’ he admitted.

  She gave a sigh of relief. ‘I’m so glad, but riding at night sounds a bit reckless. You could have broken your neck.’

  Karim spanned the slim column of her neck with his fingers and said, ‘Aren’t you glad I didn’t?’

  ‘At this moment, extremely,’ she said huskily.

  Karim flexed his shoulders, feeling pretty good about the world in general and what had just happened in particular. ‘Why has this taken so long to happen?’

  Eva curled up into his side and allowed the heat of his body to warm her cooling skin. ‘Because you’re stubborn and you were never there and I was embarrassed.’ She tucked her head onto his chest.

  Karim hooked a finger under her chin and tilted her face to his. ‘Embarrassed?’

  ‘Yes, well, how was I meant to come and beg you to take me to bed when you were obviously expecting me to be some sort of sex maniac, and I was scared stiff that I’d be a massive disappointment. To be honest, this clueless virgin thing had become a bit of an embarrassment.’

  Karim, who listened to this explanation with an expression of growing fascination, laughed at the last comment.

  ‘The fact is I didn’t have sex with you that night you turned up at my flat—�
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  ‘Drugged,’ Karim inserted.

  ‘What?’ she yelped.

  ‘Long story and I prefer to hear your story now.’

  ‘I didn’t not have sex with you on ethical grounds. You did start to…’ Her voice drifted away as the memory of the interrupted love-making rose up in her mind. ‘You know.’

  ‘I know,’ he agreed, amused that she could be shy now after what they had just shared. Sex, reminded the voice in his head. Don’t build it up into something it isn’t. She isn’t, he realized, recognising that she only spoke of sex, never love.

  Which of course was a good thing.

  ‘I’m glad we didn’t, not that I was at the time,’ she admitted with shamefaced honesty. ‘But you’d have been m…having sex.’ Just in time she caught herself before she said making love. ‘But not with me…but this time it was me, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was you…ma belle.’

  ‘And we are going to do it again—it won’t go back to separate beds.’

  ‘No separate beds, or separate continents, and no more stone floors, either, I think. Though possibly…’ he mused. ‘Once more for luck?’

  ‘Can you? I mean…’ She flushed as her eyes drifted down his body.

  ‘I can.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  AMIRA’S expression as she presented Eva with the bunch of flowers brought a lump to her throat.

  The little girl’s dark eyes glowed with pride as she said, ‘Our very first flowers.’

  Eva lifted the blooms to her face to inhale the perfume that drifted off the freshly cut flowers. The little garden they had started together had begun to bloom and so had her relationship with her stepdaughter.

  The problems that Eva had anticipated had never materialised. It would have been natural for the only child of a doting father, which Karim definitely was, to view her as an intruder, a rival for her father’s affections, but, though she had been initially cautious and a little shy, Amira hadn’t displayed any trace of jealousy.

  Amira had a streak of maturity, possibly because she had spent so much time around adults, and was also amazingly perceptive for one so young.

  That perception could on occasion be embarrassing—a perfect and painful example being the previous day when she had greeted her father with the remonstration, ‘You’re late and Eva hasn’t heard a thing I’ve said to her for the last half-hour. She’s just been looking at the door and fussing with her hair waiting for you to walk in.’

  Having effectively reduced Eva to a stuttering state of hot-cheeked mortification, she bounded to her feet, kissed her father and announced she would give them some privacy.

  Looking at a point over Karim’s left shoulder, Eva broke the ensuing silence by explaining primly, ‘I overheard one of the grooms saying that the horse you were riding would break someone’s neck one day and—’

  ‘You were worried about me,’ he cut in smoothly.

  Eva’s eyes slid to his face, her cheeks pink as she retorted indignantly, ‘Who wouldn’t be? I’ve seen you on a horse!’

  And while the image of wild-eyed steed and tall rider in perfect harmony had been riveting, her pleasure had been considerably dimmed by the fact that Karim quite obviously had no concept of danger.

  ‘I’m considered a rather good rider,’ he observed with admirable understatement for someone who could have made a good living on the international polo circuit, but found the sport rather tame.

  ‘You’re reckless!’ she condemned, then, lifting a hand to her hair, dealt with the child’s second observation by saying, ‘And I’m having a bad hair day.’

  Karim walked forward and, bending his head, buried his face in her bright hair, inhaling deeply before framing her face with his hands. ‘You never have a bad hair day.’

  Eva had not disputed this blatantly untrue statement, partly because she had been responding to a hungry kiss that had left her aching for more.

  She always ached for more.

  ‘You were thinking about Papa.’

  The comment brought Eva’s wandering thoughts back to the present with a jolt.

  ‘I…’

  ‘You get that soppy expression and look kind of sad?’

  Eva, appalled that she was so transparent even a child could see how besotted she was, pinned on a bright smile as the little girl rubbed her finger across a petal that had fallen from one of the overblown cabbage roses.

  ‘Do they remind you of home?’ asked Amira, whose curiosity about Eva’s home was insatiable.

  ‘Home?’ Eva echoed, lifting a hand to a bloom and thinking back to a time when she had imagined home meant a roof and walls.

  She had been brought up in reasonable affluence and had never lacked anything material, but her house had never been a home. A home, she had discovered, was being around people who made you feel good about yourself; home was about people, not bricks and mortar—people you loved.

  Eva’s glance encompassed the palatial surroundings that she had so recently found intimidating, surroundings that she had doubted she would ever adapt to, and she felt a little stab of shock as she recognised that this was more her home than anywhere she had ever lived.

  ‘England,’ the child prompted.

  ‘They do a little,’ Eva replied, wondering when she had started thinking of here as home? ‘The smell more than anything.’

  She did have nostalgic moments, but they never lasted long. There were too many fascinating new discoveries to make in her rich multitextured and spice-scented new world.

  ‘And when you were young like me you grew your own garden?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ confirmed Eva, not spoiling the story by adding that her horticultural experiment had ended abruptly when she had arrived home from school one day to find her little garden had been concreted over to provide an extra parking space.

  ‘What garden?’ had been her mother’s response when she had rushed indoors in tears asking what had happened to her garden and flowers. Her mother had sat her down and explained how her emotional response was inappropriate as she had pointed out the town had ample parks but very few parking spaces. Pulling herself back to the present, she smiled at Amira.

  ‘Now why don’t you run along to your room and wash your hands while I find a really splendid vase for these lovely flowers?’

  Eva followed her at a slower pace. Inside she pulled off the sunhat she wore, at Karim’s insistence, to protect her fair skin from the sun, and wandered to the small sunlit sitting room that she used each morning to catch up on her correspondence—correspondence that had increased to the point where she was almost ready to agree with Karim’s suggestion she take on a secretary.

  Part time, maybe, she mused, would not be such an overreaction. What had started as a casual visit to a charity that had been set up to provide education beyond school-leaving age for orphans had become something of an almost full-time commitment.

  It was not something she had planned, it had just evolved, and she could not blame the organisers for roping her in when she realized, as they already had, that her name opened doors…or rather Karim’s name.

  And time-consuming though it had become, it was for a good cause. Eva had been forcibly struck by the shocking contrast between the opportunities that she had taken for granted at a similar age and the gratitude these young people displayed.

  She had been and still was impressed by their talent, dedication and sheer determination to further their education and achieve goals that not long before would have been impossible. But with all the resolve in the world none of this would have been feasible if Karim had not continued the mission his father had begun to provide free education to every child.

  And nobody wants to write about that, she thought, feeling indignant on her husband’s behalf as she thought of a stupid and extremely ill-informed article printed by a magazine that was more interested in what designer he was wearing and getting his good side—as if he had a bad one—than his
speech on the economic climate.

  ‘It makes me so mad,’ she muttered, putting the finishing touches to her arrangement and stepping back to view the effect.

  She was tweaking a stem of greenery when her visitor was announced.

  Eva had time to brush a strand of hair from her cheek and pin a smile on her face before the guest was ushered in. The smile dimmed slightly but stayed in place as her visitor was revealed to be Layla.

  Six months into her marriage, Eva’s feelings of insecurity had diminished considerably. She could now see Layla and Karim in the same room without wanting to scream.

  She recognised that this was in small part due to the fact that when he was in her company Karim never made her feel as if he wanted to be anywhere else, and when they were apart he was also flatteringly eager to return.

  But there were limits to her new confidence. She believed Karim when he said he had never had any romantic feelings for the other woman, but there was no escaping the blatantly obvious fact that Layla had feelings for him.

  Eva felt the familiar prickle of antagonism and hid it behind her stiff smile as the other woman walked into the room.

  The smile was not returned. Layla only put on her ‘sweetness and light’ act for Karim’s benefit.

  ‘I’m afraid Karim is not here.’

  ‘I know he isn’t.’

  There was something feline about the smile that lifted the other woman’s carmine-painted lips. Eva struggled not to feel like a defenceless mouse as Layla unsheathed her claws and added in her throaty purr, ‘I came to see you.’

  Eva greeted this information with deep caution. So far the other woman had shown no inclination to seek out her company—a situation that suited Eva fine.

  ‘You did?’

  Layla walked around the room, her red nails running over the polished surface of the carved chest where Eva had set her bouquet in pride of place. Her expression grew openly contemptuous as she viewed the childish offering.