A Diamond for the Sheikh's Mistress

by Abby Green

  It was heaven and hell as a storm took hold of Kat that she had no control over and no choice but to give in to it. She wept for everything: her heartbreak, the loss of her leg, for her deceased and damaged mother and for the fact that she’d longed for Zafir’s arms around her so many times...even though she’d denied it to herself.

  For a long time she stood in the harbour of Zafir’s arms as his hands moved soothingly over her back. Compassion. Another facet to this man she hadn’t seen before, adding to the complexity she felt around him now.

  When her sobs had finally died away she pulled back and looked with horror at Zafir’s wet shirt. She could see the darkness of his skin underneath, and despite her paroxysm of emotion she felt awareness sizzle deep inside. Mortified—because any desire Zafir had ever felt for her must have been incinerated by now—she pulled herself free of his arms completely, wiping the backs of her hands across her hot, wet cheeks.

  He was the last person in whose arms she’d expected to find solace. Her eyes felt swollen. She must have rivers of mascara down her cheeks. This truly was her lowest moment. And that was saying a lot, considering what she’d been through.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said thickly, avoiding his eyes, ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

  He took her by the hand and led her over to a chair, pushing her down gently. He reappeared with a tissue, and another shot of alcohol in a glass. He crouched down before her and made her take a sip of the drink, until gradually she felt seminormal again.

  He dipped another tissue in a glass of water and gently rubbed at her cheeks.

  She was mortified at the emotional storm she’d just unleashed all over him—and at the way he was tending to her so easily.

  When he’d put the tissue down she forced herself to look up from his damp shirt to his face, which was tense and unreadable. ‘Your shirt is ruined.’

  His mouth tightened. ‘I couldn’t care less about my shirt. In fact—’ He broke off and stood up, starting to undo his buttons.

  Kat’s mouth opened as his impressive chest was revealed, bit by bit. ‘What are you doing?’ she squeaked, holding the glass to her like some sort of shield.

  Zafir’s shirt was open now, and he made short work of the cufflinks, throwing them on a nearby table before he let the shirt drop to the ground and then he knelt down in front of her again.

  His naked and very masculine chest filled her vision. It was deliciously broad, with dark hair dusting defined muscles. And dark, flat nipples that she remembered were sensitive to the touch, earning her a hiss through his teeth whenever she’d lavished attention on them...

  She felt bewildered and exposed. ‘Zafir—’

  ‘I want to see it, Kat. Show me your leg.’

  Her insides clenched hard in rejection of that. But he looked determined. ‘Why would you want to see it?’

  * * *

  Zafir couldn’t exactly articulate why he needed to see Kat’s leg, but it came from a visceral place deep within him that was boiling over with a mixture of volatile emotions. Reverberating shock, futile anger, and a kind of grief he’d only ever felt before for his sister.

  ‘I want to see what happened to you.’

  He could see the myriad expressions crossing her face, dominated by clear reluctance, and it made him want to go out and smash whoever had done this to her into tiny pieces. But then something else crossed her face that he couldn’t decipher—something like resignation—and she put her hands on her dress, pulling it up over her knees.

  The sparkling folds of the dress were gathered on her smooth thighs and he could see now where thick material like a sock came halfway up the thigh of her left leg. It was flesh-coloured. So it wouldn’t be too noticeable? That sent another spurt of raw emotion through Zafir.

  He moved back to give Kat room, watching as she pressed a button at the bottom of the prosthetic limb and then she pushed at it firmly, so that the whole apparatus slid down and off.

  He absorbed fresh shock seeing her amputated leg, which now ended just a few inches below her knee. The thick, sock-like liner stretched from above her knee, to the bottom of her limb, where it was rounded and had a pin, which obviously slotted into the prosthetic leg to help keep it in place.

  Her hands moved to the liner covering her leg and he could see that they were trembling. He moved forward and covered her hands, forcing her to meet his gaze by sheer will.

  When she eventually looked at him he said, ‘Let me?’

  She bit her lip, and it looked so painful that Zafir wanted to reach out and rescue it, but then she said hoarsely, ‘You don’t have to do this.’

  He reminded her, with an arrogance that felt hollow now, ‘I don’t have to do anything.’ There was a heavy weight in his chest, an ache he’d never felt before.

  Eventually she lifted her hands from under his and Zafir looked down and took a breath before carefully rolling the liner down Kat’s thigh, over her knee and off, taking in the enormity of the moment as her naked leg was revealed.

  He put both hands on her leg, cupping it, feeling the skin where it was so brutally cut short. The scar was a jagged but neat line, and he ached even harder to imagine the pain she must have gone through. The weeks and months of rehabilitation. The fact that he hadn’t noticed anything before now was testament to her sheer will.

  The earth could have stopped revolving outside, he was so focused on Kat and this moment. He looked at her. ‘Tell me what happened?’

  Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap, knuckles white. Her face was pale, eyes huge. ‘It was dark. I was crossing a road... There was a truck and a motorcycle. They told me afterwards that the truck’s brakes failed and it went out of control, hitting the motorcycle. I ended up in the middle. My foot...was crushed.’

  Zafir thought of her broken, lying still on the road, and felt a dizzying surge of panic. It took him a moment to compose himself, but then he said, ‘I’m so sorry, Kat...that this happened to you.’

  She half shrugged, as if it was no big deal, but he could see the vulnerability in her eyes.

  ‘The man on the motorcycle died, Zafir. He was only twenty-two. When you consider that...I was lucky.’

  For a second Zafir’s mind blanked as he thought of how easily it might have been Kat who had lost her life.

  Bitterly he said, ‘It sounds like the truck driver was the lucky one.’

  Kat shook her head. ‘He has to live with the guilt he feels every day. He came to visit me and I’ve never seen anyone so haunted.’

  Zafir was humbled by her compassion. He realised now where her new steely strength came from, and he felt something like awe. He also felt a very sharp pang at the assertion that he should have been there for her.

  But he hadn’t—because he’d judged her on the basis of lurid headlines without really giving her a chance to explain her side. For the first time, Zafir felt a rush of remorse and regret. Everything had changed and yet, conversely, nothing had changed.

  Kat felt so delicate and vulnerable under his hands, and yet strong. It made his blood pulse faster through his veins. Acting on pure instinct and need, Zafir spread his hands out, encompassing Kat’s leg completely. He bent forward and pressed a kiss to her knee, then lower, to the top of her shin, his hands moving down and cupping her residual limb.

  He heard her sucked-in breath and a strangled-sounding, ‘What are you doing?’

  He lifted his head and looked at her with explicit intention. He moved both hands up her leg at the same time, until they encircled her bare thigh. Blood thundered in his veins.

  ‘What do you think I’m doing, Kat? I’m finishing what we started.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  KAT COULDN’T BREATHE. Again. It was a miracle that any oxygen was reaching her brain. Somehow, from somewhere, she managed to suck in a breath. And another one. Her heart rate wouldn’t slow, though. She felt flayed alive. Raw. But deep within her core burnt a fire that not even her turmoil could quench.

  She’d
expected Zafir to be long gone by now. But he wasn’t. He was kneeling at her feet, looking up at her with that molten silver gaze. It was uncompromisingly direct, leaving her nowhere to hide.

  And yet her mind reeled. He’d just looked at her...touched her leg. Inspected it. Cupped it reverently. Kissed it.

  Emotion threatened again. The only people who’d touched her there since the accident had been medical professionals, or herself when she’d had the nerve to, and it had taken a long time to do it without crying.

  Yet Zafir had just done it, and he hadn’t looked remotely horrified or disgusted. He’d looked sad. Angry. Fierce. And there’d been something unmistakably possessive in his touch too—as if he was claiming some kind of ownership of her damaged limb. Which was obviously just a figment of her overwrought brain.

  She shook her head, forcing herself to articulate her scattered thoughts. ‘You don’t mean that...’

  Something struck her then, and she went cold all over. Zafir was a proud man. A very alpha man. A man full of integrity.

  She recoiled back in the seat. ‘You don’t have to prove anything, Zafir. If you stand up and walk away it won’t make you less of a man.’

  His hands tightened on her thigh and his eyes widened. A look of affront came over his hard-boned face. ‘First you think I’m too shallow to handle this news and now you’re accusing me of being too proud to walk away from something I don’t want to do?’

  Kat swallowed. She’d never seen Zafir look more stern.

  His voice resonated deep within her. ‘I would have thought that the least you know about me by now, Kat, is that I don’t ever do anything I don’t want to. I want something and I go after it. Do I need to remind you of how I went after you?’

  She shook her head quickly. She did not need a reminder of that all-consuming seduction right now—her brain was addled enough as it was.

  ‘I am here,’ he said, ‘because I want you, Kat. I tracked you down because I couldn’t get you out of my head. Because I believe we have unfinished business. Because I believe that I won’t be able to get on with my life until I’ve tasted you again...until I’m buried so deep inside you that I might finally be able to think clearly again. What happened to you changes nothing about how much I want you.’

  All Kat heard was ‘until I’m buried so deep inside you’ and her whole lower body clenched, as if it was already anticipating taking his body into hers. As if some muscle memory was already reacting just to his words.

  She clamped her thighs together, trapping Zafir’s hand. His eyes flashed. He knew. He could sense her helpless response. But insecurity warred with desire. Did he really still want her?

  With gentle but remorseless force, Zafir pushed her knees until they were spread apart and he was between them. Her dress was ruched up around her thighs, and if he looked he would see her very plain white panties.

  As if reading her mind, his hands moved upwards, and Kat’s breathing grew ragged and fast. Within seconds he would know just how badly she ached for him. She’d be utterly exposed.

  She reached down and covered his hands, stopping their progress, and shifted, sitting up straighter in the chair, trying to put some space between them. She seized on something, anything, that might restore sanity, even though the blood rushing through her body wasn’t asking for sanity at all. The opposite...

  ‘I haven’t been with anyone since—’ She stopped. She’d been about to say since you, but she didn’t want Zafir to know that. It would mean too much. She hoped he’d assume she’d meant to say since the accident.

  Zafir shook his head. ‘None of that matters. What matters is here and now.’

  He rested his arms on the armrests of her chair and just looked at her. Her thighs were bracketing his chest...she could feel the tiny abrasions of his chest hair against the delicate skin of her inner thighs. Between her legs she was so damp and hot it was embarrassing.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said simply.

  Kat wanted to duck her head, avoid that blistering gaze, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t speak.

  Zafir bent forward and touched his mouth to hers.

  Kat closed her eyes and a helpless sound of need flowed from her mouth to his as the kiss hardened and deepened. It was too late for sanity. She couldn’t resist this. This was what she wanted and needed to make all of the questions and doubts and insecurities fade away. When Zafir touched her she couldn’t think of anything else. And she didn’t want to.

  On every level he’d defeated her. Kat’s whole body arched towards his, her arms finding and twining their way around his neck as his kiss got deeper and darker, and so explicit that it sent electric shocks all the way through her core, against which Zafir’s taut belly provided a delicious friction.

  His hands were on her thighs, lifting them up to hook around his hips. Kat didn’t have time to think about how she looked, or how the lack of her limb felt. Zafir was too all-consuming.

  One hand was on her back now, finding the top of the zip at her neck. He tugged it down and she felt air touch her bare skin as the dress slackened around her breasts. Zafir took his mouth off hers to pull back. They were both breathing harshly.

  Without taking his eyes off hers, he pulled her dress forward and down, easing it off her shoulders and down her arms until she was naked from the waist up. The design of the dress had precluded the need for a bra.

  Then he looked down at her.

  She saw the way his eyes grew even darker, and colour slashed across his cheeks as he took in her bare breasts.

  He said something guttural in Arabic. And then he brought his hands to her flesh, cupping her and squeezing. Her nipples were hard, stinging points, and when Zafir passed a thumb over each of them she almost cried out, they were so sensitive.

  He looked at her and said raggedly, ‘I’ve dreamt of this. Of you...’

  He put one hand on her back, encouraging her to arch towards his mouth. He cupped her breast with his other hand, and then surrounded first one nipple and then the other in hot sucking heat. Kat’s hands were buried in his hair, clinging on for dear life as he stoked her arousal to painful levels.

  It was as if a wire was directly connecting Zafir’s mouth on her breasts to her core. The deliciously wicked combination of his rough tongue and teeth on her sensitive flesh pushed her right over an edge she didn’t see coming, and she found herself shuddering in his arms as an orgasm gripped her and threw her high, before letting her float back down to earth.

  She stiffened and pulled back in mortification, her cheeks burning. Her body had just betrayed her spectacularly. She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry... I—’

  He stopped her with a finger to her mouth. He looked wild. ‘Don’t you dare apologise. If I don’t get inside you soon, Kat, I’m in danger of disgracing myself in a way that only used to happen when I was a boy and unable to control my body.’

  Her eyes widened as comprehension sank in. ‘You mean you—’

  ‘Yes,’ he said succinctly. And then, ‘Where’s the bedroom?’

  All semblance of civility was gone now. And it was the sexiest thing Kat had ever seen.

  ‘Behind you.’

  With effortless strength, Zafir stood and scooped Kat up against his chest. Her arms went around his neck as he kicked open the bedroom door and brought her into the dimly lit room.

  The gathering storm clouds outside went unnoticed as Zafir lowered Kat to the bed. So did the jagged fork of lightning and the first drops of heavy rain.

  A part of Kat couldn’t believe this was happening, and she needed a moment to assimilate everything and analyse the consequences. And yet, in spite of this knowledge, she couldn’t bring herself to utter a word as she lay back and watched Zafir strip off the rest of his clothes with all the natural-born confidence of a spectacularly beautiful, sexually virile man.

  Kat’s eyes widened as she took in a sight she’d thought she’d never see again. A very aroused Zafir. Her greedy gaze avidly took in his whole bod
y, noting that his muscles seemed even harder than before. His body bigger. And yet he was leaner. As if he’d shed some softer layer. Maybe becoming a King had done that to him.

  ‘You, Kat,’ he said gutturally. ‘I want to see you too.’

  He started to tug at her dress, pulling it down over her hips and off completely. Now she only wore her plain white panties, and she felt embarrassed. She’d always made an effort before, aware that Zafir had once liked wispy concoctions of lingerie—usually sent to her by him. But as he came down beside her on the bed now, his eyes gleamed with a hunger that turned any doubts to dust.

  His hand smoothed over her chest and belly, which contracted with need. When his hand reached her underwear and his fingers slid underneath to explore she put a hand down instinctively. He looked at her. Once again she bit her lip. Unsure. As if she hadn’t ever lain with this man before. As if he hadn’t just seen her fall apart after barely touching her.

  ‘I haven’t... I don’t look after myself down there like I used to.’ Her cheeks burned.

  Zafir’s nostrils flared. ‘Kat...when are you going to get it? Nothing about you could turn me off.’

  His words unleashed a fresh flood of heat, and she realised now how careful she’d always been to live up to some ideal that she’d thought he wanted. His hand explored further, over the curls she’d always been told she had to remove for the sake of lingerie modelling contracts.

  When his fingers touched her very core she arched her back off the bed. Within seconds her panties were gone and her legs were splayed. Zafir clamped big hands on her thighs, holding her captive as he bent his head and proceeded to explore her drenched sex with a thoroughness that rendered her insensible.

  Her first orgasm had taken her by surprise. This one built and built until she almost screamed with the need to release the tension—and then Zafir circled her clitoris with his tongue, sucking it roughly, and she exploded into a million pieces.