The Sheikh's Prize(11)

'In that department you were very hot.'

Cold tainted her at the meaning of that sentence, the reminder that   there had been others intimate with him since their divorce. 'Now that   you can make comparisons?'

'Don't take that angle-it's offensive,' Zahir ground out with sudden   force. 'If I'd known what I was doing in our bed, we wouldn't have had   problems!'

Consternation slivered through her taut length. 'Is that what you   thought? That it was somehow your fault? You are so wrong, Zahir. There   was nothing you could have done to make things any different between   us,' she declared with fierce conviction, her innate sense of fairness   making her speak up. 'I needed professional help.'

Saffy couldn't believe she was telling him her even a little piece of   her biggest secret, but then he had been the only other person who had   experienced her problems with her. It shook her that he had blamed his   inexperience for her failure in the bedroom, but then how could he   possibly have guessed what was really wrong with her? Was that why he   had come up with the insane idea of kidnapping her? Was that why he   still supposedly wanted her? Was that ferocious pride of his still set   on rewriting the past and retrieving his masculine pride?

Zahir frowned, his surprise palpable. 'Professional help?'

'Never mind. Like you last night and your back...not something I choose   to discuss,' Saffy fielded, because she was extremely reluctant to  share  her secrets, and indeed was already wondering if he might  consider her  in some way 'soiled' if he knew the truth. And just at  that moment,  quite ridiculously in the circumstances, she really did  value the fact  that, in spite of everything, Zahir was still attracted  to her. It made  her feel better about the past, and when she collided  afresh with his  mesmerising dark golden eyes she was beset by a stark  sense of regret  and loss. After all, when she stripped all the  complications away one  fact stood clear: he wanted her and she was  still fiercely attracted to  him, the guy she had fallen for as a  teenager. Did that make her sad and  pathetic? Was it the pull of first  love that still made her want to  reach out to him? Or simply that  all-important element of sexual desire  that she had not so far managed  to find with another man?

And did it really matter? she asked herself, for at last the opportunity   to move into the adult world and be a normal woman was being offered  to  her with no strings attached. If she had sex with Zahir, nobody  would  ever know about it and she would never see him again... Wasn't  this  finally the chance for her to achieve the intimacy that she had  always  longed to experience? Sex was a physical thing, she bargained  with  herself, and it didn't have to mean anything, didn't have to take  place  within a defined relationship. Her sister, Kat, was a bit of a  prude and  had raised her to have a very different outlook...but Saffy  had done  the serious thing, the marriage thing and the love thing and  had ended  up broken to pieces inside herself, enduring a pain and  insecurity that  she had still not managed to overcome. Simple sex would  be enough for  her, she reasoned in desperation, suppressing her uneasy  feelings while  telling herself that she was surely old enough and  mature enough to  follow her own instincts.

'Go back to bed,' Saffy murmured tautly, the momentous decision already   made and it was a choice that she felt she could live with. 'I'll join   you in a few minutes...'

Zahir's cloaking black lashes lifted on frowning dark eyes of incomprehension. 'What are you saying?'

Saffy shrugged a slender shoulder, putting on a face because her pride   was too great to allow him to suspect how insecure and inexperienced she   actually was. 'It's only sex, not something worth making a fuss   about...'

Taken aback by that blunt statement, Zahir breathed in deep. 'Passion is always worth pursuing.'                       
       
           



       

'Not in my world,' Saffy countered doggedly, thinking of the many casual   affairs she had seen begin and end among her friends, and she doubted   that true passion-ripping-your-clothes-off passion-had driven many of   them. Loneliness and lust would be a more honest description of their   motivation.

Zahir stepped forward, lean brown hands reaching up to curve to her   cheekbones and centre her gaze on him. 'If that's true, I find it sad. I   want to give you passion.'

'No, you don't,' she whispered. 'You said it yourself. I'm the one who got away and you can't live with that.'

'It's not that simple,' Zahir growled, protest etched in every hard,   angular line of his powerful bone structure while he clashed with her   beautiful blue eyes, knowing that no other eyes had ever been so very   deep a blue that they reminded him of the sky on a hot summer day.

'Don't make it complicated,' she urged, her breath hitching as he angled   down his tousled dark head and her lips tingled like a silent   invitation.

'It was always complicated with us,' Zahir argued, stubborn to the last.

And Saffy rose up on her toes and angled her lips up to his, eager to   stop him talking and treading all over her memories with hob-nailed   boots in that obstinate, all-male, infuriating way of his. He kissed her   and her heart seemed to jolt to a sudden halt inside her chest. He   stole her breath with a kiss of such unashamed passion that she felt   light-headed and her legs went weak.

He carried her back to bed, yes, carried, her bemused mind savoured, for   very few men were physically big enough or strong enough to lift   five-foot-ten-inch Saffy off her feet as if she were of tiny and   delicate proportions. He captured her mouth again with intoxicating   urgency, his tongue delving deep between her lips, and her body sang.   Even while doubts and fears about how she would react to what came next   were circulating madly in the back of her head, she could feel the   supersensitive awareness of desire infiltrating her, sending prickling   spasms of warmth across her brea**sts and a kick of heat down into her   pelvis.

'I assumed I would have to seduce you,' Zahir admitted, staring down at   her with those amazing eyes and the kind of honesty she had once loved   him for.

'It's no big deal,' Saffy countered a tad shakily, wondering if he would   assume that she was a slut, always up for the possibility of a little   fling with an attractive man when she was on her travels. But what did   it matter what he thought? she demanded angrily of herself, because  what  she was planning to do was entirely for her own benefit and  nothing  whatsoever to do with him. That he would also be getting what  he  apparently wanted was only an accidental by-product of her decision.  She  was the one in control, full control. This was sex, nothing to do  with  the softer emotions, because she simply refused to let him screw  up her  emotions again.

Taken aback by that statement, Zahir frowned again, ebony brows drawing together.

'Call a spade a spade, Zahir!' Saffy snapped, out of all patience. 'Isn't this why you brought me here?'

'You've changed,' he condemned.

'Of course I have...I grew up, realised fairies and unicorns didn't exist, got divorced,' Saffy recited tightly.

And then he kissed her again, his mouth crashing down on hers with angry   fervour and, even though she recognised the anger, she was exhilarated   by his passion. He tugged her up into a sitting position and before  she  even knew what he was about he had swept the kaftan off over her  head,  leaving her naked but for the cloaking veil of her long blonde  hair.

'You're still the most beautiful woman I've ever known,' Zahir declared.

And she still wasn't comfortable being naked around him, Saffy   registered in dismay, fearful that the embarrassment enveloping her was   only a small taster of the discomfiture she had felt in the past with   her own body. Casual nudity was the norm behind the scenes at catwalk   shows where fast changes of clothing were a necessity and that didn't   bother her, but being naked in front of Zahir bothered her on a much   more visceral level. As he studied her a veil of hot red colour   blossomed on her skin in a flush that ran from her brea**sts to her   brow.

Long brown fingers lifted to the rounded perfection of pale brea**sts   topped with distended pink nipp**les and he stroked the tightly beaded   tips before he pushed her gently back against the pillows and bent his   tousled dark head to put his sensual mouth there instead, suckling at   the straining peaks until she gasped for breathe, shaken by even what   she recognised to be a relatively minor intimacy. Even so, it was an   intimacy that sent arrows of fire hurtling to her womb and her thighs   trembled at the thought of what was yet to come. Let it be all right   this time, she pleaded inside her head, snapping her eyes shut, seeking   to blank out her thoughts lest the old panic take hold of her again.