The Sheikh's Prize(12)

       
           



       

Zahir couldn't quite believe that this was Sapphire, lying there,   admittedly passive but not freaking out. It felt just a little like all   his fantasies rolling up in one go and that disturbed him. He didn't   know what he had expected and could only recognise how much she had   changed while wondering with dark, forbidding fury which of her men had   succeeded where he had so comprehensively failed. That mystery burned   through his bloodstream like acid and he had to fight it, suppress it   and exert iron control not to ask questions and demand answers. On the   other hand, what if she was acting like a human sacrifice because that   was how she felt?

He tasted her lush mouth with driving hunger, tried and failed to squash   that inner question and lifted his head again. 'If you don't want  this,  tell me,' he told her.

Consternation filled Saffy to overflowing as she registered that   evidently she wasn't putting on a very good impression of being a   relaxed and experienced lover. She sat up with a start, her pale hands   fixing to his smooth bronzed shoulders, blue eyes wide. 'I want this...I   want you.'

'Then touch me,' he growled low in his throat, his hunger unconcealed in his star-bright gaze.

And on the edge of fright and uncertainty, she did, smoothing her hands   over his warm golden skin, feeling the rope of muscles beneath his  hard,  flat stomach and his sudden driving tension as she found him with  her  fingers. Hard and silky and so velvety smooth and large. She  gulped at  the very thought of what he was going to do with it...if she  managed-and  she had to manage, had to be normal for the sake of her own  sanity and  his.

Zahir groaned with unashamed sensuality, lying back against the pillows,   his black hair in stark contrast to the pale linen, eyes half closed   and screened by his outrageous black lashes. 'Not too much,' he warned   her unevenly. 'I'm too aroused.'

So, she stayed with the touching, her hand trembling slightly while she   felt her body progressively warm in a great surging wash of desire. She   needed him to touch her, needed that so badly that it hurt yet she was   terrified that she might lose her nerve, her control. He hooked a long   thigh over hers, nudging her legs apart, and she stopped breathing as  if  she were a candle being snuffed out, for this was the acid test, the   one she couldn't really call and couldn't afford to fail. Long brown   fingers smoothed down her thigh as if he knew on some level that, even   hungry as she was, she was scared as no adult woman should be scared.   After all, it wasn't as though he had ever physically hurt her. She   regulated her breathing, cleared her head of such dangerous thoughts,   for thinking that way was surely like inviting her phobia back in. He   skated through the crisp golden curls on her mound and she bit her   tongue so badly she tasted blood in her mouth and she was trembling, all   hyped up with expectation, wanting and not wanting in that moment to   test her boundaries. New boundaries, she reminded herself resolutely.

He kissed her again and she squirmed against him, insanely conscious of   that exploring hand touching where she had never been touched in adult   memory, rubbing over that wildly sensitive little button that she  hadn't  even known existed for more years than she cared to recall.  Sensation  sparked through her, startling in its very intensity, sending  another  cloud of heat through her quivering length. Before she even  guessed what  he was about to do, he eased a finger into her and she  didn't go off  into a panic attack, didn't jackknife back from him as  though he had  assaulted her. It felt strange to be touched like that,  by someone else  rather than by herself, but it didn't hurt and it  didn't make her feel  sick or frightened, and hope rose in a heady gush  inside her that she  was going to be all right, after all, and the scene  was not set for  another disaster.

With so much frantic reflection taking place inside her head, it took a   minute at least for Saffy to register that she liked what he was doing,   the sweet rise of sensation fanning through her lower body as his  mouth  toyed with an achingly sensitive nipple and his fingers delved  into the  tender wetness of her body. She hadn't expected to like it,  she  acknowledged, had simply regarded it as something she had to get   through, the mountain of her virginal state at nearly twenty-four years   of age a complex challenge that had to be conquered solely for her own   benefit.

'I want you so much but you're very tight, aziz.' Zahir groaned, snaking   down her body, and she didn't know what he was doing and almost yelped   in dismay when he put his carnal mouth between her parted thighs   instead, caressing the sensitive pink folds of her femininity.                       
       
           



       

Saffy lay there like a stone dropped to the bottom of a very deep well,   so far out of her depth she felt lost, indeed shattered by the  gathering  waves of increasingly powerful sensation that he was wringing  from her  untried body. The wave gathered her up and kept on pushing  her higher  until she was pulsing and throbbing and aching with an  excitement that  she had never known existed. Her hips were rising, her  back was arching  and then suddenly, with very little warning, the  instant she had most  feared was there: his bold shaft was nudging  against her for penetration  and she tensed, struggling not to freeze,  but every skin cell in her  body was gripped by nerves that her body  might bottle out and let her  down at the worst and most unforgivable  moment.

And then she experienced the delicious friction of his entry eased by   the slick dampness of her arousal. He was pushing, stretching her inner   sheath with the hard, demanding pressure of his entrance and she was   briefly amazed at what he felt like inside her. Instinctively she lifted   her pelvis and he plunged forward and then it was done, a sharp   stinging pain flashing through her so that her eyes widened and she   gritted her teeth together, contriving to rein back a cry of pain. She   pushed her face up into his shoulder to further conceal her reaction. He   had no entitlement to the privilege of learning that, against all  odds,  he had become her first lover, and there was not much she would  not  have withstood to keep him from that knowledge. On that ungenerous   thought a spasm of intense pleasure took her quite by surprise as her   inner muscles tightened their grip on his intrusion.

With a low growl of satisfaction that vibrated his chest against her   soft breasts, he began to move, pulling out, pushing back in. The   strange seductive sensations built and she gasped, feeling her control   sliding against the onslaught of a wild excitement she hadn't   anticipated. Excitement roared through her, her heart hammering while   she panted for breath. He lifted her legs over his shoulders, rising up   over her like a conquering god, his lean darkly handsome face flushed   and taut with driving desire and uninhibited satisfaction while he drove   into her hard and fast with a pagan rhythm that put her every sense on   overload.

Nothing had ever felt so good or so necessary to her. Had he stopped she   would have screamed. He touched the tiny button below her mound again,   rubbing fast, and the golden light already expanding inside her burst   through into brilliance and exploded in a series of violent aftershocks   throughout her body. The waves of hot, sweet pleasure racked her with   compulsive shivers of disbelief and a certain amount of awe, for she  had  never dreamt that he might make her feel so much. He shuddered over  her  with a moan of intense masculine satisfaction and then fell still,   letting her legs fall back down on the bed and rolling off her to pull   her close.

'That was absolutely amazing,' Zahir breathed, his diction ragged, his   accent pronounced, his chest still heaving against her as he pulled her   close, their bodies damp with perspiration and sliding against each   other.

But Saffy's sense of perfect peace lasted for only a few seconds. What   struck her as most amazing at that moment was how much other women must   have taught him, how much practice he must have had in other beds to   have gained the sexual expertise he had just demonstrated. That fast she   wanted to thump him hard and kick him out of bed and her hands knotted   into fists of restraint below the sheet. Careful, she told herself in   fierce and bemused rebuke, for she didn't recognise the feelings   bombarding her. He was her ex-husband, not her lover, and she wasn't   jealous or possessive where he was concerned. He meant absolutely   nothing to her and she didn't understand why he was still holding her   and pressing a kiss to her delicate jaw bone as though they had shared   something special. After all, she had just used him to have sex for the   first time and he had been good...well, amazing, to borrow his word.  But  that was an acknowledgement that only made her fists knot tighter  and  her temper flare even higher, for nothing could have been more  different  from the tentative and inexperienced young husband she  remembered than  the uninhibited demonstration of raunchy sex he had  just treated her to.