The Sheikh's Prize(9)

Zahir watched Sapphire curl up on the sofa opposite, looking all fresh   faced and scrubbed clean just the way he remembered her, the way he   liked her best, for with her stunning looks she required few   enhancements. Her restive fingers toyed with a strand of golden blonde   hair and instantly he recalled the silken feel of it sliding against his   skin and got a hard-on. He crushed the recollection before it could   stray into even more erotic areas and reminded himself that she was a   beautiful shell with a cash-register heart. He was not at all surprised   that she had dropped the subject of the five million pounds without any   acknowledgement or adequate explanation. It might be pocket change to a   member of his family, but it still mattered that she had taken so much   and given nothing in return.                       
       
           



       

Perched with a plate on her lap, Saffy helped herself to portions of   different dishes and dug in because she was starving. While she ate she   studied Zahir from below her lashes, marvelling at the superb bone   structure that gave his features such strength and masculinity. From   every angle he was glorious. Sitting there, his attention on his plate   and quite unaware of her scrutiny, he mesmerised her. Her brea**sts   stirred beneath the silk, the tips growing tender and swollen. She   dredged her eyes back to her food, her mouth dry, her heart hammering,   images from the past bombarding her. Although consummating their   marriage had proved impossible, she had learned how to give him pleasure   in other ways. At that thought she shifted uneasily on her seat, moist   heat pooling at the heart of her. He had never understood what was  wrong  with her. How could he have? But he had at least tried, assuring  her of  his patience while he did everything possible to set her fears  to rest.  Unfortunately her fears had been in her subconscious and not  something  she could control, fears from a hidden source that she had  repressed  many years before while she was still a child. All of a  sudden she  simply could not comprehend why he would bring her back into  his life  after a marriage that had turned into a hell on earth for  both of them.

'Why on earth did you want to see me again?' Saffy demanded abruptly.

He lifted his dark head, stunning golden eyes locking to her. 'Few men   forget their first love and you're the one who got away...'

Regret stabbed through her and she flinched, for they had begun with   love in spite of the fact that during the year of marital strife that   followed they had lost it again. The plates were cleared away and coffee   and cakes served. She ate to fill the emptiness inside her, the hollow   that never seemed to fill. She couldn't look at him, didn't dare look  at  him again, knew the temptation was a weakness to be suppressed at  every  opportunity.

'I wanted to see you again before I remarried,' Zahir heard himself   admit in brusque addition, knowing that he would never have trusted   himself to see her after that event had taken place.

Her golden head flew up, heavenly blue eyes wide with shock. 'You're   getting married again?' she gasped, shattered at the idea although she   couldn't have explained why.

Zahir raised a winged ebony brow. 'As yet there is no particular bride   in view but there is considerable pressure on me to take a wife.   Inevitably I will have to satisfy my people's expectations.'

Some of the tension eased from her taut shoulders and she lowered her   head. Of course he would be expected to marry: it went with the   territory of kingship. What did it matter to her? Why should the concept   bother her? It was not as though she still thought of him as her   husband. In fact she was being ridiculously oversensitive and it was   time to grow up and don her big-girl pants. Exhaustion engulfed her in a   debilitating wave then, reminding her that she had been up since five   that morning. A yawn crept up on her and she stood up smothering a  yawn.  'I'm incredibly tired...'

Zahir sprang upright and rested his hands on her shoulders to prevent   her from moving away. Her mouth ran dry, her heart skipping a beat as   she looked up at him, up over that full sensual mouth to the   black-lashed golden eyes that wreaked havoc with her insides.

'Tonight you're tired.' His deep dark voice reverberated through her   very bones, the husky nuances toying with her nerves like a secret   caress. 'I won't touch you...'

Saffy shivered at just the thought of being in bed with him again. The   image caught at her and not with the sense of threat that she believed   she should have felt. A lazy brown forefinger grazed the length of her   delicate collarbone, smoothed a passage up her slender throat while she   struggled not to fall in a limp heap at his feet because her knees were   threatening to buckle. She couldn't breathe, couldn't think while he   touched her, and then he brought his mouth crashing down on hers with a   hungry passion that should have frightened her out of her wits, but   which instead stormed through her and set her on fire. There was a   primitive sense of tightening and dampness between her legs, a sudden   painful pulse throbbing through the peaks of her breasts. With every   plunge of his tongue she trembled, lost in the hot, electrifying   darkness of overwhelming physical sensation.

'Bed,' Zahir muttered raggedly, stooping to haul her up bodily in his   strong arms, thrusting back a door with an impatient shoulder. 'I want   you wide awake tomorrow.'

He laid her down on a big modern divan dressed in pristine white linen.   When he had said, 'bed' in that deep thrilling tone her imagination had   exploded into the stratosphere and when he released her again and  moved  back to the door, she frowned at him poised there in the dim  light,  black hair tousled by her fingers, the taste of him still on her  lips,  the sheer call of him to her senses overpowering. She rolled  over and  buried her hot face in a pillow. No, she didn't have a stupid  bone in  her body. She was looking for a man-had been for years-but he  was not  the one, although inconveniently he still seemed to be the only  one she  actually wanted, the only one she could even imagine becoming  intimate  with.                       
       
           



       

Angry tears of frustration stung her eyes. After the divorce had   destroyed her faith in true love and happy endings, she had licked her   wounds for years, terrified of getting into another serious relationship   and meeting up with the same problems. But after therapy, she had   longed to lose her virginity and have sex with a lover to prove that she   was fully cured and had come to terms with her past. She had simply   wanted to be normal as other women took for granted...how could that be   wrong? Or selfish? Or immoral? And she did not need to compound her   mistakes by being attracted to a man who had not only hurt her very   badly once but who also had plans to marry another woman.

Zahir went for a shower-a very cold one. A great well of burning hunger   was consuming him but it was cooled by disturbing memories of Sapphire   shaking with unmistakeable fear when he had tried to make love to her   during their marriage. Even with all the sexual experience he had   painstakingly acquired since then, he was wary and seriously distrustful   of the physically encouraging vibes she was putting out. He had been   wrong before; why shouldn't he be wrong again? And while a faint sense   of wonderment was stirring that he should actually have her in a bed   again within reach, no sense of regret yet assailed him. In fact a   merciless sense of all-male satisfaction was still driving him hard.

Saffy froze when she heard the door open again and rolled over,   ridiculously conscious that her eyelids and her nose were probably pink   from the overload of emotion and events that had brought overwrought   tears to her eyes. She sat up in honest surprise to stare at Zahir,   poised one step inside the door clad in only a pair of black silk   boxers. Her throat closed over and she stopped breathing.

'There is only one bed...'

'It's not a problem,' Saffy responded as carelessly as she could   contrive, rolling off the bed and yanking the bedspread off the mattress   in almost the same movement. 'I'll sleep on the floor, although you   could have taken one of the sofas.'