Surrender to the Sheikh Page 12

  ‘Next time,’ he promised. ‘This has been too long in the waiting. Now we will satisfy our hunger—later we will attend to the feast.’

  She felt the caress of his fingers and shuddered. ‘This is feast enough, Khalim.’ She sighed. ‘Feast enough.’

  ‘Oh, Rose.’ He smiled as her body responded instinctively to his touch. ‘Sweet, beautiful Rose.’

  But he could wait no longer, his desire for her too intense to bear. In that moment just before the communion of their bodies, he felt as though he were about to embrace life in a way in which he had never embraced it before.

  He parted her thighs with eager hands and she felt the unbelievable power of him moving against her. Surely it was too soon? Surely she was not ready? But she dissolved into honeyed heat at just that first touch, and her thighs parted wider of their own accord and as he took one long, sweet thrust he made a low moan.

  He filled her in every way he could—physically, mentally, emotionally. Joined in a fundamental flow, while the hot desert sun beat down on them, he was no longer Prince Khalim and she no longer Rose Thomas, the woman of his employ. Now he was just a man, and she was just a woman, locked in the most basic rhythm of all.

  She couldn’t remember the kisses, or the murmured things he whispered in her ear—some in English and some in a far more thrilling foreign tongue which she recognised as Marabanese. She only knew that the stars were beckoning her, that her world was about to explode.

  And his.

  He lifted his head to stare down at her, as helpless at that moment as he had ever been, sensing her release in conjunction with his own.

  And then it happened, on and on and on, until their cries were replaced by the soft sound of the desert wind, their stricken breathing calming at last and their sweat-sheened bodies glued together.

  Rose felt her eyelids drifting downwards, but he shook her awake.

  ‘No, Rose,’ he murmured. ‘You must not sleep.’

  ‘Must not?’ she questioned automatically, even as a lazy yawn escaped her.

  He smiled, but it was a rueful smile. Even in the midst of their mutual pleasure—still she challenged him! He kissed his finger and placed it over her lips to silence her. ‘They will come for us very soon,’ he said.

  That had her sitting up immediately, and she saw his eyes darken at the unfettered movement of her bare breasts. ‘Who will? When?’

  ‘My bodyguards.’ He shrugged, leaning over to rescue her discarded panties and bra.

  She shook the stray grains of sand out of her underwear and turned to glare at him. ‘And they’ll know where to find you, of course?’ she demanded crossly. ‘This is the usual location for your little trysts, is it?’

  ‘Rose, Rose, Rose,’ he murmured. ‘Fiery, beautiful, argumentative Rose! I have never brought a woman here before—’

  No, of course he hadn’t. No other Western woman had ever accompanied him to Maraban. And no Maraban woman would have cavorted with such abandon on the ground with the heir to the throne.

  ‘How will they find us, then?’ She stood up and pulled her panties all the way over her slender thighs, enjoying the brief look of frustration which clouded his eyes. ‘Are they clairvoyant, or something?’

  He zipped up his jodhpurs with difficulty. Impossible that she should have aroused him again so quickly, but somehow…somehow, she had. ‘They will follow the trail of the horse,’ he said shortly, and roughly pulled his shirt on.

  Rose was struggling into her clothes. ‘What must I look like?’ she moaned. ‘Won’t they take one look at us and know exactly what we’ve been doing?’

  He gave a rueful shrug. Rose cherished honesty, didn’t she? Then honesty she would have. ‘They would take one look at you and think that I was the worst kind of fool if we had not been doing what they suppose.’

  ‘Oh!’ Her cheeks were burning. ‘And what will they think of me?’

  He gave her a cool, steady look. ‘Do you seek the approval of my bodyguards?’ he questioned. ‘Or my approval?’

  ‘Neither!’ she snapped. ‘I’m thinking about my professional reputation!’

  ‘But your job is done. You are here now as my guest. My lover.’ He lingered on the last word with a sense of treasures to come, and then looked at her with a question glittering from his black eyes. Would she voice her objection to the term of possession without any promise of commitment?

  But Rose simply stared back at him without regrets. She had given herself to him freely. Completely. In a way she had given herself to no man before. She had never known that love-making could be that intense, that profound, that…fundamental. She shivered with the memory.

  And he had not told her lies. On the contrary, he had been totally open with her. Had told her before he’d made love to her that there could be no long-term future—and she had accepted that and given herself to him as he had given himself to her.

  So why not enjoy these exotic fruits of temptation for as long as they were available? To treasure and store up memories which would see her into old age. For she knew without a doubt that no man could ever follow Khalim.

  ‘Will you be my lover, Rose?’ he asked softly.

  She opened her mouth to speak just as she heard the dry beat of hooves on the sand, and looked up into the distance to see four horsemen on the horizon, galloping fast towards them.

  And then she smiled, deliberately enticing him with a slanted look of remembered pleasure. ‘Yes, Khalim. I will be your lover.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ROSE felt as though she had been taken prisoner on the ride back to the Palace.

  There had been a short, sharp exchange between Khalim and a man she had never seen before, a formidable-looking man in rich robes, whose bearing immediately distinguished him as someone of substance. Rose couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying, but she guessed that the man’s quietly restrained anger was an admonishment to Khalim for breaching security.

  Khalim lifted her gently onto his mount and she held on tightly to his waist, longing to turn her head and to steal a glance at him, but she resisted, relieved when the golden gleam of the palace came into view.

  Khalim dismounted and lifted her down, and in one single, suspended moment their eyes met and in his she read, what…?

  Longing. Yes. And surely a brief dazzle of tenderness. But something else, too—something which stirred a wistful fear deep inside her—for wasn’t that regret there? A regret which told as clearly as words would have done that she must accept the limitations of their affair. And never hope.

  ‘I’ll see you to your rooms,’ he said in a low voice.

  The man in the rich robes said something and Khalim turned his head and made a snapped reply.

  ‘Come!’ he said to Rose, and led her through the courtyard and into the palace.

  ‘Who was that man?’ she asked him once they were out of earshot.

  ‘My cousin, Raschid,’ he said.

  ‘He’s angry with you?’

  Khalim allowed himself a small smile. ‘Furious,’ he agreed. But making love to Rose had been worth any amount of fury.

  ‘And will you get into trouble?’

  He raised his dark brows. ‘I think not. I am the prince, after all,’ he said autocratically.

  He spoke with an arrogance that no other man could have got away with, thought Rose, guiltily acknowledging the thrill of pleasure that his mastery gave her. ‘Of course you are,’ she murmured.

  They reached her rooms and he paused, reaching his hand out to cup her chin, wanting to kiss her above all else, and to lay her body bare once more. He bit down the dull ache of frustration.

  ‘I will have food sent to you here for I cannot be with you this evening,’ he told her shortly.

  She opened her eyes very wide as her heart pounded with disappointment, but she was damned if she would let it show. ‘That’s a pity,’ she said calmly.

  A pity? Had he thought she would beg him to stay? Or interrogate him about where he wa
s going? And didn’t her lack of jealousy make him want her all the more? ‘But I will come to you later, sweet Rose.’

  ‘I might be asleep.’

  ‘Then I will wake you,’ he said on a silken promise, and he planted a sweet, hard kiss on her mouth before sweeping away.

  Rose slowly got out of her rumpled clothes and took a long, scented bath before slipping into a pair of pure white trousers made out of finest cotton-lawn, and a little shirt of the same material.

  Fatima appeared with a tempting array of food—a type of tomato stew with baby okra and lamb accompanied by a jewel-coloured rice dish. And a platter of pastries, glistening with syrup and stuffed with nuts and raisins. There was pomegranate juice and mint tea to drink.

  But once she had gone, Rose only picked uninterestedly at the dishes on offer.

  How could she concentrate on something as mundane as food, when her mind and her senses were filled with the memory of Khalim and his exquisite love-making? He had been everything. Tender and yet fierce. His kisses passionate and cajoling. He had moaned aloud in her arms, had not held back on showing her his pleasure—and that in itself felt like a small victory.

  With disturbing clarity she recalled the vision of their limbs entwined, his so dark and so muscular, contrasting almost indecently with her own milky-white skin, and then she sighed, wondering if she would ever be able to concentrate on anything other than her Marabanesh prince ever again.

  More as diversion therapy than anything else, she picked up Robert Cantle’s book on Maraban, and read the chapter on Khalim’s forefathers, and the establishment of the mountain kingdom.

  There were richly painted portraits of his recent ancestors—and one in particular which had her scanning the page avidly. Malik the Magnificent, she read. It was him! Khalim’s great-great-grandfather whose thwarted love had borne such a striking and uncanny resemblance to Rose herself.

  She studied a face almost as proudly handsome as Khalim’s with its hard, sculpted contours and those glittering black eyes and luscious lips, and she sighed again. Don’t start getting all hopeful, Rose, she told herself fiercely. You could not have had it spelt out more explicitly that love affairs like this have no future.

  At eleven, she put the book down, telling herself that he would not come tonight. She began pulling the brush through her hair, telling herself not to be angry, but she was angry. Was this a taste of things to come? How he thought he could treat his women? Keep them hanging around at his convenience?

  She flung the hairbrush down just as the door slowly opened, and there stood Khalim in robes of deepest sapphire, his eyes narrowing with undisguised hunger as he caught the unmistakable outline of her body through the thin material of her clothes.

  Rose bristled. ‘I didn’t hear you knock.’

  ‘That’s because I didn’t,’ he said, shutting the door softly behind him.

  ‘Why not?’

  He stilled as he heard the reprimand in her voice, and he turned to meet the blue blaze of accusation which spat from her eyes. ‘Because we are now lovers, Rose. This afternoon you gave yourself to me with an openness which suggested that we have no need for barriers between us. Do I need to knock on your door?’

  The voice of reason in her head told her to back off, but she had missed him, wanted him, and felt hurt by his unexplained disappearance, and so she ignored it. ‘Damned right you need to knock!’ she retorted. ‘I may be mature enough to realise that this is a very grown-up affair with no promises or expectations on either side—but that does not mean that I’m prepared to be trampled on like some sort of chattel!’

  If he hadn’t wanted her so much, he would have walked out there and then. No woman had ever spoken to him with such a flagrant lack of respect—especially when he had had her gasping and sighing in his arms on the desert grass!

  ‘I do not treat you as a chattel,’ he answered coldly.

  ‘No? You just make love to me and then waltz off for the evening without bothering to tell me where you are going?’

  He hid a smile. Ah! So she was jealous, was she? Good! ‘But you just told me that neither of us have any expectations, Rose,’ he demurred.

  ‘That’s not an expectation!’ she declared wildly, wondering where all her powers of logic had flown to. ‘That’s just simple courtesy. Where were you?’

  He had been foolish to imagine that he would not have to tell her. He had not wanted to hurt her, but now he saw that by not telling her he must have hurt her more. He was not used to analysing what effect his actions would have on a woman’s feelings. Usually, he did what the hell he liked, and was allowed to get away with it. With anything.

  ‘I had dinner with my mother and my father,’ he said softly. ‘My father is too frail to accommodate—’ he very nearly said ‘strangers’ but bit the word back in time ‘—guests,’ he finished heavily.

  Rose stared at him. ‘And that’s all? Why didn’t you tell me that?’

  She would never be able to find out, and yet Khalim realised that if he was anything less than truthful with his fiery Rose, he would lose her.

  ‘No, that isn’t all.’ He sighed. ‘There was a young woman there, too.’

  Rose froze as some new and unknown danger shimmered into her subconscious. ‘I’m not sure that I understand what you mean.’

  ‘My father is very frail—’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Soon he will die,’ he said starkly, and there was a long, heavy pause. ‘And I must take a bride when the year of mourning is complete.’

  It was the most pain she had ever felt and she felt like smashing something—anything—but somehow, miraculously, she managed to keep her face composed. Why crumple when this was what her instincts and her common sense should have told her? ‘And this—young woman—was, I presume, one of the suitable candidates being lined up for you?’

  How preposterous it sounded coming from his beautiful, English Rose! ‘Yes.’ He thought back to the girl being brought in by her mother, her slim, young body swathed in the finest embroidered silks. Only her eyes had been visible, and very beautiful eyes they had been, too—huge, and doe-like, the deep rich colour of chocolate.

  But she had been tongue-tied at first, and then so docile and submissive—so adoring of her prince and heir. He had seen his mother’s approving nod, and the sharp look of pleasure on the face of the girl’s mother, and had tried to imagine being married to a woman such as this.

  She would bear him fine Marabanesh sons and in time she would grow fat and he would grow bored. Had his mother and his father noticed his distraction with the idea? he wondered now.

  ‘So is she going to be the lucky one?’ asked Rose, only just preventing herself from snarling.

  ‘No, she is not.’

  ‘Oh? Did she discover how you’d spent your afternoon, then? Lying with me under the hot desert sun? Making love to me?’

  The taunt triggered memory, fused and exploded in a fury of anger and almost unbearable passion. He pulled her roughly into his arms, though he saw from the instant dilation of her eyes that she was not objecting. Not objecting one bit, he thought as he drove his mouth down hard on hers.

  And only when he had slaked a little of his hunger for her did he lift his head and gaze down into her dazed face as her eyelids fluttered open to stare up at him.

  Her lips opened to frame his name, but no word came.

  ‘Rose,’ he said gently, his breath warm and soft on her face. ‘How can we be lovers if you make such unreasonable demands on me?’

  Her fingers bit into the hard strength of his shoulders beneath the sapphire silk. ‘Most people wouldn’t call them unreasonable!’

  ‘Most people, most people,’ he chided. ‘Rose, Rose, my sweetest Rose—I am not most people. We both know that. I told you that right from the very beginning.’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘No, not right from the beginning, Khalim. You told me just before you made love to me, when making love had become as inevitable as night fol
lowing day. You did everything in your not inconsiderable power to get me to arrive at that point. You played me as you would—’ memory flashed into her subconscious as she recalled something he had told her about his schooldays, his love of fishing ‘—a fish! That’s what you did! Yes, you did, and don’t deny it! Teased me and tempted me, and—’

  He cut short her protests with a forefinger placed softly on her lips, feeling them tremble beneath his touch, and he felt a surge of something far greater than mere desire. How well she knew him! How was this possible in so short a time?

  ‘Yes, I plead guilty to your accusations,’ he admitted slowly. ‘Every one of them.’

  Her anger was mollified by the triumph of knowing that she understood him a little too much for his liking, and her fingertips curled spontaneously into the nape of his neck, like a kitten’s claws.

  He felt her capitulation in the instinctive sway of her body, her hips folding into his, where fire and desire were building and burning, and he groaned.

  ‘So can we not just enjoy this…now, my sweet, sweet Rose? To take what many pleasures are ours?’

  It was, she recognised, an expression of need as much as lust, and the closest that Khalim would ever come to…not begging, exactly, because a man like Khalim would never, ever beg. But beseeching, certainly. She stared up into his face, and all her objections withered into dust.

  ‘Yes, my darling,’ she said shakily. ‘We can.’

  His hand was unsteady as he traced a slow line with his finger, from neck to navel, the filmy white material of her blouse moulding itself to the slim curves beneath.

  ‘I want to see you naked,’ he said huskily. ‘Properly naked against satin, not sand.’ He drew the cotton top over her head, his breath freezing with pleasure as he saw the unfettered lushness of her breasts and the flaxen hair which streamed down over them. He bent his head to kiss one puckered, rosy nipple.

  ‘Oh!’ she sighed, squirming her hips in helpless pleasure. ‘You are a wicked, wicked man, Khalim.’