growing impatience as he led her over to the fire and pulled her close—close enough for her to feel every sinew of his powerful body. Pulling the pin from her hair, he watched as it tumbled around her shoulders.
‘Your hair is like fire,’ he murmured, letting silky strands slide through his fingers. ‘You should wear it down all the time.’
She opened her mouth to tell him it wouldn’t be practical but her words were forgotten as he removed her sweater, his eyebrows shooting upwards as a lacy bra of midnight-blue silk was revealed.
Tiptoeing his fingertip along the delicate edging of lace, he pushed her down onto the silken rug. ‘What’s this?’ he murmured.
‘It’s...a bra. What does it look like?’
‘Nothing like the one you had on last night, that’s for sure.’ Slowly, he expelled the air from his lungs as he flattened his palm over one peaking mound. ‘Did you wear it specially for me?’
Had she? She’d never worn it before. A friend had given her birthday vouchers to an upmarket lingerie shop that didn’t know the meaning of words like sensible or refund. The navy set had been the most practical thing on offer, but up until today it had seemed too delicate for everyday use. There had never been a reason to wear it before, yet something had made her put it on this morning...
‘Maybe subconsciously,’ she admitted.
He gave a glimmer of a smile. ‘A woman only wears underwear like this if she wants a man to take it off. Is that what you want me to do, Livvy? Is that what you’ve been longing for me to do ever since you got up this morning? To run my fingers over your beautiful pale skin and get you naked?’
She closed her eyes as his hand strayed to the bra’s front clasp. She wanted to tell him that his assumption was arrogant, but how could she protest when his fingers had loosened the clip and her breasts were spilling free? The cool air hit her skin and suddenly he was bending his lips to a nipple and he was sucking on it. Nipping at it and grazing his teeth all over the sensitised nub. She gave a little squeal of pleasure and he lifted his head.
‘You are very vocal in your approval, habibi,’ he observed softly. ‘Does that feel good?’
Her tongue snaked out to moisten her parched lips. ‘So good,’ she breathed.
‘And this? Does this feel good?’
Against the rug, Livvy writhed with pleasure as his hand moved between her legs, because her body suddenly felt as if was out of her control and words seemed to be beyond her. Did he really need her to tell him that she liked the way he was sucking her nipple? The way his finger was rubbing up and down the stiff seam of her jeans at the very point where she was acutely sensitive. The finger stilled.
‘Does it?’ he questioned silkily.
Did he want praise? Maybe she was expected to touch him. To reach out to where his crotch was straining so formidably against his trousers and to trickle her fingers over his hardness. Livvy’s heart began to pound. Her experience of foreplay was limited, because Rupert had known she was a virgin and had wanted to wait until they were married and had said he didn’t trust himself to touch her. It wasn’t until afterwards that she had discovered the reason why...
Her sex life was something she regarded as an arid area of failure, but instinct told her that Saladin Al Mektala could be the person to change all that. She suspected that what the sheikh didn’t know about pleasure wouldn’t be worth knowing. Yet surely it would be deceitful to let him make love to her without telling him her secret.
‘Does it?’ he repeated silkily, and Livvy circled her hips with frustration and guilt.
What if she told him and he rejected her—if he left her shivering and aching with frustration in front of the fire?
She had to tell him.
She stared straight into his black eyes. ‘It feels incredible,’ she said. ‘But maybe you ought to know that I’m—’
‘Driving me crazy with desire, that’s for sure,’ he said, moving over her to silence her words with another breathtaking kiss.
And Livvy let him. That was the shame of it. She just let him. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she kissed him back with a slow, exploratory hunger as he began to slide down the zipper of her jeans.
‘Mmm...’ was his only comment as he tugged the denim away to reveal the lacy blue knickers that matched her bra, before concentrating his attention on kissing her body. He whispered his lips over her breasts—his breath warm against her skin—before travelling down to her belly. She held her breath as his head travelled downwards until his dark head was positioned between her thighs. For a moment she tensed, but when he licked almost lazily at the moist panel of her panties a spasm of pleasure so intense shot through her that for a moment Livvy was scared she might faint.
Was it the half-broken cry she made in response to that intimacy that made him suddenly stop? Her nails dug hard into his shoulders in protest but he didn’t appear to care.
‘Don’t—’ she gasped.
Had he read her mind?
‘Don’t stop?’ He looked up from his decadent position between her thighs, and smiled. ‘I have no intention of stopping, but I am hungry to feel my skin next to yours, habibi. And while you are almost naked—I am not.’
She didn’t want him to move—terrified that any movement would shatter this precarious magic—but she had little choice except to lie there and watch as he stood up and began to strip off. His shirt was silk and so were his boxers and they floated to the ground like fine gossamer. Livvy’s mouth dried as his body was revealed. His dark skin glowed like richest gold and the deep shadows cast by the flickering firelight emphasised his physical perfection. A hard and rippling torso, with powerful arms and muscular legs that seemed to go on forever. Narrow hips and rock-hard buttocks. Even the powerful evidence of his arousal wasn’t as daunting as it should have been because by now Livvy was alive with a need that had been buried inside her for so long that she felt she would die if he didn’t make love to her.
Her heart was pounding as she stared at his erection, but when he reached down into the pocket of his trousers and drew out a condom, she felt a flutter of misgiving. Did he always carry protection with him? Did he take it for granted that there would always be a willing woman lying waiting for him like this? She thought about the women who sometimes used to accompany him to the stables—those models and actresses with their suede boots and miniskirts and real fur. For a moment she wondered how she could possibly compare to those glamorous creatures, until she forced the dark clouds of insecurity from her mind. Maybe there was always an accommodating female wherever he went—like a sailor having a woman in every port—but this wasn’t about convention, was it? She’d done all that stuff and look where it had got her.
She thought about the heartache of the past and the struggle her life had been for so long. She stared over Saladin’s shoulder as he slithered her panties off and moved over her. Outside the world was white and still and silent, apart from the distant ticking of a clock. Time was passing, but they were completely alone and this moment would never come again. And she had to seize it—to grab it—and to hell with the consequences.
Yet once before she had blinded herself to the truth. She’d buried her head in the sand and allowed herself to be treated like a fool by the man she’d been engaged
