‘What is it, my fiery little beauty?’
‘Please …’ Her word trailed away as another wave of sensation swept over her.
He smiled, enjoying his habitual feel of dominance once more. She wasn’t so defiant now, was she? ‘I can’t hear you,’ he whispered.
Ella knew what he was doing. He was manipulating her. Playing with her as a cat would a mouse just before it moved in for the kill. She knew how she should respond—she should tell him to go to hell—but she was too desperate to hold back. Too eager to experience something which had always remained elusively just out of reach. ‘Please, Hassan,’ she whimpered. ‘Oh, please.’
That breathless little plea was his undoing and with one final, powerful thrust he gave her the orgasm she had been begging for, as he had been determined she would do right from the start. But even Hassan could not fail to be carried along on the powerful tide as the spasms began to rack her body and he felt her contracting around him. And somehow, there was a quality in her shuddered little cry which he had never heard before. Something inexplicable which reached out and touched the very heart of him.
Unexpectedly, his own orgasm took him under. It hit him with a powerful force which was strangely bittersweet, so that afterwards he felt as empty as if she had drained him of all life. He heard the shudder of his breath as he sucked air deep into his lungs and felt the sheen of sweat drying on his body. For a few seconds, he felt as close to death as he had ever done in battle, while beneath him, he felt her warm body stir. Long seconds passed before she spoke. He’d been praying that she wouldn’t, that instead she would just drift off into sleep and let some of this curious intensity he felt just ebb away. But it was not to be.
‘Hassan?’ she said drowsily.
‘What?’
She swallowed. ‘That was … amazing.’
‘I know it was.’
‘I can’t believe it happened. It’s never—’
‘Shh,’ he said, because her breathless words were making him uncomfortable. Carefully, he pulled himself away from her body, his skin beginning to chill as reality slowly returned and he realised what he had done. What a hypocrite he had been! So full of proud words and certainties about the correct and proper way to behave. And yet how could he possibly pass judgement on his friend Alex, when he had proved to be just as weak as he? Despite all his contemptuous words on the subject of suitability, he had taken one of the Jackson sisters to his bed, had stripped her bare and made love to her.
Why the hell had he done that?
A cold self-contempt clenched at his heart as he lay there, wondering what he was going to say to her—what could he say to her, other than words of bitter regret? But when he turned his head, he saw that she’d fallen asleep, her head pillowed on her arm. She stirred and murmured something, the dark feathered arcs of her lashes fluttering a little. And he held his breath, unaccountably relieved when she turned over and snuggled down against the pillow.
He closed his eyes as he remembered their steamy moves on the dance floor, and then that very public row. She’d left, he’d followed and neither of them had returned. His jaw tightened. What on earth must the other party guests have thought of such behaviour?
And what the hell did he do now?
He escaped, that’s what he did. Just as if he had been captured by the enemy in battle. He must get away from there before his weak body succumbed and made love to her all over again. Because while once might be regarded as regrettable, twice would be considered a serious error of judgement.
As if on cue, she gave a little moan and snuggled her face deeper into the pillow and, with the skill of the born hunter, he slid noiselessly from the bed. Silently, he collected his discarded clothes, but not before he noticed the silver beads from her ripped dress which lay scattered on the marble floor. With a shudder he imagined the reaction of the palace maids when they arrived to clean his room in the morning. But what was the alternative? That he should start crawling around on his hands and knees, trying to pick them up himself?
In the seclusion of the bathroom, he rapidly pulled on his clothes and from there he made a call to his aide.
Benedict picked up on the second ring. ‘Highness?’
Hassan’s voice was low. ‘Prepare the plane for a flight back to Kashamak. I want to leave as soon as possible.’
‘But, Highness, you’re supposed to be attending the lunch tomorrow.’
‘Well, I won’t be,’ said Hassan flatly. ‘I’ll email Alex when I get back. Oh, and Benedict, one more thing.’
‘Highness?’
‘Have someone bring some women’s clothes to my suite first thing in the morning, will you? And before you make any wisecracks, no, I haven’t suddenly acquired an appetite for cross-dressing.’
Benedict didn’t miss a beat. ‘Anything in particular you require, Highness?’
‘Something which would be suitable for the lady in question to wear back to her hotel,’ said Hassan, pausing as an inconveniently erotic stab of memory made him recall the naked body currently sprawled out on his rumpled sheets. ‘American dress size six, I’d imagine.’
ELLA stirred, lost in that disorientating split second between sleeping and waking. Where was she? Luxuriously, she stretched her arms above her head. Certainly not at her house in Tooting, that was for sure, because the thunder of lorries past the window was noticeably absent.
The trill of birdsong alerted her at exactly the same time as she registered the soft, moist ache between her legs. And the warm sunlight which bathed her skin. Giving a dreamy little murmur of contentment, she glanced down to see that she was completely naked, and that there were tiny blue marks blooming on her breasts, as if someone had been grazing at them with their teeth. And that was when her memory came rushing back.
Someone had been grazing them with their teeth! And a lot more besides.
Sheikh Hassan Al Abbas, to be precise.
With a sharp intake of breath, she grabbed the sheet and pulled it up to her chin. Lying perfectly still, she listened for the sound of movement. Her eyes stole to the other side of the enormous bed, to the rumpled indentation, where Hassan had lain.
So she hadn’t imagined it.
Heat flared over her bare skin as vivid images clicked their way into her mind. The way she’d writhed beneath him and begged him to make love to her. The way she’d shuddered out his name as he’d made her climax.
She flushed with remembered pleasure. The first and only man ever to have brought her to orgasm and it had to have been him.
Her heart pounded. So where the hell was he now?
The bathroom, most probably. She raked her fingers through her tousled hair as she prepared herself for an embarrassing encounter with the man with whom she’d had wild sex the night before.
How
