lips came down to meet hers and Ella’s mouth opened of its own volition, and she found herself unwillingly lost in the most sensational kiss of her life.
CHAPTER THREE
ELLA swayed as Hassan kissed her, his arms tightening around her so that every hard sinew of his powerful frame seemed to be imprinted indelibly on her body. She could feel the pricking of her breasts and their sudden aching heaviness as they pressed against him. And she could feel the coiling heat which was building inside her, pooling in an erotic, silken warmth at the juncture of her thighs.
The thunder of her heart played a backing-track as his lips explored hers and she sank against him. Yet even as his tongue slid inside her mouth and her eyelids fluttered to a close she knew that something wasn’t right. Through a haze, she tried to remember just what that something was, but her greedy body seemed intent on pushing all sane thoughts from her mind. The blood pooling in her breasts and at her groin was denying her brain the vital fuel it needed in order to think clearly. But how could she think clearly when she was feeling like this?
She gasped as Hassan caught hold of her breast, his big hand splaying with arrogant possession over its hardening swell. Against the finely beaded surface, he teased the already-aching nipple with his finger, and at that split second she remembered the source of her discomfort.
She hated him.
And he hated her.
He was supposed to be showing her the way out of the palace … and instead he had her pressed up against some cool palace wall where he seemed intent on having hot and urgent sex with her.
So why wasn’t she pushing him away and professing outrage at his seduction? Why was she winding the arm which wasn’t holding her shoes around his neck and breathing urgent little sounds of encouragement?
Because she’d never felt like this before.
Never imagined that a woman could feel like this when a man kissed her. As if this was what her body had been invented for. Her one previous sexual experience now just seemed a mockingly bland rehearsal for this rapid awakening which was making her blood fizz.
But it was wrong. It was very, very wrong.
‘Hassan.’ With an effort, she tore her mouth away from his as her high heels nearly slipped from her fingers onto the floor. ‘This is … absolutely … crazy….’ She thought how weak her voice sounded. As if he had somehow sapped all her strength and resolve.
‘Don’t break the spell, Cinderella,’ he warned unsteadily, pushing open the door to his suite. Pulling her inside, he kicked the door shut, before taking her into his arms and beginning to kiss her again, as if that might obliterate any objections she might have.
And it was working, wasn’t it? It didn’t seem to matter that she was in the bedroom of a man who was a virtual stranger—a dark and empty-eyed sheikh who had spoken about her family with the cruel lash of his tongue. Such was his skill that he melted away every single doubt beneath the practised caress of his lips. His hands stroked their way down over her body as he kissed her, until her nerve endings were raw with desire and she was moving restlessly in his arms.
Her skin felt heated, her body on fire. She groaned when he cupped her breast again, his thumb brushing negligently against the bead-covered nipple. Why couldn’t he touch her bare skin instead, she wondered distractedly when, as if he’d read her thoughts again, he reached out and peeled down the flimsy bodice of her dress.
He leaned back a little to survey her, the way people did in art galleries when they wanted to get a better look at a painting. His eyes seemed to devour her breasts and she felt the skin tighten and tingle beneath that fierce black scrutiny.
‘Do you always go braless?’ he questioned unsteadily.
She wanted to tell him that the fashionable dress had made the wearing of a bra impossible but somehow the words seemed to have lodged in her throat.
‘But then again, why would you ever cover up anything so beautiful as these pert little breasts?’ he continued as he grazed a lazy thumb over one hardening nub. ‘I like the fact that they are so instantly accessible. That they are within easy reach of the curl of my tongue.’
She wanted to protest at the outrageous mastery of his words but he leaned forward to suckle a taut nipple and the corresponding shaft of desire made her body shudder helplessly.
She could see the erotic contrast of his black head against her pale skin and could feel his tongue licking sensual pathways over the diamond-hard nub. And suddenly, the pleasure almost became too intense to bear. She felt her knees begin to sag and he responded by bending down to curl his arm beneath them to pick her up. He carried her across the glittering gilded room towards an arch beyond which she could see a massive, canopied bed. And the reality of what was about to happen hit home.
‘Hassan?’
‘That’s my name.’
His teasing words momentarily distracted her. But not nearly as much as the warmth of his fingers as they pressed against her bare flesh. ‘We … we shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘Shouldn’t we? You don’t sound very certain.’
That’s because she wasn’t. She’d never been carried by a man before and it was making her feel intensely feminine. As if for the first time in her life, she’d found someone strong enough to protect her. Her loosened dress was flapping against her bare breasts and she looked up to find his black eyes burning into her as if she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She had never felt quite so desired, nor so deliciously compliant.
He put her down on the bed and she lay there watching as he shrugged off his jacket and let it fall to the floor. His tie followed, and then his silk shirt. Shoes and socks were efficiently disposed of and then his hand moved to the belt of his trousers, gingerly easing them down over his formidable erection. Completely absorbed by what was happening, Ella stared at him, unable to tear her eyes away from his magnificent body. Surely she should have felt shy at such a careless striptease, but she didn’t feel a bit shy. Was that because he knew that his hard, honed body was the closest thing to perfection she had ever seen?
He moved to the bed, his face a dark mask as he bent over her, his fingers moving to find the zip of her dress. But the zip seemed to have been jammed by some errant beads and when he tugged at it, the whole thing split, sending silver beads spilling all around them, some rolling from the bed and others cascading onto the floor. Ella heard someone laugh and realised that someone was her, and that her arms were reaching up to him and pulling him down to her.
He gave an unsteady laugh. ‘So your sexual appetite matches your temper, does it, Cinders?’
‘Does yours?’ she murmured back, completely forgetting her abysmal track record with men as she felt the brush of his lips over her shoulder.
Her provocative reply fired him up even more. Hassan had never felt quite so out of control before, knowing that what he was about to do was sheer madness and yet somehow powerless to stop himself. Because hadn’t he denied himself the comfort of a woman for too long? He had forgotten how it felt to touch silken skin, and the sweet contrast between the hard male body and its yielding female counterpart.
Yet there were a hundred women more suitable as lovers than she. Women back in that ballroom who had plenty of aristocratic
