slid on the ring. It was a perfect fit. He had kept it for three years, maybe even forgotten he still had it until a child’s chatter had reminded him. He was being practical, that was all. He would hardly want to give the ring he had chosen for her to another woman in the future. ‘It’s gorgeous. Thank you,’ she said quietly.
Zarif liked looking at the two wedding rings and the engagement ring on her slender finger. She was his at last, a surprisingly soothing thought. He watched her eat the croissant, crumbs scattering while a look of delight slowly wakened on her lovely face. Within seconds he was hot and hard and when she sipped the chocolate, just a hint of the sweet drink coating her full, soft lower lip as she emitted a soft moan of pleasure, he was ready to rip her out of the chair and carry her to bed. Suddenly all he could think about was seeing that expression on her face while he pleasured her.
‘I want you...’ he husked.
Ella froze like a cornered kitten, blue eyes flying wide as she stared back at him, a tiny pulse beating like crazy just above her collarbone.
‘I meant to wait...I intended to wait,’ Zarif confided thickly as he sprang gracefully upright. ‘But when I look at you, I can’t.’
Her mouth ran dry while the blood in her veins ran hotter than lava. He towered over her, all male, decidedly exotic and stunningly sexy in his pristine robes. Her gaze locked tight to him, her heartbeat quickening, her breath feathering in her throat while her lungs laboured to fill again. That stillness, that primal sexual awareness that engulfed her was exactly what had made mincemeat of her principles when she had first met him. It shocked her that that could happen to her again, cutting through her new maturity, her bitterness and distrust to leave only the mindless yearning she had once suppressed.
As Ella began to rise from her seat Zarif bent his head and claimed a long, intense kiss. His tongue skated across hers and a piercing dart of such primitive longing slithered through her that it was a challenge to stay upright. A strong arm slid to her spine to support her slender frame and he lifted her off her feet with breathtaking ease to carry her back into the bedroom.
ELLA SURFACED TO find herself lying on the bed. After that burning kiss she felt a little as if she had been hit with a brick because her brain no longer felt as if it were functioning. Zarif was poised several feet away, stripping off his robes and letting them fall on the rug, his proud dark head already bare. Ella breathed in slow and deep.
It was time, she told her quailing nerves firmly. They were married. This was the deal she had made. Neither love nor liking came into the arrangement. Sex was on the menu, nothing else, and she had to learn to be practical about the fact.
Naked but for his boxers, Zarif was an intimidating sight, a literal power-house of whipcord muscle overlaid with smooth bronzed skin. Her intent gaze skated down over the steely muscles of his formidable chest, down over the little furrow of soft dark hair disappearing below the waistband of his boxers, and screeched to a sudden halt. The bulge of his straining masculinity was larger than she had expected and she tensed, telling herself not to be silly, not to get all worked up about something that other women took in their stride. She wasn’t a child. She might not have had sex before but she was an educated adult and none of her friends had been swept off to paradise by their first-time experience. Once it was done, though, it was done, she bargained with herself, desperate to establish a calmer outlook. Afterwards she would know what all the fuss was about and she would be able to treat such intimacy as a mundane event.
‘I’ve wanted you for so long,’ Zarif admitted, running long supple fingers through the swirling spill of her honey-coloured hair across the pillows. ‘You’re so beautiful...’
Ella very nearly laughed. She could see herself as pretty on a good day but only when she was all done up and her hair absolutely perfect. Certainly she did not compare well to the true beauties she had seen him pictured with in newspapers three years earlier. Zarif was the truly beautiful one, an outstandingly gorgeous male, who had stolen her heart the first time she saw him and broken it the day he proposed, sending her plunging from the heights of happiness straight down into the darkness of despair. In the aftermath she had picked herself up and gone on but the trust he had broken remained broken and she was a much more anxious, suspicious person than she had once been.
His thick silky hair nudged her cheek and then his mouth, velvet and warm, claimed hers again, closing out the rest of the world as though it had never been. There was nothing then but the racing beat of her heart and the tightening at her secret core. Without warning the towel she wore was gone and he cupped her full breasts, his thumbs strumming her engorged nipples to send currents of fire shooting down into her pelvis. Her hips shifted, rose without her volition and at the heart of her she felt tight as a drum and desperate for more.
Zarif drew back, lean, strong features taut. ‘If you truly don’t want this, I will stop. I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give, habibti.’
Taken aback, Ella stared up at him, still partially lost in the stirring responses shimmying through her lethargic body.
Luxuriant black lashes dipped low over his tawny eyes. ‘You didn’t want this,’ he extended. ‘You agreed because you had no other choice but I find that I no longer want a sacrifice in my bed.’
Disconcerted, Ella stiffened. ‘I’m not a sacrifice.’
His mouth dipped to her delicate collarbone and the tip of his tongue flicked the pulse beating there below her pale fine skin and she tingled in reaction from her head to her toes. ‘I will have you willing or not at all. To say no is your right and I promise that there will be no reprisals,’ he asserted thickly.
In shock at that startling offer coming when she least expected it, Ella opened her eyes to their fullest extent and stared up at him, almost mesmerised by the stunning amber gold of his steady gaze. ‘But I agreed and you—’
‘You agreed under the duress of your concern for your vulnerable parents,’ Zarif reminded her. ‘And I am man enough to only want what is offered freely.’
His hands rested on her ribcage and she wanted so badly for him to lift his hands and touch her breasts again. The strength of that craving took her aback for nothing in her experience had ever equalled it. She shut her eyes, shutting him out but the craving, the sheer hunger mushroomed up inside her without abating. And why was she surprised? She wanted him; she had always wanted him.
Her lashes lifted, her decision easily made. ‘It’s free...I mean, it’s only sex...let’s not make a production out of it,’ she framed awkwardly.
Zarif frowned in disagreement, automatically writing off her quip about sex as a clumsy careless joke. ‘I very much want it to be a production with you, habibti.’
Ella lay back, pliant and melting with helpless anticipation. She had come to an understanding with herself and the past and present were melding into a seamless whole. She wanted Zarif to become her first lover because she had never wanted another man the way she wanted him and sharing her body with him made perfect sense to her. He nipped at her lower lip and then blew softly over a rosy straining nipple before suckling erotically at the tender peak. Ribbons of hot desire pulled taut between her breasts and her thighs.
Zarif slid down the bed, tugging away the towel still partially wrapped round her and skimming off the boxers he still wore with impatient hands. Lying there naked, Ella reddened, fighting off the urge to yank the sheet over her exposed body. He parted her thighs and before she could react moved down the bed towards
