heard the crunch of gravel on the drive and wondered if the staff were back. She glanced at her watch. Probably. But as she glanced out of the window she saw a low and screamingly expensive black sports car drawing to a halt. Well, if that was one of the staff then she needed to switch career—and sharpish!
She clip-clopped her way into the hall as the doorbell rang and pulled open the door, her face and her body freezing as she saw Hashim himself standing there, a lazy smile touching the corners of his lips.
Sienna swallowed. She had somehow expected to see him clad in an impeccable dinner jacket, with black tie and snowy white shirt, and dark, tapered trousers which would make his legs look endless. The Western style he seemed to favour the majority of the time.
But he was not. Tonight he was dressed in clothes which heralded far more exotic climes…in fine silk the colour of a pomegranate which clung faintly to hard muscle and lean sinew. It provided the perfect backdrop for his rich black hair and golden-dark skin, but it reminded her of another time—a bitterly erotic one. She felt shame and desire and regret bubbling up inside her, but most of all she felt longing—felt it with an intensity which took her breath away.
Please don’t let it show, she prayed silently.
Hashim saw the play of conflicting emotions which crossed her features, and an emotion which was almost alien to him caught him in its silken snare.
Excitement.
‘Hello, Sienna.’
‘Hashim!’ she said softly, in a tone he couldn’t quite work out. ‘You’re…you’re early.’
She stood bathed in the soft yet fierce light of the setting sun and he thought that he had never seen her look more beautiful—that thick, shiny hair caught up and woven with glittering clips, making him aware that her neck was classically long and swan-like.
Her dress was made of some light, delicate fabric, layer upon gossamer layer of it, in swirls of rose which made him think of the petals of her mouth. The dress was modest by anyone’s standards, even his— and yet he was struck, not for the first time, by how the hint of a body could inflame the senses far more than if it was on show.
As if his senses needed any inflaming!
But he kept his face calmly impassive. This had, after all, been a long time in coming—and he was a master at keeping his feelings hidden. He must not strike until he was certain…
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ he queried mockingly.
She knew she should tell him that it was not her place to invite him in—that this was his party, and his money paying for it—but all those thoughts just flew straight out of her mind. For his proximity was making her head spin. She shrank back as he passed by her—as if that could make her immune to the raw virility which seemed to radiate from him. But nothing could make her immune to him.
The black eyes were studying her face as a fox’s might just before it devoured a chicken—whole—and a smile was playing around his lips. A smile that made her feel hot and prickly and distinctly…odd.
‘Do…do you want a drink?’ she questioned. ‘Or to have a look around—check things out?’
‘No.’
She wished he wouldn’t stare at her that way, and yet she never wanted him to stop doing it. Pull yourself together, Sienna, she told herself. Remember who he is.
‘I’m afraid that the staff have gone off on an extended break,’ she said, trying for something light, something to dispel the atmosphere which was fraught and heavy—building into something she didn’t recognise nor even want to acknowledge.
And maybe that was why she relaxed and didn’t see it coming. But even if she had would she honestly have been able to stop it? Or wanted to stop it?
Because Hashim suddenly pulled her into his arms without warning and anchored her firmly against the full length of his body. His smile hardened.
Don’t, she told herself weakly as she felt the musculature and the power. Fight him.
But she did not fight him. She trembled.
And Hashim briefly closed his eyes as one arm encircled the slender column of her waist, sighing with soft triumph as he felt the instinctive flowering of her breasts crushed to his chest. What he had desired for so long would soon be his. It was going to be easier than he had even dared anticipate.
He tilted her chin with the tip of his finger, his black eyes glittering with an inner fire, and she smouldered beneath his scorching gaze. ‘Who cares about the staff?’ he drawled, and his lips began to move towards her as if a magnetic force compelled them to.
‘But—’
‘Shh.’ His lips grazed hers, touchpaper-sure. ‘There are a thousand things I wish to do and show to you, and we must waste not a second.’
Time froze. Her heart seemed to thump out a million beats in those few seconds. His face swam before her, shifting in and out of focus, and she drifted her eyes over it greedily, drinking in the hard, flat planes, the thin, jagged line which ran down the side of his cheek and scarred it.
But most of all it was the mouth which tempted her—the voluptuous cushion of the lower lip contrasting so markedly with the cruel hard line of the upper one. She could see the gleam of his white teeth and the soft pink of his tongue. It was as if all the time in between had never happened, as if nothing existed nor ever had except for what was here and what was now. In this room, in his arms, in the heightened and fragile atmosphere, with the unsteadiness of their breathing and the scent of the flowers.
‘Hashim,’ she whispered, but she never knew what it was she intended to say, for his eyes had hardened in tune with his body and he bent his head to blot out the world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A KISS could be a question and an answer. It could take or give. But Hashim’s kiss robbed Sienna of everything except her own helpless response to it. Somewhere at the back of her mind a thousand voices screamed out their protest, but she silenced them as ruthlessly as if they had been her enemies. Instead, she opened her mouth beneath the hard, seeking warmth of his lips. And was lost.
Hashim gave a low laugh of delight at the ease with which she pressed her lips so eagerly against his—it grew in the back of his throat and came out like the small groan of a playful lion cub.
‘Oh, yes,’ he murmured into her mouth, and she murmured back, something muffled and incoherent— the mindless sound women sometimes made when they were ready for sex.
But Hashim was careful, and although he felt his heart pounding, desire hardening him with its exquisite torturous heat, he knew that this seduction must be a cold-blooded one. One wrong move and she might flee from his arms. One incautious word and all would be lost.
He knew which buttons to press—for his experience of women was encyclopaedic. He knew when to cajole and when to demand. When to lead and when to follow. But with Sienna it was different. She had stated her resistance to just this act, and while her body might be responding at the moment the mind could be a powerful deterrent. Particularly in a woman’s case.
It was, he realised, as he drifted his mouth away from her neck and began
