a hand and trailed one finger down over Sylvie’s cheek and jaw to where the bare skin of her shoulder met her dress.
She was breathing so hard now she felt as if she might hyperventilate. Her skin was on fire where he touched her. She was on fire. No man had ever had this effect on her. It was overwhelming, and she was helpless to rationalise it.
‘Yes,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I’m very uptight. All over. Maybe you could help me with that?’
Before she could react his arm had snaked around her waist, pulling her into him, and his other hand was deep in her hair, anchoring her head so that he could plunge his mouth down onto hers, stealing what little breath she had left along with her sanity.
It was like going from zero to one hundred in a nanosecond. This was no gentle, exploratory kiss. It was explicit and devastating. Sylvie’s tongue was entwined with Arkim Al-Sahid’s before the impulse to let him in had even registered. And there wasn’t one part of her that rejected him—which was so out of character for her that she couldn’t appreciate the significance right now.
Her hands were on his chest, fingers curling into his waistcoat. Then they were climbing higher to curl around his neck, making her reach up on tiptoe to get closer.
Adrenalin and a kind of pleasure she’d never experienced before coursed through her blood. It radiated out from the core of her body and to every extremity, making her tingle and tighten with need.
His hand was on her dress now, at her shoulder, fingers tucking under the fabric, pulling it down.
There was something wild and earthy beating inside her as his mouth left hers and trailed down over her jaw, down to where her shoulder was now bare.
Sylvie’s head tipped back, her eyes closed. Her entire world was reduced to this frantic, urgent beat that she had no will to deny as she felt her dress being pulled down, and cool night air drifting over hot skin.
Her head came up. She felt dizzy, drugged. ‘Arkim...’ She was dimly aware that she didn’t even know this man. Yet here she was, entreating him to...to stop? Go on?
When he looked at her, though, those black eyes—like hard diamonds—robbed her of any ability to decide.
‘Shh...let me touch you, Sylvie.’
His mouth wrapped around her name...it made her melt even more. His other hand was on her thigh, between them, inching up under her dress, pushing it up. This was more intimate than she’d ever been with any man, because she didn’t let many get close, but it felt utterly right. Necessary. As if she’d been missing something her whole life and a key had just been slotted into place, unlocking some part of her.
Tacitly, her legs widened. She saw a glimmer of a smile on Arkim’s face and it wasn’t cruel, or judgemental. It was sexy.
He lowered his head to her now bared breast and closed his mouth over the pouting flesh, sucking her nipple deep and then rolling and flicking it with his tongue. Sylvie nearly shot into orbit. Electric shocks pulsed through her and tugged between her legs, where she was wet and aching...
And where Arkim’s fingers were now exploring... Pushing aside her panties and sliding underneath, searching between slick folds and finding where her body gave him access, then thrusting a finger deep inside.
Sylvie’s hands tightened, and it was only then that she realised she had them clasped on Arkim’s head as his mouth suckled her and his finger moved in and out of her body, making a strange and new tension coil unbearably tight within her. Was this what he’d meant about being uptight? Because she felt it too. Deep in her core. Tightening so much it was almost unbearable.
Overcome with emotion at all the sensations rushing through her, she lifted Arkim’s head from her breast, looking into those dark, fathomless eyes. ‘I can’t... What are you...?’
She couldn’t speak. Could only feel. One minute she’d thought he was the devil incarnate, and now...now he was taking her to heaven. She was confused. His whole body was flush against hers, his leg pushing hers apart, his fingers exploring her so intimately...
Frustrated by her lack of ability to say anything, she leant forward and pressed her mouth to his again. But he went still. And then suddenly he was pulling away so fast Sylvie had to stop herself from falling forward. He stood back and looked at her as if she’d grown two heads, his horrified expression clear in the moonlight. His tie was askew and his waistcoat was undone. His hair mussed up. Cheeks flushed.
‘What the hell...?’
Sylvie wanted to say, My thoughts exactly, but she was still struck mute.
Arkim backed away and said harshly, ‘Don’t ever come near me again.’ And then he stalked off, back up the garden and into the light.
Three months ago...
Sylvie couldn’t believe she was back at the house in Richmond again so soon. She usually managed to avoid it, because Sophie lived in central London in the family’s pied-à-terre.
But the pied-à-terre wasn’t suitable for this occasion: a party to celebrate the announcement of her little sister’s engagement...to Arkim Al-Sahid.
Sylvie could still hear the shock in her sister’s voice when she’d phoned her a few days ago: ‘It’s all happened so fast...’
Nothing would have induced Sylvie to come into the bosom of her family again except for this. No way was she going to let her little sister be a pawn in her stepmother’s machinations. Or that man’s.
The man she’d been avoiding thinking about ever since that night. The man who had at first dismissed her and then... She shivered even now, her skin prickling with awareness at the thought of meeting him again.
The memory of what had happened was as sharp and humiliating as if it had happened yesterday. His voice. The disgust. ‘Don’t ever come near me again.’
The shrill tones of Sylvie’s stepmother hectoring some poor employee nearby stopped her thoughts from devolving rapidly into a kaleidoscope of unwelcome images.
Her hands closed over the rim of the sink in the bathroom as she took in her reflection.
Despite her best efforts she could still remember the excoriating wave of humiliation and exposure when she’d watched Arkim Al-Sahid walk away and realised that her breast was bared and her legs still splayed in wanton abandonment. Panties pulled aside. One shoe on, one off. And she’d been complicit—every step of the way. She couldn’t even say he’d used force.
He’d crooked his finger and she’d all but come running. Panting. Practically begging.
The true magnitude of how easily she’d let him—more or less a complete stranger—reduce her to a quivering wreck was utterly galling.
Sylvie cursed herself. She was here for Sophie—not to take a trip down memory lane. She stood up straight and checked her appearance. A far cry from the gold dress she’d worn that night. Now she was positively respectable, in a knee-length black sleeveless shift and matching high heels, her hair pulled back into a low bun. Discreet make-up.
She didn’t like to think of the reaction in her body when her sister had informed her of the upcoming nuptials. It had been a mix of shock, incomprehension, anger—and something
