Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 2 of 2

by Lynne Graham

  ‘No, it wasn’t!’ Izzy protested defensively as she rose to fetch the main course. ‘I was never envious of Maya. She always tried to help me whenever she could.’

  Rafiq registered that he had entered a conversational minefield. ‘We’ll talk about Zenara instead,’ he informed her, disconcerting her by that total change of subject.

  In the wake of her protest, Izzy had paled, her innate honesty tugging at her conscience. ‘No, what you said was right, although I never envied her,’ she admitted reluctantly as she reappeared from the kitchen. ‘Sometimes it was difficult being Maya’s twin because people would make comparisons and have expectations that I could never meet. But I love her, and I would never admit that to her. It wasn’t her fault.’

  ‘Of course, it wasn’t. I have a teenaged brother and I am equally protective of him,’ Rafiq confided.

  Set at ease again, Izzy smiled at him, appreciating his insight and intelligence. His glorious black-lashed dark eyes shimmered like gold ingots in the subdued lighting and butterflies leapt and soared in her tummy, so that she felt almost intoxicated even on a glass and a half of champagne. ‘Nothing’s more important than family,’ she remarked.

  Studying her animated face and the smile that illuminated her porcelain-perfect skin, Rafiq gritted his even white teeth because she still wasn’t flirting with him and he didn’t know how the conversation had become so serious, as though they were on a date or something. And how would he know what that was like when he’d never been on a date in his life? But when he looked at her, let his attention linger on those big sparkling blue eyes, that wickedly luscious pink mouth full of promise, the delicate little slice of pale skin below her collarbone where a tiny pulse was beating, he burned for her as he had never burned for a woman, the hardness at his groin a constant nagging ache. He wanted to plunge his fingers into that amazing curly hair the glittering peachy colour of a desert dawn.

  ‘You were going to tell me about your home country,’ Izzy reminded him.

  Rafiq pushed his plate away because they had finished eating.

  ‘My goodness, I’m so busy talking I’m forgetting about the dessert course!’ Izzy exclaimed, leaping out of her chair and vanishing into the kitchen.

  Rafiq didn’t want dessert. He wondered what would happen if he simply walked into the kitchen, snatched her up into his arms and carried her into his bedroom. She could thump him, she could say no. Right at that instant, he felt he could handle either negative reaction better than he could handle being passive when he was much more an aggressive, action-orientated kind of guy. He had been raised to take charge, to steer negotiations and wasn’t sex a form of negotiation? An exchange in which both partners knew the score? She could not have come to the apartment to be alone with him for the meal and have expected any other kind of conclusion…could she? How the hell did he know?

  In a blaze of frustration, Rafiq stared at her, catching the glow of awareness in her eyes as she looked back at him. He thrust back his chair and sprang upright. Izzy emerged from the kitchen again carrying bowls of fruit or something. His innate good manners warred with his lust and that seething hunger won hands down, sweeping away every other consideration. As she set down the bowls he stalked around the table and hauled her entire body up into his arms, the pleasure of finally touching her engulfing him in a heady surge.

  Izzy blinked and gasped in complete shock. One minute her feet were on the ground and the next she was airborne, and he was kissing her.

  ‘I am only hungry for you now,’ Rafiq husked in a ragged undertone as her tiny frame quivered in his arms, huge sapphire eyes now locked to him with an appreciation he could no longer misinterpret.

  After that explosive kiss, Izzy’s heart was pounding so hard inside her chest she couldn’t get breath into her lungs, and while on one level she felt that pouncing on her like a panther and lifting her off her feet wasn’t quite what she had expected, on another secret level she was thrilled by the glow of wildness in his smouldering gaze and that urgent mouth on hers. It was so exciting, the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her and wasn’t that sad, she chided herself, at her age? And Rafiq was that hungry for her? That was a thrilling assurance for a young woman who had never seemed to inspire passion of that strength in any presentable man before. And he wasn’t just presentable, he was downright drop-dead gorgeous…

  CHAPTER THREE

  RAFIQ CARRIED IZZY into the bedroom and laid her down with great care on the bed.

  ‘This…it is what you want too?’ he was careful to check.

  Izzy sat back against the leather headboard, still a little stunned by the speed and mode of her arrival into a more intimate setting. Rafiq was being very direct and of course she understood why it had to be that way. No man could risk a misunderstanding in such a scenario. Even so, colour ran up her face like a banner because the decision she had acknowledged earlier in the kitchen still felt so new and fresh to her; she would sleep with him, finally discover what sex was all about, only, if she was honest, she hadn’t really expected it to happen so fast between them.

  ‘Yes…this is what I want too,’ she almost whispered, ramming down all her insecurities with ferocious determination because she was convinced that a wildly desirable opportunity with someone like Rafiq was only likely to happen once in her lifetime and she wasn’t planning to squander it. ‘But I’m a little shy, not very experienced,’ she added in cautious warning, in case his hopes were focused on more erotic thrills than she was likely to deliver.

  Suddenly, Rafiq felt as though he could finally breathe again. The idea of her walking away, turning her back and rejecting him had been a fear strong enough to freeze him in his tracks because there was something about her, presumably a very sexy something, that totally set him on fire with lust. He wondered if it was those huge blue eyes or possibly that ripe pink mouth or even the crazy copper curls surrounding that triangular face. Perhaps even the reality that shy didn’t turn him off, as her face said she feared, it actually turned him on more. Indeed, it meant that he was much less likely to be taken by surprise by anything she did.

  ‘That doesn’t bother me,’ he admitted, hitting the buttons to close the blinds on the window and dim the lights even though, by choice, he would have put her under a spotlight, but her comfort, her ability to relax with him, were more important. He kicked off his shoes and vaulted onto the bed beside her. She startled and his flashing smile tilted his shapely mouth again, his hand coming up to frame her face as he lowered his head and tasted her mouth again with all the urgent demand he was struggling to hold back.

  Izzy travelled from nervous tension back into a paradise where everything seemed to be about just one perfect kiss because he was one hell of a kisser. In that line, she was plenty experienced, even though no man had ever kissed her and made her very toes curl until Rafiq. It was as if he lit a spark somewhere down deep inside her, a spark that fostered a spread of warmth in her pelvis and made her thighs tighten. Her whole body turned liquid, her breasts swelling inside her bra, the peaks tightening and pushing against the lace.

  His lean, long-fingered hands roamed slowly over her, cupping, touching, moulding, and she quivered, heat roaring through her in an almost unmanageable surge. Her hands lifted and found his wide shoulders to explore and then the long sweep of his back, the literal heat of him burning through the silk of his shirt.

  ‘Take it off,’ he told her.

  Izzy went for the buttons, unwilling to break the kissing to look, and she must have been too slow at the task because with an earthy groan he pulled back from her and just ripped off the shirt, buttons flying everywhere.

  ‘I guess you don’t value your clothes very much,’ she muttered helplessly.

  ‘Not when they get in the way of what I want, which is your hands on me,’ Rafiq growled, taking that moment to reach down for the hem of her dress and lift it up and over her head.

/>   Disconcerted to find herself so swiftly reduced to her bra and panties, Izzy tensed, lacking the confidence in her body that was required to feel calm beneath his smouldering dark golden gaze.

  ‘You are so gorgeous,’ Rafiq breathed raggedly. She glanced up at him in stark shock and it was there in his appreciative gaze that he truly believed that.

  It wasn’t quite enough encouragement for her to lie back and preen herself like Cleopatra on a ceremonial barge, but it certainly made a difference to the way she generally viewed herself as the plain twin. After all, it had been said within her hearing many times when she was a child because people weren’t careful about making such statements around her, and it was a role she had unconsciously accepted and assumed to be the truth.

  Empowered by Rafiq’s statement, however, Izzy went back to taste that wickedly sensual mouth of his for herself and he reacted with flattering enthusiasm, pressing her back against the pillows and kissing her breathless, lean fingers sliding beneath her to release her bra in what she believed to be the smoothest move ever. And then he was curving his big hands to the swell of her full pale breasts, touching, smoothing, rolling and squeezing her achingly sensitive nipples, sending piercing shards of pleasure travelling straight to her groin.

  As he drove a thigh between her legs, pushing against the most sensitive spot of all, her entire body jackknifed upward, a muffled cry wrenched from her throat as the excitement rippling through her rose in a blinding, stabbing wave. His mouth travelled down the slope of her neck, kissing a path down to the erect buds, dallying there with lips and tongue and teeth until the breath was sobbing between her lips, and he crushed her mouth under his again, his tongue delving deep, twining with hers, only partially answering the desperate, fevered craving controlling her.

  ‘You want me…’ Rafiq savoured with satisfaction.

  ‘Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,’ she gasped, lost in those dark dramatic eyes gleaming with sparks of gold in the low light, marvelling that he felt the need to state the obvious, because who wouldn’t want him? His eyes were absolutely beautiful—all of him was absolutely beautiful, she acknowledged dizzily as he snaked his hips back from her to unzip his jeans and take them off, the generous bulge thrusting against his boxer briefs making her stare for a split second. He looked a little larger than she had been counting on, she conceded, but Mother Nature had fashioned men and women to fit, so there wasn’t likely to be a problem in that line, she told herself.

  His sensual lips sought hers again as he whisked off her panties, pulling her onto his thighs as he threw back the duvet and settled her on the sheet. He gazed down at her with wondering thankfulness because she was full of passion just like him and it wasn’t an act to impress him or even a ruse to take a photo of him, making him the boastful virtual equivalent of a show-and-tell. He smoothed hungrily grateful hands over her, his very last sin, and she was perfect, a perfect doll as she lay there looking up at him with those wide-open cerulean-blue eyes, as clear as the Zenarian sky in summer, against her pale redhead’s skin. He threaded long fingers through her wonderfully soft, silky ringlets and shifted down the bed to tug her to him and crush her luscious mouth under his again.

  His hands wandering over her curvy bottom, pulling her to him, he rejoiced in her softness and smoothness and responsiveness as he slid down the bed to spread her thighs and assure that she got as much pleasure out of the encounter as he expected to. Startled by that move, scolding herself as the most appalling wave of awkward embarrassment washed over her, Izzy threw her head back on the pillows and closed her eyes tight. If she didn’t see what he was doing, it would be more bearable, more difficult to recall that he was looking at her…there.

  Yet that first lick from his tongue over her feminine core sent a wave of heat shooting through her as hot as a lava flow and every nerve ending she possessed screamed into immediate response. Nothing had ever felt that good, nothing had ever felt so necessary to her that if he had stopped, she would have screamed even louder in frustration.

  Involuntarily one of her hands closed into his black hair and it was like thick silk between her fingers, and those eyes of his when he looked at her, yes, somehow her own eyes had opened, well, it was somehow the sexiest thing ever. Her extreme self-consciousness died away because she knew she wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything and that there was nothing wrong with feeling how she was feeling. And finally, she relaxed, although possibly relaxed wasn’t the right word to describe how exquisite sensation sent her a little crazy and out of control.

  Her body took over without her volition, her hips rising in tune with a racy beat that was new to her, little shudders of reaction tingling through her from her pelvis. The shudders increased to a level of devastating pressure that tightened and tightened around her womb until she thought she would go insane. The ferocious need that clawed at her was unbearable and it tore breathless little whimpers from her throat until finally she reached a peak and it felt as though she were internally combusting with pleasure from the outside in, rippling pulsations of sheer delight shooting through her to leave her limp and no longer on what seemed to be the same planet. The total experience was infinitely more sensational then she had expected.

  That was fortunate, she soon learned, because as Rafiq came over her—having reached for protection, she noted with relief—what followed was not quite so enjoyable. She went from pliable to stiff as he nudged at her damp centre, easing in. As he groaned with apparent satisfaction at how tight he said she was, Izzy was concentrating on the newness of sensation, and then he tilted up her hips and thrust deep and it hurt. She hadn’t been expecting an actual pain, had assumed there would possibly be a sting or a faint twinge of discomfort but not anything that truly hurt, and she cried out at the pain of it.

  And everything stopped: he froze, she froze.

  ‘It was my first time,’ she heard herself gabble in mortification. ‘Maybe I should’ve mentioned it but it’s done, so let’s finish.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Rafiq growled, thrown into a loop by the unwelcome news that he had bedded a virgin, which to him meant that he had taken advantage of someone more vulnerable, more innocent, in short a woman he should never have touched.

  Unexpectedly, Izzy found that she was amused because in the blink of an eye Rafiq had transformed from passionate lover into a naked masculine pillar of censorious disapproval, the gorgeous eyes angry, the strong jaw line clenched, the sensual mouth flattened. ‘It’s not your choice, it was mine and it’s a little late to be a party pooper,’ she told him staunchly, absolutely refusing to be embarrassed after what they had already shared.

  ‘Izzy…’ Rafiq began, astonished to see the sparkle of laughter in her sapphire gaze and disconcerted yet again by her.

  Izzy tilted back her hips and wrapped her legs round his hips. She didn’t have very long legs, so it was a struggle to execute that imprisoning gesture that told him what she didn’t have the words to tell him because she really didn’t understand herself at that moment either. But he wasn’t going anywhere, not until he had finished. ‘Well, see if you can fight your way free,’ she urged with a helpless giggle.

  And Rafiq’s ready sense of humour came to the rescue because it was a ridiculous suggestion when she was so tiny and he was so much bigger. Involuntarily, he smiled and she rested her fingers against his softened lips and murmured, ‘That’s better. It’s not your fault it hurt, not your fault you’re over-endowed.’

  It was involuntary again but Rafiq laughed. ‘And how would you know whether I am or not?’

  ‘I’m assuming that’s why it hurt, because you weren’t rough,’ she said very softly.

  Something about that tone, or possibly it was the worryingly anxious plea in her bright blue gaze, shot every other thought out of his mind. He angled back his tousled dark head and contrived, with admitted difficulty because of the difference in their heights and their still
thoroughly joined bodies, to kiss her, the fierce tension draining out of his lean, powerful body as though it had never been.

  He had never wanted anything as much as he had wanted her and now it seemed a cruelly appropriate punishment for his conscience that he had taken a virgin as his last sin. Defying that punitive thought, he stamped it down and shifted his lean hips, revelling in the feel of her, the ache at his groin climbing with every tiny movement she made. The hunger and the need burned like a fierce flame through him and he couldn’t resist her. At least that was what he told himself: that she was more temptation than any normal man could be expected to withstand. Only on another level, he knew he wasn’t a normal man, that he was supposed to be stronger, tougher, harder: the guy raised and expected to always do the right thing.

  But still he didn’t do it. He surrendered to the overpowering hunger, driving into her again with caution but also with deep physical satisfaction, delighting in the way her eyes clouded over again and her heart-shaped face relaxed to reveal pleasure. Never had he needed so badly to give a woman pleasure and even though the lust riding him was brutally strong, he took his time, measured his pace, watched her for every tiny sign of response.

  The heat in her lower body rose again, the flood of excitement unleashing as her heart hammered so fast inside her chest she could barely breathe. Izzy felt ridiculously happy and didn’t know why. Because he had listened to her? Because she had got him out of that grim mood that had promised to wreck everything and transform her adult decision into a big messy mistake to be regretted? She didn’t know—knew only that she had accidentally discovered that her ‘bathroom guy’, as he would be in her brain for ever, had an unexpectedly very serious side to his nature.

  Something deep inside her quickened and her body clenched around him as little tremors of blissful excitement mounted. His every movement became all important, stoking the pulses of hot sensation in her pelvis until the fire rose again, throwing her on a wild cry of pleasure into climax again, and she fell back against the pillows, her hand smoothing over the long, damp, satin smoothness of his flexing spine.