by Kim Lawrence
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A FEBRILE shudder slipped down her spine. You could make me forget my name, she thought, looking into his sinfully gorgeous face and feeling weak with lust, empty with sheer hopeless longing.
‘I know you could.’
The predatory gleam that lit his eyes zapped a thrill of excitement through her body.
‘Mabelle…’ He lifted his hand to touch her cheek, but Beatrice caught it between her hands and kissed his palm. She heard his sharp intake of breath as she closed her eyes and moved her mouth across the lightly callused surface.
Still holding his hand away from her face, Beatrice lifted her gaze to his. The hunger blazing in his eyes took her breath away. Beatrice struggled to retain control, but it wasn’t easy when her entire body throbbed with need. She had to tell him the truth before this went any further.
‘Khalid… He’s…’
‘He is a lying cheat and you still love him… This I already know—but you won’t be thinking about him while you are in my bed,’ he promised her grimly.
It didn’t seem possible to Beatrice that he still thought she was in love with Khalid. She felt as though her feelings were emblazoned in neon across her forehead.
While she didn’t want him to guess her feelings, she couldn’t allow Tariq to carry on thinking about his brother this way.
‘No, Tariq, I—’
He laid a finger to her lips. ‘I want to make love to you.’
He leaned closer into her and her vision blurred as Beatrice breathed in the warm male smell of him. It no longer seemed so essential to offer explanations. It just seemed imperative to immerse herself in him.
‘I want that too, Tariq.’
He captured her gaze with his eyes, and his own burned as though lit from within, the mesmerising silver lights dancing like flames. ‘I will heal you—make you forget.’
You will break my heart, she thought, not actually caring at this point. ‘I don’t want to forget anything about this, or you.’
This would be a memory she would keep for ever. She knew it would be special, and that Tariq was the man she had been waiting for—even though she hadn’t known she was waiting.
His mouth was hot on her, his lips firm as he lowered her to the low sofa, pausing only to sweep the pile of cushions onto the floor first.
His mouth stayed on hers as he unfastened the buttons on her shirt. Beatrice clung and kissed him back, opening her mouth to deepen the sensual penetration of his probing tongue. As he spread the fabric of her shirt she felt the cool air on her hot skin and shivered. The shiver became a feverish tremor when she felt his hands caress the same ultra-sensitive nerve-endings.
Filled with a driving desperation, Beatrice tugged at the waist band of his pants, sliding her hands under the fabric of his shirt to touch his skin.
Her body arched, and she moaned as his lips moved up the white column of her throat. ‘I want to feel you against me, your skin on mine,’ she whispered in his ear.
Tariq lifted himself off her and fought his way first out of his shirt and then his trousers. Lastly he kicked aside his boxers.
Her fractured gasp as he turned back to her was audible above the thunder of his own heart beat.
The fact that she was lying there, one hand flung above her head, her breasts visibly rising, staring at him through half-closed eyes, only in creased his painful level of arousal.
His hands shook as he began to remove her clothes. Her body was smooth as silk and soft, and revealing her lush curves filled him with a gloating pleasure. It took all his strength not to sink into her right then.
He was so beautiful, in a raw, primitive and totally perfect way, that it hurt…it physically hurt. Beatrice felt a moment’s anxiety. It seemed impossible that a man this perfect, a man who could literally have any woman he wanted, could find anything to admire in her body.
Her soft firm breasts spilled from their confinement as he unclipped the front fastener of her bra. ‘You are so beautiful!’
His reverent murmur sent a surge of relief through Beatrice. It was followed closely by delirious delight as he took her breasts in his hands and applied his tongue to first one pink quivering peak and then the other, until she was all need and instinct and no inhibitions.
‘Does this feel good? Is this what you want?’ he slurred as he lowered himself onto her pale body, one hand braced beside her head and one thigh insinuated snugly between hers, creating just enough pressure and friction to draw a low, keening cry from her throat.
She caught his lower lip between her teeth and tugged softly. Her hands slid cross the hard, glistening, golden contours of his shoulders before she speared her fingertips down his quivering thigh muscles. All the time his eyes held hers captive, and the heat in his bold molten stare made her dizzy.
‘Everything you do feels good. That too,’ she added huskily, as he slid a hand between her thighs, nudging them gently but firmly apart.
Her eyes closed and a wave of intense heat spread across her skin as he sought her warmth and moisture, touching and stroking her secret inner recesses until she thought she’d die from the sheer pleasure of it. ‘I don’t think I can talk any more.’
‘Talking is not necessary.’
And very soon, much to Tariq’s immense relief, neither was restraint. Within a short time Beatrice was writhing under his caresses, begging him for release. He had never known a woman so exquisitely sensitive—just as he had never known this mingling of tenderness and lust with any woman.
The need to claim her, to make her his was like a roar in his over heated blood. It was primal and raw and he could fight it no longer.
She didn’t want him to.
A few seconds later he realised she had never been with a man before.
‘Relax,’ he coaxed, every sinew straining against the iron self-discipline he exerted as he held himself immobile above her, resisting the primitive hunger surging through his body, driving him to sheath himself deep in her tight, slick heat.
‘I am,’ she moaned. ‘Oh…you feel so good. I’m…’
‘I don’t want to hurt you… Just let me…’ As he slid deeper, and she closed around him and with him, he groaned.
Her face pressed into his shoulder, Beatrice said his name over and over, her hands tightening across the sweat-slick skin of his back as he kissed her eyelids.
It was only when he felt the first spasms of her orgasm, when she cried out hoarsely in amazement, that he allowed himself the final thrust deep into her and allowed himself a shuddering release.
Long after the last little orgasmic after shocks had passed they stayed connected, limbs entwined, warm breaths mingling. In a strange way Beatrice found this sleepy after math almost more intimate than the actual sex act they had just shared.
It was only when she felt him stir inside her that she was roused from her sleepy content. Her eyes flickered open, a question in them as she looked up at him.
‘I’m not hurting you? You’re not sore…?’ The streaks of colour across his high cheek bones deepened as he waited for her reply.
‘No,’ she whispered.
He kissed her. ‘This time it will be slow and good for you.’
It was slow, languid, and so exquisitely tender that she wept as Tariq drove her to the brink twice before he responded to her increasingly des per ate pleas and carried her over the edge.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered as she curled up in his arms.
He had given her something precious, something that she would treasure for the rest of her life. She drifted off to sleep, and when she woke the first thing she saw was Tariq’s face.
‘How is it that your love affair with my brother did not involve actual sex?’
The deceptively mild question effectively wiped the dreamy smile from her face and stilled any unwise declarations of undying love that hovered on her unruly tongue.
A muscle quivered in his lean cheek, but it was his smoothly muscled golden back he presented to he
r as he queried, in a tone wiped clean of its normal vibrance, ‘Well?’
‘I was never Khalid’s lover or his girl friend.’
She watched as his eyes closed and he ground the heel of one hand to his head. He swallowed, seeming not to notice the extended silence, before he added in a voice she barely recognized, ‘How is this possible…?’
‘My friend Emma—she and Khalid…’
Emma. Of course Emma. He sucked in a deep breath. ‘You were never Khalid’s lover…?’ It was still hard for him to take in.
The memory of interminable hours of tortured guilt rose up, and a strangled laugh was dragged from Tariq’s throat.
Did irony get any darker than this?
‘You made me mad when you tried to bribe me…’ She lost her thread as her eyes became fixated on the visible tremor in his long brown fingers as he fastened, or failed to, the buttons on his shirt.
Their eyes meshed briefly, and his dropped first. Because he can’t bear to look at me, Beatrice thought and wanted to die.
What did you expect, Bea? she asked herself. You’ve not stopped lying to the man since you laid eyes on him—you’ve only just stopped lying to yourself! Sure, you came out here because you’re a selfless friend… The fact you would have rewritten history if it had meant seeing this man, sharing the air he was breathing again, had nothing to do with it!
‘So when Emma and Khalid said you’d never agree to them marrying, I saw a way of having my revenge and solving their problem.’
‘This was your idea?’
This time it was Beatrice who couldn’t hold his gaze. He hated her, she thought dully.
‘I suggested,’ she admitted gruffly, ‘that he bring me here, and I would be so awful that after me Emma would seem like the perfect wife… Well, actually she is—perfect, that is. Not at all like me.’
A laugh that it almost hurt to hear was wrenched from deep inside him. ‘No one is like you, Beatrice.’
Briefly his dark tortured eyes flickered across her face before he rose to his feet.
His back told her nothing as he fought his way into his remaining clothes, none of his normal co-ordination evident in his abrupt, clumsy actions. ‘Say something, Tariq,’ she pleaded, utterly disconcerted by his behaviour.
‘You wanted to make me look foolish. And I obliged.’
She nodded, still confidently expecting an explosion. But none came, and it was disconcerting to put it mildly. His silence made her feel she had to defend her actions.
‘You were pretty vile to me, and I didn’t know any of this would happen!’ she told him earnestly. ‘I didn’t plan this.’
‘You did not plan to be seduced,’ he said heavily. ‘That I can believe.’
‘You didn’t seduce me,’ she protested. ‘You made love to me…beautifully,’ she added huskily as her eyes dropped from his.
But he had seen her eyes, and her heart was in them, and Tariq longed with every fibre of his being to gather her to him and tell her what was in his heart. He fought the impulse.
He had already done this thing in the wrong order…now he wanted to make things right. He wanted to come to her free to offer her what she deserved.
‘Tariq…?’
‘I must… I need…’
For a moment their eyes locked. He added nothing, but her fertile imagination had no problem filling the gap… He needed to put as much space between her and himself as humanly possible!
She would have infinitely preferred it if he had shouted and yelled, but he just continued to stare at her for what seemed like aching hours, then got up and left without another word.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS the early hours when her flight touched down in London. The ten-hour stop-over had stretched into twelve in Paris, and it was an effort for Beatrice just to put one foot in front of the other. She felt numb with exhaustion. It wasn’t the sort of exhaustion that a good night’s sleep was going to put right either.
She was so lost in her own dark thoughts that she didn’t at first register the person at her elbow. When he invited her for a second time to leave the Customs line and accompany him to his office she was bewildered, but not initially alarmed.
‘I think you’ve got the wrong person. I’m Beatrice Devlin.’ She held out her passport to prove the point.
The man barely glanced at it. ‘Yes, Miss Devlin, it is you we want.’
‘But why?’ she protested, aware of the speculative stares of her fellow passengers following her progress.
‘Routine. Nothing to worry about.’
Easy for him to say, she thought as she walked past him into what she thought was an office. It turned out to be some sort of plush-looking lounge.
‘If you could wait here?’
Before she could ask anything else he was gone.
Beatrice sat down heavily on one of the leather sofas and looked around the bland but pleasant surroundings.
Why do I feel guilty? she asked herself as she struggled to keep her imagination on a leash. She was really annoyed with herself for being so passive and meekly following, no questions asked. When the man came back she would not be so sub missive.
There would be a perfectly simple explanation for this. She was, after all, innocent of everything but falling in love with the wrong man. And as far as she knew there was no law against that yet…or half the female population would be locked up.
She got up and walked over to the mirrored panel that lined one wall, grimacing at the sight of her dishevelled appearance. She passed a hand across her pale face and had begun to raise it to smooth her tousled hair when she found herself wondering if this was one of those two-way mirrors she’d seen in films.
She knew the idea was fantastical, but it stuck, and the thought of unseen eyes watching her sent a shudder down her spine.
She laughed and thought, Pull yourself together—you’re losing it.
‘Now, that is paranoid, Bea,’ she said out loud.
She was about to retake her seat when the door opened. She turned, determined to find out what this was all about. ‘Hello, Beatrice.’
The blood drained from Beatrice’s face as the world tilted a little—actually, a lot—on its axis. ‘You’re here…? How…? Why…?’
Tariq, dressed in black jeans and shirt, stood framed in the doorway, looking tall, rampantly male and devastatingly handsome.
‘I flew—though rather more directly than you.’ His dark stare seemed to pierce her soul. ‘As to the why…’ His slow smile had an explosive quality that made her heart beat faster.
He covered the space between them in a couple of strides, and before her dazed brain had even coped with the information that he was standing here, now, with her, he took her face between his big hands and covered her mouth with his.
Beatrice’s soft cry was lost in his mouth, and she grabbed the front of his shirt and clung to him as he kissed her deeply, as though he would drain the life from her. She kissed him back, responding to the need she sensed in him more than his hunger.
When eventually they broke apart he pressed his nose to hers and took a deep breath. ‘Does that answer your question?’
A dazed expression on her face, she lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at his dark, lean features. It seemed doubtful he had flown all this way to kiss her.
‘Not really. But it was nice.’
‘I think I can do better than nice,’ he growled, making her stomach flip.
As he moved towards her again she turned her head, even though every cell in her body longed for his lips.
‘You shouldn’t have come,’ she whispered.
He pushed his fingers into her hair and, lifting it from her neck, pressed his lips to the sensitive skin beside her ear, sending a deep shudder of pleasure through her body. ‘I had to come. Did you think I would let you go?’ he wondered, sounding incredulous.
‘You should go. I think they’re going to arrest me, and they could be here any moment,’ she warned him with a n
ervous glance towards the door. ‘If they find you it could cause a lot of embarrassment.’
‘Nobody is going to arrest you,’ he said, sounding so tender it brought a lump to her aching throat.
‘Well, maybe not, but they…’ Her eyes closed as he nuzzled her neck and stroked the angle of her jaw with one finger.
‘How do you think I knew you were here, Beatrice?’
Her eyes suddenly blinked wide, and with an accusing cry of, ‘It was you!’ she spun around. ‘You had them bring me here!’ she cried.
‘It was a total abuse of power,’ he admitted, looking unrepentant. Actually, he looked quite pleased with himself.
‘I was terrified! I thought… Everyone was staring at me as though I was a criminal…’ Her face scrunched into a pained grimace at the recollection.
‘I’m sorry if you were frightened, but I couldn’t risk you slipping through my fingers again. Have you any idea what it felt like to find you had run away?’ His chin dropped to his chest, but not before she had seen the raw pain in his face.
‘I didn’t run. I caught a flight.’ She struggled to control the deep sob that welled up inside her and failed. She had known he was never going to love her, but to leave thinking that he hated her, that he couldn’t stand the sight of her, had been incredibly painful.
But now it seemed he didn’t hate her. If only her brain wasn’t so whacked with exhaustion she might have been able to make sense of this, but as it was she couldn’t seem to string two coherent thoughts together.
His mouth twisted. Her painful dry sob felt like a knife in his chest. ‘Please don’t cry—the last thing I want to do is make you cry.’
Beatrice pulled out a tissue and blew her nose. ‘Well, what do you want? I’m assuming you didn’t come all this way just to kiss me?’
His smouldering gaze moved restlessly across her face, pausing on the generous curve of her lips. ‘Actually, I was hoping for more than a kiss.’
‘You want more than a kiss?’ she echoed, angry because he was going to hurt her again, and she was going to let him, because where Tariq was concerned she had no sense of self-preservation.
