by Miranda Lee
Bandar wasn’t just good in bed, Samantha conceded. He was awesome. And she didn’t mean just the way he was built. Though that was pretty fabulous, too.
She shivered at the memory of Bandar’s hands. The way they’d touched her. She could not wait to have him touch her again. And look at her again. With no clothes on.
Her thoughts brought a swirling sensation to her head and a tightness to the pit of her stomach.
She was getting turned on, she recognised. ‘Get up, girl,’ she ordered herself, then immediately thought of Bandar again. He did like to order her around. And she liked to obey. Mindlessly. Blindly. Wantonly.
Her head swirled again, her belly tightening even further.
Her groan was full of frustration. Keeping her mind on her job today was going to be almost impossible. She’d be thinking of Bandar all the time. Looking out for him. Wanting him.
The wanting part would be the most trying. She hadn’t realised how quickly desire could strike. One moment she’d been totally relaxed and content. The next, she’d been consumed with the need to be made love to again. She craved another climax. Craved Bandar inside her. Craved the soothing contentment of afterwards.
Jumping to her feet, Samantha swept the duvet up off the floor and hurried from the room.
‘I can see you’re still not feeling well.’
Samantha frowned as she glanced up at Gerald. They were halfway through worming the mares due to foal in August—an easy, though boring job. No real concentration was needed, and she’d been off on another planet the whole time.
But she could hardly tell Gerald what had been filling her mind. He’d be shocked to the core. Better to be keep Bandar’s little white lie going. He’d apparently told them yesterday that she’d had an upset stomach.
‘I’m not quite on top of things yet,’ she said.
‘Stomach still bothering you?’
‘Mmm. My head, too.’ And wasn’t that the truth? Her head was her main problem. It simply would not give her any peace, constantly filling with images of her and Bandar last night.
‘You should have the afternoon off,’ Gerald advised. ‘Have a lie-down.’
Samantha wanted to have a lie-down. But not alone.
Bandar’s sudden appearance at the fence of the paddock they were working in startled her. She hadn’t seen or heard him. The golf cart he was driving again today didn’t make much noise on the gravel. It was the quietest of the vehicles used around the stud.
‘Good morning,’ he said as he stepped up onto the wooden railing.
Her nerves were instantly ajangle, her nipples hardening under her jumper just at the sight of him.
He was wearing stonewashed grey jeans and a fleecy black top with a zipper down the front. The day was cooler than yesterday, the sun not providing much warmth.
Samantha looked at him and he looked right back, his dark eyes not reflecting anything which had happened between them. Oh, but he was a cool customer!
But then he was a playboy, wasn’t he? He had three girlfriends back home. What was she but another little bit on the side? A fill-in. Nothing all that special, despite his flattering words last night. Just someone slightly different to help him pass the time in what he was probably finding quite a dull place to live.
She had to be careful, and not let herself get carried away with this man. He was perfect as a fantasy lover. To actually fall in love with him would be very foolish indeed. She had to keep him in the role of fantasy lover in her head and in her heart. She had to learn everything she could from him, then wave him off at the end of his stay without a single second thought or regret.
Because that was what he would be doing with her. Hadn’t he mentioned more than once that his time here was limited?
At the same time, Samantha could not deny that the next three weeks promised to be the most exciting time of her life. It was difficult to keep her head—or her feet—on the ground, the moment she got within calling distance of him.
‘How are you feeling today, Samantha?’ he asked matter-of-factly.
‘She’s not too good at all,’ Gerald answered for her. ‘Her stomach’s still upset. I told her to take the afternoon off. Have a lie-down.’
‘That sounds like an excellent suggestion. I have just the thing to settle that stomach of yours up at the house,’ he said.
His voice and eyes were betraying nothing. But Samantha could hear the wicked irony behind his clever play on words. He was a devil all right: a sexy, devious, conscienceless devil.
‘There is also a nice daybed out on the back patio, where it’s warm but shady. The perfect place for you to lie down. That cottage Samantha lives in is in a cold spot,’ he directed at Gerald. ‘I visited her last night, to see how she was, and thought she would be better off up in one of the guestrooms at the main house. But I dared not suggest it.’
Gerald laughed. ‘Very wise move. Our Samantha does not take kindly to male suggestions—do you, Sam?’
Samantha’s smile was forced. ‘That depends on what they’re suggesting,’ she bit out.
‘Now, don’t go getting stroppy,’ Gerald said. ‘Bandar’s just being kind. Be a sensible girl and go up to the house with him—get that medicine into you. Then stay and have a rest. Cleo will be there to look after you.’
‘Actually, Cleo will not be there to look after you,’ Bandar murmured the moment she was seated beside him in the golf cart and Gerald was out of earshot. ‘Thursday is her shopping day in town. She has just left. I made sure Norman went with her, so we will have the house to ourselves for at least three hours.’
‘You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?’ she threw at him. And of me, she added ruefully to herself.
His head turned to frown over at her. ‘We are not back to square one, are we, Samantha?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But please don’t presume I will always be at your beck and call. I have my pride, you know.’
He stopped driving, his eyes whipping round to bore into hers. ‘You want me to make love to you again, do you not?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Then do not speak to me of pride. Pride is just an excuse for you not to be what you want to be.’
‘And what is that?’
‘A woman who has finally discovered the pleasures of the flesh and who wants more. Do not deny it,’ he swept on before she could say a word. ‘I know what I know. Pretence and pride will be your downfall, Samantha, if you let them. It is time to face the truth.’
‘The truth?’
‘You are a spirited girl, with a good brain and a strong personality. But you like to be controlled in the bedroom. That is nothing to be ashamed of. There are many women who need that kind of liberation before they can truly enjoy sex.’
‘But how can being controlled be a liberation?’ she asked, confused by his assessment of her sexual preferences. And yet he could possibly be right. She had liked it last night when he’d ordered her around, when he’d directed all the action.
‘If you totally surrender yourself to your lover, it frees you of all responsibility for what happens. You don’t have to concentrate, or compete. You just lie back and enjoy. If your lover is a good lover—and by that I mean skilled in the erotic arts, but not in any way depraved or cruel—your experiences can be out of this world. You just like your lover to be masterful.’
‘What I would like is for you to stop talking about distracting things and start driving again.’
‘You want me to get to the house in a hurry?’
‘Yes,’ she said, shuddering as she accepted she was now even more excited. There was no doubt he was totally corrupting her.
‘Then I will go slower,’ he said, and reached over to cover her knee with one hand. ‘You must learn patience, Samantha. I give the orders; you simply obey. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘You will do as I say? Always?’
She picked up his hand and put it right back on the wheel. ‘In y
our dreams, Bandar. Last night was fantastic, but I do still have a mind of my own.’ Though she suspected it might grow weaker with each passing day in this man’s company.
He pursed his lips in disapproval of her defiance. ‘I see you have not yet been broken in properly. But it is early days yet.’
‘I am not a horse!’
‘That is a pity. Horses cannot talk back. We are here,’ he said, stopping right in front of the steps. ‘Time for your medicine.’
‘You are a truly wicked man,’ Samantha said as she climbed out. For inside she was literally quaking with desire.
‘You bring out my darker side,’ he muttered, striding round the cart to where she was standing. ‘Come.’ He took her hand and drew her up the steps onto the cloistered verandah. The front doors were unlocked, and Bandar led her quickly through the foyer and down the wide hallway of the wing which contained all the bedrooms.
Samantha had been in the main guest suite. Once. Cleo had been cleaning it in preparation for visitors at Christmas time. Samantha had been helping her—not because she’d had to, but because she’d been lonely.
There were three rooms: a bedroom, sitting room anden-suite bathroom. All were spacious, filled with good-quality country-style furniture and five-star luxuries—from the king-sized bed and the flatscreen television, hooked up to the satellite, to the corner spa bath with its eighteen-carat-gold-plated taps.
‘I shall run a bath,’ Bandar said, after he’d steered her into the sitting room and left her standing by an elegantly striped sofa.
Samantha winced. ‘I smell of horses, I suppose?’
‘I like the smell of horses,’ he returned smoothly. ‘One day we will make love on a horse.’
‘Oh…’ she said, her mind immediately forming an image of Bandar riding a horse and her, naked, sitting astride his lap, her back to him.
Her hands were holding the reins, because his hands were busy on her bare breasts. He was naked, too, and buried deep inside her, as he’d been last night. The horse was galloping and—
‘But not today,’ he went on, breaking the spell of her fantasy. ‘Today I wish to bathe with you. Then make love to you in a proper bed.’
‘Oh,’ she said, for a second time. Was there no end to the erotic scenarios he would propose, which he had obviously experienced before?
A black jealousy claimed Samantha as she thought of Bandar bathing with other women, not to mention making love to them on galloping horses, and hard floors, and soft beds, and probably countless other places and positions.
‘You’ve done these things with other women, have you?’ she blurted out.
‘What? Oh…otherwomen.’ His dark eyes narrowed, his brows drawing together as he considered his answer.
Samantha’s heart grew tight in her chest. She didn’t want him to admit it. And what if he said he had? What would she do? Would she have the courage to walk away?
‘I have known many women. In fact, I have moved in a very different world to you, Samantha,’he said at last, ‘where obscene wealth brings out the worst in men.And women. I have witnessed many scenes—most recently at a private party I attended not that long ago—but I was revolted. I enjoy playing erotic games, but lovemaking, for me, is a private and very personal activity. I do confess to preferring a partner who likes me to be master in the bedroom. I am not one of those inadequate men who needs the woman on top, so to speak. It is I who does the riding. I who does the binding.’
‘Thebinding ?’
‘You will like being bound,’ he stated, with shocking confidence.
‘How can you be sure?’ she asked, but breathlessly. The idea was already exciting her, bringing all kinds of questions into her head. How would he tie her up? Where? And for how long?
‘I am sure,’ he stated firmly, his eyes fixing on her parted lips. ‘There are tea and coffee-making facilities over there,’ he went on, nodding towards the built-in wall unit, the long wooden doors cleverly concealing everything a person would require to make a drink or a snack. On the day Samantha had been helping Cleo clean, her job had been to fill the small fridge with wine and soft drinks.
‘You might like to make us something hot to drink whilst I run that bath.’
‘No,’ she replied, frustrated by his coolness and his control. ‘I don’t want a drink. I want you to kiss me. Ineed you to kiss me, Bandar. Right now.’
Bandar was taken aback by her passionate rebellion. But also stirred by it.
This was what had bewitched him about her from the start. Her headstrong spirit. And, yes, her passion. Having her blindly obey him last night had been extremely satisfying, but when she was like this—her blue eyes blazing and that saucy mouth of hers spitting defiance—he wanted to rip the clothes from her body and ravage her on the spot.
‘If I kiss you, I might not be able to wait,’ he admitted, feeling some alarm at the way he was suddenly feeling—like a volcano about to erupt.
‘You’re the one talking too much now,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you just shut up and kiss me?’
Bandar’s already precarious control snapped.
He covered the ground between them in a split second, crushing her against him and plundering her lips as he had never plundered a woman’s mouth before. She more than matched him with her own hunger, her hands grabbing him by his top and yanking him even harder against her.
Bandar knew he could not last much longer, a situation which was quite shocking to him. He prided himself on his skill as a lover. To come prematurely would be mortifying in the extreme.
In desperation, he grabbed her ponytail and yanked her away. Their mouths burst apart, and Bandar stared down into her wildly dilated eyes before he suddenly fell to ripping off her clothes.
To hell with his pride. To hell with everything!
She helped him with the shedding of her jumper over her head, and then with her bra. Her jeans were a temporary stumbling block when the zipper caught in the fraying denim halfway down. He tipped her back onto the nearby sofa and dragged them down her legs, taking her elastic-sided riding boots with them. Her panties followed—unsexy cotton briefs which Bandar vowed to burn.
Once totally naked, she actually jumped to her feet and attackedhis clothes. Bandar was too stunned—and too turned on—to stop her. She was like a wild animal, ripping and clawing at him. By the time he stood naked also he was once again perilously close to the point of no return.
She should not have touched him—should not have caressed him like that!
He took her standing up, lifting her onto her toes as he rammed up into her. Once anchored deep inside her, he carried her across the room and pushed her up against the wall unit, taking her wrists and pinning her arms wide against the wood, holding her solidly captive whilst he started pounding into her. He heard her cry out, and didn’t know if it was a cry of pain or pleasure. He didn’t care. He had totally lost it.
Bandar came with a speed unknown to him. Barely ten seconds after penetration he ejaculated, groaning and shuddering like some horny teenager with no control at all. His not using protection made him groan for a different reason. Yet how delicious it felt without anything between them. Bandar wallowed in the sensation of his seed flooding her womb. More satisfaction followed when she came, his physical pleasure heightened as her avid flesh milked him.
True regret was slow in coming. But when it did Bandar squeezed his eyes tightly shut, his lungs expanding then deflating in a deeply troubled breath.
Samantha was going to be furious with him. And rightly so. Though, damn it all, her behaviour had not helped. How could she expect a man to control himself in such a situation?
But you always have before, Bandar, came a rueful voice from deep inside. You never lose control. Never, ever.
Why are you so different with this girl?
A sound escaped her lips: half-sigh, half-sob.
He opened his eyes to find that hers were half closed, her head turned to one side. He got the impression she would sink
to the floor if he wasn’t still holding her arms up against the wall.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, not daring to let her go.
Her eyelids opened slowly. Her smile was just as slow.
‘Lovely, thanks,’ she murmured.
‘I did not use protection,’ he said, becoming more perturbed by his reckless stupidity with each passing moment.
He did not want a child—especially not now, when he might not be here to protect it. Material provision could always be made, but having money was not the answer to everything, no matter what some people thought. A child needed his father to be there for him during his growing up years.
