by Lynne Graham
‘But he’s still so young…how can that be?’
‘His mother’s unpleasant reputation went before him. She was very unpopular.’ Tariq loosed a rueful sigh and let his fingers rise to cover the rosy pink nipples involuntarily straining for his attention.
As an electrified shiver of helpless response ran through Faye and her eyes squeezed shut on the intensity of the sensation, Tariq continued talking in a slightly roughened undertone. ‘Were anything to happen to me in the near future, my people might not accept Rafi as my successor. For that reason and others, I will soon have to take a second wife and father a son of my own.’
Emerging from the sensual haze provoked by his most minor foray over her shamelessly wanton flesh, Faye jerked rigid when that casual announcement finally sank in. Her shaken eyes opened very wide, pain biting into her very bones without warning. A second wife? Did that mean that, however briefly it had lasted, their marriage had been a true marriage a year ago? But what did that matter now when Tariq had long since divorced her?
‘A second wife…?’ Faye parroted, although she had waged a mighty battle with her impulsive tongue and tried very hard not to comment.
‘I have had enough of the water…but not enough of you,’ Tariq countered with a ragged edge to his sexy drawl, beginning to rise from the water and carrying her with him to lift her out of the Jacuzzi again.
Dazed and devastated by the unbelievably agonising idea of Tariq marrying another woman, Faye stood there streaming with water while she was wrapped in a huge fleecy towel like a small child. There was something extremely disorientating about the way Tariq just reacted with split-second timing and switched channel and subject, something decidedly terrifying about the totally offhand manner in which he had mentioned his plans to marry again.
Here she was naked within an hour of his becoming her first lover, her body still singing under even his most light and impersonal touch, and yet here he was treating her like a casual bed partner, a sex object who had no value beyond the fleeting physical pleasure she might give. An object without any apparent right to have vulnerable feelings of her own. Well, a little voice said inside her head, just what did you think becoming the mistress of an Arabian prince would entail?
‘Another w—?’ she began shakily again, gazing up into glittering lion-gold eyes, voice failing altogether as he released his hold on the towel and let it drop round her ankles instead.
‘I want you all over again,’ Tariq confided thickly. ‘But then that is only to be expected when it has been so long since I have been with a woman—’
‘So long?’
As if that was a rather stupid question, a slight frownline furrowed his imperious brows as he drew her to him with purposeful hands. ‘For the whole of the past year, I have naturally been in mourning for the tragic deaths in my family.’
His father, his stepmother, she assumed absently. Official mourning to show respect for the departed? What did she know about that? Yet she respected him for that self-denial. Or was it just that the knowledge that there had been no other woman for him since he had first met her gave her a much-needed sense of not being merely one more in a long line of available female bodies? For women, certainly in the West, would always be available to Tariq. When she had been seeing him, she had been painfully aware that he attracted her sex without even trying.
‘Faye…so hungry am I for you, I could devour you where I stand,’ Tariq admitted in a charged undertone.
Her lashes lifted, sensible thought snatched from her. She gazed up at him, jolted by the primal fire in his eyes, the hard male clenching of his superb bone structure. He knotted his fingers slowly into her hair, drawing her inexorably to him, anchoring her to his big, powerful frame. The hard, potent proof of his hunger brushed her quivering tummy and her legs turned hollow and her mind went blank and she could not drag her mesmerised eyes from the savage lure of his. The wanting was back with a vengeance, hotter and even less controllable than before. She could feel a damp, pulsing ache between her thighs, an ache that was becoming frighteningly familiar.
He swept her up and strode out of the bathroom. Like a doll without will or voice she didn’t object but shame touched her deep for the fastest route back to the bed was all that mattered to her. Just that ragged note in his voice, just a touch, just a scorching look of raw hunger and something in her melted, reducing her to reckless, mindless surrender to his dominance, all defences forsaken. How could she fight herself?
‘I meant to have you only once tonight.’ Tariq groaned. ‘But the once was only the breaking of a fast, not sufficient…I could have taken you in the Jacuzzi, I could have taken you on that hard floor, against the wall…the dawn is far away but it threatens me for tomorrow I must spend all day in talks with the sheikhs—’
Enervated and intimidated by that series of earthly declarations of intent, Faye mumbled shakily, ‘The wall?’
Tariq gave her a shimmering smile of pure blazing assurance. ‘Anywhere you want, any way you want.’
‘I only know one way…’
Tariq spread her across the bed. On some dim level of awareness her nostrils flared in vague surprise at the scent of freshly laundered sheets. Evidently even in the space of their brief absence the bed had been changed.
‘That was basic,’ Tariq husked. ‘Think steep learning curve…’
Her feverish gaze welded to him, her face hot with embarrassment but her wanton body secretly burning. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. The sexual heat he emanated filled her with helpless excitement. You’re going to spend the rest of your days regretting this, her conscience warned. You’re going to hate yourself…
‘Think pleasure beyond your wildest fantasies…’ Tariq lowered himself down over her inch by sexy inch, trapping the breath in her throat, charging her quivering length with the most intense anticipation. Well, maybe she could learn not to hate herself…fate, he had called it, no point fighting fate…no point denying that that wicked smile of sensual promise slashing his lean, dark, devastating face bereft her entirely of her wits.
‘Thinking…’ she conceded weakly.
‘Feeling…’ Tariq traded, sliding between her parted thighs with the slow carnal expertise of a male who liked to tempt and incite. ‘Until you don’t care what day it is or what time it is and hunger and need for me controls your every thought, your every action…’
A chill of foreboding touched her deep down inside. ‘You want me to love you…’
‘Yes…’ Tariq studied her with dark, deep-set eyes of unutterable calm.
‘So that you can throw me away again,’ she framed unevenly.
‘If you please me enough, I may only throw you as far as my villa in France,’ Tariq breathed with lazy cool. ‘Then I could visit you when I wanted to and the tables would be truly turned for you would be jumping every time the phone rang, praying it was me and you would never ever dare to be unavailable…’
‘That’s some agenda you’ve got,’ Faye muttered with forced amusement. ‘No harem but complete enslavement.’
‘The only game player would be me…’
‘Well, there wouldn’t really be room for anyone else with that ego of yours.’
He threw back his proud dark head and laughed with rich appreciation and then he brought his mouth down on hers and kissed her breathless. Until all she was conscious of was the feel of him, the taste of him and her own deep, endless hunger…
Faye shifted in the dawn light, waking slowly, conscious of a myriad sensations: Tariq holding her close, the weightless feel of her own limbs and a level of sweet contentment beyond anything she had ever imagined.
‘Happy, aziz?’ he murmured, easing her back into the hard heat and shelter of his lean, powerful frame, pressing his lips against a pale, slim shoulder, sending an evocative shiver winging through her awakening length.
‘Blissful…’ The hand he had splayed across her tummy melded her even closer and she felt his hair-roughened chest graze the skin of
her back, the flex of his long, powerful thighs against her slender hips. A sheet of paper could not have squeezed between them and, at that instant, that was her definition of bliss.
Erotic images of the night they had shared assailed her mind, images that shook her but still filled her with an intoxicating heat she could not resist, any more than she could resist him. Now she understood what had once prompted her to make an utter fool of herself around him. Not just his devastating good looks or his powerful personality but the excitement, the sheer charge of physical excitement he evoked just walking into a room. That white-hot sexuality, that volatile charge of innate sensuality was as much a part of him as the cool self-discipline which cloaked it. So what was it like being an Arabian mistress? she asked herself, in a dizzy state of delight that had nothing to do with intellect. It was the passport to the sensual heaven of another world for she did not want the night to end, she did not want the light fingering through the tent room to rise to the strength of the full morning sun.
‘Good…’ Tariq let his hands glide up over her breasts in the lightest of caresses and she arched her spine, instinctively pushing her swelling flesh into his palms, driven by the tingling demands of her own sensitised body.
‘Everything’s good,’ she mumbled, jolted by her own instant response, shaken by the ever-ready heat he could ignite at will, wondering for a split second if she was insatiable, wondering anxiously if it was quite normal to want any male as much as she now seemed to want him. Constantly.
‘Then I’m happy too…’ He let his fingers encircle the swollen prominence of her nipples, stroking, tugging, teasing the tender tips.
She jackknifed back against him, a long sobbing breath escaping her throat, and just closed her eyes tight, letting the pleasure cascade through her like a drug she craved, for long, endless moments totally lost within its grasp.
‘Although “happy” is something of an understatement,’ Tariq husked above her head, the dark, smouldering rasp of his voice sending tiny shivers down her taut spine. ‘You are very passionate.’
She was not capable of speech. There was no yesterday, no today, no tomorrow, she told herself feverishly, no reason why she had to think if she didn’t want to, for to think might be to let go of the happiness singing through her veins like a heady intoxicant.
‘Indeed you might have been fashioned at birth solely for me.’ A faint bitter edge harshened his tone and then he buried his mouth with sensual force in the extended length of her throat. As he hit on a tiny pulse spot with devastating accuracy, she moaned in response.
No longer did she have to tell herself not to think as the slow burn of desire flooded her with mindless heat. He was moving against her, letting her feel his hard, potent arousal, and she lay back against him, quivering, waiting, anticipating, every skin cell alight. He rearranged her with a care that was as tender as it was teasing. He pushed up her knees, drew her back again, sought with deft fingers the damp, swollen centre of her and played there until tortured moans sobbed in her throat.
‘Tariq—’
‘Wait—’
‘I don’t want to wait…I can’t!’ But she knew why there was the need for that slight hiatus, knew he was ensuring that their lovemaking would not result in a pregnancy.
‘Yes, you can…’ Tariq pulled her back to him and entered her all too willing body with surging force.
The sensation was so delicious, she arched her back in helpless pleasure. But one thing he had already taught her: there was no end to the pleasure, no boundaries either. He caught her chin and tugged her face around so that he could possess her mouth in a hot, demanding kiss that branded her. As he took her with agonisingly slow, deep thrusts, she lost herself in the rising, burning excitement of her own hunger. It was as if he were all around her for she felt totally possessed by him and she moaned his name, driven by every invasive shift of his lean, hard body to a greater height. And then the roaring in her ears came like a great wave and she felt him shuddering against her in the grip of a hungry satisfaction as powerful and uncontrollable as her own…and that was even more of a joy to her than the aching, drowning flood of her own release.
In the aftermath, Tariq rolled her back against the pillows and stared down at her. He brushed the wildly tumbled pale blonde hair from her damp brow. She noticed his hand was unsteady. Hawkish golden eyes gazed down into hers, stubborn dark-stubbled jawline clenching hard. ‘Surely you are sore now…I didn’t mean to take you again. Your pleasure should not be less than mine.’
Faye reddened to the roots of her hair, turned her head away, for there was no denying that after a night of constant lovemaking she was tender, but she could no more resist him than she could have resisted water after a week in the hot sun. ‘It wasn’t,’ she mumbled.
‘I don’t believe you.’ Long brown fingers drew her discomfited face back to his keen scrutiny. ‘No woman has ever wanted me as much as you. If I keep you here, I don’t believe you’ll be fit to rise from this bed and walk by tomorrow, aziz.’
With that mortifying and earthy assurance, Tariq released her and sprang out of bed.
‘So you’re not keeping me here?’ Faye prompted before she could bite back that startled question.
‘I think it would be best if you returned to the Muraaba.’
Slight effort at diplomacy in implying she had a choice when she so evidently did not have a choice if he did not want her around. After the night they had shared, she reeled in shock from that rejection.
‘In any case, I’ll be engaged in talks for the next few days and too busy to give you much attention,’ Tariq completed.
Attention? Like a child or a pet might hope to receive? That particular word seemed to reduce her to a very low level of importance. Super-sensitivity to his every spoken word had now afflicted Faye. The harem might have been abolished but she could not help thinking of his father who had sent for a concubine whenever he’d felt like one. After only one night, she was to be dispatched back to the palace.
‘I hope you won’t mind travelling back by car, rather than by air. It will be a lengthy journey.’
‘And why should you spare a helicopter for little insignificant me?’ Faye flipped over onto her tummy and pushed her hot, mortified face into the pillow, cringing at how immature that response had made her sound.
‘It is not like that,’ Tariq responded with grave quietness. ‘I do not believe in unnecessary flights being made merely to save time.’
No woman has ever wanted me as much as you. She shuddered with shame that he should have recognised that and confronted her with that reality. How attractive did men really find the women who found them irresistible? A too willing woman would not challenge or excite the essential hunter in any male. She had just spent the whole night being overwhelmed by how fantastic he was in bed.
‘Faye…you’re taking this too personally.’
‘Maybe you’d like to tell me how not to take it personally,’ she said jaggedly.
‘Sex is a seductive force. I walked in paradise with you last night,’ Tariq murmured coolly, ‘but I have other responsibilities to meet.’
That cool reminder bit like a whip into her unprotected skin. But then she already felt that during the long, passionate hours of the night she had lost an entire layer of protective flesh and somehow turned into someone else, for she no longer knew the woman she had become. He was sending her away and she was arguing about it. She could not believe that she was letting herself down to such an extent. And Tariq had a wonderfully evocative turn of phrase and tone. He had made walking in paradise sound like a giant, hugely wicked taste of the forbidden, to be treated with extreme caution, possibly even rationed.
‘If you stay here, you would be too great a distraction. I could turn a coffee break into an excuse for a private orgy,’ he murmured darkly, undertones churning up the atmosphere around him.
A distraction? Her image of herself had already sunk lower than the soles of her own feet. Numbly, she lifted
her head and focused on his lithe, powerful physique in profile. The hard, clean planes of his high cheekbones were fiercely taut, the set of his strong jawline decidedly aggressive. He was pulling on riding breeches. The long brown sweep of his once satin-smooth back bore scratch marks from her nails. He had a bruise from her teeth on one muscular shoulder—maybe more than one.
Tariq looked as if he had had a run-in with a sex-starved woman, possibly even a whole bunch of them. But even unshaven and with his hair tousled by the all too frequent clutch of her greedy fingers, he was staggeringly beautiful to her stricken gaze. Her heart now felt as if it were in the palms of his lean hands, already crushed, soon to be dropped and maltreated in the worst of ways. And as she watched him dress with that easy, silent grace that was so much a part of him she could no longer pretend to herself, no longer hide from the truth of her own feelings or, even worse, her own wounding insight into his mood.
‘You wish you had never set eyes on me again…’ Faye said painfully.
‘Do not presume to know what is in my mind,’ Tariq urged with chilling immediacy, glancing up and transfixing her with brilliant golden eyes. ‘Once you taught me regret but you will never do so again. Once you had the power to make me ignore common sense. No more.’
As a message for the immediate future it was not encouraging.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SILENCE and mute misery ruled the breakfast at which Faye shredded croissants and ate nothing for she had no appetite for food. The servants kept on bringing ever more tempting dishes to the table but she still could not eat. Soon she would be leaving the tent palace.
It was only two hours since she had woken up in Tariq’s arms. Two hours since she had made the mistake of believing that she was more necessary to Tariq than she was. His seemingly insatiable hunger for her had somehow made her feel secure. But she had deceived herself into thinking what she wanted to think, she conceded strickenly. Tariq had set ruthless limits to their relationship and there was no longer any danger of her weaving fantasies. She was the light entertainment in the bedroom, nothing more.
