‘Hashim…what?’ he questioned huskily, moving his mouth to her throat to trace a featherlight kiss along its silken path.
It would be madness to protest that he had never kissed her like this before—not when she had spent hours wondering why.
‘Oh-oh-oh!’ She shuddered as he lightly drifted his hand over her breast.
A grim, silent smile of triumph curved his hard lips as his fingertips returned to whisper over their pert lushness. ‘Oh, what, Sienna?’ came the silken query. ‘Is that good?’
‘Oh!Oh! ’ she gasped. ‘So good!’
A tiny pulse flickered in the centre of one tensed olive cheek. ‘Tell me what it is you want,’ he grated.
Instinct took over from reservation and sent the words spilling out of their own accord. ‘That,’ she sighed, as his fingers brushed fleetingly against the aching mounds of her breasts. ‘That’s what I want!’
He cupped the magnificent swell in his hand and rubbed a slow and deliberate circle with his thumb. ‘Likethis , you mean?’
She nodded as pleasure constricted her throat into a tight, dry band.
‘I can’t hear you, Sienna,’ he urged softly.
‘Yes,’ she moaned. ‘Yes! Just like that. Oh, Hashim…’
How he had misjudged her! Oh, yes! He could feel her responsive body pressing close to his, and knew that if he put his hand up her skirt she would not stop him. How far would she let him go in public? Would she let him unzip himself and plunge right in? Probably.
‘You want that I should make love to you by the lift?’ he demanded hotly.
In some dim recess of her mind she was aware that he sounded almost…harsh…disapproving…But maybe that was because he had been holding back for so long. Didn’t they say that men had difficulty controlling their sexual hunger? Sienna drew back and swallowed breathlessly, lifting the palm of her hand to touch his rugged face, but it looked oddly cold and forbidding. Obviously he was holding himself tightly in check and she must not make him wait any longer—he had played the gentleman to her heart’s content. It was time.
‘Let’s go to bed,’ she whispered daringly.
His mouth hardened. ‘Yes,’ agreed Hashim, in an odd kind of voice. ‘Why don’t we?’
Without warning he shut the door with an echoing slam, then picked her up and carried her towards a vast double bed which was covered with a lavish embroidered gold coverlet.
‘Fit for a king!’ Sienna murmured with delight, but there was no answering smile in his eyes as he put her down on it.
‘Only a sheikh this time, I’m afraid,’ he responded tonelessly. ‘Are you disappointed?’
She wanted to ask him if something was wrong, but by then he had come to lie down beside her and her last reservations melted away.
‘Now, then,’ he said decisively, and began to unbutton her dress, a pure feral smile of hunger emphasising the deep lines around his mouth. ‘Ah…’ He sucked in a slow breath of pleasure as her breasts were revealed to him, spilling lushly pale from the pink lace which confined them. ‘So firm. So tight. So taut. Like two rich, ripe fruits. Beautiful. So very, very beautiful. You have the most beautiful breasts that I have ever seen, Sienna. What a lucky man I am.’
Something in his words unsettled her—but any slight anxiety she experienced was allayed with the expert motion of his fingertips, and Sienna closed her eyes.
‘Yes,’ he murmured approvingly. ‘Lie back and enjoy it.’
Oh, but he was so thoughtful. Beneath that steely exterior he cared for her own pleasure first and foremost. She felt him unclip her bra and give a shuddering sigh. Her eyelashes fluttered open and she surprised a look of almost…reluctance…on his face. But then he lowered his head towards her and she could feel the approaching warmth of his breath.
‘Hashim…’ She swallowed. She wasn’t sure that he’d heard her. ‘Hashim,’ she said again, almost desperately this time, for more than anything she wanted him to kiss her, to whisper sweet words to accompany these erotic gestures.
‘Shh,’ he instructed silkily, for he knew from experience that conversation could break the mood and concentration. He knew what he wanted and he was going to allow nothing—nothing—to stop him from achieving it.
Sienna squirmed on the cold coverlet and the expert movement of his hands made her need for reassurance vanish. Her breasts had never felt like this before. As if they had swollen to twice their normal size and were prickling with excitement—the blood coursing through them so that the slightest touch sent shafts of pure pleasure spiralling through her. She squealed as his tongue licked against the sensitised flesh.
‘You are very responsive for one so…innocent,’ he observed against her puckered nipple.
Another shaft of pleasure so acute that it bordered on pain shot through her, and she was aware of an empty, echoing longing, just crying out to be filled. ‘A-am I?’
‘Yes, you are. And now you will be more responsive still….’
Sienna’s breath caught in her throat, for his hand was moving downwards now, inching towards the heated clamour—the very heart of where she most wanted to be touched—and Sienna silently prayed that he wouldn’t stop.
‘I won’t,’ he said roughly, and she realised that she must have spoken the words out loud.
‘Hashim,’ she whispered, letting her lips rest against the soft furnace of his skin. ‘Hashim, I love you.’
For a moment he stilled, then shook his head very slightly, silencing her with his expert caress. He touched her molten and responsive heat with such delicate skill until she gasped in disbelief—like someone frantically seeking something only not quite sure what. Restlessly, her head moved from side to side as she stumbled towards a place of promise so beautiful that she was certain it could not really exist.
But it did. Oh, it did. She found it and fell into it, sobbing out her fulfilment, scarcely aware of Hashim pulling away from her. But, as reason and sanity began to seep back in, she realised that he was getting off the bed and moving away.
Over to the other side of the room and as far away from her as possible!
She blinked as she struggled to catch her breath. ‘Hashim?’ she croaked in confusion. ‘Is anything wrong?’
‘Wrong?’ He paused before answering her question, sucking in a deep breath as he sought—successfully—to bring his desire under control, to be replaced with the slow simmer of rage. ‘I think that we’re through with playing games, don’t you?’
Sienna sat up on the bed, aware that her clothing was in disarray, feeling somehow cheapened as she stared into the forbidding mask of his face. A Hashim she’d never seen before, and one she barely recognised. ‘Why are you behaving like this?’ she questioned in bewilderment. ‘Don’t you…don’t you want to make love to me? Properly?’
‘You think I would deign to contaminate myself byentering you?’ he questioned insultingly. ‘You who have fooled me!’
‘I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about!’ But some self-protective instinct made her begin to button her dress with trembling fingers.
‘The sweet little virgin!’ he ground out furiously. ‘Like hell you are! Sweet little virgins don’t take their clothes off and pose for pornographic photos!’
And then it all became horribly, horribly clear. That calendar. Those twelve photos. Oh, those wretched, wretched photos.
Sienna flinched and let out a shuddering sigh. ‘You’ve seen them?’
Had there perhaps been some insane part of him which had been hoping that it was all a mistake—that she had a secret identical sister waiting in the wings, perhaps? Because, if so, that futile thought was banished by the look of guilt on her face.
His hopes and dreams for what might have been now crumbled before his eyes like desert dust as he realised his mistake. He had believed her to be the woman hewanted her to be, not the woman she really was. He had been sucked in by her beauty and her air of innocence. Oh, what a fool he had been!
‘Yes, I’ve seen t
hem!’ he grated, remembering that he had been about to introduce her to his family! That he had actually been entertaining thoughts of her as a future bride. Fool!
‘Hashim—please—it isn’t how it looks,’ she said desperately.
She had agreed to do the calendar as a one-off to get her mother the operation she’d needed. Her mother had been crippled with pain and facing ruin, and the badly needed operation had been expensive. It had been an unconventional way to get the money, yes—but the only way which had been open to her at the time. And surely if Hashim realised howdesperate she had felt. Howhopeless her mother’s predicament…
‘Please, Hashim…I can explain—’
‘What? How you came to be rubbing your breasts and simulatingorgasm ?’ he cut in brutally, but despite his disgust he nevertheless felt the hard leap of desire. For even though their existence destroyed any future between them, he was not hypocritical enough to deny that they were magnificent photographs. ‘You think that there is any acceptable explanation forthat ?’ he snapped.
‘It isn’t—’
But his rage was such that he barely heard her. ‘On the head of my camel you are a magnificent actress—I commend you for that! You have succeeded in fooling me. And you have lied to me,’ he added bitterly, remembering the way she had told him that she was a virgin—and that sheloved him.
‘I did not lie to you! I just…’ She looked at him and shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘Couldn’t think of the right time to tell you.’
‘But there would never have been a right time! In my culture, such conduct from the consort to the Sheikh would be utterly repellent—surely you must have known that?’
Sienna stared at him. Of course she had. Was that another reason why she had buried it away? As if by doing that she could pretend it had never happened? So that she wouldn’t have to face the repercussions of her actions? Could carry on living in her little fantasy world with Hashim—untouched by the past and untroubled by the future? But had she ever imagined that the outcome would be any different from this? That there would be some magical, fairy-tale solution despite what she’d done?
No. Hashim would never forgive her.
The reality of seeing the contempt in his black eyes was almost too much to bear, and Sienna stood up and picked up her shoes, her hair falling down over her face, concealing her pain from him.
But she paused by the door, lifting her gaze to his, unable to suppress the tiny flicker of hope which stubbornly refused to die.
‘Is that it, then, Hashim? Is it…over?’
‘Over?’ His mouth hardened, for he wanted to wound her. To hurt her as she had hurt him. To destroy her dreams as she had destroyed his. ‘I think you forget yourself. Did you ever expect that it would be anything other than a very temporary diversion?’ he questioned imperiously. ‘For I am the Sheikh and you are but a commoner.’ His made his final thrust. ‘A true commoner.’
CHAPTER THREE
HOWpainful the past could be.
But as the mists of memory cleared, and Sienna looked into Hashim’s steely black eyes, the pain came flooding back as if the years in between had never happened.
She remembered the way she had stumbled from his suite that evening, the tears beginning to slip from beneath her eyelids. Somehow she had made it home and howled into her pillow like a wounded animal. She had never known that it was possible to cry that much. Or to hurt that much. To be revolted by the thought of food and want only to sleep—but sleep had never seemed to come, and when it had, it mocked her with images of the dark face she had grown to love so much.
For the first and only time in her life she had understood the meaning of the word heartbreak—and she never wanted to experience it again.
It had taken her countless months to put her life back on track, to rejoin the human race. But a lot had changed since then—and most importantlyshe had changed. She was no longer the innocent young girl who didn’t have a clue about life or how to handle men.
Just keep telling yourself that,she thought, with more than a hint of desperation as she met his glittering stare.
‘You’re remembering the last time we saw each other,’ he observed, an odd kind of note in his voice.
Had her face given her away? Maybe he had read in it her vulnerability and her anguish. ‘How could I not?’ she questioned, trying to keep her voice from shaking. ‘I only have to look at you and it all comes flooding back.’
He stared at her and his black eyes were as hard as jet. Did she imagine that it was any different for him? He felt the hard leap of desire. ‘So it does,’ he agreed softly.
‘Maybe we should try a joint counselling session,’ she suggested, trying to keep it light. ‘You know—like people who want to stop smoking.’
How flippant she sounded, he thought—and how cynical. Were those traits that she had kept cleverly hidden from him? And why not? Had she not been a woman adept in the art of concealment? ‘But maybe I’m not ready to stop,’ he said deliberately.
Sienna felt an odd kind of lump in her throat, and something both seductive and yet infinitely threatening hovered unseen and unspoken in the air. Now her voice did tremble. ‘And wh—what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, at least for you it was a…how shall I put this?’ A cruel kind of smile lifted the corners of his lips. ‘A satisfying encounter.’
His implication was very plain and very insulting, but it wasn’t even true—or at least not in the way that mattered. Maybe in one sense it had been satisfying—on a purely physical level, yes—but on an emotional one it had been as barren as one of the deserts in his homeland. Fulfilment without tenderness was never satisfying for a woman, and it had left her empty—as if he’d ripped out an essential part of her and carried it off with him. ‘Is that how you would describe it?’ she questioned bleakly.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ he mocked.
‘Not really, no.’ She looked into the cold black eyes and knew that he would never understand in a million years—nor even want to try. Why would he? Sienna shook her head, hoping to drive away some of the sadness. ‘Anyway, what’s the point in discussing it? Things have moved on.’
His face remained impassive, but inside he felt the flicker of anger mixed into a potent cocktail with sexual hunger and anticipation. She had fooled him once, but never again! Did she really think for a moment that now that he had her in his sights he was about to let her go? Did she not realise what he wanted? That he had come here to achieve just this?
But, like the expert hunter he was, he knew that there were many ways to play with your quarry. Had she too regretted the abrupt end to that meeting? Perhaps for her as well as for him there had been bitter regrets that their lovemaking had not been complete?
‘Yes, things have moved on,’ he agreed. ‘But they seem to have brought us back to the same place. I am here and you are here—so just what do you think we ought to do about it?’
He took a step closer to her. He was close enough now for her to study him properly, so that she could see how much he had changed—though none of the fundamentals had. He was still the most breathtakingly masculine man she had ever laid eyes on. As if he had stepped from another age and another time. His own particular scent drifted up her nostrils—a vital, spicy scent that spoke of raw virility and reached out to the most feminine side of her.
Briefly, Sienna closed her eyes in helpless recognition, and when she opened them again it was to see the warm ebony fire in his. She could feel herself drawn to him. Like a child who had been left outside in the cold for too long. He promised the certainty of warmth. Of comfort. And security.
She wasn’t aware that he had moved again, but he must have done—please God it hadn’t been her—because suddenly she was in his arms, her senses not giving her time to question her sanity as he bent his head to graze his lips across hers.
It was electric. Like fire. Ice. All extremes which could shock the system to its very core—that was Hashim’s kiss. It awakened in
her something which had lain dormant, sleeping since the last time she had been in his arms. Back then she had—in her naivety—imagined that all kisses would press the button to instant sensual combustion, but in the interim she had discovered how way off the mark she had been.
His expert lips were both hard and soft, seeking yet commanding—and they tasted sweeter than the richest honey. Her own opened beneath them, to taste the warmth, to feel the seductive slide of his tongue into the moist interior of her mouth, and she gasped, buckled, so that his arms caught her against him, imprisoning her in an iron-hard grip which made her melt against him.
A great wave of longing swept through her. Physical—oh, yes—but something else besides. Something which was infinitely more powerful and far more dangerous. As if Hashim alone could fill some emotional space which seemed ever-constant inside her.
Exposed The Sheikh’s Mistress Page 3
