Abruptly, she turned from the tent’s entrance and strode over to the chest of drawers near the bed. Pulling them open, she sifted through her clothes until she’d found what she wanted.
It wasn’t a belly dancer’s outfit, but the robes she’d worn the night of that banquet would remind her of the power those women had. The strength in their sensuality and sexuality. That strength, that certainty, had made her afraid at the banquet. But she wasn’t going to let fear stop her now.
Tonight, she was going to change Isma’il’s mind. Tonight she was going to go and reclaim her strength. Reclaim herself. If she wanted him to stop treating her like a victim, she had to stop treating herself as one first.
Lily dressed quickly, pulling on the robes, shaking out her hair so it lay loose across her shoulders. Then, she stepped out into the night.
The space between his tent and hers wasn’t so very far, even so, she shivered a little as she crossed the rocky ground and it wasn’t from cold. Because she wasn’t cold. The decision she’d made heated her up from the inside out. Made her burn.
She didn’t pause to announce herself, didn’t say a word, merely pulled back the tent flap and stepped inside.
Isma’il sat at his desk, a laptop open in front of him, a small desk lamp casting a pool of light around him. His attention was focused on the screen, but as she came in, his head jerked up, a frown on his face. Then, his blue eyes met hers and the frown disappeared, his whole expression wiped clean.
“Ms. Harkness,” he said, smooth. Formal. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
So he meant to distance her did he? Well, she wouldn’t let him. “You know why I’m here.”
Slowly, he leaned back in his chair, a pen held in his long fingers. “No, I am not sure that I do.”
Lily came towards him, the thickness of the carpets strewn on the floor soft beneath her bare feet. He watched her, outwardly calm, but she could see the glitter in his eyes. Knew that he wasn’t as calm and collected as he seemed.
Good.
“You want me to say it? Okay, I will.” She put her hands on his desk, leaned forward, holding his gaze. “I want you, Isma’il.”
He remained very still, but she saw his throat move. “I thought we had established that was not going to happen.”
“You had established that. I hadn’t.”
Abruptly, he tossed the pen down on the desk. “Did you think I said all of that for fun?”
“I think you said all of that because you’re afraid of something. Of hurting me.”
Anger glittered in his eyes, the smooth mask slipping. “You should be afraid.”
“But I’m not.” She stared straight into his turquoise gaze. “I know what I want, Sheikh. I know what I’m asking for. Don’t make me doubt myself.”
This time it was he who looked away, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet. “That was not my intention.”
“Whether it was your intention or not, telling me I don’t know what I want is wrong.” She stepped away from the desk, coming round the side of it to where he stood. “Dan did that. He told me I didn’t mean no. That I wanted it. And now here you are, doing the same thing. Telling me I don’t know my own mind. Making me doubt my own decision. Making me feel as if I’m sixteen again.”
The anger in his eyes flared hotter. “I only wanted you to know exactly what you are getting yourself into.”
“I know exactly what I’m getting myself into.” She came right up close to him, looking up into his eyes. The top few buttons of his shirt were undone, revealing the smooth, bronze skin of his throat, the strong column of his neck, and she wanted to touch him there. Kiss him there.
“I’ve made myself a victim for too long, Isma’il. I’ve lived small and scared, using my job as my armor. Protecting myself. But I’m sick of it. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to feel strong for a change and when you kissed me in the dunes, that’s exactly what I felt.”
He remained motionless. “You should not be here.” His voice sounded hoarse. “You should not say these things to me.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” She stepped closer. “I know you’re afraid of hurting me. Afraid of repeating what Dan did to me. But I’m telling you that you won’t. Because I want you and that makes a difference—I understand that now.”
His breathing had become unsteady, a thin strip of color on his cheekbones. “You will have been observed coming here.”
“I didn’t see anyone around.”
“My security team will have noted your arrival.”
Oh. That wasn’t exactly what she wanted. And yet she found that fact it wasn’t enough to make her leave. “I don’t care who knows I’m here.” It was almost strange to find she really didn’t.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Lily . . . you understand what I like? You know what I’ll take?”
“Yes.” She reached out and put a hand on his chest, feeling his heat. “And I want that too.” Her mouth had gone dry as the enormity of what she was asking came home to her, a tense, shivery excitement collecting in her stomach. It felt good. It felt like coming back to life after years of being frozen. “No holding back. No protecting me. Treat me as if I’d never told you about Dan.”
In his gaze a hot, blue spark ignited. “I will need your obedience.”
She stared back. “You won’t get it.”
Tension, thick and hot and exhilarating built in the air around them.
“Then, I will have to take it,” he said, very soft.
“You can try. In fact, I want you to try.” A shot of intense excitement went through her as something suddenly crystallized in her head. “And . . . I want to resist.”
Yes, resist him. Fight him. Do the things she’d never done when Dan had touched her all those years ago. A dark and dangerous desire.
“Lily . . . ” He stopped. “Do you know what you are asking for?”
She swallowed. “I didn’t stop Dan. I didn’t push him away. I just stood there and let him do whatever he wanted because I was too young and too afraid.” Her hand pressed against the hard wall of muscle. There was no give. Just heat and solid strength. “I’ve always been so ashamed of that. I always wished I’d at least put up some fight.”
“You were only sixteen.”
“But I’m not sixteen now.” She pushed at him and again he didn’t move. “I want to resist, Sheikh. I want to fight. Just so I know that I can. So I know what it feels like.”
He said nothing for a moment. “If you do not want me to hold back, Lily, I will win. I will take you.” It wasn’t a threat. It was a statement of fact. “You understand that?”
“It’s not the winning that matters. All that matters was that I fought. That I tried. That I resisted with all my strength. That I gave back as good as I got.” She curled her fingers, digging them into the taut muscle under her hand. “I’m so angry that he did that to me. I’m so angry I let him. And I’m so angry that all I feel is shame.”
Isma’il’s warm hand covered her own, the heat of it burning down her arm. Into her chest. Into her heart. “Then give me your anger, Lily Harkness. Give me your shame. Use me to reclaim your strength and your pride.”
Her throat closed. He understood. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
His mouth curved. “Do I look weak to you?”
“No.” She wanted to smile back, but the moment was too serious. Too intense. “But I’m very angry, Isma’il. And I’m stronger than I look.”
“Then try, Lily,” he said softly. “Hurt me if you can.”
That was all the warning she got.
He moved, pushing one hand into her hair, curling his fingers through it. Lily gasped, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he turned his wrist, wrapping her hair around it, pulling her head back hard. She looked up into his eyes, into the blue flame burning there. A blue flame with a dark heart.
“Isma’il.” A prayer. A plea.
His head bent and he took her mouth, letting her know exactly what she wa
s dealing with. What she’d unleashed in him.
So much heat. So much intensity. He devoured her, the hot taste of him a shot of pure alcohol that went straight to her head. Like the kiss in the dunes, he didn’t hold back and he didn’t let up, kissing her with a raw carnality that made wild excitement break loose inside her.
She shoved her hands hard against his chest, resisting him as she’d promised, but it was like pushing against a brick wall. He didn’t move, didn’t release her. His hand in her hair tightened further, her head pulled back harder, giving him deeper access to her mouth, which he took without mercy.
Lily groaned, only to gasp and stumble as abruptly he let her go.
“No,” she protested, swaying, trying to find her balance. “I don’t want you to stop.”
“I am not stopping, Habibti,” he said, his voice thick. “Take off your clothes.”
“No.” She reached for and gripped the edges of his shirt. “You take off yours.” Then, she jerked her hands apart. Material ripped, buttons bouncing onto the thick carpets, and Isma’il’s long fingers curved around her wrists, forcing them down to her sides.
Lily panted, fighting for breath. His shirt hung open to the waist revealing powerful shoulders and broad chest, muscles sharply defined, bronze skin like oiled silk. She pulled against his fingers, wanting to touch him and when he didn’t let her go, she rose on her toes and pressed her mouth to his throat, the hot, salty taste of his skin in her mouth. A shiver went through him and he cursed in Arabic, forcing her wrists behind her back, holding them in one hand. She tried to free herself, but his fingers were like iron, locking her wrists in place.
“Do as you are told,” he murmured. “Or I shall have to punish you.”
A shudder racked her as he lifted his free hand, trailing it down her throat to the neckline of her tunic. It felt like he’d left a burning line down her skin. Marking her.
She tried to free her hands again, but he forced her closer, bringing her body against his from breast to hip. It was like standing too close to a fire and she was catching alight. Burning.
“An eye for an eye, Habibti.” Isma’il bent, the heat of his mouth at her throat. Another shudder went through her and she closed her eyes, sensation streaking down through her body, straight between her thighs.
Adrenalin flooded through her, making her struggle harder. But she wasn’t afraid. This was what she’d chosen. This was what she wanted. A chance to resist as that sixteen year old girl she’d once been had not. A chance to release all the shame and the anger she’d kept locked away. Release it, then exorcise it from her life completely.
Lily screamed out her rage. Struggled in his hold. Used Isma’il’s strength to find again the pride that had been stolen from her.
Eventually, the adrenaline began to fall away and she stopped struggling, chest heaving. The intensity of the emotion should have left her feeling drained, but she didn’t feel drained. She felt alive. Wild. Free. Turning her head, she caught Isma’il’s lower lip between her teeth and bit it. His body jerked, but he didn’t let go, the expression on his dark, fierce face intense, the color of his eyes shading into deep, almost forest green. His mouth, where she’d bitten him, looked swollen and a fierce satisfaction unfurled inside her.
“Still afraid for me, Sheikh?” she panted, reckless. “I could take you anytime.”
Isma’il smiled. Dark and dangerous. “I want you naked. Now.”
“Make me.”
“I do not need to make you.” His free hand gripped her chin, keeping her gaze on his. “You will take your clothes off because I asked you to do so. Because you cannot bear to have anything between your skin and my hand.” His thumb traced her lower lip, stroking gently.
But she didn’t want gentle. She bit his thumb. Hard.
Isma’il’s breath hissed. “Ah, Habibti. You are no lily. You are a lioness. With claws.” And he kissed her again, hard and hot, one hand keeping her wrists locked behind her, while the other gripped her chin to hold her in place.
Lily’s excitement soared, recklessness pouring through her. Oh God, yes. This was what she craved. This was what she’d been craving all her life. A man who could match her. Challenge her. Help her be the woman she’d always wanted to be. The woman she should have been. Wild and strong and free.
She let herself go lax in his arms. Let the kiss gentle, become almost sweet. And then, when she felt his grip on her loosen, she wriggled, twisting out of his arms.
Isma’il made no move towards her, watching her as she took a couple of steps away from him, exhilarated and triumphant she’d managed to get away.
“Shall I chase you?” he said in a lazy, sensual drawl. “Is that what you would like?”
Lily began to back away from him, but not towards the entrance of the tent. Towards the bed. “You’re assuming I want to get away.” Her voice came out breathless, uneven. “I don’t.”
He began to walk towards her with all the slow, predatory grace of a hunting cat. “No, you don’t. You want to surrender to me. That’s what you want to do.”
“Not yet.” The bed bumped against the back of her thighs and there was nowhere else to go, yet he kept coming, not stopping until he was crowding her right back against the edge, towering over her. Thrilled by him, she put her hands out to push against him, but he knocked her hands away, grabbing the neckline of her tunic. “Yes, Lily. Now,” he growled and ripped the material apart, silk parting easily under the strength of his fingers.
She gasped, unable to stop herself, cool air moving over her heated bare skin as the silk fell away. Isma’il said something soft in Arabic, his gaze drinking her down. “You are so beautiful.” His voice had gone hoarse, the look on his face that of a man pushed to the edge.
It felt good to have him look at her. To be proud of her body, to see it as something beautiful, not a machine to get her through the water or evidence of a femininity she wanted to hide. To see that look on his face and know she’d put it there.
Lily let him look, let him push the remains of her tunic off her shoulders and when he gripped the back of her neck, holding her in place for his kiss, she arched against him. Wanting his touch. Needing it. And when she finally got it, she moaned against his mouth, heat pulsing through her body as he cupped her breasts in his hands, circling the aching hardness of her nipples with his thumbs, brushing over them, sending incandescent sparks over her skin.
“Lily . . . ” The edge of desperation in his voice sent a thrill straight down her spine. “Get on the bed.”
She ignored him, running her hands beneath the white cotton of his torn shirt, over his hot brown skin, wanting to test him. Taunt him. He responded by pushing her forcefully down onto the mattress, the heat of his body pressing down between her thighs, blue eyes blazing into hers.
The need in them made the breath lock in her throat. He said nothing, as he jerked the loose trousers she wore from her body, the sound of material ripping loud in the space around them.
She reached for the zip on his pants, but he caught her hands, shackling her wrists with his fingers and forcing them up above her head and down onto the pillows. She cursed and then cried out as his free hand pushed between her thighs, fingers sliding through the soft, damp curls of her sex to find her wet and slick and hot for him.
“Isma’il!” Sensation tore through her, his touch burning everything away. The shame. The anger. The helplessness. Leaving white hot pleasure in all the aching empty spaces in her heart. “Oh, Sheikh . . . ” She couldn’t stop the sob that broke from her. “What have you done to me?”
One finger slid inside her, the pad of his thumb brushing over her clitoris at the same time, intensifying the sensation a hundred-fold and she cried out again, her body arching.
“Give me your surrender, Lily Harkness,” his voice a hot, dark whisper in her ear. “Give it to me now.”
She’d given him all her secrets, all her anguish. Let him take it all away. She’d given him everything and now, for the fi
rst time in her life, she was finally free.
Lily trembled under his hand, the intense, irresistible pleasure pulling her in. Pulling her under.
And surrendered.
Chapter Eight
Isma’il turned his head into the soft warmth of Lily’s hair, the sound of her wild cry of release still echoing in his ears.
His body burned. Ached. He was so hard it hurt. And he felt torn in two.
He hadn’t held back, had given her the fight she’d wanted, something he’d never allowed with any other woman. Because she’d asked. Because she wasn’t a victim and never had been.
But it had come at a cost.
He’d liked it. No, he’d loved it. Loved that she hadn’t given in. That she’d matched him with all her strength. That she hadn’t been afraid of him, not even for a second. And when she’d given him her surrender, the sweetness of it had stopped his heart.
Taking Lily had shown him what he’d been missing with all those sweet, submissive women in his bed. Something he’d denied himself for years—freedom from the rigid control he lived his life under. And now he knew what it felt like, he wanted more.
But it was something he could never have. Freedom wasn’t allowed. Without limits, without control, there was nothing between himself and the dark violence he knew for a fact lived inside his soul.
Isma’il shut his eyes for a second, battling the echoes of Khalid’s voice that whispered in his head. A satisfied voice that that told him this was a slippery slope. A slope that led to a sunny room, a bloody riding crop in his hands, and a man lying on the white tiles in a pool of his own blood.
His heart squeezed tight in his chest and he couldn’t breathe.
No. No. No.
Lily’s warm body moved, a hand resting on his shoulder, and the tightness eased all of a sudden. Shoving the thoughts away, Isma’il, slowly pushed himself up, looking down at her. She lay on her back on the white sheets, her golden body the perfect blend of athleticism and womanly curves, her hair spread out in pale silken wave. Her eyes were so dark, cheeks flushed, the color going all the way down to her perfect, pale breasts.
Never Seduce a Sheikh (International Bad Boys Book 2) Page 10
