by Annie West
Her heart was hammering as she tore her lips away, gasping for air. Yet it wasn’t lack of oxygen that made her withdraw, but shock at how a thank-you kiss had turned into something completely different. Gratitude and excitement had turned to curiosity, to pleasure and then, almost, to surrender.
She wanted nothing so much as to kiss him again, to lose herself in him.
Samira shivered, suddenly cold despite the hot pulse of blood under her skin. Fear warred with elation.
Tariq still held her, his gaze hooded, waiting, and her stomach churned.
She swallowed, trying to find her voice and not betray rising panic. ‘That was...’
His mouth tilted a little at one corner. ‘Delightful?’ he mused in a low murmur that trawled through her insides, tying her in knots.
‘Unexpected,’ she gasped.
‘A taste of things to come.’ His smile deepened, his hold tightening just a fraction.
Instantly Samira stiffened, shaking her head.
She broke from his embrace, staggering back till she came up against the huge work table, her breath coming quick and shallow. Her hands splayed on its edge as she tried to lock her knees. She felt too wobbly to stand alone.
‘No.’ Her voice was hoarse but she didn’t care. She had to make him understand.
She hated that he made her feel weak. She’d taught herself to be strong, hadn’t she? She’d taken him by surprise when she’d proposed marriage. She’d been strong then. She refused to cower now.
‘No.’ Samira locked her hands before her, meeting his eyes directly. ‘I told you I don’t want love or sex.’
Tariq’s teeth bared in a smile she could only describe as hungry. It made her wonder how the graze of his teeth on her skin would feel. ‘You say that but your body tells a different story.’
He stepped forward but her outstretched hand stopped him. It took too long for her to realise her fingers had curled into his crisp cotton clothing. She tugged her hand back as if burned.
‘Please, Tariq. Believe me when I tell you love is the last thing I want.’ Except for the warm, sustaining love between a mother and her children. She’d imagined a special caring too, respect, trust and friendship between husband and wife, but shied from calling it love.
‘You made that clear when you proposed. That was one of the reasons I agreed to marry you.’
‘It was?’ Her eyes widened.
‘Definitely.’ His gaze shifted, lifting to look past her towards the distant mountains. Instantly Samira felt some of her tension suck away, like a tide suddenly turning. ‘The last thing I want is a wife who thinks she’s in love with me.’ His voice held a honed edge that made her shiver.
Because Tariq was thinking of Jasmin?
Obviously he was. Samira watched his dead gaze as he stared into the distance. She sensed he didn’t see the view. It was his first wife he saw. Everyone spoke of how devoted they’d been, how her death had devastated him.
Samira’s heart wrenched.
He looked as if a cold wall of steel had crashed down, cutting him off from her. Was his grief still so all-consuming?
Samira wanted to comfort him, except she guessed the last thing he wanted was a reminder that his beloved wife was gone, replaced by a woman he hadn’t really wanted.
Suddenly she felt small and unreasonably...hurt.
That was ridiculous. She’d never expected more from him.
Of course Tariq didn’t want love. He’d had that from Jasmin and now he couldn’t love again. He was a one-woman man. Samira told herself she respected him for that.
He turned and eyes of crystalline green snared her. ‘But there’s no reason,’ he murmured in a low voice of pure temptation, ‘why we can’t enjoy sex.’
Heat pounded into her. His stare didn’t trail suggestively over her body. It didn’t need to. It was potent, alight with a desire that made the blood sing in her veins. She struggled to cope with a barrage of sensations as her body responded to that sultry, knowing look. Her emotions jack-knifed from distress to forbidden excitement.
‘No. We agreed.’
‘You agreed, Samira. I didn’t.’
Panic rose anew as she tried and failed to ignore the heat in his eyes and, worse, the answering blaze of hunger in her belly.
It was an aberration.
She threaded her fingers together. ‘I told you I don’t trust myself with sex and love. I don’t—’
‘You think sex and love are the same?’ His brows crunched together.
‘I...’ She tilted her chin up. She mightn’t have Tariq’s vast experience but she had enough. ‘For me they are. I never slept with a man I didn’t love.’ Which meant she’d had one lover and he’d been the biggest mistake of her life. ‘Sexual attraction makes you vulnerable. It blinds you to the truth, so you see only what you want to see.’ It had been her mother’s great weakness and her own. But she’d learned her lesson.
‘Oh, Samira.’ Tariq shook his head, his hand touching her chin in a fleeting caress that sent shock waves zinging through her. ‘You’re so inexperienced.’
She huffed out a gasp of mirthless laughter. ‘You’re the only one to think so.’ There was an element of the press, and the public, that insisted on wondering whether she’d been to bed with every man ever photographed with her.
‘Believe me, you don’t need to be in love to enjoy sex.’
Samira supposed he was thinking of the many beauties who’d warmed his bed before his first marriage and, if rumour was right, in the period since his first wife’s death. None had lasted long enough to make a claim on him.
‘I know that.’ She wasn’t a complete innocent. ‘But it was like that for me and I can’t afford for it to happen again.’ She couldn’t survive such disillusionment a second time.
‘You don’t love me, do you?’
‘No.’ She clenched her jaw.
‘Yet you feel this?’ This was the graze of his knuckles across her breast, lingering at her nipple, making it harden. Her breasts seemed to swell and an arrow of fierce heat shot directly to her womb.
Samira jerked back against the table, shock skittering through her.
‘Don’t touch me like that!’
‘Why not, when you enjoy it?’
She opened her mouth to deny it but he continued. ‘I can see the flush of arousal at your throat so don’t pretend I’m not right.’ His gaze dipped from her neck. ‘Your breasts are burning up, aren’t they? Is there heat lower too? Deep inside, do you feel empty? Needy?’
Samira gasped as the muscles between her legs clenched greedily, responding to Tariq’s words. He knew her too well. Better than she knew herself.
‘I can fill that emptiness, Samira. I can make it good for you. For both of us.’
He could too. Instinctively she knew it. Certainty gleamed in those penetrating eyes. Her body was inching forward, eager for his expert touch.
Samira grabbed hard at the table behind her. ‘I don’t want that.’
Slowly he shook his head. ‘Of course you do. So do I.’ His face was taut with a hunger that should have dismayed her, yet instead intrigued her. She imagined them together, here in this room, his big, capable hands gentle yet demanding on her flesh. She wanted...
No! She’d made that mistake once.
‘I told you, Tariq, it’s not for me. Intimacy and love are bound up together. I won’t go there again.’
‘You speak with such experience. How many lovers have you had?’
‘One.’ She jutted her chin. ‘That was one too many.’
His gaze narrowed. His words, when they came, held a contained savagery she’d not heard from him before. ‘You had your heart broken by a bastard who shouldn’t have been allowed even to touch the hem of your dress.’
Sami
ra blinked, taken aback by the depth of Tariq’s anger.
‘Take it from me, little one, sex can be quite, quite separate to love.’ He paused and she sensed he chose his words carefully. ‘That makes us an ideal match. I don’t want love from you and you don’t want it from me. We’re on a level playing field. Neither of us will fall for some grand romantic illusion about this marriage.’
Was that bitterness in his voice?
Samira bit her lip. No doubt he was thinking of Jasmin and the fact no other woman could take her place in his heart.
‘We have the marriage you wanted,’ he continued. ‘But we can have more. We can enjoy each other. It’s only natural, you know.’ This time his touch wasn’t at all sexual, a mere brush of fingertips against her hair, yet she felt it all the way to her toes.
‘Desire is a part of life. Why not enjoy it? After all, neither of us is in danger of falling in love.’
CHAPTER SIX
A SMILE CURVED Samira’s mouth at the way Risay’s small hand tucked confidingly into hers as they entered the stables. Shade engulfed them, with the scent of horses, hay and leather.
She paused, letting her eyes adjust, basking in the gentle pleasure of this outing with her new son.
Her son. The word shimmered like a vibration in the warm air, wrapping around her. How long before she grew accustomed to this wonderful new reality?
Her reverie was broken when Risay tugged her hand. Stiff-legged, he marched forward, gabbling in baby language to a man sitting amidst a selection of harnesses.
‘Your Highness.’ He rose and bowed, a bridle hanging from gnarled hands.
‘Please, don’t let me interrupt your work.’
With another bow he sat and picked up his polishing cloth. Light from a window caught the ornate silver decorations on the bridle. ‘The little prince admires the harness,’ he said as Risay strained forward, hand outstretched.
Samira smiled. Anything bright was sure to catch Risay’s eye. ‘We’re looking for the Sheikh. I believe he’s here somewhere.’
‘Just in the training ring.’ The stable hand gestured to the open space on the other side of the building.
The thud of hooves on dirt drew her attention and she turned to look out of the wide doors. Movement caught her eye.
‘I’ll look after the young prince if you wish to talk with His Majesty,’ the stable hand offered. ‘We’re old friends.’
Samira dragged her gaze away from the arena. Risay already half-sat on the man’s lap, obviously at home, plucking at an intricately wrought harness.
‘Thank you.’ She nodded and moved towards the open doors.
In a sunlit arena a man and horse faced each other—the horse skittish, its gait high as it pranced, eyes rolling. Her heart jumped as Tariq, unperturbed, approached it. His lips moved and the horse’s ears flicked.
Samira’s skin drew tight as she caught the delicious, low cadence of Tariq’s voice. That same voice had mesmerised her just yesterday.
Desire is a part of life.
Neither of us is in danger of falling in love.
The voice of temptation.
She’d told herself she was immune to such temptation. Yet her body betrayed her. Even here, now, when Tariq wasn’t aware of her presence.
Fire trawled her veins, stirred the feminine pulse point between her legs, scorched her breasts. She just had to look at Tariq’s powerful frame, hear his rich coffee voice, and she went weak at the knees.
Despair gripped her. Maybe her critics were right. Perhaps she was tainted for ever since she’d once given in to a man’s blandishments. Perhaps desire had become an intrinsic weakness, no matter how hard she battled for a cool head.
Her eyes ate him up. He wore a collarless shirt that stuck to broad, muscled shoulders in the heat and pale trousers tucked into boots. Tall, confident and erect as a soldier, he was magnetic. His total lack of fear as the stallion sidestepped wickedly close made her gasp.
Heart in mouth, Samira moved nearer, watching the horse try to intimidate. A rider herself, she understood the stallion’s magnificence and the danger. One strike of his powerful hoof could seriously wound.
Yet, as she watched, something changed. That sharply nodding head lowered. Wide nostrils flared as it scented the man who stood, murmuring, keeping eye contact with the big beast.
Seconds strung out to minutes and, apart from quick checks to see Risay was happy, Samira’s gaze remained glued on the figure of her husband as he, by some magic, quieted the untamed horse. He didn’t even lift his hand, just communed with it in a way she didn’t understand.
Finally the horse stepped forward, its gait almost delicate, and blew gustily on his face.
A chuckle sounded in the still air, causing a ripple of sensation deep in Samira’s belly. She pressed her hand to the spot, trying to prevent that warm, melting sensation from spreading.
Tariq lifted his hand and the stallion snuffled it. When Tariq turned and moved away, to Samira’s amazement, the horse followed like a pet. It nudged his shoulder blade and he laughed, the sound carefree rather than triumphant.
Samira couldn’t drag her eyes away. Something inside squeezed tight and hard at the power and pleasure radiating from him. It made her want to reach out and—
‘Samira.’ He’d seen her. Sensation jolted her as their eyes met.
In swift strides Tariq crossed the arena to stand before her, only a fence separating them.
Despite the breathless clutch of attraction, Samira found herself smiling. ‘You have a shadow.’
He turned his head just as the stallion lipped at his shoulder. Tariq murmured something she couldn’t hear to the big animal, then, swift as quicksilver, he was through the fence to stand before her, his eyes keen beneath lazy lids.
Samira breathed him in hungrily, clean sweat and warm spice. Moisture sheened his forehead and the burnished skin of his collarbone. Her eyelids flickered as the pulse between her legs quickened.
‘How did you do that?’ she asked, needing words to fill the expectant silence.
‘Do what?’ His eyes were on her mouth and her nipples pebbled in anticipation. She shuffled back a step.
‘That.’ She nodded to the stallion. ‘The way you break in a horse.’
‘Ah.’ He drew the sound out as he followed her a pace. Heat beaded Samira’s brow. He was too close. ‘That’s the secret.’ He bent his head and his words feathered warm breath across her face. ‘I don’t break them. I gentle them.’
His eyes caressed her and she felt it like the graze of hard fingers along her throat and over her cheek.
She blinked. ‘Gentle?’ Was he some sort of horse whisperer?
‘It’s a matter of trust,’ he murmured in that low voice with just a hint of gravel. It trawled through her insides, furrowing pleasure in its wake. ‘Once they know I’m not going to hurt them, they learn to trust.’
The liquid heat in his eyes told her he was talking about more than horses.
She stiffened. ‘You won’t hurt them while they abide by your rules, you mean. You want to be master.’ Just as he wanted to be hers. Disillusionment was still fresh in her memory. Of how he’d duped her into believing he was safe.
No man had ever looked less safe.
Or more appealing. That was the problem. Her heart hammered her ribcage as if yearning for her submission.
‘You think it’s about power?’ Slowly he shook his head, his gaze never leaving hers. ‘You had the wrong teacher, Samira.’ Heat scorched her skin at his words. They both knew he was referring to her ex-lover. ‘It’s all about partnership, mutual understanding and enjoyment.’
‘Enjoyment?’ Instead of disbelief, the single word sounded...needy. She swallowed hard, unable to break away from the enchantment Tariq wove around her with his rich v
oice and those slumberous eyes that yet danced with anticipation.
‘Of course.’ He smiled and something hitched in her chest. ‘If we don’t both enjoy the partnership it won’t work.’
Tariq’s words hung in the air like a promise. Partnership, enjoyment...was that what he offered where she saw only capitulation and danger?
Samira looked over his shoulder to the dark, glistening eye of the big stallion. Far from being cowed, mischief glinted there. And delight.
Or perhaps her imagination ran away with her. She shook her head, stepping back abruptly to break the spell Tariq wove around her.
Long fingers closed around her hand. His grip was firm but not unbreakable, yet she found herself stilling.
‘We’re not enemies, Samira.’ His tone coaxed. ‘We want the same thing.’
She swallowed the words all but bursting on her tongue. Emotionally charged accusations that stemmed from fear, not of Tariq as much as of herself, of this weakness she couldn’t eradicate but dared not give in to again.
‘Risay is here,’ she said stiffly. ‘Unlike his brother, he refused to settle for a nap without seeing you.’
Tariq’s hand loosened around hers as she pulled away, yet even with four whole paces between them the imprint of heat still shackled her.
Then he moved past her in long, easy strides. He hunkered down to Risay’s level and weathered his son’s enthusiastic embrace with a smile that confirmed what she already knew: that his boys were the light of his life.
He didn’t look back over his shoulder at her. His whole attention was focused on his son.
To her dismay, Samira felt excluded. She wanted some of what he gave Risay: his attention, his loyalty. She wanted to bask in his smiles, share his laughter.
And more...so much more.
* * *
Laughter rang out, the sound curling around Samira’s heart, making her smile. Adil shrieked with joy as his father threw him up and deftly caught him in strong arms. Water droplets caught the dying light as Tariq shook his head. Samira made herself look away. She’d spent too long furtively ogling his powerful body.
