Breaking the Sheikh's Rules

by Abby Green

  But it was near impossible to regain that control. Her breasts were like two succulent fruits, her back still slightly arched. When he’d felt that spasmodic response as he’d closed his mouth around one hard, tight nipple and sucked it deep, he’d damn near exploded. She was biting her lip now, her eyes glazed, dark golden pools of desire…her hair was spread out around her in glorious disarray.

  Smoothing his hands down the sides of her body, out over the gentle swell of her hips, he snagged on the ties of her skimpy harem pants. With little more than a tug they were gone, falling away in a diaphanous cloud by the bed, taking her panties with them.

  Now she lay there with nothing except the gold chain around her waist and the gold ankle bracelets, and Nadim did not have the spatial ability to even attempt removing those. Feeling suddenly constricted, he stood and dispensed with his own trousers. He saw Iseult’s gaze drop and her cheeks pale slightly when she saw the sheer evidence of his arousal…

  Iseult knew all about sex, even if she’d never had it. She’d watched stallions mount mares all her life, so she knew all about the earthy reality. But to see Nadim fully naked and fully aroused intimidated her more than she cared to admit. Any thought of telling him she was a virgin fled her mind. They’d gone too far now, and even as she balked at his physicality she knew she didn’t want to turn back. If he knew she was a virgin…

  Nadim came down on the bed alongside Iseult, scattering her thoughts. He lay on his side and with a possessive arm pulled her into him. She breathed in the musky scent of their arousal. She could feel his erection pressing against her and it made her want to move her hips. Any trepidation fled.

  Tentatively she trailed a shy hand up over his lean waist and torso, watching how his belly was sucked in on a short breath. Her fingers found a hard blunt nipple, and acting on pure instinct she bent down and found it with her mouth, kissing it before biting and nipping gently, savouring the salty taste of his skin, running a hand down his back to the indent just above his firm buttocks.

  Nadim fisted a hand in her hair and pulled her head back up. Pressed torso to torso, length to length, they touched everywhere. With an enigmatic look that Iseult couldn’t decipher Nadim covered her mouth with his in a searing kiss and pulled her even closer, his arms wrapped around her so tight that her breasts were flattened against his chest. She didn’t even know where he ended and she began.

  An urgency was building between her legs and in her belly, a tightening coil of tension, and Iseult moved restlessly, unwittingly causing stars and spots to explode behind Nadim’s eyes as he fought to retain control.

  Nadim’s hands smoothed down her back, down to her bottom, pulling her into him even more. Instinctively Iseult opened her legs, feeling Nadim’s heated erection sliding between them. Hearts were thumping out of control, and Iseult felt a light sweat break out all over her skin. She’d never been so intent on one thing: reaching an elusive peak with this man.

  In an effortless move Nadim shifted them so that Iseult was flat on her back and he lay between her legs. She could feel the potent strength of him between her thighs, but still he didn’t move. He just bent his head and found her mouth again, drugging her with his kisses.

  She heard the faint sound of foil ripping, and there was a moment when Nadim pulled back. She opened her eyes with a faint mewl of despair. She needed something right now that only he could give her. She wrapped her hands around his biceps, feeling them bunch and move under silky-smooth skin.

  Her legs moved further apart even as her thighs gripped his lean waist, and she felt him move down slightly. He touched her intimately with one finger, drawing it slowly up the desire-drenched folds of her sex, finding where the evidence of her arousal was a hard swell of nerve-endings and rubbing her there.

  Iseult’s back arched again. Pressing herself into his hand, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think straight. Her hands gripped his arms so tight that she thought she’d leave him with permanent marks.

  ‘Nadim…’ she said hoarsely, desperately. ‘Please…’

  ‘What?’ he asked, all innocence wrapped up in the devil, and he continued to tease her with his finger, which was moving inside her now, where she felt slick and hot.

  ‘I could tease you and watch you all night, but not any more… I can’t wait…’

  Before Iseult knew what was happening, or had sucked in a breath, Nadim was pushing himself into her. Filling her, stretching her…impossibly. She gasped for a moment, and jerked her hips as if to move away from his penetration, but even as she did she could feel a glorious friction.

  Nadim frowned down at her. ‘Iseult…are you…?’

  Iseult somehow knew the discomfort would be fleeting. She reached up and pulled his head down, pulling him closer, and wrapped her legs around his waist.

  ‘Don’t stop. Please don’t stop, Nadim…’ She saw him wage what looked to be an intense inner battle, before he made an inarticulate sound and said gutturally, ‘Relax…this might hurt for a moment…’

  Iseult looked up into his eyes, telling him silently that she trusted him implicitly, and in that moment she did. She could feel him flex his bottom, and then he thrust in, making her breath catch at the searing, burning pain.

  Immediately his mouth was on hers, kissing her, drugging her as she felt him go deeper. And the pain was fading magically, and as he started to pull out again she felt that delicious friction. Loath to let him go, she moved her hips with him, but then he came back, thrusting in again, even deeper this time.

  Iseult’s legs were locked around his waist, her chest arched up to his and her head falling back as she struggled to comprehend all the sensations running through her body and head.

  Nadim brought a hand around her back, arching her up even more, and thrust again, deeper, a little harder. Iseult moaned. She felt his breath feather over her hot skin and gasped out loud when he took a nipple deep into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it, biting gently as he took up a remorseless rhythm, driving in and out of her body.

  The intensity of sensation was overwhelming. Iseult could only cling onto Nadim. He was her anchor, the centre of her universe, and he was threatening to topple her over an edge she’d never known before. But with him looking down into her eyes she was fearless.

  His strokes got longer, deeper and faster, and Iseult felt her muscles clenching. She was rushing headlong into something she could only guess at, and in that moment everything exploded around her, and a carnal pleasure she’d never even imagined existed pulsed through her even as Nadim still moved in and out.

  Iseult could feel her muscles spasm along his hard length, but she couldn’t articulate anything, knowing that she must look shocked. She felt shocked. What she’d just experienced had reformed all her cells into a new configuration, and this man’s stamp was all over them.

  As she watched Nadim’s eyes closed tight, his head was flung back, the veins of his neck stood out. And with one final powerful thrust he stilled, and the only sound that could be heard was their laboured breathing.

  Iseult was still floating in a limbo land of half-consciousness when she felt herself being lifted out of the bed by strong arms. She murmured something and felt Nadim’s breath close to her ear. His deep husky voice sent a frisson of remembered ecstasy through her. ‘Shh, I’ve run you a bath…you must be sore.’

  Iseult shook her head with an effort, not even able to lift it from where it lay on Nadim’s shoulder. She sounded drunk. ‘No…not sore…happy.’

  She only started coming back up through the layers of satedness when she felt Nadim lower her into a warm, fragrant bath and felt the water close over her languid body. His arms were leaving, pulling away, and instinctively she made a sound of protest, catching his arm, finally opening her heavy eyes.

  She was in a bathing area much like her own, but far bigger and more opulent. Nadim’s arm was under her hand, and she saw that he’d put on a robe. She felt completely disorientated, and if an alien had appeared in that mo
ment with the news that they’d arrived on another planet she wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Nadim pressed a kiss to her mouth, and a chain reaction started in Iseult’s blood. She wanted to ask Nadim to get into the bath with her, but something in his closed expression forbade it. He looked cool and composed, austere again. Not like the man who’d told her with such a tortured expression that he wanted her. And who had then made love to her…had initiated her into womanhood.

  She took her hand from his arm, something inside her contracting protectively amongst the feelings of opiate languour.

  Nadim stood up and towered over Iseult in the bath. ‘I’ve left a robe on the chair for you. I’ll be outside when you’re ready…’

  Iseult watched him walk out, and felt alternately as if he’d just slapped her across the face and as if he’d just given her the greatest gift. She sank down in the water, wanting to hide away, feeling hideously self-conscious all of a sudden. Deeply embedded doubts and fears started to rise up to the surface.

  Had she initiated this? Had she somehow twisted things again so that she could justify it to herself because Nadim had really wanted her? Had she thrown herself at him like some out-of-control groupie?

  Her belly quivered when she remembered how he’d lifted her up and carried her to his tent like a marauding pirate. A tiny trickle of confidence returned. He’d told her he’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen her…so that tension in Ireland hadn’t been her imagination…but why was he being so aloof now?

  Iseult’s brain started to throb with questions and insecurities and attempts to reassure herself. Sitting up to wash herself perfunctorily, she stopped for a moment when she saw faint bruises flowering across her skin, redness from where Nadim’s stubble had grazed her delicate skin. Heat bloomed low again, and Iseult avoided touching that part of herself which still tingled and stung slightly.

  Nadim stood at the heavily draped curtains at the entrance to his tent. Hard to believe that only an hour or so had passed, when the entire world seemed to have shifted on its axis. Sounds of revelry came faintly from the tent he’d left earlier. But all he could remember was the sheer blind lust that had galvanised him.

  When he’d first spotted Iseult in the tent, dressed in that excuse of an outfit, he hadn’t recognised her. But he hadn’t been able to look away. She’d been more inherently voluptuous than the other girls, and her movements had been gauche and untutored. It had been odd, as the girls who danced that dance would have learnt it from their own mothers at a young age.

  His eye had been drawn to the unknown woman and his body had stirred in response. Nadim’s first feeling had been intense relief—Iseult hasn’t bewitched me completely. But almost in the same instant, she’d come closer, and he’d had the sinking realisation that it could be none other than her. The perfect pale alabaster of her skin had glowed with luminescence in the dim light. And her eyes, flashing dark gold above that veil, had given her away completely.

  And then had come the burning acrid jealousy be cause every other man there would be looking at her and coveting her charms. It had taken all his control and self-restraint to wait until she’d disappeared at the back of the tent to go and get her. And the minute he’d pulled her into his body he’d known that there was only one possible outcome to that scenario.

  The knowledge sliced through his brain and body as if he’d been blocking it out: she’d been a virgin. And yet she’d made love to him with such passionate abandon that if he hadn’t felt her body’s initial resistance he might not even have known.

  He’d only ever slept with one other virgin: his wife. Nadim’s brain seized there. Yet another comparison thrown up to mock him and make his belly roil with guilt as he had to acknowledge the vast differences between the two women…

  He realised then that the splashing of the bath had stopped, and he heard a soft footfall behind him. Feeling intense trepidation, he slowly turned around to face Iseult.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ISEULT steeled herself for whatever was coming, even though she had no idea what that might be. She belted the robe around her waist tightly. Between her legs she could feel tenderness, and the memory of how it had felt to have Nadim surge so forcefully into her body made her feel weak with desire all over again.

  Slowly he turned around, his face unreadable, his long robe concealing his body. He came into the tent, the drapes falling closed again behind him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were innocent?’

  The simple question blindsided Iseult for a moment, but she recovered. ‘Would you have slept with me if you’d known?’

  No way, was Nadim’s quick and instinctive response—along with a rogue voice saying, Liar, you wouldn’t have been able not to.

  As Iseult watched, she could see Nadim battle with something, but eventually he said, ‘Probably not, no.’

  Iseult ducked her head, ashamed of having been duplicitous on any level, and had to admit, ‘I think I knew that…but I didn’t want you…not to sleep with me.’

  She lifted her chin again, feeling something defiant move through her. She knew if she had the moment again she’d act in the same way. She’d wanted Nadim and he’d wanted her.

  Nadim had moved closer and Iseult could feel heat rising. His smell wound round her again, and that musky tang of sex.

  ‘You know this changes everything.’

  Iseult could only look at Nadim. ‘What do you mean?’ She had a sudden horrifying vision of Nadim telling her that because he’d been her first lover some ancient desert law decreed that they should be married.

  As if reading her mind, he quirked a hard smile and said mockingly, ‘You can stop that overactive imagination right there. This may be a country with indelible ties to ancient customs, but those customs don’t apply to women I decide to take as my mistresses…’

  For a long second his words didn’t sink in. Mistresses. There was something so inherently insulting about that word and title. As archaic as the laws he’d just spoken of. And yet Iseult had to mock herself. Nadim was hardly the kind of man who’d have something as trite as a girlfriend or a partner. He was of the modern world and yet not of the modern world.

  She tried to comprehend. ‘You’re saying that just because we’ve slept together now I’m your mistress?’

  He moved closer, and Iseult’s hands tightened on her belt. Her breath hitched unsteadily. ‘Precisely that’s what I’m saying. Sleeping with you once is not enough. Not by a long shot. You’re innocent, Iseult. I can teach you…help you explore your sensuality.’

  Iseult’s brain melted, and the part of her that rebelled was drowned out. How could he know what he said? How could he know that with those few words he was taking out one of her innermost vulnerabilities, looking at it in the light and saying, Let me help you with this.

  She shook her head and felt her hair move across one shoulder, saw how Nadim’s eyes flicked there momentarily and how his eyes grew darker. Her heart thumped in response. ‘I…don’t know how I feel about that.’

  In a cataclysmic second he was close enough to snake a hand around her waist and pull her into his body. Their robes were so flimsy she could already feel the potent burgeoning strength of him, and at that moment the thought of being denied another chance to sleep with this man was anathema to Iseult.

  His eyes blazed down into hers, mesmeric. ‘I’m offering you all I can give, Iseult. You will be my mistress and we will explore this attraction for as long as we both feel it.’

  How could she think when he was so close? When it felt as if a mythical kingdom lay just beyond the tent, calling to her seductively to give in? When this man had woken her from a deep dark and cold sleep and shown her an enticing taste of what it was to be a desirable woman? Iseult couldn’t believe that there was anything more to this than sheer random carnal attraction. But one thing she did know: if anyone had the ability to make her feel beautiful it was going to be this man, and now. Nadim was making it perfectly clear to Iseult
this would only last for a very finite time.

  Feeling as if she was stepping out over a cliff-edge and into a void of nothing, Iseult just said shakily, ‘Okay…’

  An expression crossed Nadim’s face—one that made Iseult tense instinctively; it had looked like cynicism. She had a sudden flash of understanding that she’d just joined the leagues of other women who’d never said no to him, and for a second wished that she could be stronger. But, feeling her tension, Nadim pulled her even closer, and now his expression was full of only one thing: desire.

  Taking Iseult’s hand in his, he led her back to the bed, which was still rumpled. He lay down and pulled her down to lie alongside him, the movement causing her gown to slide aside so that one breast was exposed.

  Immediately embarrassed, Iseult went to cover up again, but Nadim stopped her hand, pulling the robe further apart and down her arm, making Iseult’s pulse throb between her legs when she saw how he looked at her. Her breast flowered under his gaze, swelling and tightening, the tip becoming an aching hard point.

  Before he touched her, though, Nadim asked innocuously, ‘Are you hungry?’

  Iseult’s throat dried. She was, but not for food. As if reading her mind, Nadim chuckled darkly and said, ‘You are learning fast, my sweet Iseult…time for food later, I think…’

  Feeling desperately wanton, Iseult couldn’t move as Nadim bent and cupped her breast and brought that tingling peak into his mouth where he sucked hard. Iseult gasped. Her hand tightened on the bedclothes. And then he pushed her back and opened her robe fully, spreading it apart, baring her to his gaze.

  With a dark look of intent he started to press kisses down over her flat belly to where dark red curls hid the secret place of her desire. She felt Nadim’s hands spread her legs apart and said shakily, through the fire building at her core, ‘Nadim?’

  He looked up at her, all dark and awe-inspiring, and said, ‘This time is going to be all about you and your pleasure. I will show you another way to fall off the edge…’