She shook her head, wishing he’d made it sound a little less anatomical, wishing he’d responded with a few romantic words in what was a very romantic setting. But maybe she would have to make do with this—along with the realisation that at least he wasn’t making mirages of his own. He wasn’t wooing her with empty promises—he was telling it the way it was. And anyway by then he was kissing her and all her objections were forgotten as she opened her lips beneath his, because hadn’t she been missing this, more than she would have ever thought possible?
His hands were hot and urgent as they raked through her hair and over her body, and her own were equally hungry as they explored the hardness of his magnificent physique. Impatiently, he slithered off her jodhpurs and shirt before peeling off his own silken robes, and Livvy gasped to discover that he was completely naked beneath.
‘It is another characteristic we share with the Scots,’ he murmured as he spread the robes onto the sand to make a silky bed for them. ‘Who I believe wear nothing beneath their kilts?’
But Livvy didn’t answer because by then she felt as if she were in the middle of a dream—the most amazing dream of her life—as he laid her down. His eyes were unreadable as he moved over her and made his first thrust, and she gasped out his name as he entered her.
‘It’s good?’
She bit her lip and moaned. ‘It’s terrible.’
He laughed, but then his voice changed to a note she’d never heard before as he began to move inside her. ‘Oh, Livvy.’
She didn’t answer. There were things she’d like to have known and questions that maybe she should have asked. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. She was powerless to do anything other than respond to the feel of Saladin deep inside her. Because by then she had started to come, and there wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it.
* * *
They rode back after night had fallen, even though Livvy had initially been fearful of crossing the dark desert on horseback. But Saladin had run the tip of his tongue along the edge of her lips, and she had felt him smile as he answered her question.
‘I told you that I know this desert as well as my own body,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t you realise that there’s a great big celestial map overhead?’
That had been the point when she’d looked up at the stars that she’d been too distracted to notice before. The brightest stars she’d ever seen—silver bright against the indigo backdrop of the sky. And there was the moon rising in splendour—a bright, gleaming curve above the palm trees where they’d spent the past two hours making love. Livvy felt a lump rise in her throat. It was like a fairy tale, she thought.
Except that it wasn’t a fairy tale. It was nothing but a brief interlude, and Saladin had already warned her that real life would soon intrude.
He had pulled her against him after they’d dressed and brushed away stray grains of sand from their clothing. He had tilted up her chin so that she was caught in the dark gleam of his eyes and, in that moment, she’d felt very close to falling in love with him.
But his black eyes had been empty. The barrier was back, she realised, with a sinking heart.
‘You know that when we return—’
‘I’m to act as though nothing’s happened.’
His eyes glittered in the starlight. ‘How did you know that’s what I was going to say?’
‘Wasn’t it?’
He seemed surprised by her calm response. Was that why he provided an explanation she hadn’t asked for?
‘This cannot happen within the walls of the palace,’ he said. ‘It would place you at a disadvantage were people to find out that we were having some sort of relationship.’
‘Sweet of you to be concerned about my reputation, Saladin. Are you sure it isn’t your own you’re worried about?’
‘I don’t think you understand,’ he said, his voice growing cool. ‘It will impede your work if there is any suggestion that we are intimate. I will not have any negative fallout because we’ve just had sex.’
‘Because soon I’ll be gone and it will all be forgotten?’ she questioned lightly.
There was a pause.
‘Precisely,’ he said.
His honesty should have pleased her, but right then Livvy could have done without it. She wanted him to tell her soft things. Tender things. She wanted the man who had made love to her so beautifully, not this cold-eyed stranger who had taken his place and was swinging his powerful body up onto his horse. But it was a timely wake-up call, she reminded herself. Just because something felt like magic—didn’t mean it was. She mustn’t ask the impossible of a man who had not promised her anything he was incapable of delivering. She must approach this...affair like any other woman of her age—with enjoyment and enthusiasm and a lack of expectation. She mustn’t start to care for him more than was wise, but take what was on offer and not look beyond that.
She could choose to stay or to run away—and it seemed that she had chosen to stay.
The palace gleamed like a citadel in the distance as they rode in silence towards it. They brought the horses in and handed them over to two grooms, before entering the marbled splendour of Saladin’s home. A servant appeared and the sheikh spoke to him in rapid Jazratian, before walking her to the door of her suite.
The corridor was empty, and she could feel the whisper of the warm, scented air that drifted in from the nearby courtyard.