‘What, then?’
‘I want to savour it. Savour you.’ She wanted this feeling to go on and on and on and never stop. Khalim hers, in her arms, as she had dreamed of him being since the moment she had first seen him.
‘Next time,’ he promised. ‘This has been too long in the waiting. Now we will satisfy our hunger—later we will attend to the feast.’
She felt the caress of his fingers and shuddered. ‘This is feast enough, Khalim.’ She sighed. ‘Feast enough.’
‘Oh, Rose.’ He smiled as her body responded instinctively to his touch. ‘Sweet, beautiful Rose.’
But he could wait no longer, his desire for her too intense to bear. In that moment just before the communion of their bodies, he felt as though he were about to embrace life in a way in which he had never embraced it before.
He parted her thighs with eager hands and she felt the unbelievable power of him moving against her. Surely it was too soon? Surely she was not ready? But she dissolved into honeyed heat at just that first touch, and her thighs parted wider of their own accord and as he took one long, sweet thrust he made a low moan.
He filled her in every way he could—physically, mentally, emotionally. Joined in a fundamental flow, while the hot desert sun beat down on them, he was no longer Prince Khalim and she no longer Rose Thomas, the woman of his employ. Now he was just a man, and she was just a woman, locked in the most basic rhythm of all.
She couldn’t remember the kisses, or the murmured things he whispered in her ear—some in English and some in a far more thrilling foreign tongue which she recognised as Marabanese. She only knew that the stars were beckoning her, that her world was about to explode.
And his.
He lifted his head to stare down at her, as helpless at that moment as he had ever been, sensing her release in conjunction with his own.
And then it happened, on and on and on, until their cries were replaced by the soft sound of the desert wind, their stricken breathing calming at last and their sweat-sheened bodies glued together.
Rose felt her eyelids drifting downwards, but he shook her awake.
‘No, Rose,’ he murmured. ‘You must not sleep.’
‘Must not?’ she questioned automatically, even as a lazy yawn escaped her.
He smiled, but it was a rueful smile. Even in the midst of their mutual pleasure—still she challenged him! He kissed his finger and placed it over her lips to silence her. ‘They will come for us very soon,’ he said.
That had her sitting up immediately, and she saw his eyes darken at the unfettered movement of her bare breasts. ‘Who will? When?’
‘My bodyguards.’ He shrugged, leaning over to rescue her discarded panties and bra.
She shook the stray grains of sand out of her underwear and turned to glare at him. ‘And they’ll know where to find you, of course?’ she demanded crossly. ‘This is the usual location for your little trysts, is it?’
‘Rose, Rose, Rose,’ he murmured. ‘Fiery, beautiful, argumentative Rose! I have never brought a woman here before—’
No, of course he hadn’t. No other Western woman had ever accompanied him to Maraban. And no Maraban woman would have cavorted with such abandon on the ground with the heir to the throne.
‘How will they find us, then?’ She stood up and pulled her panties all the way over her slender thighs, enjoying the brief look of frustration which clouded his eyes. ‘Are they clairvoyant, or something?’
He zipped up his jodhpurs with difficulty. Impossible that she should have aroused him again so quickly, but somehow…somehow, she had. ‘They will follow the trail of the horse,’ he said shortly, and roughly pulled his shirt on.
Rose was struggling into her clothes. ‘What must I look like?’ she moaned. ‘Won’t they take one look at us and know exactly what we’ve been doing?’
He gave a rueful shrug. Rose cherished honesty, didn’t she? Then honesty she would have. ‘They would take one look at you and think that I was the worst kind of fool if we had not been doing what they suppose.’
‘Oh!’ Her cheeks were burning. ‘And what will they think of me?’
He gave her a cool, steady look. ‘Do you seek the approval of my bodyguards?’ he questioned. ‘Or my approval?’
‘Neither!’ she snapped. ‘I’m thinking about my professional reputation!’
‘But your job is done. You are here now as my guest. My lover.’ He lingered on the last word with a sense of treasures to come, and then looked at her with a question glittering from his black eyes. Would she voice her objection to the term of possession without any promise of commitment?
But Rose simply stared back at him without regrets. She had given herself to him freely. Completely. In a way she had given herself to no man before. She had never known that love-making could be that intense, that profound, that…fundamental. She shivered with the memory.