She lifted her eyes in horrified and excited understanding. ‘You can’t mean—’
‘Oh, but I can. I do not wish to see you dressed. On the contrary—your naked body is all I desire. I want you, Jenna—and I want you now. For too long I have played the assiduous gentleman around you. Fool! When all the time…’
He began to move towards her, and it was so close to all her illicit half-forgotten fantasies that she was frozen there, like a statue waiting to be brought to life by the man she had always desired more than any other.
He was nothing but a breath away now, all dark and golden stealth, muskily rapacious. ‘If I had but known…’ he continued, and reached his hand out to run his fingertips over the long, bare line of her neck, feeling it tremble in response. ‘If I had but known that you were in need of a man’s body, then I should have oh, so willingly complied with your wishes.’
‘G-go away,’ she said helplessly.
His voice deepened as he saw her body sway instinctively towards his. ‘But you don’t want me to. You want me, Jenna. You always did. And now you always will. You will ache with the memory of what you have thrown away for the rest of your days. That will be my curse on you!’
He pulled the towel away from her unprotesting fingers, and as it fell redundantly to the ground he sucked in a raw breath of longing as she stood naked before him, her body more beautiful than he had dreamt of, even in his wildest dreams.
Her skin gleamed as if of gold, with dark and secret shadows, and the lush swell of her breasts was tipped with dark rose. He sucked in a shuddering breath as he felt his body jerk into life.
‘May the desert always bloom!’ he groaned thickly, and pulled her urgently into his arms to kiss her, more excited than he had ever been in his life.
Melded tightly against him, Jenna could feel every lean, hard contour of his body through his silken robes, even while his mouth worked its predictable magic, and then she was lost from all sane thought. Many times she had imagined a kiss like this, and yet the reality blew the fantasy away in meaningless little pieces.
‘R-Rashid,’ she whispered shakily, lacing her fingers possessively in his hair, as she had wanted to do for as long as she had been a woman.
He groaned again as he reached down to cup one breast, feeling its ripe, warm weight nestling in the palm of his hand while his thumb teased the hardening nub with an expertise which had her almost fainting. ‘Rashid, what?’ he questioned unsteadily. ‘Rashid, make love to me? Rashid, join me to your body? Is that what you want, Jenna?’
May God forgive her—because that was exactly what she wanted! She gave no answer, merely a fraught little whimper of assent, because now his hand was splayed possessively over the slight swell of her belly and was moving down between her thighs. She should have felt frightened, but all she felt was a deep, almost unbearable sensation of longing.
And then he found her, touched her where she was filled with heat, and she bucked with unexpected pleasure as the drift of his fingertip filled her with a curling sense of warmth which made her knees buckle.
He was famous for his restraint. For his ability to pleasure a woman until she could be pleasured no more. Then and only then would he take his own release. But this time there were no thoughts of restraint or finesse or of demonstration of his consummate skill as a lover. This time he would not wait. He groaned again as he tugged at the silken tie of his trousers. Could not wait.
Somehow she had fallen backwards onto the bed, on top of her discarded clothes which had been lying there, but none of that seemed to matter. Nothing mattered other than the sight of her dark and golden and fiercely aroused lover as he prepared to straddle her, and a sigh caught painfully in her throat.
Rashid! Her beautiful, beloved Rashid! Hers, but never really hers. Not now. Only this once. She felt the threat of tears pricking at her eyes. She wanted him. Needed him. She always had done. And just for once she would taste the pleasures of paradise in his arms. She opened her eyes and her arms to him in silent invitation though her heart felt as if it was breaking.
For with that look of raw, ill-concealed passion on his face it was so very easy to imagine that she loved him still. She made a little moan of regret and longing, and her fingertips met the rasp of his shadowed chin. He bent his head to kiss her again, and that kiss swept her away into a world that she could barely believe existed.
He moved over her, so aroused that he could barely contain himself. What had she done to him? This vixen! This desert cat! This wicked, wanton and unknown Jenna who had taken another to her bed! He lifted his mouth away from hers and bent his head to briefly suckle her breast, felt the knife-edge of bitterness as he thought of what she had thrown away. She could have suckled his baby, he thought. That joy could have been hers. And his.
But then his thoughts were overtaken by a need to possess her. A need so strong and so urgent that he was eaten up by it. Her eyes were wide and her lips were parted in gleaming invitation as he entered her.
And when she let out a stifled cry he thought at first it was because he was so big inside her. By the desert flower, he had never felt so big! But something warned him that this was not all as it seemed. The little tremor as her nails bit into his shoulders—as if what was happening was new to her.
He stared down at her in disbelief, watching the tears begin to slide from beneath the corners of her tightly closed eyes, and it hit him like a body-blow just what was happening.
He tried to stop himself, but it was too late for that—far too late. He felt the slow shuddering of an orgasm so deep and intense and earth-shattering that he thought he might die at that very moment, and be happy to die that way.
For a moment the world lost meaning as it shifted out of focus, and then reality began to creep back, like the first faint sun after the winter freeze.
He stifled a groan, and when he had stilled he withdrew from her as gently as he could. But he did not need to see the scarlet flowering which had spread over the clothes and divan like new blossom. He had guessed for himself.
He caught her against his bare chest. But she was stiff and unmoving in his arms as the words caught in his throat like dust and his heart pounded with something very close to pain.
‘You were a virgin,’ he said flatly.
CHAPTER FIVE
JENNA didn’t answer for a moment, but when she opened her eyes it was to surprise an expression of something approaching sorrow in his own. Moving out of his embrace, she reached for the huge towel which lay beside the bed and cuddled it over her protectively, though its warmth did little to take the edge off her feeling of naked expos
ure and her teeth began to chatter violently.