‘Yes, but the situation is more complicated that that. You see, I had promised you to Vere.’ Drax felt her stiffen and try to pull away from him. But he had anticipated her reaction and held her tightly, keeping her close to him.
‘You mean that you acted as a pimp for your brother?’ Sadie challenged him savagely.
‘No. Let me explain.’
Quietly and openly Drax started to tell her about the potential problems that might have arisen from the desire of the rulers of their neighbouring states to tie them to their families via marriage.
Sadie winced when she heard Drax repeating his mocking comment about virginal women falling in love with sheikhs, but Drax laughed softly and said, ‘What I hadn’t bargained for was that this sheikh was going to be the one falling in love, and that he would be so overwhelmed by the experience that he’d try to pretend that it wasn’t happening.
‘Vere guessed the truth, though. My brother isn’t like me. He is more reserved. He finds it less easy to talk of what he feels, even to me, and he guards his emotional privacy fiercely. So he waited for me to come forward and tell him of my feelings. He tried to encourage me by commenting that you would make a perfect wife, and in my jealousy I imagined that he was telling me that he too had fallen in love with you and wanted you as his wife. How could he not love you when you’re so loveable? How could I have so stupid as to not see that for myself the moment I set eyes on you?
‘Because he is my twin, and because of the vow I had made to find him a temporary wife first, I felt obliged to step out of your life. I had no idea that when he talked about you being perfect wife material he was referring not to himself but to me. It was the jealous outburst you overheard that enabled him to learn how I had misunderstood him. What you heard me saying to him was not, my darling, a description of what I wanted, but the anger of a bitterly jealous man. I hated the thought of Vere so much as looking at you, never mind touching you.’
‘But you were still willing to give me up to Vere, even though you knew I loved you?’
‘I reasoned that since Vere is the better of the two of us you would love him more. You have to understand, Sadie, that because of our obligations to our country Vere and I have always put our loyalty to one another ahead of everything else. But now both he and I know that our relationship can never be the same again, because my love for you means that you will now be the most important person in my life.’
Sadie could hear the sincerity and truth in his voice.
‘I couldn’t bear what I thought I’d heard you say. I’d wanted to talk to you. To tell you that I wanted to return to England.’ She shuddered. ‘I shouldn’t have taken the vehicle like that, but I had to get away.’
‘And I had to find you.’
‘Oh, Drax, we could both die here, and it will be my fault.’
He shook his head and smiled at her. ‘We aren’t going to die. Listen.’
Sadie looked at him and frowned.
‘I can’t hear anything.’
‘Exactly,’ Drax said. ‘While you and I were battling our own personal storm, the one outside the tent blew itself out.’
‘We’ll be able to leave here and return to Dhurahn?’ Would he sense her disappointment and guess how reluctant she was to give up the chance of this precious time alone with him?
‘We could,’ he agreed. ‘But not tonight.’
‘Not tonight?’ Sadie repeated.
‘No, tonight.’ Drax repeated firmly. ‘Because tonight I want you to myself, so that I can prove to you just how much I love you.’
‘I’d like that. And I’d like it too if our child was conceived here tonight, Drax,’ Sadie told him softly. ‘Here, tonight, in the aftermath of the storm which could have destroyed us.’
She could see from the smouldering look in his eyes just how much her words were affecting him. She leaned towards him, reaching out her hand to enclose him, trembling with anticipation and desire when her fingers encircled his hardness. His flesh felt hot, tempting her caress.
‘You know what’s going to happen if you keep on doing that, don’t you?’ Drax said thickly.
‘Show me,’ Sadie said, catching her breath as he lifted her hand from his body.
He kissed her fiercely as his own hands mapped her body. When his hands cupped her breasts her nipples rose eagerly, seeking the touch of his flesh. His lips were against her throat, feeling the vibration of her moans of delight at the soft tug of his fingers and thumbs on her nipples. Sadie lifted her hands to his shoulders, pushing his head further down her body, wanting the erotic stimulation of his mouth against her breast. But when he obeyed her unspoken command the pleasure was shockingly sharper than she had anticipated. Drax slipped his hand between her legs as he drew her nipple into his mouth, the knowing stroke of his fingertip probing the folded outer lips of her sex mirroring the rhythmic tug of his mouth of her nipple.
Sadie thought she would die from the pleasure building so intensely inside her—or explode, its tension was so unbearably arousing. She opened her legs and pressed up against his hand, hotly eager for him to probe deeper and more intimately at the slickness of her aroused flesh. He had found the source of her female pleasure and was caressing it, drawing it to its full desire-swollen sensitivity, so that every shallow breath she took seemed to rock her on the edge of the orgasm she longed to engulf her. But each time she reached for it Drax withdrew from her, until she reached for him in a frenzy of need, telling him fiercely, ‘Now, Drax. Now, please now.’
It was heaven to feel the weight of him against her, to spread her legs and then wrap them around him tightly, arching up against him. He thrust carefully into her, but his care frustrated her.
‘Deeper, Drax, harder,’ she begged him, her eyes darkening with feral pleasure when he obeyed her and she felt her body accommodate the sensation of him within it. Experimentally she tightened her muscles around him, and heard him groan with pleasure.
‘How can you know how to do that?’ he demanded in between kisses.