Her feverish buzz stilled as she sensed a change in him. ‘Salim?’
Rosanna reached up, wondering at that sober look. Her hands skimmed his chest and shoulders but before she could embrace him, he sank low, settling further down her body. He wrapped his arms around her thighs, pulling them up over his shoulders, and she couldn’t stifle another gasp as his hot breath tickled her damp curls.
‘Salim, I...’
She lost whatever she’d been about to say as he kissed her intimately and once again made the world fall away.
Salim looked across to Rosanna lying on a padded sun lounger. She was naked but for the diaphanous red caftan she’d insisted on throwing on after their swim. His gaze traced the lines and entrancing curves of her body enticingly revealed through the sheer fabric. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be anywhere else.
For the first time it occurred to him to wonder what it would be like if he hadn’t been born royal, with a nation’s expectations on his shoulders, and could please himself with what he did and who he chose to be with.
Hurriedly he thrust away the thought. That could never be.
‘Tell me about this place, Salim. It’s obviously very old but it has such a warm feel to it. Not grim like a fortress.’
Rosanna’s voice was soft and her eyes closed as she lay on her stomach, her cheek pillowed on her folded arms. Even this late in the day it was warm enough for her to settle in the shade rather than bake in the direct sunlight at the edge of the long pool.
‘What do you want to know?’
She looked like she wasn’t far off sleep and he couldn’t blame her. They’d had a vigorous, wholly satisfying afternoon.
He couldn’t remember ever feeling so good, fizzing with energy, despite the weighted laxness of his well-used body. Rosanna tested him to the limit, urging him to peak after peak when common sense decreed he should be sated.
A dull clamour of warning sounded in his brain. Like a cracked bell ringing off-key in paradise. He felt the discordant jangle too in the hollowing of his belly.
Salim frowned, trying to identify it. He’d experienced it earlier in bed. He’d rolled her over and looked down into eyes as bright and beguiling as moonlight and felt...
That was it. The temptation to feel too much, read too much into their compatibility, though he knew they’d soon go their separate ways.
Salim ignored the pain stabbing his rib cage. That, he assured himself, was for Rosanna. He worried about her. He’d seen her dreamy expression as she watched him and feared maybe she was building unrealistic hopes about them.
Yet whenever they talked about the future, Rosanna was as sensible as she’d always been. Expecting nothing from him but this single week.
Hewanted more than a week. Seven days wouldn’t be enough to sever the bond between them.
But it had to be. He’d already gone beyond the limits of what was reasonable.
‘Tell me about the queen it was made for,’ she said sleepily, and he was reminded irresistibly of himself, years ago, begging his mother for another bedtime story. Time alone with her had been such a treat.
‘It wasn’t built for a queen but as a clan fortress centuries ago.’ His lips quirked up in a smile. ‘Times have changed. These days local power struggles are confined to politics.’
Rosanna opened her eyes and surveyed him. He read the dark pewter colour, so different to the bright blaze of silver when she was aroused. This was her assessing look, as if she weighed his words. He knew she was still thinking of the queen, not old power struggles.
Salim shrugged and relented. What harm would it do to tell her? ‘It came to the crown when one of our country’s greatest sheikhs married the daughter of the clan chieftain of this region. She brought the fortress as part of her dowry.’
‘It must have been a powerful clan to give up such a strategic position.’
He nodded, surprised at how quickly she’d grasped its significance. ‘It was. Winning her as a bride was a political coup for the sheikh. The irony is that she refused him, not once but twice.’
Rosanna’s eyes widened. ‘I’ve heard about her!’
She pushed herself up on her elbows, inadvertently giving Salim a glorious view of her breasts.
A clenching weight in his groin banished that phantom sensation that something was amiss. His palms itched with the need to cup those lovely breasts and caress her till she purred with pleasure. She was so beautiful.
Yet he’d known more classically beautiful women. There was something about Rosanna that he couldn’t explain butfeltat a visceral level.
‘The sheikh made those three wonderful gates to the palace to celebrate when she finally agreed to marry him.’