CHAPTER TEN
TORISIGHEDASpleasure trickled through her. The bed was soft, she’d had the best sleep she could remember and, half-awake, she sensed all was well with the world.
It took her a few moments to realise that the delightful sensation that had roused her was a trailing caress. The brush of fingers across naked skin.
Naked skin.
For a moment her dulled brain couldn’t compute that till, in a flurry of excitement, memories swamped her.
Ashraf, even more potent and magnificent in the flesh than in her dreams, powering into her with a single-minded focus that had been almost as arousing as the feel of his hard body.
He’d been strong yet tender, urgent yet considerate. She trembled, recalling how his body had made hers sing. How his touch had reduced her defences to rubble. How the pleasure had gone on and on and—
‘Ash!’
Her eyes popped open as that wandering hand strayed across her breast, pausing to circle in ever-diminishing rings towards her eager nipple.
Dark eyes held hers—eyes that danced with devilry and hunger. By the pearly light filling the room she knew it was very early morning and she felt a fillip of delight that Oliver had slept through, leaving her and Ashraf uninterrupted. Soon, she guessed, he’d wake...
Then Ashraf pinched her nipple and her thoughts shattered. Tori all but rose off the bed as arousal shot through her. His leg across hers held her down and even that, she discovered, excited her.
Mouth dry, she licked her lips. His eyes followed the movement. At his throat a tiny pulse flickered hard and the tendons at the base of his neck pulled taut.
Tori breathed in sharply, excited by his arousal. It was a heady thing, discovering she had power over this man she found impossible to resist.
‘Good morning, Victoria.’
Even the way he said her name—her full name, that no one but her father used—tugged at unseen cords in her belly. She used the name Tori partly because its less feminine sound fitted her work environment, but mainly because she hated how her father expressed his disapproval by drawing out the syllables.
Now, on Ashraf’s tongue, her name sounded sensual and inviting.
‘Good morning, Ashraf.’
His hand slid down to circle her navel and feather her belly, drawing a shiver from her and an eager softening of muscles. Her legs quivered.
‘Last night it was Ash.’
‘Was it?’ She remembered, but pretended not to. Because last night he’d flattened every barrier between them.
When they made love it was as if time ripped away and she was with Ash again, the vital, viscerally exciting man she’d known in the desert. The man who tried to protect her, who’d given her the gift of his support when she’d been terrified. Rather than Ashraf, the man whose intentions worried her, despite his attempts to allay her concerns. For nothing could take away the fact that he was supreme ruler in this foreign land and that he wanted her to relinquish her freedom and everything she knew.
If he knew the full extent of his power over her...
She shivered.
His hand paused just inches away from the apex of her thighs and, despite her worrying thoughts, Tori felt the sharp bite of frustration. No matter her concerns for the future, she needed more.
Tori pressed her palm down on the back of his hand, holding it against trembling skin.
Their eyes clashed.
‘Why did you stop? You want me to call you Ash?’
Broad shoulders shrugged above her. ‘Call me whatever you like.’
Yet he made no move to complete what he had been doing just moments before.
An ache set up inside her, deep in that hollow place he’d filled last night. And in her chest, as if her heart or lungs were bruised.