‘I don’t think we should close any doors, either.’
Were they still talking about business? Shaking herself round, she explained that she wouldn’t be making any decisions on behalf of the other shareholders yet.
‘And I need to take samples from the mine before I can involve the consortium in such a large investment,’ Emir pointed out.
He only had to speak for alarm bells to go off in every part of her body, making it impossible to think about anything other than long, moonlit nights in the desert. Not once since taking over at Skavanga Mining had she ever been so distracted during a meeting. It didn’t help that she had thought the Black Sheikh’s trusted envoy would be some greybeard with a courtly air.
‘Here is your copy of my projections,’ she said, forcing her mind back to business before closing her file to signify the end of the meeting.
‘I have my own projections, thank you.’
She bridled at that before reminding herself that just a murmur from the Black Sheikh could rock a government, and that his envoy was hardly going to be a pushover when it came to negotiations.
‘Before we finish, there’s just one here on the second page,’ he said, leaning towards her.
‘I see it,’ she said, stiffening as she tried to close her mind to Emir’s intoxicating scent. And those powerful hands...the suppleness in his fingers...the strength in his wrists...
He caught her staring and she started blushing again. This was ridiculous. She was acting like a teenager on her first date.
Exhaling shakily, she sat back in the chair determined to recover the situation, but Emir was on a roll.
‘You seem to have missed something here,’ he said, pointing to another paragraph.
She never missed anything. She was meticulous in all her business dealings. But sure enough, Emir had found one tiny thing she had overlooked.
‘And this clause can go,’ he said, removing it with a strike of his pen.
‘Now, just a minute—’ She stared aghast as Emir deconstructed her carefully drawn-up plan. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘That clause does not go, and neither does anything else without further discussion, and this part of the meeting is over.’
He sat back in his chair as she stood up, which explained why she wasn’t ready for him moving in front of her to stand in her way.
‘You seem upset,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want the first part of our meeting to end badly.’
‘Bringing in investors is a big step for me to take—’
‘Britt—’
Emir’s touch on her skin was like an incendiary device, but the fact that his hand was on her arm at all was an outrage. ‘Let me go,’ she warned softly, but they both heard the shake in her voice. And surely Emir could feel her trembling beneath his touch. He must feel the heated awareness in her skin.
He murmured something in his own language. It might as well have been a spell. She turned to look at him, not keen to go anywhere suddenly.
‘It seems to me we have a timing problem, Britt. But there is a solution, if you will allow me to take it?’
Emir’s eyes were dark and amused. At first she thought she must have misunderstood him, but there was no mistake, and the solution he was proposing had been in her mind for some time. But surely no civilised businessman would be willing to enter into such a risky entanglement within an hour of meeting her?
As Emir’s hand grazed her chin she moved into his embrace, allowing him to turn her face up to his. This was no meeting between business colleagues. This was a meeting between a man and woman who were hot for each other, and the man was a warrior of the desert.
Emir promised pleasure. He also promised a chance to forget, and, for however short a time, the prospect of that seemed preferable at this moment to doing battle endlessly on every front. How would it feel to have this big man hold her and bring her pleasure? She must have swayed towards him, for the next thing she knew he was holding her in front of him.
‘Why, Britt,’ he said with amusement. ‘If I’d known how badly you wanted this I’m sure we could have arranged something before the meeting.’
Emir’s blunt approach should have shocked her—annoyed her—but instead it made her want him all the more, and as he brushed her lips with his she found herself instantly hungry, instantly frantic, for more pressure, more intimacy, and for everything to happen fast.
But Emir was even more experienced than she had realised, and now he took pleasure in subjecting her to an agonising delay. As the clock ticked, the tension built and he held her stare with his knowing and faintly amused look. She guessed Emir knew everything about arousal, and could only hope it wouldn’t be long before he decided she had suffered enough. She voiced a cry of relief when he cupped her face in his warm, slightly roughened hands, and another when her patience was rewarded by a kiss that began lightly and then brutally mimicked the act her body so desperately craved.