Lynne Graham - The Sheikh's Collection

‘No table and chairs, I’m afraid,’ he warned her, settling down by the flickering fire with animal grace.

‘That’s OK,’ she muttered as a servant emerged from one of the doorways bearing a tray, closely followed by another. ‘So, you have a kitchen here.’

‘A necessity when I’m entertaining.’

He had mentioned the tribal sheikhs he met up with but Saffy was already wondering how many other women he had brought out into the desert. She knew there had been other women. For a couple of years after the divorce and before the overthrow of his father, Zahir had made occasional appearances in glossy magazines with several different beautiful women on his arm. And those glimpses of the new and much more visible life he was leading abroad without her had cut deep like a knife and made her bleed internally. She had known that those women were sharing his bed, entangling his beautiful bronzed body with lissom limbs and giving him everything she had failed to give him. Divorce, she had learned the hard way, wasn’t an immediate cut-off point for emotions, even emotions that she had no right to feel.

Zahir watched Sapphire curl up on the sofa opposite, looking all fresh faced and scrubbed clean just the way he remembered her, the way he liked her best, for with her stunning looks she required few enhancements. Her restive fingers toyed with a strand of golden blonde hair and instantly he recalled the silken feel of it sliding against his skin and got a hard-on. He crushed the recollection before it could stray into even more erotic areas and reminded himself that she was a beautiful shell with a cash-register heart. He was not at all surprised that she had dropped the subject of the five million pounds without any acknowledgement or adequate explanation. It might be pocket change to a member of his family, but it still mattered that she had taken so much and given nothing in return.

Perched with a plate on her lap, Saffy helped herself to portions of different dishes and dug in because she was starving. While she ate she studied Zahir from below her lashes, marvelling at the superb bone structure that gave his features such strength and masculinity. From every angle he was glorious. Sitting there, his attention on his plate and quite unaware of her scrutiny, he mesmerised her. Her breasts stirred beneath the silk, the tips growing tender and swollen. She dredged her eyes back to her food, her mouth dry, her heart hammering, images from the past bombarding her. Although consummating their marriage had proved impossible, she had learned how to give him pleasure in other ways. At that thought she shifted uneasily on her seat, moist heat pooling at the heart of her. He had never understood what was wrong with her. How could he have? But he had at least tried , assuring her of his patience while he did everything possible to set her fears to rest. Unfortunately her fears had been in her subconscious and not something she could control, fears from a hidden source that she had repressed many years before while she was still a child. All of a sudden she simply could not comprehend why he would bring her back into his life after a marriage that had turned into a hell on earth for both of them.

‘Why on earth did you want to see me again?’ Saffy demanded abruptly.

He lifted his dark head, stunning golden eyes locking to her. ‘Few men forget their first love and you’re the one who got away…’

Regret stabbed through her and she flinched, for they had begun with love in spite of the fact that during the year of marital strife that followed they had lost it again. The plates were cleared away and coffee and cakes served. She ate to fill the emptiness inside her, the hollow that never seemed to fill. She couldn’t look at him, didn’t dare look at him again, knew the temptation was a weakness to be suppressed at every opportunity.

‘I wanted to see you again before I remarried,’ Zahir heard himself admit in brusque addition, knowing that he would never have trusted himself to see her after that event had taken place.

Her golden head flew up, heavenly blue eyes wide with shock. ‘You’re getting married again?’ she gasped, shattered at the idea although she couldn’t have explained why.

Zahir raised a winged ebony brow. ‘As yet there is no particular bride in view but there is considerable pressure on me to take a wife. Inevitably I will have to satisfy my people’s expectations.’

Some of the tension eased from her taut shoulders and she lowered her head. Of course he would be expected to marry: it went with the territory of kingship. What did it matter to her? Why should the concept bother her? It was not as though she still thought of him as her husband. In fact she was being ridiculously oversensitive and it was time to grow up and don her big-girl pants. Exhaustion engulfed her in a debilitating wave then, reminding her that she had been up since five that morning. A yawn crept up on her and she stood up smothering a yawn. ‘I’m incredibly tired…’

Zahir sprang upright and rested his hands on her shoulders to prevent her from moving away. Her mouth ran dry, her heart skipping a beat as she looked up at him, up over that full sensual mouth to the black-lashed golden eyes that wreaked havoc with her insides.

‘Tonight you’re tired.’ His deep dark voice reverberated through her very bones, the husky nuances toying with her nerves like a secret caress. ‘I won’t touch you…’

Saffy shivered at just the thought of being in bed with him again. The image caught at her and not with the sense of threat that she believed she should have felt. A lazy brown forefinger grazed the length of her delicate collarbone, smoothed a passage up her slender throat while she struggled not to fall in a limp heap at his feet because her knees were threatening to buckle. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think while he touched her, and then he brought his mouth crashing down on hers with a hungry passion that should have frightened her out of her wits, but which instead stormed through her and set her on fire. There was a primitive sense of tightening and dampness between her legs, a sudden painful pulse throbbing through the peaks of her breasts. With every plunge of his tongue she trembled, lost in the hot, electrifying darkness of overwhelming physical sensation.

‘Bed,’ Zahir muttered raggedly, stooping to haul her up bodily in his strong arms, thrusting back a door with an impatient shoulder. ‘I want you wide awake tomorrow.’

He laid her down on a big modern divan dressed in pristine white linen. When he had said, ‘bed’ in that deep thrilling tone her imagination had exploded into the stratosphere and when he released her again and moved back to the door, she frowned at him poised there in the dim light, black hair tousled by her fingers, the taste of him still on her lips, the sheer call of him to her senses overpowering. She rolled over and buried her hot face in a pillow. No, she didn’t have a stupid bone in her body. She was looking for a man—had been for years—but he was not the one, although inconveniently he still seemed to be the only one she actually wanted, the only one she could even imagine becoming intimate with.

Angry tears of frustration stung her eyes. After the divorce had destroyed her faith in true love and happy endings, she had licked her wounds for years, terrified of getting into another serious relationship and meeting up with the same problems. But after therapy, she had longed to lose her virginity and have sex with a lover to prove that she was fully cured and had come to terms with her past. She had simply wanted to be normal as other women took for granted…how could that be wrong? Or selfish? Or immoral? And she did not need to compound her mistakes by being attracted to a man who had not only hurt her very badly once but who also had plans to marry another woman.