Maisey Yates - Sheikh's Defiant Wife

He said something she couldn’t quite make out and the expression in his slitted eyes was suddenly forbidding.

‘Is something wrong?’ she questioned tentatively.

‘Who buys your lingerie for you?’ His voice was dark with some unnamed emotion.

‘I do.’

‘But you buy it for you? Or do you buy it for the men who will enjoy watching you wearing it?’ he persisted, slithering his finger inside her thong where she was so wet and so sensitive that she bucked beneath his touch and gave a little cry. His finger stilled. ‘Do you?’

Sara nodded, so strung out with pleasure that she barely knew what she was agreeing to. But men liked women to indulge in fantasy, didn’t they? She’d read enough erotic literature to know that. Men liked you to pretend to be things and to do things. She read that normality was the killer in the bedroom.

Not that they were anywhere near a bedroom, of course—but who cared about that? Why not feed into his fantasies—and her own? Why shouldn’t she make love with Suleiman in the wild desert which had spawned her, on this shaded patch of sand? She might not like all the restrictions of life here, but she was sensitive enough to appreciate its beauty. And if Suleiman wanted her to play the femme fatale, then play it she would.

‘I’m enjoying wearing it for you,’ she answered coyly, her finger moving to trace the curving satin trim of her bra. ‘Do you like it?’

He made a sound mid-way between hunger and anger as he pulled off his crimson robes with impatient disregard, until he was also naked. She let her gaze drift over him, her eyes widening as her gaze locked onto the most intimate part of his aroused body—and suddenly she was a little daunted by what she saw.

‘Suleiman...’ she whispered, but her words faded because he was back in her arms and was touching her again. Moving his hand intimately against her sex and stroking her with pinpoint accuracy. She could smell the scent of her arousal on the air. She could feel the warm rush of blood flooding through her veins. And shouldn’t she be touching him? She reached down to whisper her fingertips against his silken length, but he stilled her movement by the abrupt clamp of his hand around her wrist.

‘No,’ he said.

She looked into his eyes, confused. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m too close to coming, that’s why. And I want to come when I’m inside you. I want to watch your face as I enter and hear the sounds you make when I move inside you.’

It was the most erotic thing she’d ever heard. Sara swallowed. Suleiman deep inside the one place where she had always longed for him to be. She could feel her skin burning as he spread his robes down on the shaded sand, like a silken blanket for them to lie on. His face was dark and taut as he peeled off her electric-blue underwear, until she lay before him like a naked sacrifice.

She could see the hardness of his erection and the dark whorls of hair from which it sprang. His olive skin gleamed softly in the terracotta light and his dark eyes were as black as tar as he reached for her, bending his lips to hers. The kiss which followed made her gasp with pleasure. It seemed to unlock something deep within her, but when he lifted his head she could see that his eyes were dark with pain.

‘My greatest fantasy and my greatest sin,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘And it is wrong. We both know that.’

Suddenly Sara was terrified he was going to stop. That she would never know what it was like to have Suleiman Abd al-Aziz make love to her. And she couldn’t bear it. She thought she could pretty much bear anything else, but not that. Not now.

Her hand reached up to touch the blackness of his hair, letting her fingers slide beneath the silken strands. ‘How can it possibly be wrong, when it feels so right?’

‘Don’t ask disingenuous questions, Sara. And don’t look at me with those big violet eyes, a colour which I’ve never seen on any woman other than you. Just stop me from doing this. Stop me before it goes any further because I don’t have the strength to stop myself.’

‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘Because I...’ She nearly said I love you, but just in time she bit back the words. ‘Because I’ve wanted this for so long. We both want it. You know that. Please, Suleiman. Make love to me.’

He tilted up her chin and gazed down at her. ‘Oh, Sara,’ he said, saying her name like an unwilling surrender.

He entered her slowly. So slowly that she thought she would die with the pleasure. She cried out as he made that first thrust—a cry which was disbelieving and exultant.

Suleiman was inside her.

Suleiman was filling her.

Suleiman was...

He groaned as he found his rhythm, moving deeper with each stroke. And Sara suddenly felt as if she had been born for this moment. She wrapped her legs around his back as he splayed his hands over her bare buttocks to drive even deeper. Her breath was coming in shuddered little gasps as he moved inside her. She’d had sex before, but never like this. Never like this. It was like everyone said it should be. It was...

And then she stopped thinking. Stopped everything except listening to the demands of her body and letting the pleasure pile on, layer by sensual layer.

She felt it build—desperately sweet, yet tantalisingly elusive. She felt the warmth flood through her as Suleiman’s movements became more urgent and she was so locked into his passionate kiss that the first spasms of her orgasm took her almost by surprise. Like a feather which had been lifted by a storm and then tossed around by it, she just went with the flow. She cried out his name as his own body suddenly tensed, and he shuddered violently as he came.

But it was over all too quickly. Abruptly, he pulled out of her—so that all she was aware of was a warmth spurting over her belly. He had withdrawn from her! It took a couple of disconcerting moments before she felt together enough to open her eyes and to look at him and when she did she felt almost embarrassed. As if the sudden ending had wiped out the magic of what had gone before.

‘Why...why did you do that?’

His voice was flat. ‘I realised that in our haste to consummate our lust, we hadn’t even discussed contraception.’

Sara did her best not to flinch, but it seemed a particularly emotionless thing to say in view of what had just happened. Consummate their lust? Was that it? ‘I suppose we didn’t.’

‘Are you on the pill?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘So we add a baby into the equation and make the situation a million times worse than it already is,’ he said bitterly. ‘Is that what you wanted?’

She flushed, knowing he was right—and wasn’t it the most appalling thing that she found herself wishing that he had made her pregnant? How weird was it that some primitive part of her was wishing that Suleiman had planted his seed inside her belly. So that now there would be a baby growing beneath her heart. His baby. ‘No, of course it wasn’t what I wanted.’ She met his eyes. ‘Why are you being like this?’

‘Like what?’

‘So...cold.’

‘Why do you think? Because I’ve just betrayed the man who saved my life. Because I’ve behaved like the worst kind of friend.’ His gaze swept over her and somehow she knew what he was going to say, almost before the words had left his lips. ‘And you weren’t even a virgin.’

It was the ‘even’ which made it worse. As if she’d been nothing but a poor consolation prize. ‘Were you expecting me to be?’

‘Yes,’ he bit out. ‘Of course I was!’

‘I’m twenty-three years old, Suleiman. I’ve been living an independent life in London. What did you expect?’

‘But you were brought up as a desert princess! To respect your body and cherish your maidenhood. To save your purity for your bridegroom. Your royal bridegroom.’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, I know you spoke freely of sex and that beneath your clothes you were wearing the kind of lingerie which only a truly liberated woman would wear. But even though I had my suspicions, deep down I thought you remained untouched!’