Heart of the Desert

Until now she’d never enjoyed kissing just as she’d never really enjoyed sex. But held in the arms and caressed by the lips of a master, Georgie changed her mind. His mouth pressed into hers, his jaw harsh against her skin, but there was moist relief in the centre and his tongue was cool against hers and made her burn. His hands were as skilled as his lips, because her hair was freed from the braid, and she knew only by the weight of it tumbling. He caressed her long blonde hair as if he was confirming it was how he had pictured it. He smelt as he had on the dance floor, as if he had stepped out of the shower and splashed on cologne, and she wanted to kiss him for ever.

Her fingers felt the hair she had admired as his hands now roamed her waist and just when she thought nothing could be better, he pulled her hips into his, so purposefully, so specifically that for a second she thought she would topple, except he was holding her and the wall was behind her and her shoulders met it as he pulled her in.

She felt it then.

As his mouth savaged hers, as his erection pressed in, she felt all the promise in that lithe, toned body, glimpsed the delicious place to which they were leading. Always she had shied from that path, but she felt tonight as if she wanted to run down it. They could have been in Peru or at a bus stop, they could have been anywhere, and it didn’t matter because she was absolutely lost in the moment he made.

It was Ibrahim who had control, because he stopped then, pulled that noble head back just a fraction and looked as no man, no person, no soul had ever looked. He looked so deeply into her eyes that she wanted to climb into him, to dive into the beauty they mirrored.

‘Come …’ He had her hot hand in his and he would take her to his bed, right now. He would lead her, and soon he would have her, but Georgie was greedy, she was hungry and she could not wait, could not climb a single stair if it kept her from the moment that was waiting to be made. She was out of control and for the first time she liked it, because somehow with him it felt safe.

‘Here.’ Her room was here behind her, her bed was here, and she wanted them both safe and unsafe behind closed doors, but Ibrahim was a prince and his seed so precious, the orders so ingrained, that he hesitated.

‘We need …’ His own room would be better. There were discreet drawers, regularly replenished for the women sent to entertain the young prince, but in the guest rooms there would be nothing,

And, yes, they did need. Her scrambled brain, her rushing thoughts were grateful for his care yet she raced to a speedier solution and her voice leapt in delight as she recalled.

‘I’ve got some.’ She thanked the gods watching over Heathrow Airport who’d taken the two pounds she’d put into a machine and delivered not the mouthwash she had selected but a little parcel she hadn’t wanted, but she was very grateful for it now.

And worlds collided for Ibrahim.

That she came prepared was perhaps to be admired. In London he would not give it a thought, but here …

He did not belong here, he reminded himself.

The rules did not apply.

So why the pause?

Why did it matter?

It did not, he told himself as they moved into her suite, and then when he kissed her again, he didn’t have to tell himself any more because it simply did not … matter.

It did.

For Georgie something else mattered.

She closed her eyes to his kiss and tried not to think about it, tried to forget and just be warmed by his tongue, which was hot now.

Hot and probing and done with her spent mouth. Now that he had kissed her onto the bed, he pulled the straps on her dress and licked down her chest, his hand pushing up the hem of that hateful dress, but not all the way, because her hips rose so high into him he was blocked. It was urgent, urgent and desperate and completely delicious, her body responding as if it had been waiting for ever to join him. She tore at his jacket, his shirt, her mouth in his hair, on his ear, her hands on his back, her stilettos tearing the silk of his trousers as their legs entwined, wishing the heat from their bodies would melt their clothes so they could connect with skin.

It mattered.

She could not ignore it—could not forgo her strange principle. As she knelt on the bed and lifted her hem as Ibrahim lowered his head, not knowing whether or not it would matter to him, Georgie said, ‘We can’t …’

He liked her game.

‘We can.’

He liked her feigned reluctance.

Liked the sudden shyness as his mouth met her stomach.

‘I can’t.’

‘You can,’ he breathed as his hands pulled at her panties and brushed off the hands that sought to keep them on.

‘Ibrahim, please …’ And he realised then that it wasn’t a game. Or rather that she’d been playing a very dangerous one, because he could not have been closer, could not have been closer. He was still hard and he was back to angry and for a moment there he did not like his own thoughts, but he hauled himself from her, looked down at his torn clothing, could feel the scratches from her nails in his back and shot daggers at her with his eyes.

‘I’m sorry …’ Georgie gulped, and wondered how could she explain it suddenly mattered.

‘I’m not like that.’

‘You pretending to be demure was lost in the hallway.’

‘I haven’t—’

‘Don’t try to tell me you’re a virgin.’ He gave a nasty smirk. ‘A condom-carrying virgin.’

‘I’m not.’ She wasn’t and she certainly wasn’t about to explain to him in this mood about the Heathrow gods. ‘I didn’t mean to lead you on.’

‘You meant it,’ he said. ‘You meant every second of it.’ He wasn’t hard any more, he was just pure angry. He’d been told she was trouble and he should have listened. ‘What are you holding out for, Georgie?’ It dawned on him then. ‘Jealous of your big sister, are you? Want a rich husband of your own?’ He mocked her with a black smile. ‘Here’s a tip for the future—men like a little or the lot.’

She was angry too. Angry at herself and now at him for not letting her explain. And she was embarrassed, which wasn’t a great combination because she bit back with harsh words of her own.

‘Oh, so you’d have loved me in the morning?’ She answered her own question. ‘As if.’ He was a bastard, a playboy and she’d been playing with fire from the beginning, she just hadn’t known it at the time.

But there was a beat, a tiny beat where their eyes met.

A glimpse of a tomorrow that might have been, which they’d lost now.

That made him even angrier, ‘I wouldn’t touch you again if you were on your knees, begging. I’ll tell you what you are …’ Ibrahim said, and he added an insult that needed no translation and it hurtled from his mouth as he walked from her room.

She pulled up her knees as he slammed closed her door and then pulled a shaking hand across her mouth because how could she tell him what had suddenly mattered?

Georgie wasn’t looking for a husband.

She already had one.

CHAPTER THREE

IT DID not abate.

Ibrahim Zaraq rode his horse at breakneck speed along the paths, across the fields and back along the paths, his breath white in the crisp morning air, and, despite the space, despite the miles available to him to exercise his passion, today, this morning, and not for the first time lately, Ibrahim felt confined.

London had been the place that had freed him, the place of escape, and yet as he pulled up his beast, as he patted the lathered neck, Ibrahim, though breathless, wanted to kick him on, wanted to gallop again, to go further, faster, not follow a track and turn around.

There, in the still, crisp morning, in the green belt of a city, the desert called him—just as his father had told him it would.