One Desert Night: Destined for the Desert King / Hidden in the Sheikh's Harem / Claimed by the Sheikh

‘Tell me,’ she persisted. ‘What was it that kept you from sleeping?’

‘Just you.’

The look she turned on him from those golden eyes was so blatantly sceptical and yet tinged with a tiny hint of something that Nabil wanted to be fool enough to call interest glowing in the amber depths.

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘It’s the...’

Unexpectedly the word failed him. He wanted to be able to assert that it was the truth and nothing but, but there was no way he was going to admit that bruised pride had had a part in his sleeplessness, as well as everything else.

The newly woken physical hunger that tormented his days, heated his nights, was bad enough but the realisation that he had allowed the shadows of the past to reach out and enfold him, just when he had thought that he was freeing himself from them, had stirred the mix to toxic proportions.

He had wanted to believe her—hell, deep in his soul he had known she was innocent of the black suspicions that had risen up between them. But it was the fact that he wanted it so much that had forced him to take a step back and reconsider. He had rushed into marriage with Sharmila on just that assumption. With Aziza he had to get it right or it would ruin both himself and his country.

‘You think I was happy to settle and sleep after that night?’ he demanded, going on to the attack to hide the restless, scrambled thoughts inside his head.

‘You were the one who told me I was to sleep alone,’ Aziza pointed out now, making him curse his memories and the fact that he couldn’t deny her accusation.

In his dreams—in the rare times of sleep he managed—he could still taste the intoxicating blend of sugar from the grapes and the provocation that was pure Aziza, and his hands still burned from the intimacy of the search she had subjected herself to. A search that had had nothing to do with calm common sense and everything that came from need and desire—a desire that was still frustrated. And that was only his fault.

Stiff-necked pride had stopped him from admitting the truth. That he had made a mistake from the first, and regretted it in less than the space of a heartbeat afterwards. Sharmila’s toxic legacy still lingered so heavily, throwing black shadows over everything he did, and he had to rid himself of it before he could make a move into the future he had planned for himself.

But at the same time, by keeping him from the burning sexual fulfilment that he had known was just waiting for him in this woman’s bed, it had opened up another personal form of hell that had tormented his nights and shadowed his days.

Had he waited too long? Had he pushed Aziza too hard so that she was too far away from him ever to win back?

‘I’m sorry, Aziza,’ he said softly and the quiet use of her name seemed to drag her back from wherever her thoughts had drifted to. He saw her blink just once, slowly and thoughtfully, and then she lifted her head and turned to face him.

‘I was never asleep either,’ she said, stunning him so that his eyes narrowed sharply.

‘What are you saying?’

‘What do you want me to say, sire?’ she challenged him, her chin coming up in the defiant way that always hit him right in the guts. ‘That I was only waiting for you to get those reports you asked for so that you would know it was safe to be with me? Did I have any choice? Don’t you think it would have been fairer—more reasonable—to check me out before you married me? So that we could have had our wedding night uninterrupted—in peace?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded slowly, never taking his eyes from her face.

A shake of her head sent the black silk of her hair flying, sliding over her face for a moment. The scent of its freshly washed softness caught on his senses, making his body ache. He could command her to come to him, he reflected. He could crook that finger again and insist that she come to him, as his wife, as his subject, but that was not how he wanted this. He wanted her to come to him of her own choice, her free will. He wanted her to hunger for him as much as he desired her, but he wanted her to crave him as a man, rather than a king. It was an odd feeling; one that made him feel strangely vulnerable in a way he had never known before.

‘So why didn’t you?’

‘I was a fool.’

Which one of them had moved? Aziza wondered. She knew she had taken a step forward, maybe two, unable to resist the invisible magnetic pull of his body on hers. But surely she hadn’t come so much closer to him as she was now, within touching reach, so that if she just put out a hand...

Her fingers tangled with Nabil’s, hard and warm, and a moment later she was pulled against him, the breath crashing from her lungs as she was crushed up against his chest. Her head went back, lifting her mouth to his, her eyes closing as she felt his lips take hers and she gave herself up to the sensation.

It was nothing like the kiss on the balcony. Or the feeling in Nabil’s room while she’d struggled with the veil that had concealed her face. That had had all the excitement of a new discovery, of tumbling into an unexpected hunger, an irrepressible need. It had been breathless and greedy, bewildering.

This hunger had been six days brewing. The waiting, the isolation, the separation, had left it to feed on itself so that it had grown, wild and blazing. They were both starving, desperate to finish what they had started on their wedding night, and what long hours apart in the heated darkness had built into an uncontrollable longing.

It was so very different somehow, but Aziza couldn’t put a name to what had changed. It was only when Nabil muttered, rough and low against her skin, that she realised.

‘Wife,’ he murmured, the heat of his breath feathering the curls of her ear.

She had never heard that note in his voice before and now, finally, she recognised it for what it was.

Trust.

It was just a little word. Just five letters, but it meant so much, changed so much. It meant that whatever darkness had shadowed Nabil’s thoughts of her at the beginning—on that first terrifying night they had spent together and yet so far apart—that darkness was now gone. He trusted her, wanted her, and she couldn’t ask for more.

His hands seemed to be everywhere, his lips following their path along her skin. She was stroked, caressed, tantalised, tormented, coming alive under his hands, plunging hard and fast and deep into what it meant to be a woman who was wanted by a man. And how it felt to be the woman who wanted the man she was with so much that she was out of her head with need.

‘My wife,’ Nabil muttered again, his voice dark and thick as he swung her up into his arms and carried her from the room and up the curving marble staircase to kick open the door into the bedroom. Never once in the whole of that hasty journey did his lips leave hers, his body making the climb surefooted and safely even though he was acting blind.

In the bedroom he dropped her down on to the cushioned softness of the bed, leaning over her as he did so to tangle his hands in her hair, pull her face up to his again for yet more of those overwhelming, demanding kisses. Until, in the space of a heartbeat it seemed, kisses were not enough and his hands plundered her body, the heat of his palms branding her as his with every touch.

‘You are wearing too many clothes.’

He ripped the soft, green silk tunic open down the front, baring her breasts to his burning eyes. A moment later, both sides of the top fell away, slithering to the floor to pool at her feet, to be joined just moments later by the white trousers she had been wearing, her underwear tossed aside with a total indifference to where it fell.

Then he was there beside her on the bed, his own clothes discarded alongside hers, the heat and hardness of his lean length stoking the fires that were already running wild through her yearning body. His kisses were more intimate now, lingering on each breast to swirl his tongue around the pouting nipples, drawing them into the heated cavern of his mouth and suckling hard until she was crying out with need.

But he was ahead of her there too, stroking his way down the length of her body and parting her legs, finding the most intimate part of her and making a raw, rough sound of satisfaction as his fingers encountered the moisture that told how ready she was for him there.

But then, just when she could least bear it, he suddenly hesitated and paused, looking down into her face. His eyes were glazed with passion, a heated blush streaking across high cheekbones above the rich growth of beard, but he held himself still for a moment, letting her know without words just what he was thinking. He was considering her inexperience; thinking of the need for care.

But care and consideration were not what Aziza wanted—not what she needed.

‘No!’ she ordered, her voice raw and high with a need that matched his. ‘Don’t stop now. Don’t!’

‘No chance, lady.’

Her legs were pushed apart by the pressure of his powerful thighs as he settled himself between them, the heat of his length coming up against the point where she most yearned for him. Fearful that he might hesitate once more, she found herself acting on instincts as old as time, lifting her hips slightly and opening herself to him until, on a groan that was a mixture of triumph and surrender, he gave himself up to the passion that controlled him, pressing in and up until he possessed her completely.

The sting of pain was only brief and soon forgotten as from then it was all fire and fury, passion and need taking over and driving every last thought from her mind. She didn’t know where she ended and Nabil began, only that they were together and together they were storming higher, higher, reaching for something she had never known existed but felt that now she would die if she never achieved it.

Just seconds later she felt that she was dying. Of pleasure; of the brilliance of the delight that was exploding along every nerve in her body, sending her spinning over the edge into a freefall into space. All that she was aware of was the fact that Nabil went with her, following her along the same blazing path, with her name a raw, broken sound of triumph on his lips as he did so.

A long, mindless time later, Nabil’s breathing finally slowed and he stirred at last, stretching luxuriously and pulling her close so that she was curved against him, skin to skin, her slender, smooth legs tangled with the bronzed length of his, dark hairs rough against her sensitive skin.

He cupped a hand under her chin to lift her face towards his, a frown drawing his black brows together.

‘Are you all right? It was your first time. Are you OK?’

For several seconds Aziza had to struggle to speak. She found that she was blushing fierily at the ease with which he had realised her inexperience. Had it showed? Had she disappointed him?

‘Disappointed? Did it look that way?’