Sheikh's Captured Bride: The Sheikh's Prize / The Sheikh's Son / Captured by the Sheikh

Saffy froze in her tracks and slowly turned back to him. ‘If it’s anything to do with the recent past, it’s unwelcome and I don’t want to hear it.’

Zahir regarded her with glittering dark golden eyes. ‘Tough,’ he told her. ‘I’m here and you’ll listen.’

‘Look, that kind of attitude may go down well in Maraban but it leaves me cold!’

‘But I don’t…leave you cold,’ he affixed as if she might be in some doubt as to his meaning.

A flush of pink washed from her long slender throat up in a wave of burning mortification, for to have him throw that in her face was an affront of no mean order. ‘I’m not listening, Zahir… I’m going to show you out. I want you to leave.’

Instead he stalked towards her like a prowling jungle cat cornering a prey. ‘No, you don’t. You’re being stubborn. You don’t like the tables being turned but you put this ball into my court—’

‘No, I didn’t!’ Saffy exclaimed in angry vexation.

‘You came to me willingly—’

‘I said I wasn’t going to talk about this!’ Saffy flung back at him furiously.

Zahir sent the door behind her crashing shut with an imperious shove of one strong hand. ‘I have a proposition I want you to consider—’

‘No…no.’ Saffy whipped up her hands to press them against her ears in desperate defiance. ‘I’m not listening. You’ve got nothing to say that I could want to hear.’

Zahir grabbed her hands and yanked them down, retaining a firm hold on her wrists. ‘I’ve already bought you an apartment here in London. You’ll move out of this one into it and I will visit you there whenever I am free…’

As simple shock winged through Saffy in a tidal wave her hands went limp in his grasp and she stared up at him wide-eyed with astonishment and no small amount of incredulity. ‘An apartment? What on earth are you suggesting?’

‘That you leave your current lover and become mine,’ Zahir spelt out with barely leashed ferocity. ‘I don’t want you here with him. I don’t care what arrangement you have. I will only come to you if you are mine alone!’

Saffy blinked rapidly, processing his words in disbelief. ‘You’re insane. Five years ago, you divorced me and cast me off like an old shoe you’d outgrown!’ she condemned rawly. ‘And now you’re asking me to be your mistress?’

Brilliant dark eyes narrowed and he freed her hands. ‘That’s an emotive label and rather outdated.’

‘And yet you’ve got the nerve to suggest such a demeaning relationship might suit me?’ Saffy hissed at him furiously.

‘Yes, I have the nerve,’ Zahir declared in a driven undertone, his accent very thick. ‘I want you to the edge of madness but I won’t share you with other men.’

‘My goodness,’ Saffy said in a sharp and brittle voice. ‘Was I that good in the tent?’

‘Stop it,’ Zahir urged harshly, stroking a stern finger across her parted lips, leaving a tingle in the wake of his warning. ‘Don’t reduce us both to that level with that tongue of yours. There is no sin in us indulging ourselves in pleasure. Who would it harm? We would be discreet. I would spend as much time with you as I can find to spare.’

But Saffy was still stunned by what he was proposing. A mistress? A kept woman in the background of his life, a dirty secret? Her? He had to be kidding. Her pride and independence would never allow her to accept such a relationship. Of course, how could he know that? At eighteen she had been loving, clingy and needy and that was probably how he still saw her. Back then marriage and a man she loved had been the zenith of her ambitions. But the more she thought of it the insult of what he was prepared to offer her in the present cut very deep indeed and she could not credit that he would believe even for a second that she could agree to be any man’s secret mistress!

‘It really is time that you go,’ Saffy snapped, throwing her head back, damp golden hair rippling back from her taut cheekbones. ‘You’ve said what you wanted to say and my answer is no. No, no, no! I like my life just the way it is.’

‘Look at me and tell me you don’t want me,’ Zahir growled.

And she looked and lingered on those lean, darkly handsome features and lost, blue eyes fearlessly clashing with smouldering gold, and then it was as if a knot were unfurling faster and faster inside her, unleashing a disturbing blast of emotions and responses that shook her inside out. But even then in the midst of that gathering storm she knew that no way would she ever sink low enough to become his mistress. Yes, she wanted him, but no, she would never take what he was offering because the price was too high.

Saffy parted her lips. ‘I don’t want you enough for that…’

Zahir glowered down at her. ‘Liar.’

Saffy tossed her head. ‘You can’t bully me into giving you the answer you want—’

‘I don’t bully you. I have never bullied you,’ Zahir countered wrathfully.

‘You’ve very domineering.’

‘You like it,’ he told her with a roughened edge to his voice, lush black lashes low over his gaze as he watched the tip of her tongue snake out to moisten her lower lip.

‘I like my men civilised,’ Saffy shot back scornfully.

‘But you still want me,’ Zahir framed with hungry intensity.

‘As I said…not enough to become your personal, private slut,’ she spelt out succinctly, but her breathing pattern was fracturing, her tension so great as he came closer that it was like a tightening band constraining her lungs.

‘Prove it,’ he said, backing her up against the wall, winding long brown fingers into her golden hair to anchor her in place, and drew her head up.

Saffy trembled, pink flying into her cheeks. ‘No kissing, no anything,’ she warned him. ‘I won’t let you do this to me—’

And being Zahir, who had a lot in common with an express train when he was set on a goal, he simply ignored her, bending his head, nuzzling her throat, licking a delicate path along her collarbone with such erotic skill that the pulse there went crazy. Her hands knotted into fists at her side to prevent herself from touching him even while the lips he had so far ignored tingled and burned for attention.

‘And how dare you offer me that option?’ Saffy continued heatedly, her rancour on that point unforgotten.

‘He who does not dare loses,’ Zahir traded with assurance, welding his hard, demanding mouth to hers in an explosion of passion that sent her heart racing and the blood pumping insanely fast through her veins.

‘What the heck are you playing at?’ she gasped strickenly, appalled by the insidious weakness spreading through her lower limbs and the glow of heat and yearning firing up low in her pelvis.

‘I’m not playing,’ Zahir said thickly, returning to plunder her mouth, sliding his tongue in and out between her parted lips and then delving deep in a sensual assault that made tiny shudders rack her tall, shapely frame. He pressed her back against the wall and even through the barrier of the suit she could feel him hard and urgent and ready. ‘I want you. I have wanted you every day since you left Maraban… I can’t sleep for wanting you!’

And although words were easy to say and often empty, something still quickened and tightened inside Saffy’s chest when he admitted that she exerted that much influence over him. Her robe came undone as he jerked it loose, sliding a hand below it to trail his fingers up her inner thigh. Instantly every sense went on red alert. In that moment she wanted him to touch her more than she had ever wanted anything and she went rigid with anticipation, unable to breathe for longing. She burned; she ached. And then with one stroke of his clever fingers he found her and an agonised moan was wrenched from her as he toyed with her tender flesh, rubbing the tiny bud that controlled her until she strained against him, whimpering, quivering, helpless with need while he explored the slick, hot heat between her legs and she gasped under his marauding mouth. Time had no meaning for her. Indeed it felt as if the world had speeded up because she was so frantically impatient, every skin cell reaching for the climax her body was so desperate to experience.

Zahir paused and she heard the sound of a zip, the crackle of foil and she blinked like someone coming out of the dark into the light, but her hunger didn’t abate even a little when she met stunning coal-black-fringed golden eyes alight with desire. She trembled, tried to reason and discovered that she was quite incapable of logic in the grip of the uncontrollable need clawing at her like a kind of madness…terrifying and overwhelming, utterly shameless in its single-minded focus.

‘I cannot take you to another man’s bed,’ Zahir growled, snaking one arm round her waist to lift her off her feet. ‘Wrap your legs round me,’ he urged.

And she did, hungry for him to put his mouth back on hers, unbearably hungry for him to touch her again. Her arms locked round his neck to steady herself and he braced her against the wall while he angled his hips and lowered her until she felt the smooth, hot crown of his bold shaft pushing against her most tender flesh. Her eyes widened to their fullest, her head rolling back on her shoulders as he slowly, strongly pressed his passage up into her tight sheath. Her excitement went into a tail-spin as he stretched her with his fullness, his grunt of all-male satisfaction vibrating sexily in her ear. He angled her back, withdrew from her achingly tender flesh and then brought her down again hard, sending shockwaves of sensation pounding through her lower body.

‘You’re so tight,’ he growled through gritted teeth, repeating the movement until he was fully seated inside her. ‘You feel so good. I would kill for this!’

‘Don’t stop!’ she cried, shivering as another wild, exhilarating wave of pleasure-pain pulsed through her pelvis, pushing the excitement higher until it was all-consuming and she was battered by both frustration and uncontrollable need.

‘I couldn’t…’ Zahir husked, positioning his hips, grinding against her and withdrawing before driving home again hard. Over and over he repeated that movement until she was literally roused to screaming point.

And the first throbbing upsurge of climax splintered through her like a lightning bolt then and she cried out as the successive spasms of intense pleasure rippled through her. He came with a shudder and a shout and slowly, gently, lowered her legs back down to the floor, which was unfortunate because her legs didn’t want to hold her up. She tipped forward as he balanced her, hands strong on her slim shoulders, and he kissed her breathless in the interim before lifting his tousled dark head and saying with typical practicality, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

She told him and had to stagger back against the wall to stay upright. She was feeling horribly dizzy. Shock was tearing through her every bit as powerfully as the orgasm had. He had had her against the wall and it had been hideously, horribly thrilling but she didn’t want to accept that she had not only let that happen but urged him on to commit that sin. Her knees wanted to give way but she wouldn’t let them. With shaking hands, she tied the sash on her robe and covered herself up. A little late, a snide voice remarked in her brain and she squashed it. Her body was still pulsing from his possession and she was weak as water, drained by disbelief at what she had allowed to take place between them.

‘Are you OK?’ Zahir asked huskily from the doorway.