Prince of the Desert

THIS couldn’t possibly be happening, Gwynneth decided breathlessly. She could not be standing here naked, body-to-body with this man who was a stranger to her but whom her body was welcoming with such rejoicing.

And yet when he turned her towards him she reached out and touched his face with her fingertips, slowly exploring its structure. His flesh felt warm against the hard contours of his bones, and something about the sheer male arrogance and power of him set off a quivering sensation of wanton excitement inside her. She could feel the heat of his grey-eyed gaze burning into her own skin, her breath catching in her throat as she looked at the thick clumped black lashes shielding his eyes from her. His hands were resting on her waist, almost spanning it. They slid down to her bottom, kneading her flesh, pressing her into his own body and its hard erection. She made a soft sound of pleasure, rubbing herself against him, reaching up to pull his head down towards her so that she could offer up her mouth for him to plunder. The kneading had become a rhythm he was slowly forcing on her own body, using pleasure to make her flesh accept and reciprocate the sensual beat of physical arousal. Now she knew why the sound of softly beaten drums could be so erotic, Gwynneth thought feverishly, as his mouth took hers and his tongue reinforced the rhythm he had set her body.

Now she was her father’s daughter. Now she was obeying the call of her own blood. Now she was exposed to that need within herself she had always tried to deny. Now she was not denying it, though. She was embracing it, welcoming it, abandoning herself to it, physically powerless to resist the relentless drive of her own need, and emotionally too flooded with what she was feeling even to want to do so.

There was a pagan drive within her, a stream of subconscious need from the dawn of womanhood, imprinting itself relentlessly over every protective pattern she had ever tried to teach her body.

She wanted to feel like this, she recognised dizzily. She needed to experience what she was now experiencing; she needed to take the sweet juicy flesh of sexual arousal and taste every bit of it, savouring its taste and its texture on her fingers, her lips, her tongue, in her mouth, her belly, her deepest self. She wanted to linger over every delicious mouthful, to breathe in its scent, absorb its reality; she wanted to take her own sexuality and relish every second of experiencing its coming of age.

These thoughts flashed hypnotically through her mind, glinting like tiny shoals of brilliantly coloured fish, dizzying in their speed and beauty.

Chad had certainly known what he was about in choosing to send this woman to him, Tariq recognised as his self-control gave up the fight to force his body not to respond to the dangerous shimmering sensuality she exuded. It was almost as though it surrounded her in a multi-layered invisible aura that weakened and then trapped his treacherous senses, until nothing mattered more than satisfying his desire for her.

The increasingly charged sound of their breathing echoed erotically on the sandalwood-scented air. Their lips met, their tongues entwining, and Gwynneth’s soft moans were echoed by Tariq’s harsher sound of raw male need. Gwynneth kissed his throat, sliding her open mouth over his newly sweat-dampened flesh, tasting the little beads of arousal glistening against the smooth tanned flesh, savouring the fresh, erotically musky scent with which his body was telling her its need. The feel of his hands spread over her bottom, pressing her closer to him, made her sigh with liquid pleasure. His hands stroked upwards to her waist, and up again, whilst the hard thrust of his thigh parted her own. His hands cupped her breasts. She moaned in eager delight, her teeth nipping at the strong column of his throat, her fingers digging into the muscles of his back as her body arched in a torment of longing.

Tariq swung her up into his arms. The moonlight shining in through his bedroom windows highlighted her slender delicacy, silvering the thrust of her hipbones and her desire-swollen mound, whilst shadows deepened the dark allure of her tightly erect nipples.

He had reached the bed, but, too impatient to wait until he had placed her on it, Tariq laid her back against his bent leg, one arm supporting her whilst he looked down at her. He could see the contraction of her ribcage as she breathed, could see too the tiny shudders of arousal quivering over her as she looked up at him, wantonly offering herself up to his visual and physical possession.

How could she be feeling this intensity of physical excitement in lying here, knowing that she was offering her body up to this stranger as a source of erotic pleasure they could both share and enjoy? How could she have come to disassociate herself from her flesh, as though she and this man were co-conspirators, both intent on the same goal of sharing the feast of sensuality they had prepared?

Tariq reached out and slowly stroked his fingertips from the base of her throat down between her breasts, watching as her heart jumped and her breathing deepened, moving lower across the concave dip of her belly to stroke up to the swollen flesh and soft hair covering her pubic bone.

He leaned forward, his tongue flicking against the hollow of her throat as his fingers carefully parted the folded outer lips of her sex.

The flick of his tongue-tip and the stroke of his fingers seemed to create a taut cord of intensity that coiled her pleasure higher and tighter with every touch.

When he lowered her to the bed, without ceasing to caress her, she reached up for him, telling him urgently how good his touch felt, then shuddering when he cupped her breast with his free hand, savouring the erotic texture of her nipple and its response to his sensual stimulation.

Mindlessly Gwynneth reached out for him, her eyes widening and her gaze focusing hotly on him as she tried to enclose him within her grip and realised his potency.

When she exhaled, it was with an instinctive and deep-rooted female recognition of sensual pleasure at his size and strength. Somehow, she realised, her body, her senses, had a knowledge that she herself had never allowed them.

Deep within her female muscles flexed and female flesh heated, whilst a sound that was almost a voluptuous purr of anticipated pleasure vibrated in her throat.

The male flesh she was touching felt hot and slick, the movement of the skin she was rhythmically caressing unexpectedly erotic to her own senses. She moved demandingly on the bed, opening her legs and arching her back as Tariq’s fingers stroked over her, experiencing a pleasure that turned her body liquid with aching need.

Had there ever been another woman like this one? Surely she was unique in her erotic offering of herself, in her sensual abandonment to her own pleasure? It took from him the role of being pleasured and demanded instead that he should make himself the provider of her pleasure. She was surely a queen amongst houris, demanding his subservience to her desire, Tariq acknowledged, and the intensity of his own physical desire burned away both his pride and his contempt.

Her tight, erect nipples demanded the worship of his gaze, his touch and his tongue-tip. But to draw one fully into his mouth and to pleasure it rhythmically as he suckled on its swollen heat would, he knew, be a pleasure too far for his self-control. However, the slender fingers sliding into his hair and commanding that he did just that could not be denied.

Gwynneth moaned and trembled convulsively as pleasure leapt fiercely inside her, her fingers tightening around the hard, hot shaft of male flesh that was moving within her grasp in quick urgent strokes, whilst knowing male fingers stroked and tugged the swollen flesh of her clitoris until she cried out aloud in a frenzy of arousal that took her higher and higher, so high that she felt she couldn’t bear any more. But even as she cried out against what she was feeling her orgasm was overwhelming her. She heard the man call out, but his words meant nothing. Her body shuddered into its own completion.

It was the way she had abandoned herself so utterly to her own fulfilment that had thrust him past the barriers he had imposed on himself and overwhelmed his self-control, Tariq decided grimly as he moved away from her to deal with the resolution of his own release.

Five minutes later, when he returned from the bathroom, she was fast asleep.

Tariq frowned as he looked down at her. Why hadn’t she dressed and left? That was certainly what he would have preferred her to have done—wasn’t it? She opened her eyes and looked up at him and smiled. And then she closed them again. By the time he had exhaled, very, very slowly, she had fallen asleep again.

Still frowning, he pulled the covers over her. At least that way her body was concealed and could no longer be the source of any kind of temptation to him. He should feel nothing but disgust for himself. He did feel disgust for himself, Tariq decided grimly. How could he have wanted a woman who sold herself to any man who could afford to buy her? What hitherto unknown to him part of himself had she managed to reach in order to arouse a desire in him strong enough to overwhelm his self-control?

The blending of East and West that was his heritage had given him the advantage of not having any desire to experience the wanton sexuality so freely exhibited by so many Western women. He had never, as other Arab men he knew did, felt any urge to provide himself with the services of a Western mistress, a woman with whom he could have sex without censure and whom he could dismiss from his life when he chose.

Zuran’s exclusive hotels did not permit the kind of behaviour indulged in by young Westerners in other foreign resorts. Topless sunbathing, any kind of intimacy with a man in public—these things were banned by law. But there were men, rich men, who brought with them to Zuran women who were quite plainly not their wives. And, as he was discovering, Zuran had now become a target for the kind of sordid, seedy lifestyle he deplored, for drugs and prostitution racketeers. He was under no illusions; it was common knowledge that the two went hand in hand.

But, even knowing all of that, he had still been unable to stop himself from reacting to the skilled sensuality of a woman he simply shouldn’t have wanted to touch.

How many of the other men in the gang had shared this woman’s favours? One of them? All of them? Together?

First thing tomorrow morning he would find out who she was and arrange for her to be deported. He didn’t want to find her waiting for him a second time, he told himself savagely. He wasn’t going to risk another night like tonight. Nor did he want to have to share his bed with her. But, since she was already deeply asleep in it…He looked towards the bedroom door. He had converted the second bedroom into an office, and the furniture in the living room was not conducive to a decent night’s sleep. Anyway, why the hell should he give up his right to sleep in his own comfortable king-sized bed because it already had an occupant?

He reached for the covers.

Sunlight pouring through the unshuttered windows slanted gold bars across Gwynneth’s face, its heat drawing her reluctantly from sleep. Unfamiliar images and sensations curled like autumn smoke through her thoughts and her body, making her frown in rejection and try to ignore the way her heartbeat picked up.

Cautiously she opened her eyes, exhaling in relief when she found that she was lying in the same bed she had originally gone to sleep in last night—and, more importantly, she was lying there alone. But she had not slept there alone during the night, she recognised, her face starting to burn as she saw the telltale imprint of another head on the pillow next to hers. So last night had not just been a fevered dream or a trick of her imagination.

She pushed back the covers and swung her feet onto the floor, tensing as she did so. She certainly wasn’t imagining the small bruises on her skin where hard hands had held her. She wasn’t imagining either the heavy fullness of her breasts or the sensitivity of her nipples. There was an unfamiliar ache deep inside her. Of fulfillment? Or of longing for what she had not had? A longing for more of what she had had, for the satisfaction of being totally and completely sexually possessed?

She shook her head, trying to disperse the images that clung to her mind as betrayingly as the scent of him still clung to her skin.

She had no idea what had caused last night’s aberration in her behaviour, the total deviation from the controlled pathway she normally imposed on it. She could come up with a variety of theories, though, ranging from mundane jet lag to some kind of delayed reaction to her father’s death.

Since she did not know what had been responsible for the way she had acted, the best thing she could do now, she told herself sturdily, was to put the entire incident behind her and refuse to give in to the self-indulgence of spending time and energy focusing on it. Like anything else, once starved of energy it would quickly shrivel to nothing.

But the man who had shared the wild passion of the night with her—who was he? How had he got into the apartment? Logic suggested that he must have a key, which further suggested that he must be employed to look after the apartments in some capacity. Was what had happened last night a regular occurrence? Something he considered to be a perk of the job? If so, she had had a very lucky escape. She shuddered to think now of the kind of health risks she had run in coming so close to unprotected sex with a stranger. Why hadn’t she stopped him?

Inside her head she could hear her own voice, taunting her that she was after all her parents’ daughter, and that all the years of struggling to deny the fact, to reject it and prove to herself she could never be caught in the trap of her father’s sexuality, had been swept away by her physical desire for a stranger.

Her parents’ marriage had been the result of her father’s uncontrollable sexuality and her mother’s equally out-of-control emotional neediness. In a word: lust. She had sworn she would never be like them.

So what had happened?

She didn’t drink, and she most certainly didn’t do drugs, so she couldn’t blame either of them.

She walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. As she had already told herself, she couldn’t change what had happened, but she could refuse to dwell on it or endlessly analyse it. She could choose to ignore it, to seal it off and lock it away where she would never need to think about it again. And, thankfully, there was no reason why she would have to think about it again.

In three days’ time she would be back in London, having arranged for ownership of the apartment to be put in her name and having put it up for sale.

She just hoped it would sell quickly. Her plan was that once the apartment had been sold she would have all the money put into a trust fund for Anthony and Teresa. They were both her late father’s responsibility after all. Teresa was little more than a girl and Anthony was his son.

Gwynneth dried herself quickly, ignoring the small marks on her body that were evidence of last night’s passion. A mental image of herself raking a tanned male shoulder with her teeth, clawing a male back in hunger, flashed through her mind. Defensively she dipped her head, hurrying to get herself some clean clothes. As she left the room, she hesitated. What if he was still here somewhere in the apartment, waiting….? Waiting for what? A repeat of last night? Her belly clenched fiercely around the distinctive and very betraying surge of hot excitement that stirred inside her. He wasn’t here, she told herself. Instinctively she knew that. Taking a deep breath, she opened the bedroom door and stepped resolutely into the hallway.

Half an hour later, having been delighted to find some coffee in a kitchen that was otherwise bare of provisions, she was ready to leave for her appointment. Picking up her handbag, she frowned as she saw the thick wad of Zurani currency stuffed into her passport. How had that got there? Uneasily she removed the money from her handbag, her eyes widening as she saw the note that was with it. The words To professional services for last night were written firmly on the paper, and it was abundantly plain just what they meant.

Automatically she stiffened in angry rejection of both the meaning of the note and her own reaction to it. How could she possibly feel hurt because a man who was a complete stranger had made an error of judgement? Although even though he was a stranger, it was a very insulting error of judgement, she reminded herself shakily. After all, he was the one who had invaded her privacy and entered the apartment uninvited. Even so…

Hadn’t she always believed that she had to be guardian of her own reputation and her own values? That she had to do everything she could to prevent herself being labelled as her father’s daughter?