Shackled To The Sheikh

‘So,’ he said as he reefed off his shirt and tossed it onto a chair in the corner, exposing a chest that wouldn’t have looked out of place on her annual firefighters’ fundraising calendar. ‘Shower first?’

She stood transfixed, drinking in his masculine perfection, the sheer poetry of tightly packed muscle under skin, until his hands moved to his belt, and with a jolt she realised she should be doing something, too, not standing around ogling him and waiting to be seduced.

This wasn’t a seduction after all. Clearly he’d done his seducing in getting her here. This was more like getting down to business.

‘Oh, right,’ she said, her tummy a mass of flutters, the bad girl inside her overruled by the good girl who was suddenly aware of how far out of her league she was, and not just because this man came with serious money. Here he was, shedding clothes and shoes in a lighted room more easily than an autumn tree shed its leaves in the wind and no doubt expecting her to do likewise. She slid off her shoes, her fingers playing at her buttons as she remembered what she’d put on this morning, wishing she’d worn something a bit more exciting under her boring black skirt and shirt than her even more boring underwear. Not that she had a seduction collection, exactly, but she might have managed to wear something that at least smacked of lace.

She swallowed as she pulled the shirt free from the waistband of her skirt and eased it over her shoulders, feeling more self-conscious by the second as she stood there in her department-store skirt and regulation bra. ‘I didn’t dress for...’

He looked at her, a frown tugging at his brows, as he shrugged off his trousers, revealing denim-coloured elastic fitted boxers that fitted his hard-packed body so well, there were no bulges anywhere—except where there should be.

Oh, my...she thought, her stomach flipping over, her mouth Sahara dry, and she wondered how long the champagne would take to arrive. She didn’t need the alcohol particularly, but her mouth sure could do with the lubrication.

‘I’m not interested in your underwear,’ he said as he padded on bare feet towards her, his steps purposeful rather than rushed. He lifted her chin with the tips of his fingers and pressed his lips lightly to hers while his other hand eased the tie from her hair, making her scalp tingle, pulling it free so that her hair tumbled heavily over her shoulders. His fingers skimmed down her throat and to her shoulder, found the strap of her bra and curled a fingertip beneath, before slipping it away down her arm. He pushed the hair back and dipped his head and pressed his lips to her bare shoulder and breath hissed through her teeth. ‘I’m interested in what lies beneath.’

She shuddered on a sigh, her breasts achingly tight, as she felt his clever fingers at her back as he slid her bra away. And then her skirt was riding low and lower over her thighs before she realised he’d even unzipped it. ‘Very interested,’ he said, standing back to take her in, dark storm clouds scudding over the deep ocean blue of his eyes. He touched the pads of his thumbs to her bolt-like nipples and twin spears of sensation shot down deep into her belly, triggering an aching pulse between her thighs. Her groan of need was out before she could haul it back, but he didn’t seem to mind as he sucked her into a deep kiss that amplified the sensations.

‘What happened to the brazen woman who accosted me in a bar?’

She was a fraud. Tora swallowed. ‘She was angry. She was proving a point.’

‘Is she still angry?’

‘Yes, but now she just wants to forget why.’

‘Oh,’ he said, his eyes gleaming as he swung her into his arms and headed for the shower. ‘I can make you forget.’

* * *

Her stranger was true to his words. Granted, he had steam, a rainforest shower head and slippery gel on his side, but his clever hands and mouth had a way of making her forget everything besides being naked with a man she wanted to bed her with a compulsion and an urgency she’d never felt before—an urgency he didn’t seem to mirror.

When he’d turned on the taps and shucked off his underwear, she’d gasped at his size, not with fear, but with anticipation. She wasn’t a virgin. She knew how things worked and what generally happened and, if she was totally honest, she’d always wondered what it would be like to make love with a man so well equipped. But then he’d hooked his fingers into the sides of her underwear and pushed them down and she’d imagined that a minute or two of foreplay in the form of soaping each other’s skin, and they’d be making love right here in the shower.

Apparently he wasn’t in such a rush.

He kissed her again, long and deep, as she clung to his shoulders, while the torrent rained down upon them, his slippery hands in her wet hair, down her throat to cup her breasts before sliding down her sides, the touch of his long fingers relaying the dip of her waist in a way she’d never felt or seen so clearly in her mind’s eye before. Every curve his fingers seemed to find, every jut of bone explored on their seemingly leisurely but purposeful way south. It almost felt as if his fingers were mapping her terrain.

She gasped again, into his seeking mouth this time, when one hand cupped her mound. She felt his lips smile around hers before his mouth dipped to her throat, to kiss her shoulder and then worship her breasts on his way down to kneeling before her, his lips traversing her belly, his fingers deep between her thighs and the pulsing flesh that lay within.

Oh, God. She shuddered as he parted her legs, turning her face up into the spray as his fingers opened her to him. Exposed her to him. She thought she knew about sex. She’d thought this would be over in a minute. But she might just as well have known nothing. She felt like a virgin all over again.

She knew nothing at all, but...

Pleasure.

It came upon her in waves as his tongue lapped at her very core, teasing her beyond existence, beyond reason, as all she knew was sensation.

His tongue. The steam. The water cascading over her and his fingers teasing, circling her aching centre.

Right now there was nothing but sensation, and the inexorable build to a place a man had never taken her. A place she’d never believed it possible for a man to take her unassisted. This man was taking her all the way.

She felt his fingers stray closer until they edged inside her. She felt the tug of his mouth on her screaming nub of nerve endings and she felt the surge coming. She bit her lip to stop from crying out but there was no stopping the wave that washed over her and the cry that came all the same as her body broke around him.

* * *

He supported her before her knees could give way and she fell, and she felt him there, at her core.

Yes, she thought, because even on her way down from the highs he’d taken her to she still wanted this—wanted him deep inside her—more than anything.

But then, just as she thought she had him, just as her muscles worked to urge him in, he pulled away on a curse and slammed open the shower door.

She blinked as he pulled a towel from a rack and wrapped it around her, swinging her into his arms.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said, still trembling after her high and back to the virgin she wasn’t, fearful she’d done something wrong.

‘Nothing,’ he said as he deposited her in the centre of the big wide bed before pulling out a drawer, ‘that this won’t fix.’

He tore the top from the foil packet and rolled the condom down on him and suddenly it made sense and she was glad one of them was still thinking.

‘Now,’ he said, his face grim as he positioned himself between her legs, ‘where were we?’

And the virgin inside her turned wanton as she wrapped her hand around his bucking length and felt his power and his need within her fingers, and placed him at her core. ‘Right here.’

His eyes flared with heat as he growled with approval, and her heart skipped a beat as he took her hands and pinned them each side of her head, their fingers intertwined, and then with one long thrust he was inside her and sparks went off behind her eyes.

It was sex, she had to remind herself, just sex, because in that moment it had seemed that the world as she knew it revolved around that moment and that moment only.

He leaned down and kissed her then, so sweetly and reverently that she wondered if he’d felt it, too, this tiny spark of connection that went beyond physical, before he let go her hands and raised himself higher and slowly withdrew. She almost whimpered at the loss, wanting to hold him inside and keep him there, but then he was back, lunging deeper if that were possible, the slide and slap of flesh against flesh bringing with it that tidal flow of sensation, in and out and building each time until their bodies were slick with sweat. There was nowhere left to go, nowhere left to hide, and the next wave surge crashed over her and washed her away.

She clung to him as he went with her, tossed helplessly in the foaming surf of her undoing, gasping for air, not knowing which way was up.

He pressed his lips to her forehead before he slumped beside her. ‘Thank you,’ she heard him say between his ragged breaths, and she wondered if he could read her mind, for they were the exact same words she wanted to tell him.

* * *

He watched her sleep in the yellow-grey light, watched the slow rise of her chest and listened to the soft sigh as she exhaled, all the time wondering at a woman who had turned up exactly when he’d needed her. A woman who had made him forget the shocks of today so well that he’d almost forgotten to use protection.

When had that ever happened before?

Never, that was when.

He shook his head. He was more affected by today’s revelations than he’d realised if he could forget something so absolutely fundamental. There could be no other reason for it. Other than the way she’d come apart so furiously that he hadn’t wanted to wait, he’d wanted to follow her right then and there.

Propped up on his elbow, he lay alongside her, watching her eyelids flutter from time to time. Her hair splayed wild around her head and against the pillow. Tangled. Elemental. He touched a finger to one of the coils, felt the silk and steel within the shafts of hair and congratulated himself for walking down the stairs into that basement bar.

One night with a stranger had never been so desperately needed and so satisfying.

Almost.