moving towards her lips.
He was going to kiss her!
Eleni had never been kissed before and she was not to know that it was being executed by a master of the art. All she did know were a series of conflicting sensations which were dragging her into a sweetly erotic world she hadn’t dreamed could exist. She could feel the silken seeking of his mouth and the instant clamouring of her senses in response. Could hear her heart beating so loud and so hard that she was afraid it might burst beneath her breast. And now a strange honeyed rush was beginning at the fork of her thighs, which had her almost choking with pleasure.
He was pressing against her now, pushing her down onto the cushions. Almost arrogantly, he had splayed his hand over one breast and—both shamefully and delight-fully—Eleni could feel that breast reacting to his caress. It was growing full and tingly and achy—and, inexplicably, she found herself longing for him to touch it more, and much harder.
‘Highness!’ she gasped as she felt the royal tongue licking its way deliciously over her lips. ‘Oh, Highness!’
‘Mmm?’
Fighting every instinct in her body, Eleni detached her mouth. ‘We must stop this,’ she said weakly.
‘No!’ he growled, tiptoeing his fingers over the growing bud of her nipple and groaning as it peaked through the silk gown. Increasing the urgency of his mouth, he felt her lips open and Kaliq began to ruck the silk of her dress up over her ankles. Ah, the sweet firmness of her ankle with its soft, silken flesh! And beyond? What treasures lay undiscovered there? ‘Not yet.’
‘Yes!’ Eleni knew little of the ways of love—her sexual education had been one hasty class at school and a peep at an ancient art-book shown to her by her favourite teacher before it had been confiscated by the school’s head. She knew that sex was sacred, secret and forbidden—and yet, now she was sampling her first taste of it, she could see how tempting it was, too.
Kaliq was playing with her aching breast and sliding up her silken gown and she was lying there and just letting him—even though she knew it was wrong!
It was like dragging herself back from the edge of paradise, but Eleni knew she had to get herself out of such a dangerous situation with such a highly experienced and powerful man. Get out now—before it was too late.
With a strength she didn’t know she possessed—a strength forged from years of hard, physical work in the stable—she pushed the sheikh away from her, surprising a series of conflicting emotions on his face as she did so.
She saw frustration and a dark smouldering kind of anger, but more than any of these things she saw astonishment.
‘What in the falcon’s name do you think you are doing?’ he questioned, with silky menace.
Eleni’s breathing was so erratic that it took a moment before she could speak, and even then, she felt odd—as if she were sickening for something. Dizzy. Disorientated. Her blood boiling in her veins and her head spinning.
‘I am guarding my honour!’ she cried out, not caring now about protocol.
Kaliq’s mouth twisted. ‘Your honour?’ he questioned acidly, as if she had just invented a new word. ‘What are you talking about?’
Eleni couldn’t really move—and in truth she did not think she would be able to. But she knew that things needed to calm down and that somehow she must help the sheikh lose that look of pure fury on his face. Because surely once he understood the truth of her predicament—then he would understand?
‘You do not think that I have a reputation that I guard fiercely?’ she demanded hotly. ‘That my honour is not worth preserving?’
‘Your honour?’ he echoed again as he tried to ignore the fierce throb of hunger which pulsed through his body.
‘I may be a simple country girl—but even I know that such an act between two people who barely know one another would be wrong.’
Frustration made him want to ask her whether she was
Gary Hastings
Wendy Meadows
Jennifer Simms
Jean Plaidy
Adam Lashinsky
Theresa Oliver
Jayanti Tamm
Allyson Lindt
Melinda Leigh
Rex Stout