Magnates: Desert Prince, Bride of Innocence

CHAPTER THREE

BEFORE Elinor could even register what Jasim was about, he had peeled down the top of her swimsuit so that the pale plump mounds of her breasts tumbled free. A low masculine growl of hunger escaped him when he saw the luscious and prominent protrusion of her rose-pink nipples. ‘You have the most wonderful body.’

He kneaded those tender tips with expert fingers and she cried out in shaken acknowledgement of the arrow of sensation darting straight down to the balloon of burgeoning heat expanding low in her pelvis. That fast she was in uncharted territory and at the mercy of the hunger he had unleashed inside her. She craved more and he was not slow to answer that craving. He brought her down on the bed and closed his mouth fiercely to a straining pink crest, taking it between his teeth and toying with the tender tip until her fingers formed into claws that raked the sheet beneath her hands. A frantic sense of swollen heat between her splayed thighs was sending up her temperature and threatening what little remained of her control. He touched her there where she was most tender of all just once while he played with her lush breasts and her spine arched off the bed in a reaction so strong it almost frightened her.

‘You’re too tense,’ he censured, wrenching her free of her swimsuit and rolling off the bed to remove his wet shorts.

Nerves and doubts immediately attacked Elinor again. Everything was going too fast for her and she was trying to work out how she could have allowed matters to go so far without seriously questioning what she was about to do. After all, sleeping with a man for the first time was a very big deal on her terms. Elinor stared at her first daunting view of a man unclothed. He seemed endowed out of all reasonable proportion to her untried body. The shameless burn at the heart of her felt as scary as it was exciting and she wondered feverishly if she was doing the right thing or simply letting passion and the joy of attracting so superlative a male go to her head.

Jasim looked down at her with an amount of pleasure that took even him aback. She looked like a goddess, he decided in awe, the fiery abundance of her hair the perfect complement to her full creamy curves. Never before had a woman made him ache with such ravenous hunger … no, not even Sophia had had that power. But he would never be vulnerable with a woman again or allow desire to overwhelm his judgement, he told himself with fierce confidence.

‘I want you now,’ Jasim confessed, coming down on the bed beside her, his lean powerful body taut with sexual impatience. Overwhelming desire made it an effort for him to recall that his primary motivation in taking her was to ensure she lost the power to lure his brother into an affair.

Just looking at his lean bronzed features, which were compellingly handsome and strikingly serious, Elinor felt her mouth run dry and her heart threatened to drum its way out of her chest. ‘I’ve never felt this way before,’ she whispered unevenly and held back the craven admission that feeling as she did just then was distinctly intimidating.

Immediately discarding that ingenuous assurance as a pre-planned sop voiced to stroke his male ego, Jasim bit back an appreciative sound of amusement and ravished her soft mouth afresh. Against her will, Elinor felt herself melt again. Her insecurities ebbed while every nerve ending leapt in helpless response to the scent and touch of him. He felt like living hair-roughened bronze next to her, hot and hard and strong. She had a delirious image of what it would feel like to have him inside her and was shattered at the leap of her body and the newly wanton direction of her thoughts.

Jasim rubbed the tiny bud below her mound and listened to her cry out her pleasure. She was swollen with arousal and as slippery as wet silk. With a forefinger he probed the delicate cleft and discovered that she was deliciously small and tight within. She gasped and winced and he marvelled at her theatrical ability. Of course, just like Sophia she most likely assumed that an Arab male would only properly value her if she pretended to be a virgin. Sophia had paid a small fortune to have her hymen surgically restored and he had been absolutely fooled by her masquerade, he remembered with deep bitterness.

‘What’s wrong?’ Elinor exclaimed, glimpsing the dark shadowed look in his brilliant eyes at the breathless peak of a rippling wave of almost torturous pleasure. His lovemaking enthralled her, but now she wondered if he had finally registered her lack of experience. Was that a turn-off for him?

‘Nothing could be wrong …’

‘I’ve never slept with anyone else,’ Elinor admitted awkwardly. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘How could it be, when you are about to honour me beyond all other men?’ The sardonic light in his gaze hardened at her careful last-minute assurance of her sexual innocence. Afraid that he might not get the message, she was leaving nothing to chance. He was wild for the hot, tight satisfaction of her body under his, but he would have preferred the cool self-restraint to tell her that she was a liar and that her shoddy, foolish pretence didn’t fool him for a moment.

He settled into the cradle of her thighs and he was so eager for her that little tremors were racking his lean, muscular frame. He pushed into her moist, warm entrance and revelled in the taut feel and softness of her silky inner passage. Driven by a ferocious sense of need, he thrust back her thighs to deepen his penetration and at the same instant that he ensured she stretched to accommodate all of him she vented a sharp cry of pain. He froze, not having expected her to go to town on the virgin act to this extent.

Elinor was mortified. ‘I’m sorry, it just hurt a bit … it’s all right,’ she muttered, her mortification so great that she wanted the bed to open up and swallow her.

‘It is for me to apologise. I should have been more gentle,’ Jasim breathed, marvelling that he could match her masquerade, all the while inching his aching shaft into the velvet-smooth honeyed welcome at the heart of her.

As her discomfort receded the excitement came back in steady increments that were stoked by every skilled move he made. Elinor gasped and wrapped her arms round him and discovered he could once again be the giver of such energising sensation as she had never dared to dream existed. The pace quickened to a hypnotic tempo and she was swept away by the erotic excitement of his sensual rhythm. The sweet surges of pleasure ran closer and closer together, driving her to the very peak of an explosive climax and then tipping her off the edge into a blissful weightless fall and satiated indolence.

Jasim stared down at her in the aftermath, his dark eyes blazing gold with passionate appreciation. ‘You took me to paradise and I have never been there with a woman before.’

As he held her to him, his heart pounding against hers, Elinor blinked back sudden tears, for she felt very emotional. She also felt incredibly tender towards him and strung a line of kisses across a broad brown shoulder. She fiercely fought off the sense of shame and awkwardness that she guiltily knew was waiting to pounce on her. He made her feel special and she was desperate to hold on to that reassuring sensation.

‘I should go back to my own room,’ she mumbled, however, a few minutes later.

Jasim’s arms tightened like bars of steel round her. He had every intention of fully satisfying his desire for her. ‘Tonight you are mine and you stay here with me,’ he spelt out thickly.

And she was his now, he reflected in male triumph, his hungry body already quickening against hers again. One stolen night, however, was all he could dare to take beneath a roof that also housed his niece. Anything more would be an insult.

Elinor wakened in the early hours of the next morning when light was filtering with increasing strength through the curtains and illuminating the magnificent unfamiliar room. In that first instant of reason after a very eventful night, she knew only pure terror when she thought of the unknown that faced her.

What the heck had come over her? Complete insanity? It was barely thirty-six hours since they had met and she had spent the night in Prince Jasim’s bed, letting him make love to her over and over again. In truth she wasn’t sure she would be able to walk if she got out of bed, since he had proved a very demanding and seemingly tireless lover.

She lay watching him in the half-light, dreamily, tenderly admiring the strong classic bones of his profile and the way blue-black stubble enhanced his wide stubborn mouth. While her body might ache from his attentions, familiarity had not bred contempt. He was beautiful. He still took her breath away and that scared her, because she had never believed in love at first sight.

But what else was she to make of the powerful emotions assailing her? He had not been out of her mind for a second since they’d met and she felt remarkably comfortable with images and reflections of him fully occupying her every waking thought. On a horse and in bed he was her every dream come true. Yet she hardly knew him and surely he could only think less of her because of the ease with which she had fallen into his arms?

Content to be the full focus of her admiration, Jasim was wondering if he dared take her one more time. He couldn’t get enough of the sweet, tight release of her warm, willing body. But the servants would be up and about soon, and a lifetime in a royal palace had taught him how fast scandal hit the household grapevine and went places one would prefer it did not reach. The deed was done, accomplished in record time too, he savoured with ruthless satisfaction. His brother would never look at her now. Too warm, he sat up and tossed back the duvet and saw the blood stain on the white linen sheet.

‘Good morning,’ she whispered, looking all shy and flushed and utterly adorable.

Unlike his unlamented Sophia, Elinor had been a virgin, Jasim registered in substantial shock. Yet he had taken her with all the finesse of a stallion covering a mare. A virgin: quite a statement for a young woman of twenty-one in a world where casual sex was commonplace. A twinge of rare guilt pierced Jasim; he would never have chosen to seduce a virgin. But even had he known beforehand, would he have left her untouched while he was aware that Murad would have found such purity a mouth-watering temptation? He had now contrived to smash the possibility of a relationship that could well have driven his brother into setting Yaminah aside and replacing her with Elinor as a second wife. For all his extra-marital affairs, Murad was a staunchly traditional man and Jasim was convinced that, had Elinor slept with Murad, his brother would have offered her marriage. Well, at least that disaster could not be enacted now.

Jasim reached for Elinor and pulled her into his arms. ‘Good morning,’ he husked, cupping her pouting breasts and gently teasing the swollen pink buds that crowned them.

Elinor was very tense. ‘I need to go back to my room—’

‘One of the servants will bring you clothes and pack for you,’ Jasim intoned, arranging her against the tumbled pillows and letting his tousled dark head swoop down to capture a straining nipple. One more time, he was thinking, just to get him through the day ahead.

Elinor went from being all soft and purring and quivering with response to sudden rigidity. ‘Pack … for me?’

Jasim wished he had taken more thorough advantage of her before he broke that news. He lifted his handsome dark head and met the anxious questions clouding her green eyes. ‘You can no longer stay at Woodrow Court.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Elinor gasped in bewilderment, pulling away from him and yanking the duvet up over breasts that suddenly felt indecently bare.

Jasim released his breath on a slow hiss of impatience. ‘Of course you can’t stay here now that we have shared a bed. It would be most inappropriate for you to continue caring for my niece.’

Elinor was so shocked by that announcement that she felt the blood drain from her face and leave her pale. ‘You mean that having sex with you is grounds for giving me the sack?’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite as crudely as that.’

Elinor hugged the duvet to her with furious defensive hands, her eyes prickling with stinging tears. She could not credit what he was telling her, or that he could say such offensive things in that smooth low-key style, as though he were merely making polite conversation. ‘Then how would you put it?’

‘Our relationship will enter another phase,’ he drawled, smooth as polished glass and with a decided hint of warning ice in his tone.

Deaf to that loaded hint of icy withdrawal, Elinor stared straight ahead and worried at her full lower lip with her teeth. ‘What sort of a phase?’

‘I want you to move to London so that we can see more of each other.’

Now horribly conscious of her nudity below the bedding, Elinor flung him as frozen a look as she could contrive. ‘But I like working here. I love looking after Zahrah.’

‘It’s unfortunate but it can no longer continue. I cannot conduct an affair with you in the presence of my family.’

‘Because you’re ashamed of your association with me!’ Elinor condemned, and she flung herself out of bed in a passion of self-loathing regret and snatched up the towelling robe.

‘No, it would be indiscreet and unacceptable behaviour on my part. In London I can do as I like and what I would like is to see more of you,’ Jasim declared, brilliant dark eyes welded to her angry bemused face as he willed her to accept the change in her status. ‘We can’t turn back the clock on our intimacy. You must trust me. Say your goodbyes to Zahrah and I will have you out of here by lunchtime.’

Elinor snatched up her discarded swimsuit with a shaking hand. She was in shock and deeply confused. Throughout the night hours he had been the passionate lover of her dreams but, all of a sudden, he was laying down the law and making non-negotiable demands that threatened to tear apart her entire life. ‘And if I was to say, no, I’m not going anywhere and let’s forget we ever crossed the boundaries?’

‘I believe you are too sensible to challenge me.’

This time around she felt the distinct chill in the air and it raised goosebumps on her exposed skin. His dark gaze was black and cold. For the very first time, she sensed the steel of him, the fierce ruthless purpose that powered him beneath the charisma. The discovery of what lay at the core of him unnerved her. He was determined that she leave Woodrow Court and if that was how strongly he felt, she did not see how she could remain and live in constant fear of her wanton behaviour being exposed. ‘I wish I had known what I was getting into,’ she breathed starkly.