Desert Prince, Bride of Innocence. Lynne Graham

pulled on her towelling robe.

      Jasim swam over to the side and heaved himself out. Water streaming in rivulets from the taut contours of his lean bronzed body, he approached her and lifted a towel. ‘Why are you leaving?’

      ‘I just think it’s wiser,’ Elinor mumbled tautly, trying not to let her attention linger anywhere it shouldn’t while he towelled himself dry. She was grateful that he favoured loose shorts rather than body-hugging briefs.

      Dark golden eyes smouldered over her and lingered on her pouting mouth. ‘For whom? You want me too. Don’t deny that this feeling is mutual.’

      The very boldness of that statement struck hot colour into her face. She tied the sash on the robe with clumsy hands. He spoke with such terrifying confidence, and even though it scared her, his complete assurance drew her like a bonfire on an icy day. ‘But it’s not enough,’ she protested, still trying to get a grip on a situation that felt as though it were flying fast out of her control.

      Jasim closed his hands round her narrow wrists and drew her firmly to him. ‘This is only the beginning…’

      And she fell into the depths of the hot, hungry kiss that followed like a novice swimmer with a suicide wish as she sank deeper and deeper out of her depth. One feverish kiss led hotly into the next. He crushed her mouth with devastating urgency and her excitement rose and rose until she was shaking and shivering against him, her body on fire with her craving for more.

      ‘This is not the place for this, but you are irresistible,’ he breathed thickly against her reddened lips. Bending, he scooped her off her feet and carried her into the lift.

      She had never been in the lift before, for it travelled only to the master bedroom to facilitate the early-morning swims that the owner of the house apparently enjoyed. He set her down beside the giant divan bed and pushed the loosened robe off her slim shoulders so that it fell in a heap round her bare feet. She looked up at him with sensually stunned eyes, the swollen contours of her strawberry-pink mouth like a magnet reeling him back down to her again.

      ‘We can’t do this!’ she exclaimed, pushed to the edge of panic by the intimacy of the bedroom. She thought she had been very naïve in failing to appreciate that he might expect her to go to bed with him without further ado.

      He tugged her hand down to the front of his wet shorts where the fabric was moulded to the massive width and length of his erection. ‘Please…I won’t be able to sleep for wanting you.’

      And Elinor could have withstood almost any other response but, even as he plunged her into agonies of self-conscious embarrassment, that roughened sensual appeal thrilled her to the core of her being and touched her to the heart. When had any man ever wanted her like that? When had she ever contrived to rouse such a storm of desire? Far more often than she cared to recall she had been made to feel freakishly tall and unfeminine. Meeting his smouldering dark golden eyes, she rejoiced in his need for her and suppressed the voice of reason urging caution and restraint at the back of her mind. Hadn’t she always been sensible and controlled? Was there any real harm in taking a risk for once? Especially when she was falling for him like a ton of bricks: she affixed to that last thought, eager to be daring and worthy of such a passion as his. This might well be the only time in her life when a man called her ‘irresistible’…

      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