Hot Arabian Nights. Marguerite Kaye

her nipples a delicious frisson of pressure on his skin.

      Then she broke the kiss, her eyes drawn down again, running her hand experimentally along his length. Azhar shuddered, his eyes closing momentarily. She did it again, the pads of her fingers lightly caressing the sensitive skin at the tip, and Azhar had to bite back a moan, had to clench his fists in an effort to hold on to some element of control.

      ‘You don’t like that?’ Julia said.

      ‘I like it,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘but if we are going to bathe, then you will have to unhand me.’

      Julia smiled, tightening her hand just a fraction around him. ‘I don’t want to unhand you. I’m not ready to bathe yet,’ she said, stroking him this time, all the way up, all the way down.

      His breath expelled in a rush. He had thought he couldn’t get any harder, but he had been wrong.

      ‘Lie down,’ Julia commanded. She gave him a little encouraging shove. ‘Lie down, Azhar,’ she said, this time with a great deal more confidence.

      He lay down on the cushions. Julia dropped to her knees between his legs. Her hair fell over her shoulders, brushing his belly. He shuddered. She gathered a handful of her hair in her hand and brushed it over his chest. ‘Do you like that?’ she asked him.

      ‘Yes.’

      She stroked his nipples with the hair. Satin soft, yet it positively ached. ‘Do you like that, Azhar?’

      ‘Julia,’ he said with a tight smile, remembering her own words, ‘Everything you do pleases me.’

      Her laughter was husky. She trailed her hair down his belly, brushing it lightly over his skin. He could see tantalising glimpses of her nipples. Her knees brushed the inside of his thighs. His heart was hammering so hard he was surprised he could still breathe. The anticipation of what she would do next was almost as arousing as what she did. Satin-soft hair on his shaft now, and Azhar let out a deep moan. She trailed it down his length then back up again. The sensation was so intense, his fists clenched.

      ‘You like that, Azhar,’ Julia said, and this time it was not a question.

      She leaned forward to kiss him, and her breasts pressed against his chest again. He could feel the soft brush of her sex on his shaft, and in response, he could feel, horribly close, too close, his climax gathering. Her mouth was achingly sweet. He arched under her, pressing himself unashamedly against her, and she gave a soft, feral cry. The urge to take her then, to feel her hot, sweet, wet flesh tight around him, was almost overpowering. He dug his fingers into the cushions at his side. Julia’s tongue touched his, and he cried out again.

      ‘Julia...’

      ‘Azhar,’ she said, deliberately teasing him with the brush of her nipples over his chest, ‘I do believe you like that too.’

      It was there in her eyes, the gleam of satisfaction he had wished for her to discover, arousal enhanced by the power to arouse. ‘Julia, I like that so much that if you do it again...’

      She did it again. And she laughed as he groaned, a laugh of sheer delight that was curtailed as he pulled her to him, ravaging her mouth, his hands curved around her rear, praying for one more second, two more seconds, five more seconds of control even as her mouth and her tongue and the weight of her flesh pressing down on his body made exerting that control agonising.

      ‘Julia,’ he said, quite desperate now.

      And she understood. She sat up. She knelt back between his legs. She took his shaft between her hands, and she stroked. Inexpert as her touch was, it was all he needed, all he wanted. Too gentle, but more than enough. With a hoarse cry, Azhar climaxed, grabbing a drying cloth just in time, feeling as if the seed he spilled had been torn from deep inside him and when he thought he was done spilling more, as Julia stroked him again, and then again.

      * * *

      Julia surveyed the man lying beneath her with wonder. He lay sprawled, his eyes closed, his lashes thick on his cheek, his arms spread, and his male part still thick and hard in her hand. She felt an odd flush of triumph, knowing that she had done this, that she had taken him to such heights, that she had forced him to lose control. But it was most certainly not the only triumph she felt. She knew now what Azhar meant. His pleasure had most decidedly been her pleasure. Her nipples ached. She cupped her breasts, shuddering as the brush of her palm connected with the sensitive skin. Closing her eyes, she risked the tiniest brush of her thumbs over the peaks, remembering how Azhar had touched her like this, and had to bite back a moan.

      Opening her eyes again, she found he was looking at her. Hastily, she dropped her hands, but Azhar shook his head. ‘No, don’t stop.’

      She shook her head, mortified.

      ‘I like it, Julia,’ he said with a slow smile. ‘Every bit as much as you do. Do it again.’

      He liked it? Unconvinced, but almost too aroused to care, Julia touched herself again, cupping her breasts, running her thumbs over her nipples. Her back arched. Her eyes drifted closed. Deep inside, her muscles clenched.

      Azhar pulled her on top of him, his mouth claiming hers briefly. ‘No,’ she said, ‘this was for you.’

      He rolled her on to her back. ‘And this is for both of us,’ he said. He kissed her. Then his lips were on her breast, licking her nipple, his hand teasing the other. Then he eased her legs open, and his mouth was on her belly. And then lower. Julia arched up, thrusting unashamedly as he licked into her. She had had no idea she was so close, so ready, so tight. To try to hold back would be futile, and she did not want to hold back. A lick, a thrust, she did not know what he was doing nor did she care, save that it was exactly what she wanted. Her climax ripped through her, wave upon wave of hot, heady pleasure, and she cried out with a wild abandon that she did not know herself capable of.

      * * *

      The water in the bathing tub was refreshingly cool as Julia sank into it—alone, after all—some time later. Her body felt heavy, her skin glowed. She lay back, closing her eyes, drifting into a languid state, sated and satisfied in a way she had never been before. The image of Azhar, also sated and satisfied, lying beneath her, made her shudder. She could not possibly be aroused again so quickly, yet she was. Was this normal? Was her body, deprived of such carnal pleasure, now becoming addicted?

      She sighed, lying back in the water, enjoying the lap of it over her skin. They had not even made proper love. Though her experience of making proper love was far too proper for her new decadent self. There would be nothing proper about making love with Azhar. It would be as improper as she could possibly imagine, and more, since she actually couldn’t imagine—though she wanted to. She wanted to know what she had been missing all these years.

      Julia sat up, splashing water everywhere. Initially, the month she had agreed to stay had seemed to stretch out like an eternity, and yet already more than half of it was gone. When she set out from Cornwall, this trip had merely been the first step on her path to freedom. Her desire to fulfil her promises and claim that freedom was every bit as fervent as before, but the sense of urgency was no longer there. The desert was not simply a means to an end, an exotic habitat that she must traverse in order to complete a task, it had an allure all of its own. She would happily linger here another month, or even three.

      ‘And just how, exactly, would you manage that, Julia Trevelyan?’ she asked herself sternly as she stepped out of the bath and wrapped herself in one of the huge drying cloths. She had just about sufficient funds to get herself back to England. There could be no question of her extending her trip here. ‘And no real desire to do so, without Azhar,’ she muttered ruefully. For she had spoken the truth earlier. Alluring though the desert was, it was Azhar who had bewitched her.

      She finished drying herself and selected a loose cotton tunic to wear. Even if their idyll was by some magic extended for another month, it would still have to end, because that was the nature of idylls. They were not real.

      In the real world, she and Azhar could be nothing to each other. Aside from the problem of geography, there