Sheikh's Forbidden Queen. Lynn Raye Harris

      Ella very nearly laughed. She could see herself as pretty on a good day but only when she was all done up and her hair absolutely perfect. Certainly she did not compare well to the true beauties she had seen him pictured with in newspapers three years earlier. Zarif was the truly beautiful one, an outstandingly gorgeous male, who had stolen her heart the first time she saw him and broken it the day he proposed, sending her plunging from the heights of happiness straight down into the darkness of despair. In the aftermath she had picked herself up and gone on but the trust he had broken remained broken and she was a much more anxious, suspicious person than she had once been.

      His thick silky hair nudged her cheek and then his mouth, velvet and warm, claimed hers again, closing out the rest of the world as though it had never been. There was nothing then but the racing beat of her heart and the tightening at her secret core. Without warning the towel she wore was gone and he cupped her full breasts, his thumbs strumming her engorged nipples to send currents of fire shooting down into her pelvis. Her hips shifted, rose without her volition and at the heart of her she felt tight as a drum and desperate for more.

      Zarif drew back, lean, strong features taut. ‘If you truly don’t want this, I will stop. I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give, habibti.’

      Taken aback, Ella stared up at him, still partially lost in the stirring responses shimmying through her lethargic body.

      Luxuriant black lashes dipped low over his tawny eyes. ‘You didn’t want this,’ he extended. ‘You agreed because you had no other choice but I find that I no longer want a sacrifice in my bed.’

      Disconcerted, Ella stiffened. ‘I’m not a sacrifice.’

      His mouth dipped to her delicate collarbone and the tip of his tongue flicked the pulse beating there below her pale fine skin and she tingled in reaction from her head to her toes. ‘I will have you willing or not at all. To say no is your right and I promise that there will be no reprisals,’ he asserted thickly.

      In shock at that startling offer coming when she least expected it, Ella opened her eyes to their fullest extent and stared up at him, almost mesmerised by the stunning amber gold of his steady gaze. ‘But I agreed and you—’

      ‘You agreed under the duress of your concern for your vulnerable parents,’ Zarif reminded her. ‘And I am man enough to only want what is offered freely.’

      His hands rested on her ribcage and she wanted so badly for him to lift his hands and touch her breasts again. The strength of that craving took her aback for nothing in her experience had ever equalled it. She shut her eyes, shutting him out but the craving, the sheer hunger mushroomed up inside her without abating. And why was she surprised? She wanted him; she had always wanted him.

      Her lashes lifted, her decision easily made. ‘It’s free...I mean, it’s only sex...let’s not make a production out of it,’ she framed awkwardly.

      Zarif frowned in disagreement, automatically writing off her quip about sex as a clumsy careless joke. ‘I very much want it to be a production with you, habibti.’

      Ella lay back, pliant and melting with helpless anticipation. She had come to an understanding with herself and the past and present were melding into a seamless whole. She wanted Zarif to become her first lover because she had never wanted another man the way she wanted him and sharing her body with him made perfect sense to her. He nipped at her lower lip and then blew softly over a rosy straining nipple before suckling erotically at the tender peak. Ribbons of hot desire pulled taut between her breasts and her thighs.

      Zarif slid down the bed, tugging away the towel still partially wrapped round her and skimming off the boxers he still wore with impatient hands. Lying there naked, Ella reddened, fighting off the urge to yank the sheet over her exposed body. He parted her thighs and before she could react moved down the bed towards her on his knees with the predatory grace of a stalking cat. Ella lay still, eyes rounding when she glimpsed the long thick length of his erection hung low between his muscular hair-roughened thighs. A spasm of something she didn’t recognise pulled taut in her pelvis.

      Zarif dropped a kiss on her gently rounded stomach and tension leapt high inside her as he stroked the soft skin of her inner thighs, moving ever closer to the heart of her desire. ‘I want to taste you,’ he told her hungrily. ‘I want to drive you crazy with need and then I want to make love to you until you are senseless...’

      ‘A lot of wants,’ she pronounced shakily, shy of that new side of him and the raw sexual self-assurance she had never seen him display before.

      ‘And all the time in the world in which to enjoy them,’ Zarif murmured, pushing her slender thighs back at almost the same time as he lowered his head and swiped his tongue across her clitoris.

      The sensation was so powerful that she almost shot off the bed in shock. ‘No...no, you can’t do that!’ she told him when she had found her breath again.

      ‘You’ll discover that I am naturally domineering in the bedroom,’ Zarif confessed without apology, his strong hands clamping to her hips to hold her in place for his attentions.

      ‘I’ve...I’ve just never quite...’ Ella mumbled unevenly.

      ‘But your body loves it and so do I,’ Zarif countered hungrily, marvelling that an experienced woman could have such an inhibition while he ran long fingers soothingly down the outside of her slender thighs to relax her tense muscles. ‘Close your eyes...I promise only pleasure, habibti.’

      Afraid of making a fool of herself and entering into an undignified tussle, Ella shut her eyes tight, mentally willing herself to play it cool. She really didn’t want Zarif to know that she hadn’t done any of these things before. If he realised she was still a virgin he might then appreciate what a catastrophic effect he had had on her life three years earlier and her pride was too great to reveal the massive hurt he had unwittingly inflicted.

      He teased the entrance to her body with gentle fingertips and she jerked, insanely conscious of where she needed to be touched and cringingly aware of how wet she was. He eased a finger into her and then lowered his head to tease her with his sensual mouth. Almost unbearable sensation engulfed Ella in a never-ending cascade. She no longer controlled herself; he controlled her. Her body hummed and jerked with constrained power like a race car at the starting line, raring to go. Excitement roared through every cell in her body, drowning all thought, closing out everything but what he was making her feel. The ripples of growing sensation soared to a peak and her back arched and she cried out while ripples of pleasure spread outward, making the pleasure last and draining every ounce of energy from her body.

      ‘I have no condoms here,’ Zarif groaned in frustration and he levered himself off the bed.

      Ella blinked as she struggled to emerge from that frighteningly intense climax and suddenly reached out to close a hand over his before he could move out of reach. ‘I’m on the pill...it’s safe,’ she muttered, assuming it would be safe, then certain it was because she had, after all, been taking the mini pill for years to regulate her periods and surely all those years had to count for something.

      For a split second, Zarif hesitated and then he came back to her with alacrity. ‘It’s a very long time since I had sex without a condom,’ he confided, pulling her close to his warm, musky male length, his erection pressing against her lower stomach. In that instant her hunger for him rose to such a height that she felt weak and dizzy with it.

      ‘You can be assured that I am clean and healthy,’ he murmured, studying her with scorching dark golden eyes fringed by quite ridiculously long black lashes. ‘And you?’

      ‘I’ve never had sex without a condom,’ Ella replied, trying not to laugh because, of course, she had never had sex at all but she was convinced he would not be able to tell the difference between her untried body and a more practised woman’s.

      He captured her lips in a soul-shattering kiss and deep down inside her the tingling and the prickle of awakening heat and the awful aching emptiness began to fire her up afresh. He was so hot, she reflected helplessly, so hot that he