Sheikh's Forbidden Queen. Lynn Raye Harris

below the hard, warm weight of his lean, powerful body, entranced by the intimacy but nervous of what the next step entailed, regardless of how much her body seemed to yearn for it.

      He tilted her up to facilitate his entry and nudged at her entrance before pushing in, filling her completely and stilling to give her time to adjust.

      ‘You’re very small,’ Zarif husked, his black hair brushing her cheek. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

      Ella was all bound up in the alien sensation of his intrusion in that wildly sensitive place and in the same moment he pulled back and then drove forward, thrusting into her with primal force. A strangled shriek of shocked pain escaped her and he froze over her.

      ‘What the hell?’ he breathed rawly, frowning down at her in consternation.

      Ella gulped and regrouped. ‘It’s been a while for me,’ she told him weakly.

      Ebony brows pleated, Zarif began to withdraw and her hands whipped up instinctively to close over his muscular forearms even as her hips lifted to contain him. ‘No, don’t stop,’ she protested, incredulous at the idea that he could go so far and then stop without letting her experience what she had ached to share only with him for so long.

      That would be another rejection and just then she couldn’t face that prospect; no, not to be left with the suspicion that she was so much less than other women and so useless that she could not retain his interest even until the act was finished. She could not bear that her only sexual experience should end in failure and shame.

      The muscles in his arms strained and Zarif groaned, fighting for control until the shift of her hips embraced him and sent him beyond the point of return. He sank deep and she was tight and hot and wet and he knew nothing else because much more basic instincts had taken over by then. His hands gripping her hips, he plunged right into the heated core of her with a shout of shuddering satisfaction. The slap of his flesh against hers joined with the sound of her sobbing breaths and helpless cries. He pushed her legs over his shoulders and drove hard into her tight sheath. She shuddered, feeling the gathering surge of excitement coalesce inside her again as he upped his tempo. It was all too much for her and as he slammed into her one last time she felt the hot blast of his release. Bucking wildly under him, her hips writhed as he thrust her into an indescribably powerful orgasm.

      Afterwards the silence was so intense that the sound of her own breathing felt like a roar in her ears. Zarif settled her back down on the bed with care, resisting the urge to hold her close, and sprang off the bed at speed. He was feeling far too much all at once, too many thoughts screaming through his mind. He was shocked, appalled, drowning in guilt and regret. Snatching up his clothing, he began to get dressed.

      ‘So...that’s it, is it?’ Ella heard herself say limply, hurt winging through her in an enervating surge. ‘No cuddling afterwards?’

      ‘It would not alter what we just did,’ Zarif breathed curtly, brushing straight his robes with unsteady hands and heading for the doors that opened out onto the stairs down to the courtyard beyond, desperate for some fresh air and clarity of thought.

      Ella’s body ached: she was sore. Strange how she had never suspected that the first occasion might hurt so much, she acknowledged numbly. So, of course, Zarif had guessed her deepest darkest secret. She had let the cat out of the bag herself. He was shocked. And he wasn’t pleased, of course he wasn’t. Clearly he had wanted an experienced lover to entertain him for a year, not a first-timer unfit for a repeat encounter or more carnal games.

      * * *

      Zarif came to an abrupt halt by the central fountain, which played its water in the shade of a clump of palm trees. A virgin. Ella had been a virgin and he had taken her with all the finesse of a rutting beast and naturally he had hurt her. He recalled how careful he had been as a newly married teenager with Azel in spite of his colossal ignorance and he recoiled in disgust at his lack of control with Ella. He had hurt her, wronged her... Was there to be no end to the mistakes he made with her?

      In public life, Zarif had made very few mistakes. He was highly intelligent and naturally cautious and he had learned early how to think ahead and protect himself from missteps. A king couldn’t expect second chances, a king needed the support of his subjects and had to stay in touch with their prevailing mood to retain the right to rule. He knew for a fact in that instant that he was a better king than he was a husband.

      But then, in truth, he had not been fit to touch an innocent woman in the first place and that inescapable awareness tormented him. She had stayed pure in a much more liberal culture than his own, setting a standard he had strikingly failed to follow. For so long he had blamed her for that reality because it had been her rejection that had sent him careening off the rails of restraint. Unbearable as it was to acknowledge, he had been weak where she had been strong. Shame drenched him like perspiration in the heat. He had tried to bring her down to his level by treating her like a sex object and he had failed. But why had she refused to take advantage of the escape clause he had offered her?

      Ironically, he had never understood Ella and was indeed beginning to suspect that she was a complete and utter mystery to him. Yet he had often assumed that he did understand her and just as often read her entirely wrong, only to discover too late that he had made yet another miscalculation.

      She seemed so deceptively open, he acknowledged broodingly. He had believed she was playing games with him three years earlier when she said no to his proposal. He had believed she wanted him to propose purely to relish the narcissistic charge of her power over him. Now he doubted that hypothesis and found it quite a challenge to fit an innocent young woman into such a scenario. Perhaps she had said no to marrying him for the very reasons she had stated...the same reasons he had arrogantly dismissed as offensive red herrings. Perhaps she had genuinely feared having to adapt to a culture and royal expectations so far removed from her own experience and he had said and done nothing to soothe her concerns.

      But why was he looking back to the past when he had created so many more problems here in the present? He had essentially forced her to marry him and forced her into his bed because, loving her parents as she did, she had not had a choice. Possibly that was also why she had urged him to continue in bed, believing as she must have done that sooner or later she had to surrender her body to his to meet the terms he had demanded.

      Zarif swore below his breath, recognising how complicated everything had become and knowing he had brought it down on himself with no help from anyone else. But then guilt had, for so long, been Zarif’s constant companion in life that he almost welcomed it back like an old friend. He was in the wrong. Once again he was in the wrong.

      A hundred years ago, one of his ancestors would have dealt much more easily with such a situation, he reflected with sardonic humour. He would have kidnapped her, offered her family handsome compensation for the loss of her and hidden her in the harem, eventually offering her marriage as a reward for her acceptance. It would not have been considered dishonourable. That approach would have dealt practically with a man’s need for a woman he could not otherwise have. Zarif knew that his contemporary solution had crashed and burned at spectacular speed, particularly when all he could think about in spite of all that had gone wrong was climbing back into that bed with Ella again and proving that in some fields he could get it right.

      * * *

      Ella lowered her body into the bath of warm water and hugged her knees. Well, it was done, she had met the conditions of their agreement and he had no reasonable grounds for complaint now. Seemingly he had not enjoyed the sex as much as he had thought he would, but that was the essential flaw in male fantasy, Ella thought grimly. Fantasy wasn’t real. He’d had a fantasy about what she would be like and she had failed to live up to it, which wasn’t really surprising when one considered that she was simply an ordinary young woman and neither stunningly beautiful nor amazingly sexy.

      The bedroom was filled with flowers when she finally emerged from a long soothing bath, wrapped in a towelling robe. Innumerable baskets of white roses sat on every surface and she frowned. Someone knocked on the door and she opened it. An envelope and a gift box were extended to her by a maid.

      The envelope contained