Australia: In Bed with a Sheikh!. Emma Darcy

him up from the desk and whipped some tension through him. A primitive satisfaction zinged through Sarah. She wished she could rip his clothes off, get right down to the naked truth of how he felt about her. The remembered image of his almost-bare physique played through her mind, stirring a wanton excitement, a wild desire to goad him into action, any action that involved touching.

      “You are being ridiculous!” he said tersely.

      “Am I? You don’t credit me with a woman’s needs, a woman’s feelings, a woman’s desires. ‘Don’t play with fire, Sarah,’” she mimicked. “Just stand by and watch the sophisticated grown-ups like Dionne Van Housen play with it because they understand it and you don’t.”

      His face darkened with an angry rush of blood and Sarah exulted in having reached and plucked a sensitive chord. It flashed through her mind she wasn’t being completely fair, but she was on a wild, non-stop roller-coaster, her nerves screaming with frustration, heart pumping with rushes of adrenalin, thoughts careering down the track he had chosen for her, the track that kept her at arm’s length from him.

      “Then there was Washington,” she plunged on, gesticulating with mocking emphasis as she interpreted his actions. “Trotting me out like a young debutante, protecting me from other men, saving me from any little awkwardness, watching over me like a father.”

      His mouth compressed.

      To Sarah, it denoted she’d hit the nail on the head and she heedlessly hammered it further, furious he’d denied her the maturity she knew she could lay claim to. “You even dictated when I should go to bed, saying goodnight when it suited you. Same in New York. And here, of course, you’ve had the relief of adult company with Peter Larsen. It’s a wonder you haven’t given me dolls to play with.”

      “Are you quite finished with this absurd tantrum?” Tareq demanded, his eyes glittering with barely suppressed anger.

       Tantrum…

      The word stopped Sarah in her tracks. She shuddered in revulsion. A child threw tantrums. She had delivered a tirade of truth. Close enough to truth anyway. For Tareq to interpret it as a tantrum…

      She drew in a deep breath. Her eyes stabbed him with daggers of pain as she made the only decision she could make. Then with all the passion of her womanhood, she replied, “I’m finished with you, Tareq. Since you treat me as though I haven’t reached the age of consent, our bargain is null and void and I am out of here!”

      Having flung down the gauntlet she turned her back on him and marched to the door.

      “Wait!” he thundered.

      “What for?” she flung back at him, throwing out dismissive hands. “I don’t need another father. I’ve already had three. Between them they’ve done a fine job of ripping away any innocent illusions I might have had about life, so you don’t have to worry about me being hurt. Henceforth I am a cynical woman of the world who doesn’t believe in anybody.”

      She twisted the knob and pulled the door open. Before she could step out of the library an arm reached past her and slammed the door shut. Startled, she did nothing to stop the strong brown hand from dropping to the knob and activating the locking device. Her mind grasped the consequence though, and in the next instant she was whirling around to contest it, rebellion rampaging through her heart.

      “I will not be your prisoner!” she yelled, her hands slamming against Tareq’s broad chest in violent rejection of any more domination from him.

      “Shut up!” he retorted fiercely.

      The shock of it snapped her eyes up to his.

      “You want raw truth?” he demanded, his voice harsh, his nostrils flaring, the windows to his soul revealing chaotic conflict. “I’m a man with a man’s needs. And those needs don’t come wrapped in finer feelings. How ready are you to accept that, Sarah?”

      Dark turbulence enveloped her, sucking the strength from her mutiny, swirling around her thwarted desires, fanning them into a ferment of need, tearing at the feelings that had made being with him a torment, transforming them into something more intense, overwhelming, flooding her with a warm, liquid weakness, and she knew she would accept anything of him. Anything…

      Somehow he saw what was happening to her, recognised it, and his arms swept her strongly against him, and the tremulousness inside her gathered a hunger for his strength. She pressed closer, her hips against his, needing, wanting, her hands sliding up over his shoulders, around his neck, her breasts pushing into soft, no hard, harder contact with the pulsing wall of his chest, pursuing the need, the want as a whirlwind of beating, throbbing sensation travelled through her.

      The storm in his eyes was rent by a blaze of blue lightning, electrifying the air, tingling her skin, her lips, jolting her heart. Her mouth fell open, gasping for breath. Her mind seized on the image of his face, his beautifully sculptured face, coming nearer, nearer to hers. Her fingers raced into his hair, clutching, grasping, pulling his head nearer still. Every atom of her energy was focused on drawing him to her, reaching into him.

      Then his mouth covered hers, softly at first, gently, tenderly, holding back the fire she’d seen and sensed and invited, but the heat of his lips, the caress of his tongue, the excitement of touch and taste whirled her into a passionate searching for all he would give of himself. Her whole body seemed to soar with exultation as he abandoned softness, driven to a wild exploration that eclipsed hers with its ardent, urgent hunger to know, to feel, the wanting a sweet, fierce, nearly desperate need, crying out to be satisfied more fully, more deeply.

      Kissing was not enough. Kissing was an anticipatory intimacy, a tantalising promise, a binding beginning to the journey towards the togetherness she craved.

      He moved her back against the door, holding her there between his thighs, the burgeoning thickness, hardness of his arousal stroking across her stomach in a rhythmic swaying as his mouth continued to devour hers, the need of a man implicit, raw, demanding to be met. His hands moved quickly, skilfully, stripping her of blouse and bra, dragging off his shirt, freeing flesh to meet flesh, heated with feverish excitement.

      Then he was kissing her breasts, his tongue circling the nipples, teasing them into needful erection, and Sarah threw back her head, arching to push for more acute sensation, the need of a woman surging through her, concentrating fiercely on the hot attachment of his lips, sucking, dragging an intense stream of pleasure through her body, her flesh pulsing to his pumping mouth, his hands stroking her thighs, rolling down her trousers, fingers smoothing her stomach, thrusting through moist curls to the core of heat, cupping it, taking possession of the wet softness.

      Sarah closed her eyes and gave herself up to the sweet chaos of sensation, forgetting everything, all sense, all caution, all care, wanting only to feel. She had no idea how Tareq accomplished the rest of their undressing. Her entire physical existence was turned inwards to the hunger he fed with his skilful touching, the seductive, exquisitely pleasurable invasion of hand and mouth.

      Only when he picked her up and carried her did she realise she was naked, both of them naked, and the sensuality of skin against skin was another wonderful intimacy. He lay her on the soft Persian carpet in front of his desk and she feasted her eyes on him as he knelt over her, such powerful maleness poised to mate with her, and her body was crying out for him, longing to feel him there in the place that was made for him.

      She lifted her arms and he came into them, kissing her mouth, slowly, tenderly, as she felt him pressing against her, beginning to fill the opening to her charged, innermost self. Her whole body quivered in waiting. She moved, urging him on, thrusting for the fullness of him inside her. His hands slid beneath her, holding, moulding her buttocks and she felt him enter, slowly pushing further, growing, and she had the amazingly voluptuous sensation of opening before him, spilling the essence of herself around his passage, muscles pulsing, drawing him in.

      She heard herself cry out sharply when he stopped. But it was only a pause to negotiate a barrier neither of them wanted. A pinprick of pain and it was past, trailing in the wake of deep, deep pleasure as he sank into ecstatic union with her,