Mills & Boon New Voices: Foreword by Katie Fforde. Ann Lethbridge

he left her breasts and trailed hot kisses down her abdomen she sucked in her breath, knowing what he planned and dying for it all at once. Her panties fell away as he pushed them down her hips, and then he was cupping her buttocks, pulling her to him, his tongue sliding into her secret recesses, finding the bud of her desire.

      She cried out as he circled her clitoris, sucked it between his lips, then circled and sucked again and again. Her legs were jelly, but his strong grip on her kept her upright while he drove her to completion with his lips and tongue.

      When she shattered, she didn’t care who heard her as she rode wave after wave of blinding sensation.

      But still it wasn’t enough. And Zafir knew it too. He climbed to his feet while she sagged against the table. Shrugging out of his jacket and shirt, he dropped them to the ground. A moment later he’d lifted her onto the stone table and stepped between her legs. As she leaned back on her hands he unfastened his trousers and rolled on a condom. She didn’t even bother to wonder how he’d known to be prepared.

      Then he was hooking his arms behind her knees and drawing her forward until the tip of his penis slid into her entrance.

      Genie drew in a sharp breath. Zafir closed his eyes, swallowed. And then he plunged forward, their bodies joining so deeply and thoroughly that they both cried out.

      He grew utterly still, though she could feel him throbbing in the heart of her. “Did I hurt you?”

      Genie shook her head, tears building behind her eyelids. It hurt, but not the way he meant. Physically, yes, he was big, and it had been a long time, but her body accommodated him the way it always had.

      No, the pain was in her heart, her soul.

      “Don’t stop,” she said, and then he was moving, plunging into her while she wrapped her legs around him and braced herself on the table.

      She hadn’t known her body could be so responsive, that she could be on fire so quickly after he’d taken her over the edge. But she gripped him hard, her hips working in time with his, her body catching the wave and riding it higher and higher.

      Zafir must have sensed when she was close, because he lifted her against him, angled his thrusts so they were deeper and more intense—

      And that was when she exploded, when her body dissolved into a mass of fire and sound and sensation that reached into her fingertips, her toes, her scalp. Everything sizzled, and she cried out with the intensity of it, the utter bliss.

      She hadn’t even realized that Zafir tumbled over the edge with her until he set her carefully back down and withdrew from her body. His skin gleamed in the candlelight, his chest rising and falling more quickly than before.

      He was magnificent, exotic, and her body still craved his like a drug—though she was exhausted and, at least temporarily, sated. He turned away from her, and she felt as if she’d been basking in the sun’s rays only to have a black cloud block their warmth.

       What had she done?

      Genie couldn’t move, though she had a sudden urge to do so. It was as if her good sense had come trickling back, but too late. She wanted to snatch up the dress and cover herself.

      She felt too raw, too exposed. She’d just had amazingly hot sex with a king.

      On a table. In a garden.

      But that wasn’t what made her want to cover up. She felt as if her heart was as exposed as her body, as if he could see that it beat only for him. That it had always beat only for him.

      Because this was Zafir—her prince, her lover, the man who’d once been everything to her.

      And that made her angry. Angry with him for being here, for being so unrelenting, and with herself for being unable to hold fast to her vow not to have sex with him ever again. What in the hell was wrong with her?

      “Will you let me excavate the temples now?” she threw into the air between them. Because he’d won, hadn’t he? Because she was an idiot, and because she still loved him in spite of everything, and because she was suddenly so insecure that she had to lash out to protect herself.

      His shoulders stiffened, and she wished with all her heart she could take it back. But words once spoken were out there, hanging in the air, and she could no more call them back than she could undo what they’d just done together.

      Zafir turned, his trousers zipped again, his gaze as hard and cold as marble. He let his eyes wander over her lazily, insultingly. She pushed herself to a sitting position and wrapped her arms around herself.

      “You were good, Genie. But not that good.”

      Chapter Six

      HE’D lied. Zafir lay in bed, staring up at the ornately carved wooden canopy, and listened to the soft breathing of the woman beside him. He’d told her she wasn’t that good, but the truth was he’d been so hot for her that he’d been unable to make the trek to the bedroom the first time.

      He’d wanted her so much that having her then and there, in the courtyard, had seemed the only way to assuage the heat boiling inside him.

      Except that it hadn’t. It had only made the need worse.

      She might have had sex with him for the temples, but he’d done it because he could not do otherwise.

      But Genie Gray had certainly not lost sight of what she wanted, and that made him angry.

      He had no right to be angry with her. He was the one, after all, who’d suggested that the only way to win the commission was to sleep with him. He’d wanted to punish her, and he’d ended up punishing himself.

      She’d pretended to be insulted, but she hadn’t resisted when he’d carried her into the bedroom and made love to her again. No, she’d melted beneath him, her body as soft and welcoming as it had always been. Her body was paradise, and he lost himself in it.

      They’d fallen asleep much later, exhausted, but now that he’d awakened again he couldn’t get back to sleep.

      What was it about her that made him so crazy? That made him feel as if he’d come home after a very long time away?

      It had to be the connection to the past, to a simpler life. But this need was only temporary. Though he wanted Genie more than he could remember wanting any woman he’d ever been with, there was no future in it.

      Soon he would have to let her go.

      The light slanting through the curtains and across the bed was not the light of early morning. Genie blinked and sat up. Muscles she’d forgotten she had ached. Zafir had been intense last night, making love to her as if it was the first and last night he would ever do so.

      The thought gave her a chill. She’d loved every moment of it, even if he had told her she wasn’t that good. She’d been hurt at first, but she’d quickly recognized that he was lashing out at her. Just as she’d done when she’d asked if he would now give her the commission.

      They’d gotten past that very quickly—at least physically. But now Zafir was gone and she wasn’t certain what to do. Even if she did manage to find the dress and put it back on, she wasn’t sure she would remember how to find the harem. And she definitely didn’t want to run into anyone in the passageways.

      “As-saalamu ’alaykum, madam.”

      Genie’s head snapped up to find Yusuf patiently standing in the entry. He didn’t seem at all flustered by her appearance in his king’s bed, though she could feel the heat of a blush all the way to the roots of her hair. The problem with being a fair-skinned redhead was the ease with which she turned pink, she thought.

      She returned the ritual greeting and waited.

      “His Majesty bade me bring you clothing, madam. You will find a selection of items in His Majesty’s bath chamber. If you would care to dress, I will bring you something to eat in half an hour.”

      “Thank