Desert Sheikhs Collection: Part 2. Susan Mallery

her dislike of the subject.

      “No.” There, she thought, let him suffer for a minute.

      He moved and suddenly he was sitting next to her, his shoulders blocking her vision, his legs caging her in the corner. He wasn’t the one suffering.

      “No?” His deep voice evoked memories of huskier tones and sensual laughter. “Your family let you change?”

      “They had no choice.” She’d followed their dictates and cut herself off from Tariq, but it had almost destroyed her. Her weak state had alarmed even her family, and no one had commented when she’d switched studies. By the time they’d tried to change her mind, she’d grown up. Disillusionment with the selfishness of those she’d trusted had followed fast on the heels of her sorrow.

      “What did you study? Hmm?” He curved one big hand round her neck in a blatantly possessive gesture. The heat from his body swirled around her.

      “Do you have to sit so close?” she blurted out.

      For the first time, he smiled. It was a smile full of teeth, the smile of a predator tempting his prey to venture out into the darkness. “Do I bother you, Mina?”

      He’d called her Mina. She remembered the way he’d always shortened her name to Mina when he’d been coaxing her to do something, usually involving kissing him until she felt like liquid honey inside. He hadn’t needed to coax much. One look of sexy invitation, the husky whisper of her name against her lips, and she’d softened like a sigh in the wind.

      When she didn’t answer, he leaned down and nuzzled her neck, his warm breath seeming to burrow through her skin and into her bones. He’d always loved to touch. She’d relished his affection, but right now it was making her more off balance than she already was.

      “Tariq, please.”

      “What do you want, Mina?”

      Jasmine swallowed. He traced the movement down her throat with his thumb. “Space.”

      He raised his head. “No. You have had four years of space. Now you are mine.”

      His intensity was almost frightening. As an eighteen-year-old, she’d been unable to cope with his sheer, charismatic power. Though he was only five years older than her, his strength and determination even then had been enough to command unswerving loyalty from his people. Now, four years later, she could see that he’d grown impossibly stronger, impossibly more charismatic. However, she was no longer a sheltered young girl, and she had to learn to cope with Tariq if she wanted a future with him.

      Holding his gaze, she lifted her hand and placed it over the one curled around her neck. When she tugged, he released her, his curiosity apparent in the quizzical look in his green eyes. Raising his hand to her cheek, she turned her face to drop a single kiss on his palm. His breath grew harsh, loud in the confines of the car.

      “I studied fashion design.” His skin was warm against her lips, his masculine scent an irresistible aphrodisiac.

      “You have changed.”

      “For the better.”

      “That remains to be seen.” His eyes narrowed. The hand against her cheek tightened. “Who taught you this?”

      “What?” Shivers threatened to whisper down her spine at the sound of that dark, rough tone.

      “This play with my hand and your lips.” His jaw could have been carved out of granite.

      “You did.” It was the truth. “Remember the time you took me to the Waitomo caves? As the canoe floated in the glowworm grotto, you picked up my hand and you kissed it just so.” She moved her head, and he loosened his hold enough to allow her to repeat the soft caress.

      When she looked up, she knew that he’d remembered, but his features remained stony and his eyes boiled with emotions she didn’t have the experience to identify.

      “There have been others?”

      “What?”

      “Other men have touched you?”

      “No. Only you.”

      He curved his hand around to tug at her plait, arching her neck and making her vulnerable to him. “Do not lie to me. I will know,” he growled.

      He was threatening to overwhelm her. In response, she relaxed into the exposed position that he’d engineered and slid her arms around his neck. “I will know, too,” she said quietly. Under her fingers, his hair was soft, tempting her to stroke. Below that was the living heat of his skin.

      His jaw firmed. “What will you know?”

      “If you’ve let other women touch you.”

      Tariq’s eyes widened. “When did you become fierce, Mina? You were always so biddable.” She knew he was taunting her with the way she’d let her family control her life, even to the extent of ignoring her heart.

      “I had to grow claws to survive.”

      “And am I supposed to be frightened of your puny claws?” He raised one dark brow, daring her.

      Deliberately, Jasmine sank her fingernails into the back of his neck. She forgot that she was goading a panther. To her surprise, her panther didn’t seem to mind her claws. He smiled down at her, a dangerous, tempting smile.

      “I would like to feel those claws on my back, Mina,” he whispered. “When you are in your place—flat on your back, under me—then I will.”

      “In my place?” Jasmine jerked out of his hold. When he continued to loom over her, his body crowding her against the door, she pushed at his chest. Masculine heat seared her through the fine fabric. “Move, you…you male!”

      “No, Mina.” He put one hand against her cheek and turned her toward him. “I will no longer follow your commands like a dog on a leash. From this day forth, you will follow mine.”

      He held her in place as his lips descended over hers. He needn’t have bothered. Jasmine was transfixed by the raw pain she’d glimpsed on his face, before his shields had risen. She’d done this to her panther. It was, she acknowledged, his right to demand restitution.

      Two

      Tariq couldn’t fight the driving, primitive urge to taste Mina, to claim her in this small way. Not even the knowledge that she was feeling overwhelmed and trapped could halt him. He tried to be gentle in his possession, but he hungered too much to stop. Then small, feminine hands clutched at his nape, holding him to her, inciting him. The painful craving he’d leashed for years battered at his control, pleading for freedom. He wanted to gorge on Mina. To feast on Mina.

      Not now, he decided.

      When he took her, he wanted hours, days, weeks in which to linger over her. But that long-suppressed craving had to be fed something, or it would shatter the bonds he’d imposed in order to keep from being eaten alive. Anger threatened to flame at the edge of his consciousness as he crushed her soft lips under his. He’d kill any man who’d dared to touch her. He would never forgive her if she’d allowed a single caress.

      Mina was his.

      And this time, he wouldn’t let her forget.

      In his arms, she shivered, and the simmering need inside him threatened to take complete command. He stroked his tongue across the seam of her lips. She opened at once. The taste of her was an elixir, a drug he’d starved for for years. His feelings for her were as wild and chaotic as a desert storm. How dare she leave him? How dare she take four years to return? When she gasped for breath, he breathed into her mouth, feeding her even as he took from her.

      “No one else has touched you.” He found some peace in that. Not much, but enough to rein in the beast.

      “And,” Jasmine responded in shocked surprise, “no one else has touched you.”

      He smiled that predator’s