The Royal House Of Karedes Collection Books 1-12. Кейт Хьюит

Eleni began to tremble and tears began to blur her eyes as waves of ecstasy began to shudder through her.

      ‘K-Kaliq!’ she gasped.

      He almost lit the lamp to watch her very first orgasm but he did not want to destroy the mood. As it was, the half-light caught her joy and illuminated the tear which trickled slowly down over her cheek and he lowered his head to lick it away.

      ‘Do not cry,’ he said softly and then, inexplicably, he felt a sudden lurching of his heart. ‘Are you sad that I took your purity away?’

      Eleni shook her head, and laid it on his chest, where she could feel the beat of his lifeblood as it pulsed through him. ‘How could I be sad about something which was so beautiful?’ she whispered, her voice still dazed. ‘Why, to feel that way seems scarcely human.’

      ‘That is why some say the act of love is divine,’ he murmured. ‘Now come here, and I will show you more beauty still.’

      Moving over her, he stroked a few wisps of tangled curls away from her face and she wrapped her arms around his neck, looking up at him with utter trust. What a straight-forward lover she was proving to be, he thought—as honest and as fearless as she was in the saddle!

      His lips grazed over hers—at first almost lazily—as if he were coaxing from them another trembling response. And then the kiss deepened and became more intense—and suddenly he could wait no longer.

      Parting her firm thighs, he thrust into her with one long stroke as he heard her stifle the cry as her innocence was taken from her for ever. How hot and tight she felt. Kaliq moaned. He could have spilled his seed into her right there and then—and why not? For it was the right of the sheikh to take his pleasure where he found it.

      Yet strangely he found himself wanting this eager, unexpected beauty to have the time of her life. To gasp her pleasure once more beneath the onslaught of his sexual prowess. So he held back. He tantalised her with the thrust of his body and then retreated, over and over again until the body of his no-longer-a-virgin began to adjust and to acclimatise to the new sensations which were sweeping over her. How quickly she learnt, he thought in admiration as he sensed her pleasure building once more.

      ‘Kaliq!’ she whispered.

      In the darkness, he smiled. And how quickly she had adjusted to the familiar use of his name, too! ‘What is it, my green-eyed lovely?’

      ‘It’s… it’s… Oh! That thing… that thing… it’s going to happen all over again!’

      ‘Your orgasm,’ he purred—but this time as she convulsed around his aching flesh he joined her, letting go completely, losing himself in a sea of delight, his body juddering as it was racked with spasms which seemed to go on and on, leaving him completely dry and gasping.

      Afterwards he lay back against the heap of pillows, staring rather dazedly up at the ceiling—knowing that he should now go back to his own suite and yet strangely reluctant to do so. She was snuggling up to him, wrapping her warm body around his, and he was usually irritated by such cloying familiarity once the sexual act had been completed. But with Eleni he felt no such irritation.

      Was that because he was safe from ambition with her? That such a lowly lover as her would simply be grateful for whatever he gave her and would not dare to make the demands of the majority of her sex?

      He would just close his eyes for a moment and then he would go back to his suite…

      Beside him, Eleni lay listening to his steady breathing as he slipped into sleep, while the facts of what had just happened began to sink into her glowing body. Truly, she was no longer a girl—she had been made into a woman by her sheikh.

      Carefully, she turned her head to look at him. His dark hair was tousled and as he slept his harsh features were relaxed. How bizarre to think that the Prince of Calista lay naked beside her. That his body had been intimately joined with hers—just as she had seen the stallions rutting the mares in the stable.

      But this was different. Horses did not have emotions that felt as if a great big bit of mountain had just fallen down on top of you. She bit her lip. And what did this extraordinary night mean? Were they to become lovers, or would Kaliq simply cast her off in the morning and pretend that nothing had happened?

      So troubled were Eleni’s thoughts that she should not have slept, but she did sleep—a fact she only discovered by being woken by the soft touch of a fingertip over each of her eyelids.

      Her eyes fluttered open to find that the early morning sun was creeping in through the muslin drapes and that Kaliq was looking down at her. Anxiously, she searched his face for a sign of what last night had meant to him. Did he still respect her? Consider her to be a worthy lover? But the ebony eyes were as hard as chips of bright ebony and his sensual lips gave nothing away, except—she thought, with the beginnings of experience—a sense that they would like to kiss her again.

      ‘So what did you think of your sexual awakening, lizard?’

      She felt the colour stealing into her cheeks. What was she expected to say? ‘It was very… agreeable.’

      ‘Agreeable?’ He laughed softly, thinking how ironic it was that his little stable girl should give him such a cool response—he, who had been praised to the heavens by society beauties the world over. ‘Agreeable enough to want to do it again?’ he mocked as he touched the outline of her lips with his finger.

      His flesh contained the scent of something sultry and soapy—something that Eleni knew was connected to her and she felt the colour flaming to her cheeks once more. And there was no place to hide in the cruel light of day. ‘Highness… Kaliq… I…’

      Kaliq frowned. Last night, in the passion and heat of the moment, he had overlooked the fact that she was not just inexperienced physically—but emotionally, too. And this morning he needed to make the situation clear to her—because he could not afford for her to misread it.

      ‘Before we continue, there is something I must tell you, Eleni,’ he said softly, tilting her chin upwards so that she was forced to look at him. ‘You know that sex is always different for a woman?’

      She stared at him in confusion.

      ‘Some women do not have the same capacity as a man to enjoy the act—or so I believe,’ he added truthfully, ‘since no woman in my bed has ever experienced anything but pleasure.’ He ignored her wince of pain—but he had merely been stating a fact. Was she foolishly allowing herself the fantasy of thinking that he had never known any other lover than her?

      ‘Nature has designed a man and a woman differently,’ he continued firmly. ‘For men sex is simply the natural spilling of their seed, but for women it is merely the trigger—and deep down they are searching for a mate to father their children. That is what makes women start attaching emotion to the act.’

      ‘E-emotion?’ Eleni felt as if he was insulting her—she just wasn’t quite sure how, or why? ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

      He steeled himself against the naked pain in her face. ‘I mean that women sometimes convince themselves that they’re falling in love with a man once they’ve had sex with him—because it seems to make the act more respectable in their eyes.’

      For a moment, Eleni didn’t react until the full impact of his words hit her. Of all the cold-hearted and cruel men she could have picked as her lover—then Kaliq must be the very worst. She tried to tell herself that she could have resisted him. Should have resisted him—but she knew that was a lie. She could have no more resisted the sheikh than a man crawling in the desert for three days could have resisted a cool, clear flagon of fresh water. She had had no control over her reaction to him—physically, at least.

      But she saw now that she needed to protect herself as much as possible against the inevitable pain which would follow if she did not heed his words. If she were foolish enough to fall in love with a man who would toss her aside in an instant if he needed to.

      No, she would learn everything