Читать книгу The Royal House Of Karedes Collection Books 1-12 - Кейт Хьюит, Шантель Шоу - Страница 34

ELENI was in a terrible dilemma as she dressed for dinner, defiantly picking out the most traditional outfit from the batch she had brought with her from the sheikh’s palace in Calista. And all the time, a single question buzzed round and round in her head like a fly mesmerised by a candle flame.

Had the prince deliberately put her into a suite with a door which connected to his—and was he planning to use it?

But surely it would be impertinent to ask him—as if she was questioning his motives. Even perhaps a little presumptuous—almost as if she was expecting him to try to enter her room?

And aren’t you? taunted that rogue voice in her head which kept stirring up uncomfortable thoughts and feelings no matter how hard she tried to quell it. Hadn’t she thought of little else other than the way his lips had felt as he had pushed her down onto the back seat of the car and… and…

Cheeks stinging, she finished tying back her hair before going over to the door in question to check whether or not there was a key. And why did she register no surprise whatsoever to discover that there wasn’t one?

Her hands were trembling as she heard a tap at the door and there was Zahra, waiting to lead her down to dinner.

‘I thought I’d come and get you myself,’ she said kindly. ‘Rather than send one of the servants.’

And as Eleni followed her down the sweeping staircase she made up her mind that if the sheikh came to her in the night, she would simply tell him no. Because although he was a man—and a highly virile man at his peak—she knew deep down that he would never take her by force.

But Kaliq seemed preoccupied throughout the meal, his brow furrowed deep by a frown. He kept getting called out by Zahra to take telephone calls, leaving Eleni sitting there rather self-consciously on her own while a stream of servants glided through offering her golden dishes of titbits she had no appetite for.

She was just wondering whether she could slip away unnoticed when he returned, his eyes narrowing as she sat there with a half-eaten pear in front of her—as if he had only just noticed her for the first time. He sat down opposite her, and sighed.

‘I have been a bad host tonight, lizard—forgive me.’

‘It is not the sheikh’s place to seek the forgiveness of one of his subjects,’ answered Eleni dutifully, hoping that a little protocol might emphasise all the differences between them.

‘How very prim and proper you sound this evening,’ he murmured sardonically. ‘Few would guess that you had been lying in my arms just a few hours earlier—with your body craving more of my touch!’

‘Highness!’ Eleni whispered, appalled—but he shrugged his shoulders.

‘Highness, what?’ he mocked. ‘Highness, don’t tell the truth? Don’t you like the truth, Eleni? Or are you trying to pretend that if I hadn’t called a halt to your sweet submissiveness, then I should have taken your virginity in the back of my limousine?’

Once again, her cheeks were on fire, but so too—more worryingly—was her body. A strange aching had made her breasts feel so heavy—just like that peculiar sensation she’d first experienced in the scented bathwater at Kaliq’s palace. This was desire, Eleni realised—and the sheikh was such a proficient lover that he could manufacture it by words which were not even sweet or admiring!

‘No?’ he continued ruthlessly. ‘Nothing to say?’

She could sense the unknown and potent danger in the air. His eyes were challenging and his body language was suddenly tense and Eleni recognised that if she allowed this conversation to continue, then it might end up in the place she most wanted yet most feared to be. In his arms.

‘I am very tired after the journey and I would ask the sheikh if I may be excused,’ said Eleni stiffly.

There was a pause as Kaliq’s eyes narrowed. Excessively formal, he thought. And how insolent of her to ask to be excused before her royal host had left the room. But mightn’t it be easier to have her stripped naked and waiting for him?

‘Then don’t let me stop you,’ he drawled. ‘In fact, I have business I need to deal with.’ His black eyes glittered with anticipation. ‘Think you can find your way back upstairs?’

‘Of course,’ said Eleni, the heavy chair scraping back as she stood up, her heart beating fast beneath her breast. Remind him why you’re here—and remind yourself in the process before you get carried away with this rich and privileged life of his. ‘And when will we see the horse?’

‘Tomorrow. There is a polo match at a nearby ground—you might as well see him in action before you exercise your judgement.’

‘I shall look forward to that.’ Eleni curtseyed. ‘Good… goodnight, Highness.’

His lips curved into a sardonic smile as he heard her tremulous hesitation. She was innocent, yes—but she had a natural intelligence which surely would not deny the chemistry which existed between them. Did she really think that she would lie alone tonight? That he would allow that to happen?

‘Goodnight, Eleni.’

Her mouth dry with nameless fear, Eleni went upstairs to her room—trying to tell herself that of course she wasn’t surprised or disappointed that the sheikh had let her go so easily. For hadn’t his words unsettled her? The way he had described her response to him in the back of the car—why, it had made her feel ashamed and yet full of desire, all at the same time!

But it was with a sense of urgency that she undressed quickly—her hair still ribboned as she turned off all the lights and then slipped between the sheets.

Through the filmy curtains was a silver scythe curve of moon and she could see the occasional pinprick of a star—but they looked like pale imitations of the bright stars in the Calistan heavens, and suddenly Eleni felt very alone.

She tried to keep awake, to be on her guard in case the arrogant prince tried to enter her bedroom uninvited. And she should have been too excited and nervous to sleep after everything that had happened—the drive, the flight, the fact that she, Eleni Lakis, was in England! But one way or another it had been an exhausting day and the bed was unbelievably comfortable so that she couldn’t seem to stop eyelids which felt as if they had been weighted by lead, from shutting out the world.

It seemed like only seconds later that Eleni awoke to the sensation of the bed dipping and her eyes snapped open in alarm. For a moment then it had almost felt as if someone was… getting into bed beside her!

Her eyes adjusting to the half-light from the stars outside, she turned her head and there… there… lying next to her as if he had every right to be there and clearly naked as the day he had first entered the world of men—was the Sheikh Kaliq Al’Farisi!

She sat bolt upright in bed, her fingertips flying to her throat, feeling the pulse fluttering wildly beneath. ‘By the desert storm,’ she breathed. ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’

He gave a soft laugh as he reached his hand up to twist a silken braid of hair around his fingers. ‘Innocent you might be, my beauty—but I don’t really think you need me to give you an answer to that, do you, Eleni?’

Afterwards, she told herself that she might have screamed—had he not pulled her down against his bare flesh. And the sensations which powered over her were so intense that she closed her eyes and prayed that she would be strong in the path of such temptation.

‘Highness, please!’ she protested.

‘Please, what? Please this …?’

Almost lazily, he drifted his lips to hers and kissed her, feeling her tremble beneath his touch.

‘H-Highness!’ she stumbled, weakly.

Kaliq levered himself up to look down into her face, his expression stern—his eyes glittering fiercely in the half-light as they raked over her with proprietorial hunger.

‘Now listen to me while I tell you this and listen well. For tonight I am not your Highness, Eleni,’ he said. ‘Tonight I am just Kaliq. In this bed at least, we are equals. Do you understand that?’

And a little bit of Eleni’s heart turned over as she heard the simple appeal in his words—the sense that tonight he just wanted to be treated as a man and not a prince. Could she deny him a gift so simple—or was that just wishful thinking on her part?

She wanted to ask him how he thought that she could ever call him by his Christian name—but by then the sheikh’s hand had moved beneath the sheet and had taken her breast. It seemed that he, at least, had no problem with familiarity. Eleni closed her eyes, trying to fight the great wave of pleasure which whispered through her as he cupped the small globe and teased its tip into throbbing life.

‘H-Highness!’ she gasped.

‘Kaliq!’ he reminded her.

‘K-Kaliq!’ Vaguely, she thought how odd it was to utter the name of her sheikh—and yet how delicious it felt on her lips. Nearly as delicious as the sweet caress of his fingers.

‘Yes, Eleni, what is it?’

‘I… I…’ She shook her braided hair distractedly against the pillow as he worked some kind of magic with his touch. ‘I don’t remember.’

In the semi-darkness, he smiled as he continued to stroke her. ‘That’s good. Just feel. Just enjoy what I’m doing to you. Tell me, do you like it when I do that, Eleni?’

‘Oh! Oh. Oh!’

‘I think we must judge from your response that you do,’ he murmured drily. ‘Shall we try something else?’

Carelessly, he let his fingertips trail to dip into her belly button and let them stay there—waiting instinctively until she circled her hips in restless but silent entreaty. And then slowly—more slowly than he had ever moved in his life—he moved his hand lower still until he had delved deep into her honeyed sweetness—and was taken aback by how fresh and how ready she was for him. ‘And what about here—do you like me touching you here, too?’

As she bucked beneath his fingers Eleni honestly thought she was going to faint with pleasure—that was if she allowed herself to give into it, and not focus on the fact that this was the sheikh. Or just what he was doing to her. ‘But surely that is wrong?’ she breathed as he moved luxuriantly against her heated flesh.

Kaliq swallowed, strangely moved by her combination of innocence and enthusiasm. ‘How can it be wrong when it is what a man and a woman were designed for?’ he questioned huskily.

Eleni felt as if she were drowning in unbelievable sweetness—far sweeter than anything she had ever known. She knew the basics of sex—of course she did—so why was the sheikh not joining with her as she expected him to?

Why was he moving his fingers deliciously between her legs like that—making her feel as if control was slipping away? As if a place of undreamed-of delight were beckoning to her and she were sliding towards it. 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 she could from her royal lover—would study sexual techniques in the same way that she had learned about horses. She would become an expert lover in his bed… and when the affair was concluded, she would leave the arrogant and dismissive sheikh aching for her.

‘I agree completely, Kaliq,’ she agreed imperturbably.

His eyes narrowed. ‘You do?’

‘But of course. And you need have no concerns about me. For why would I waste my time falling in love with a man with whom there was no earthly possibility of a future?’

This should have been the perfect answer—but to Kaliq’s fury, it made him feel utterly indignant. Why, she had accepted her fate without shedding even a single tear! Did she think that she would find him easy to forget? Well, she would soon learn how wrong she had been.

Kaliq moved his hand beneath the sheet. ‘I am bored with talking,’ he growled as he guided her fingers to his aching flesh. ‘Come here and kiss me.’

And even as Eleni obeyed—the pleasure happening all over again as he thrust into her—she remained glad that she had sounded both proud and independent. But if this was victory—then it must have been the most short-lived in the history of the world. Because after he had made love to her with an almost ruthless efficiency which left her gasping, he got out of bed—seeming to enjoy her blushes as he paraded his magnificent nakedness against the stark backdrop of the snowy room.

‘We will leave for the polo match after lunch,’ he said.

Eleni pulled the sheet up to her chin and nodded. ‘Yes, Kaliq.’

Pausing in the act of knotting the belt of his robe, he flicked her an impenetrable look. ‘Just two things,’ he drawled. ‘When you prepare for bed tonight, don’t braid your hair like a governess—I wish to see it spread loose over my pillow.’

Her fingers playing with one of the ribbons, Eleni looked at him, unable to deny the small spring of hope in her heart. ‘And the other?’

His smile was cruel. ‘Make sure you don’t ever call me Kaliq in public.’