Kitabı oku: «The Scandalous Collection», sayfa 18
She opened her mouth to say something but by then his curiously empty eyes had begun to blaze into life as he lowered his head towards her. And then it was too late.
His lips came down to meet hers and Ella’s mouth opened of its own volition, and she found herself unwillingly lost in the most sensational kiss of her life.
CHAPTER THREE
ELLA swayed as Hassan kissed her, his arms tightening around her so that every hard sinew of his powerful frame seemed to be imprinted indelibly on her body. She could feel the pricking of her breasts and their sudden aching heaviness as they pressed against him. And she could feel the coiling heat which was building inside her, pooling in an erotic, silken warmth at the juncture of her thighs.
The thunder of her heart played a backing-track as his lips explored hers and she sank against him. Yet even as his tongue slid inside her mouth and her eyelids fluttered to a close she knew that something wasn’t right. Through a haze, she tried to remember just what that something was, but her greedy body seemed intent on pushing all sane thoughts from her mind. The blood pooling in her breasts and at her groin was denying her brain the vital fuel it needed in order to think clearly. But how could she think clearly when she was feeling like this?
She gasped as Hassan caught hold of her breast, his big hand splaying with arrogant possession over its hardening swell. Against the finely beaded surface, he teased the already-aching nipple with his finger, and at that split second she remembered the source of her discomfort.
She hated him.
And he hated her.
He was supposed to be showing her the way out of the palace … and instead he had her pressed up against some cool palace wall where he seemed intent on having hot and urgent sex with her.
So why wasn’t she pushing him away and professing outrage at his seduction? Why was she winding the arm which wasn’t holding her shoes around his neck and breathing urgent little sounds of encouragement?
Because she’d never felt like this before.
Never imagined that a woman could feel like this when a man kissed her. As if this was what her body had been invented for. Her one previous sexual experience now just seemed a mockingly bland rehearsal for this rapid awakening which was making her blood fizz.
But it was wrong. It was very, very wrong.
‘Hassan.’ With an effort, she tore her mouth away from his as her high heels nearly slipped from her fingers onto the floor. ‘This is … absolutely … crazy ….’ She thought how weak her voice sounded. As if he had somehow sapped all her strength and resolve.
‘Don’t break the spell, Cinderella,’ he warned unsteadily, pushing open the door to his suite. Pulling her inside, he kicked the door shut, before taking her into his arms and beginning to kiss her again, as if that might obliterate any objections she might have.
And it was working, wasn’t it? It didn’t seem to matter that she was in the bedroom of a man who was a virtual stranger—a dark and empty-eyed sheikh who had spoken about her family with the cruel lash of his tongue. Such was his skill that he melted away every single doubt beneath the practised caress of his lips. His hands stroked their way down over her body as he kissed her, until her nerve endings were raw with desire and she was moving restlessly in his arms.
Her skin felt heated, her body on fire. She groaned when he cupped her breast again, his thumb brushing negligently against the bead-covered nipple. Why couldn’t he touch her bare skin instead, she wondered distractedly when, as if he’d read her thoughts again, he reached out and peeled down the flimsy bodice of her dress.
He leaned back a little to survey her, the way people did in art galleries when they wanted to get a better look at a painting. His eyes seemed to devour her breasts and she felt the skin tighten and tingle beneath that fierce black scrutiny.
‘Do you always go braless?’ he questioned unsteadily.
She wanted to tell him that the fashionable dress had made the wearing of a bra impossible but somehow the words seemed to have lodged in her throat.
‘But then again, why would you ever cover up anything so beautiful as these pert little breasts?’ he continued as he grazed a lazy thumb over one hardening nub. ‘I like the fact that they are so instantly accessible. That they are within easy reach of the curl of my tongue.’
She wanted to protest at the outrageous mastery of his words but he leaned forward to suckle a taut nipple and the corresponding shaft of desire made her body shudder helplessly.
She could see the erotic contrast of his black head against her pale skin and could feel his tongue licking sensual pathways over the diamond-hard nub. And suddenly, the pleasure almost became too intense to bear. She felt her knees begin to sag and he responded by bending down to curl his arm beneath them to pick her up. He carried her across the glittering gilded room towards an arch beyond which she could see a massive, canopied bed. And the reality of what was about to happen hit home.
‘Hassan?’
‘That’s my name.’
His teasing words momentarily distracted her. But not nearly as much as the warmth of his fingers as they pressed against her bare flesh. ‘We … we shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘Shouldn’t we? You don’t sound very certain.’
That’s because she wasn’t. She’d never been carried by a man before and it was making her feel intensely feminine. As if for the first time in her life, she’d found someone strong enough to protect her. Her loosened dress was flapping against her bare breasts and she looked up to find his black eyes burning into her as if she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. She had never felt quite so desired, nor so deliciously compliant.
He put her down on the bed and she lay there watching as he shrugged off his jacket and let it fall to the floor. His tie followed, and then his silk shirt. Shoes and socks were efficiently disposed of and then his hand moved to the belt of his trousers, gingerly easing them down over his formidable erection. Completely absorbed by what was happening, Ella stared at him, unable to tear her eyes away from his magnificent body. Surely she should have felt shy at such a careless striptease, but she didn’t feel a bit shy. Was that because he knew that his hard, honed body was the closest thing to perfection she had ever seen?
He moved to the bed, his face a dark mask as he bent over her, his fingers moving to find the zip of her dress. But the zip seemed to have been jammed by some errant beads and when he tugged at it, the whole thing split, sending silver beads spilling all around them, some rolling from the bed and others cascading onto the floor. Ella heard someone laugh and realised that someone was her, and that her arms were reaching up to him and pulling him down to her.
He gave an unsteady laugh. ‘So your sexual appetite matches your temper, does it, Cinders?’
‘Does yours?’ she murmured back, completely forgetting her abysmal track record with men as she felt the brush of his lips over her shoulder.
Her provocative reply fired him up even more. Hassan had never felt quite so out of control before, knowing that what he was about to do was sheer madness and yet somehow powerless to stop himself. Because hadn’t he denied himself the comfort of a woman for too long? He had forgotten how it felt to touch silken skin, and the sweet contrast between the hard male body and its yielding female counterpart.
Yet there were a hundred women more suitable as lovers than she. Women back in that ballroom who had plenty of aristocratic credentials. Who knew how to behave and how not to behave. Who would never have doused him in champagne and then submitted to him so easily. He should go back right now. Renounce this insolent Jackson while he still had the strength left in him to do so.
But now her milky thighs were spreading wide, silently urging him into their secret, molten depths, and Hassan knew that it was too late. With fingers which weren’t quite steady, he reached for a condom. Everything he wanted at that moment was centred on this woman and all he had to do was push his hard flesh into her silken sweetness to find that elusive peace.
Unable to wait any longer, he slithered her skimpy lace panties down, tossing them away before moving over her and positioning himself against her quivering heat. With an urgent moan he entered her, moving deep into her body with a trembling hunger he could barely restrain.
Ella gasped as she felt Hassan’s intimate possession, momentarily dazed as his enormous length and power began to fill her. Surely he was too big for any woman? For a moment she tensed as she allowed her body to accommodate his and she could feel herself stretching and then settling, her blood pumping and her heart giving a little leap of joy. She made an instinctive sound of pleasure and he looked down at her, smoothing some of her tousled hair from her hot cheeks.
‘Does that feel good?’ he demanded.
‘It feels f-fantastic,’ she managed.
‘Then let’s see if I can make it even better, shall we?’
It sounded like an arrogant sexual boast, but somehow she didn’t care. Especially as his words were true. He was making it irresistible. And somehow instinct made her respond to him in a way which relegated her relative inexperience to distant memory. Suddenly, she felt like the woman she had thought she could never be. Who could respond with passion and eagerness. No longer a miserable block of ice but a fiery equal who knew exactly what she wanted.
Her hips rose to meet his as she quickly became attuned to each powerful thrust. Clinging to his sweat-sheened back, she felt the powerful play of muscles moving beneath his silken skin as he thrust into her.
‘Hassan!’ she gasped.
‘Ladheedh!’ he ground out gutturally, in his native tongue
Helplessly, her head fell back as he kissed her neck and then her breasts, brushing his hungry lips against the tight buds of her nipples, increasing the urgent pleasure which was building inside her with every second.
Hassan groaned. She felt so hot. So tight. How many nights in the desert had he fantasised about being inside a woman’s body like this, before spilling his warm, wet seed onto his own frustrated fingers?
He drove deep inside her before lifting her legs to wrap them around his back so that he could go deeper still. He could feel her fingers digging into his back, could hear her breathless little moans of pleasure as his own began to snowball. Was it because it had been so long that it felt this good? Or because it was so sudden and unexpected, and with none of the usual prerequisites demanded by even the most predatory of women? He felt as if he was clinging by his fingernails to the edge of a cliff, and at any minute he might simply lose control and slip away.
For a moment, he watched her. She looked lost in her own little world: her hair was splayed against the white of the pillow and her lips were parted so that he could see the gleam of her teeth. He watched as her lashes fluttered open so that their gazes locked but he quickly shut his eyes. For why would a man ever choose to let a woman look at him when he was at his most vulnerable?
Instead he began to concentrate on giving her pleasure, and thus taking back the control he had felt in danger of losing. Over and over again, he edged her to the very brink, like a man determined to showcase his repertoire of sensual skills. He heard her murmured little pleas, the entreaties she made, all warm and muffled against his ears.
‘What?’ he whispered. ‘What is it, my fiery little beauty?’
‘Please …’ Her word trailed away as another wave of sensation swept over her.
He smiled, enjoying his habitual feel of dominance once more. She wasn’t so defiant now, was she? ‘I can’t hear you,’ he whispered.
Ella knew what he was doing. He was manipulating her. Playing with her as a cat would a mouse just before it moved in for the kill. She knew how she should respond—she should tell him to go to hell—but she was too desperate to hold back. Too eager to experience something which had always remained elusively just out of reach. ‘Please, Hassan,’ she whimpered. ‘Oh, please.’
That breathless little plea was his undoing and with one final, powerful thrust he gave her the orgasm she had been begging for, as he had been determined she would do right from the start. But even Hassan could not fail to be carried along on the powerful tide as the spasms began to rack her body and he felt her contracting around him. And somehow, there was a quality in her shuddered little cry which he had never heard before. Something inexplicable which reached out and touched the very heart of him.
Unexpectedly, his own orgasm took him under. It hit him with a powerful force which was strangely bittersweet, so that afterwards he felt as empty as if she had drained him of all life. He heard the shudder of his breath as he sucked air deep into his lungs and felt the sheen of sweat drying on his body. For a few seconds, he felt as close to death as he had ever done in battle, while beneath him, he felt her warm body stir. Long seconds passed before she spoke. He’d been praying that she wouldn’t, that instead she would just drift off into sleep and let some of this curious intensity he felt just ebb away. But it was not to be.
‘Hassan?’ she said drowsily.
‘What?’
She swallowed. ‘That was … amazing.’
‘I know it was.’
‘I can’t believe it happened. It’s never—’
‘Shh,’ he said, because her breathless words were making him uncomfortable. Carefully, he pulled himself away from her body, his skin beginning to chill as reality slowly returned and he realised what he had done. What a hypocrite he had been! So full of proud words and certainties about the correct and proper way to behave. And yet how could he possibly pass judgement on his friend Alex, when he had proved to be just as weak as he? Despite all his contemptuous words on the subject of suitability, he had taken one of the Jackson sisters to his bed, had stripped her bare and made love to her.
Why the hell had he done that?
A cold self-contempt clenched at his heart as he lay there, wondering what he was going to say to her—what could he say to her, other than words of bitter regret? But when he turned his head, he saw that she’d fallen asleep, her head pillowed on her arm. She stirred and murmured something, the dark feathered arcs of her lashes fluttering a little. And he held his breath, unaccountably relieved when she turned over and snuggled down against the pillow.
He closed his eyes as he remembered their steamy moves on the dance floor, and then that very public row. She’d left, he’d followed and neither of them had returned. His jaw tightened. What on earth must the other party guests have thought of such behaviour?
And what the hell did he do now?
He escaped, that’s what he did. Just as if he had been captured by the enemy in battle. He must get away from there before his weak body succumbed and made love to her all over again. Because while once might be regarded as regrettable, twice would be considered a serious error of judgement.
As if on cue, she gave a little moan and snuggled her face deeper into the pillow and, with the skill of the born hunter, he slid noiselessly from the bed. Silently, he collected his discarded clothes, but not before he noticed the silver beads from her ripped dress which lay scattered on the marble floor. With a shudder he imagined the reaction of the palace maids when they arrived to clean his room in the morning. But what was the alternative? That he should start crawling around on his hands and knees, trying to pick them up himself?
In the seclusion of the bathroom, he rapidly pulled on his clothes and from there he made a call to his aide.
Benedict picked up on the second ring. ‘Highness?’
Hassan’s voice was low. ‘Prepare the plane for a flight back to Kashamak. I want to leave as soon as possible.’
‘But, Highness, you’re supposed to be attending the lunch tomorrow.’
‘Well, I won’t be,’ said Hassan flatly. ‘I’ll email Alex when I get back. Oh, and Benedict, one more thing.’
‘Highness?’
‘Have someone bring some women’s clothes to my suite first thing in the morning, will you? And before you make any wisecracks, no, I haven’t suddenly acquired an appetite for cross-dressing.’
Benedict didn’t miss a beat. ‘Anything in particular you require, Highness?’
‘Something which would be suitable for the lady in question to wear back to her hotel,’ said Hassan, pausing as an inconveniently erotic stab of memory made him recall the naked body currently sprawled out on his rumpled sheets. ‘American dress size six, I’d imagine.’
CHAPTER FOUR
ELLA stirred, lost in that disorientating split second between sleeping and waking. Where was she? Luxuriously, she stretched her arms above her head. Certainly not at her house in Tooting, that was for sure, because the thunder of lorries past the window was noticeably absent.
The trill of birdsong alerted her at exactly the same time as she registered the soft, moist ache between her legs. And the warm sunlight which bathed her skin. Giving a dreamy little murmur of contentment, she glanced down to see that she was completely naked, and that there were tiny blue marks blooming on her breasts, as if someone had been grazing at them with their teeth. And that was when her memory came rushing back.
Someone had been grazing them with their teeth! And a lot more besides.
Sheikh Hassan Al Abbas, to be precise.
With a sharp intake of breath, she grabbed the sheet and pulled it up to her chin. Lying perfectly still, she listened for the sound of movement. Her eyes stole to the other side of the enormous bed, to the rumpled indentation, where Hassan had lain.
So she hadn’t imagined it.
Heat flared over her bare skin as vivid images clicked their way into her mind. The way she’d writhed beneath him and begged him to make love to her. The way she’d shuddered out his name as he’d made her climax.
She flushed with remembered pleasure. The first and only man ever to have brought her to orgasm and it had to have been him.
Her heart pounded. So where the hell was he now?
The bathroom, most probably. She raked her fingers through her tousled hair as she prepared herself for an embarrassing encounter with the man with whom she’d had wild sex the night before.
How could she? How could she have fallen into bed with a man who’d made no secret of his contempt for her and her family? Why, he’d barely had to try before she’d allowed him to practically rip her clothes off. Her eyes travelled to the silver dress which lay in a sad little heap on the floor, looking like last year’s Christmas decoration, the tiny beads scattered in all directions.
And yet, hadn’t he been the most fantastic and unselfish lover, hadn’t he destroyed all her doubts and uncertainties along the way? Beneath his expert caresses and amazing lovemaking, he’d made her feel things she’d never felt before. Desire and hunger and fulfilment. Like a real woman instead of the frozen and uptight version she’d believed herself to be.
She glanced at the watch which was still on her wrist, appalled to see that it was gone nine. How ironic that the longest sleep she’d had in years should be on the morning when she wasn’t even supposed to be in the royal palace. She was supposed to be tucked up in that fancy hotel with the rest of her family. What on earth would they say when she didn’t turn up for a post-mortem of the party over their breakfast eggs?
Where was he?
But even as the true extent of the situation in which she now found herself sank in, Ella made a decision. It had happened and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. It had been amazing and unexpected and she wasn’t going to act all shame-faced and cowed. They had both been responsible for what had taken place last night.
And if he decided that he had enjoyed it so much that he wanted to do it all over again, what then? Ella stared at the ceiling, unable to prevent the rush of memories from flooding back. Wouldn’t she be only too happy to start over, so they could prove to each other that first impressions needn’t necessarily count?
‘Hassan?’ she called softly.
No answer.
She wondered if he was in the shower, perhaps lathering creamy soap over that honed, olive skin. Suddenly, she could imagine only too well what that might look like. The hard, flat planes of his body. The powerful legs, the taut stomach and the dark mass of hair which grew around his manhood. She closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to take herself there. It had been … well, it had been absolutely fantastic. But she wasn’t going to read too much into it, not at this stage. All she wanted was to get back to her family as soon as possible, and she needed his help to do that.
‘Hassan!’ Her voice was louder now but there was still no reply, when just at that moment came a rap at the door.
What should she do?
Ignore it? Wait for Hassan to come out of the bathroom and deal with it himself? Surely, the fewer people who saw her here, the better.
But the rap was repeated and there came the distinct and undeniable sound of someone saying her name.
‘Miss Jackson?’
Ella screwed up her nose in confusion. That was her. No way on earth she could deny it. How the hell did they know she was here? Wrapping the sheet around her like a fancy-dress version of a Grecian goddess, she padded barefoot to the door, pulling it open and gazing suspiciously through the small crack. Outside stood a tall man she didn’t recognise, with a polite smile on his face and what looked like some dry-cleaning hanging over his arm.
‘Miss Jackson?’ he said again.
Ella screwed her eyes up. ‘Who are you?’
‘You don’t know me. My name is Benedict Austin and I work as an aide to Sheikh Hassan Al Abbas. He asked me to make sure that you got this.’
With this, he handed her the package and Ella blinked. ‘What is it?’
‘You’ll find some clothes in there. The sheikh was most insistent that you have them, since I understand that you …’ He hesitated. ‘Spilt some wine down your dress last night.’
Ella could feel herself blushing since she suspected that this man knew very well what had really happened to her dress. And in that moment, she felt furious. Why couldn’t Hassan have had the decency to hand over the clothes himself instead of sending one of his puppets to do the deed? She looked the aide straight in the eye. ‘Do you have any idea where he is?’
‘The sheikh?’ The aide gave an apologetic shrug as if this was a question he had been asked by indignant women many times during his career. ‘I’m afraid he had to fly back to Kashamak with some urgency. There were pressing affairs of state which he needed to attend to.’
Ella had thought it wasn’t possible to feel any worse than she already did, but this new piece of information just went to show how wrong she could be. So he had done a runner. He had left without even bothering to say goodbye.
Humiliated, she wanted to tell this Benedict Austin just what he could do with his clothes, but pride told her that was a luxury she couldn’t afford. What had happened was bad enough, but if she was seen slinking out of the palace wearing a tattered version of last night’s dress then she might as well carry a banner, announcing to the world how she’d spent the night.
‘Thank you,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, before taking the proffered package and quietly closing the door on him.
Some women might have cried, but not Ella. She was a survivor. She wasn’t about to waste her tears on someone as unworthy as Hassan Al Abbas. Instead she concentrated on making herself presentable enough to find her way out of the strange palace.
A shower and vigorous hair wash got rid of every last trace of the sheikh’s scent from her body, even if the memory of him wasn’t quite so easy to shift.
She stared at herself in the mirror, reading the bewilderment which had darkened her blue eyes and wondering why she had behaved like that.
Hadn’t she spent her whole life despairing at how easily her mother had capitulated to the whims of her straying ex-husband, allowing him back in her life whenever it pleased him? Time and time again she had begged her mum to grow a little backbone and stand up to the man who’d made such a fool of her. But once she’d realised that her mother would listen to nothing except the demands of her own heart, Ella had vowed that she would be different. She would always be cool-headed when it came to men. She would regard them with the same impartiality as she would a prospective business deal.
Up until now, she’d never had a problem with that strategy, but then, up until now she’d never met a man like Hassan Al Abbas. Nor ever felt as if she were a slave to her body. The only sexual experience she’d had prior to last night had been an unmitigated disaster, mainly consisting of her lying looking wide-eyed up at the ceiling, wondering what all the fuss was about.
Well, last night she’d found that out for herself. And suddenly she understood. Suddenly she could see why people took such huge risks when it came to sex. Why they made complete fools of themselves. She felt as if she had been initiated to a secret club, without having decided whether or not she really wanted to be a member.
With trembling fingers, she opened up the package which Hassan’s aide had brought with him. Inside lay a cool white dress and a pair of panties nestling among sheets of tissue paper. But while the dress was a fairly respectable length, the panties were nothing but a peach-coloured thong, a sexy little garment which revealed more than it concealed. The thin, satin string made her bottom look almost bare and the filmy peach fabric at the front showed the dark fuzz of hair through which Hassan had hungrily tangled his fingers only hours before.
Her skin felt tainted as she put it on, yet what choice did she have but to wear it? Had he chosen it, she wondered, or did he usually leave that kind of thing to his aide?
Slapping on some makeup from her purse and a defiant slash of scarlet lipstick, she stuffed her ruined silver dress into the bathroom bin, sickeningly aware that there were tiny beads lying all over the floor. And then, having forced her feet into what was quite clearly a pair of evening shoes, she let herself out of the suite, momentarily trying to get her bearings.
Heading towards a wide corridor hung with lavish chandeliers she caught a glimpse of perfectly manicured grass in the distance and realised that she must be near the palace gardens. Could she find some passing member of staff and ask them to arrange a car to take her back to the hotel? Was that possible?
‘Miss Jackson? Miss Jackson, isn’t it?’
The icily cultured voice behind her made Ella freeze in horror because she couldn’t fail to recognise those aristocratic tones. Oh, please don’t let it be Queen Zoe, she prayed silently, her hopes crumbling as she turned round to stare into the cold features of her sister’s future mother-in-law.
Awkwardly, Ella bobbed a curtsey, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. ‘Er, good morning, Your Majesty.’
‘It’s Ella, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right, Your Majesty.’
The queen raised her eyebrows. ‘Forgive me for being a little surprised to see you here at such an hour. I thought that you and your family were staying at the hotel?’
Ella hoped her grimace resembled a smile. What could she do, other than be evasive? Tell the queen that she’d spent the night with the sheikh? Wasn’t the fact that she was creeping around the corridors wearing new clothes which didn’t match last night’s shoes evidence enough? ‘I … I fell asleep,’ she said lamely.
There was a silence while Ella dared the queen to ask just where she’d fallen asleep. But fortunately, good breeding must have stopped her, for the older woman simply gave a disapproving look, as if she didn’t believe a word of it.
‘I see. And have you had breakfast?’ asked the queen.
‘Er, no. I’m not really very hungry, Your Majesty. In fact, I really ought to be getting back to the hotel. My mother will be wondering where I am.’
‘Yes, I can imagine she will be,’ answered the queen drily. ‘Well, speak to one of the staff and they will arrange a car for you.’
‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’ Ella gave the deepest curtsey she could manage and waited until the queen gave a brief nod before walking off.
It took her a while, but eventually she found someone and made herself understood well enough to order a car.
Minutes later she was being driven along a picturesque coastal road, grateful to put miles between herself and the Santina royal palace. But Ella’s stomach was in knots and she barely noticed the deep sapphire of the sea or the perfect blue of the sky. For once, the island’s scenic beauty left her cold.
All she could think about was the way she’d behaved. It was not only completely uncharacteristic, it was also shameful, because she had chosen the worst man in the world with whom to be sexually rampant. She’d been given the perfect opportunity to prove to Hassan Al Abbas that his bias against the Jackson family was unfair and unfounded. Yet instead, she had simply reinforced all those prejudices with her own behaviour. He’d accused the women in her family of behaving like cheap tramps and hadn’t she gone ahead and done just that?
Ella bit her lip as the car began to snake down the road towards the hotel. She’d let everyone down. But most of all, she’d let herself down.
