Page 10 of At the Sheikh's Command
She shook her head, but his fingers slipped into her hair and held her head firm. She could do nothing but look up at him. He was much closer now. His mouth was only a kiss away. Could she? This moment was all she’d dreamed of for so long. But she hadn’t imagined rekindling their affair. She’d imagined something quite different. She’d imagined she’d watch him and his wife from a distance, watching him be a king, a different man, someone who was no longer connected with her. Instead, she’d walked straight back into the world she’d left eight years earlier.
“I don’t want you,” she managed to say.
His hold on her head firmed. “You lie.”
She tried to shake her head to deny it, but he refused to let her.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“What I mean is…”
“What you mean, Leonora, is that you don’t want to want me.”
She bit her lip. “How did you know?”
“Because it’s the same with me. I don’t want to want you, either. I have a life I need to live. I don’t need any distractions.”
“And is that what I am? A distraction?”
“An eight-year distraction I need to exorcise.”
“I can’t come to your bed.”
“Unless you do, I won’t help you find the Bahr al Noor diamond. And, without my help, you will fail, no matter what your research tells you. Because you won’t be given permission to travel unless I give my approval.”
“You’re blackmailing me to get me into your bed?” She couldn’t believe that the man she’d known, the man full of love and integrity, had turned into someone capable of this.
“You can put it how you like, but the facts are clear. We want each other and, unless you come to me, you’ll have a wasted trip. What’s it to be?”
Just the feel of his hands against her scalp, his warm breath on her cheek, and his masculine smell filling her nostrils, making her mouth water at the thought of the pleasure he could bring her, made her want to agree. But that wasn’t what she’d imagined happening. She’d planned to keep her distance, believing that would be enough. She was losing control, and she didn’t like it.
Suddenly, the sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer from the city below them filled the air. She closed her eyes. What the hell was she doing? This wasn’t her. This wasn’t what she’d come for. She opened her eyes and looked at him with a fierce expression, digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands.
“No,” she said.
He did something to surprise her then. He smiled, and she realized that she could lie to herself, but she couldn’t lie to him.
Instead of letting her go, he dipped his head and brushed his lips against hers. She could have sworn her heart stopped, before it swept into a pounding beat which had her forgetting all else except the feel of him against her. She grasped a handful of his robe in one hand, and pressed the other flat against his chest, whether to resist or to explore his chest beneath her fingertips, she couldn’t have said.
“What’s it to be, Nora?” he said, his voice roughened by desire.
She closed her eyes and looked down, struggling to calm her breathing, struggling to think straight.
Then, from somewhere temporarily buried, her rational self returned. “No,” she repeated, and he immediately stepped away.
“Goodnight then,” he said coolly, turning from her and walking back to the open door. Without a further word, he stepped out into the gardens.
It was what she’d wanted, but from the moment he’d withdrawn his hand from her, she knew she’d made a big mistake.
CHAPTER5
Leonora ran through the corridors back to her room, taking wrong turns, hardly aware of her surroundings. The flame that had suddenly burst into life deep inside of her when he’d kissed her consumed all rational thought, stripping her bare of everything except what her body needed.Him.
Eventually, she found the right corridor and hurried up to her door and entered her room. She leaned back against the door, and looked around, chest heaving with exertion and something more—a desire which she’d thought she’d get rid of once she’d seen him. She’d spent the past eight years trying her hardest to suppress it but now it had come back stronger than ever before.
It seemed that just observing him wouldn’t be enough to rid herself of her need for him. But to accept his proposal? She shook her head, trying to deny the obvious conclusion that her clever brain had reached despite her fears.
“No,” she said to herself firmly.
