Never Resist a Sheikh (International Bad Boys) (16 page)

Her eyes were closed and he didn’t want that, so he leaned over her, sliding one hand behind her head, cradling it in his palm. “Look at me, Felicity.”

Her lashes fluttered, opened, the silver
gray of her eyes dark as woodsmoke. She looked dazed.

The satisfaction spread inside him. He’d given her pleasure, brought her to climax, and he hadn’t lost his control, not once. Perhaps it was possible for them to have this after all.

He held her gaze as he positioned himself at the entrance to her body, then he pushed inside in one strong, deep thrust.

Her eyes went wide, another soft cry
escaping her.

And he stopped because the sheer heat of her blanked his mind. Two years since he’d been inside a woman’s body, but even then, it hadn’t been like this. Never like this. The tight clasp of her sex around his shaft was almost more than he could bear, but he forced himself to keep still, looking down into her face.

She was panting, her breathing harsh, her eyes dark, sparks of pain
in them.

“Are you ready?” he murmured, because, holy God he couldn’t keep still any longer.

Her throat moved as she swallowed. “Y-yes.”

Slowly, he drew his hips back and flexed, thrusting deep, watching her, seeing those silver sparks of pain become something else. Her hands were lifting again, reaching for him, but he couldn’t have that. She needed not to touch him because this would only
work if he was the one in absolute control.

So he reached for her wrists again, gathered the delicate bone structure of each one in his hand, holding them above her head and keeping them there. Then he moved, feeling the intoxicating slide of her slick heat around him pleasure uncurling through his body, sweet and sharp as the bite of a steel blade.

“Zakir,” she murmured thickly, pulling against
his hold. “Oh, yes… Oh, please…this is…so good…”

He moved harder, deeper. Never taking his gaze from her face, watching the same dark pleasure that burned in him glitter in her eyes.

He’d thought her fragile, but she wasn’t. There was a strength to her, he could see that now. It was there in the way she lifted her hips, meeting his thrusts. In the way her back arched. The way she lifted her
legs and wrapped them around his waist. Giving herself utterly to the experience and to him.

“I w-want to touch you,” she whispered, moving restlessly under him. “Please. Let me.”

He shook his head, keeping his grip on her, feeling the fragility of those narrow wrists in his palm. For someone so small and fragile, she had the power to undo him completely. In fact, she was doing it now, with
each soft cry she made, with each sensual, unpracticed move of her hips. With the heat of her body and the way her sex gripped him, held him.

With the way she looked into his eyes, with hunger and longing, letting him see all that he was doing to her. Opening herself up to him, unafraid.

Something in his chest twisted, a tightness he’d never felt before. It was disturbing so he pushed it aside,
concentrating instead on the feel of her body beneath him. The shift of her hips and the movement of her small, high breasts. On the scent of flowers and musk and a warm, spicy note that was all Felicity.

He moved faster, using his free hand to grip her hips, holding her steady as he thrust deep, the friction becoming too much, the pleasure overwhelming.

She arched her back like a cat, her arms
straining against his hold, crying his name. And then he felt her sex grip him tightly, convulsing around him.

Thank God.

Zakir released the leash he had on himself, driving hard inside her, letting the pleasure grip him by the throat and squeeze. Until his vision dimmed and there was nothing but the slick, wet heat of her. Nothing but the unendurable tension drawn so tight he couldn’t bear
it.

Then he leaned down and covered her mouth, kissing her hard and wet and deep as the orgasm came for him. Swift and annihilating as a bullet to the back of his head.

F
elicity couldn’t seem
to get a breath. She lay on the couch with her eyes closed, her body trembling from the force of a second climax so intense her eyes had just about rolled back in their sockets…

Wow.

That’s all you can say? Wow?

Okay, so that was a stupid word and not nearly enough to encompass everything that had just happened with Zakir. But then, she had a feeling
no word would
ever
be enough to encompass it.

Zakir’s grip on her wrists was punishing, the sound of his harsh cry echoing in her ears. She could feel the heavy weight of him crushing her against the cushions of the couch, the long, thick length of him still buried deep inside her.

She felt stretched and sore and…sated. And good. So, so good.

Slowly, she opened her eyes.

He was looking down
at her, black gaze glinting with fierce possession. There was a flush to those aristocratic cheekbones, his mouth curving in a smile of deep satisfaction.

“Any more questions?” The heat in his voice made her skin prickle all over.

She grinned, feeling ridiculously pleased with herself for some reason she couldn’t possibly fathom. “Actually, I do have a few.”

He gave a low laugh, the soft, rough
sound of it sending a little thrill right through her. “Of course you do. But not now. I think we both could use some recovery time.” Gently he slid from her, moving off the couch, pulling up his black pants and tucking himself away.

She rolled over onto her side, watching him as he went over to the far side of the room where there was a set of cupboards. He opened them up, taking out a few things.
He had his back to her, the muscles of his shoulders rippling with his movements.

And her mouth dried. Such wide shoulders. So strong. He could carry anything. Protect anyone. In fact, hadn’t he done that the previous night? Taking her away from Faisal, believing her when she said it hadn’t been her fault. Defending her. Taking her side.

A sudden longing tightened in her chest. She couldn’t
remember the last time anyone had taken her side. Her father never had because he’d never been interested. While her mother… Well, everything was Felicity’s fault. Even the divorce.

Especially the divorce.

She shut her eyes. No, that wasn’t her fault. Her parents’ marriage had been on the rocks even before she’d been born and having her hadn’t changed that, no matter what her mother told her.

“If you’d been a boy or even a different kind of girl, this would never have happened, Felicity.”

The sound of a footstep near her, a big, warm palm on her side, drowned out the sound of her mother’s anger. Her mother’s hopelessness.

Her eyes snapped open. Zakir was standing there, holding a white towel. “On your back.”

“Why?”

He didn’t reply, that warm hand pushing until he’d rolled her onto
her back himself. Then, very matter of factly, he pushed his hand between her thighs, using the towel to clean her up.

She flushed and tried to bat his hands away. “Stop, I can—”

“No.” Just a simple word, but it held the weight of mountains, leaving her with no option but to sit there while he moved the cool damp towel on her, making her shiver and blush. But it felt good, no denying that.

When he’d finished, he threw the towel into a nearby wicker basket. “If there is a child, we will deal with that when the time comes,” he said.

“Child? What child?”

He stared at her, very direct. “I did not use protection, little one.”

Felicity blinked, a cold sensation sliding down her spine. Oh, God. No, they hadn’t. She hadn’t even thought of it and he’d just…

“Why not?” Her voice sounded
weak and shaky, the warm, relaxed feeling from the sex dissipating suddenly. “I mean, I don’t have any. It wasn’t like I packed my suitcase thinking I might get kidnapped by a medieval sheikh and taken to his castle, and I’d need to pack some condoms, just in case.”

He reached out a hand, cupped her cheek with a gentleness that had her breath catching. “I am sorry. I did not have any on hand.”

“But it’s not just kids we have to worry about, Zakir.” She was starting to feel panicky. “You know that, right?”

“Of course. But you were a virgin and I have been celibate for two years. Neither of us is in any danger of disease.”

He sounded so calm. But then of course he would. Everything was going exactly as he wanted it.

She swallowed, pulling away from his hand and slipping off the couch.
She felt cold and scared all of a sudden, like she was falling slowly but inexorably down a mountainside and there was nothing to hold onto, nothing to stop her fall.

She’d only come down here to try and get more pieces of the puzzle that would unlock him, that would hopefully give her some way of getting out of this ridiculous marriage situation. But all she’d done was manage to get herself
in deeper.

If she wasn’t careful she was going to trap herself and then there would be no way out.

“Felicity.” His voice was so deep and rough, the sound of her name foreign and exotic on his tongue. “I will take care of you, you know that.”

“I don’t want you to take care of me. I never wanted this. I never wanted
any
of this.” She bent to grab a towel from the stack nearby since he’d neatly
destroyed her jeans and panties, only to have his long fingers wrap around her wrist. She flinched as he brought her around to face him again.

Anger glittered in his eyes. “But you wanted me. Do not pretend otherwise.”

Of course she couldn’t, not when she’d been very, very obvious about it. God, why hadn’t she thought about protection?

Because you lost your mind over him. Because you were desperate
for him.

“I’m not.” She tried to swallow past the lump of fear in her throat. “It’s just…a kid shouldn’t be used like that. A kid shouldn’t be…” She stopped, realizing where the words were coming from.

“A kid should not be what?” Zakir demanded.

“Nothing.” She jerked her hand out of his grip. She didn’t want to talk about this, not now, not with him.

He stared at her a moment, his expression
shuttered. Then abruptly he turned to the other thing he’d brought from the cupboards and laid on the couch, a length of deep blue silk. Picking it up, he held it out to her. “Here. You may dress in that.”

She felt shaky and angry and vulnerable. Why had she said that? This was a different situation to what happened with her and her own parents. Totally different. “Why didn’t you ask me, Zakir?”
she said thickly. “Why didn’t you warn me? Or does what I want not matter at all?”

His expression closed up completely. “Dress,” he said, ignoring the question. “In a few days we will be leaving for the desert on a visit to the tribes.”

She stared at him, the blue silk clutched in her hand. “The desert?”

“Yes.” He turned, heading toward the doors. “You need pack nothing, all that will be taken
care of. Until then, you may do as you wish.”

Felicity let out a long breath, watching as his tall figure strode out of the training room, leaving her standing there naked and confused, and strangely, inexplicably hurt.

She swallowed, slowly opening out the silk in her hands. It was a beautiful robe, the material soft and warm on her skin.

Her hands shook as she put it on, but no matter how
tightly she wrapped it around herself, she was still cold.

*     *     *

A couple of
days later, Zakir stood in the shade of his tent’s awning, trying to have a discussion with the chief of Al-Shakhra’s largest desert tribe, only to find his attention yet again distracted by Felicity.

Which was nothing new. She’d been doing that ever since they’d arrived
at the desert camp the previous day. And not because she was constantly demanding his attention, but because she’d been doing the exact opposite.

Their encounter in the training room had not gone as he’d wanted. At least, the pleasurable part of it certainly had. How it ended, however, had not. And the truly annoying part of it was that he had no one but himself to blame.

He should never have
gotten angry with her when she’d protested about the fact he hadn’t used protection. But he had gotten angry. Mainly because he’d experienced a very unwelcome attack of regret.