How to Seduce a Sheikh (4 page)

Easing her down onto the sand, he kissed her mouth again, her breasts again. She writhed delightfully, bucking up under him. Parting her legs, he moved between them to kiss her belly. A startled gasp greeted this move, and he remembered what she had said, that she knew nothing of the arts of love. The arts that it was a husband’s job to teach his wife. Obviously the man she had married had been a very poor husband. No wonder she thought herself unattractive. Zafar smiled with satisfaction as he kissed his way down her belly to the apex of her thighs. A cluster of dark curls, damp with her arousal, smelling of vanilla. Placing his hands under her bottom, he tilted her towards his mouth, parted the soft folds of skin with his lips and set about showing her just one of the many things she had been missing.

Chapter Four

Colette felt taut, every muscle, every sinew focused on riding the wave of spiralling heat that was building inside her. Shocked then excited, exhilarated, her body thrumming and pulsing in response to the way he licked, sucked, kissed, a part of her that she had never considered any man could do such outrageous, delicious things to.

She dug her hands into the sand, feeling the warm grains trickle through her fingers, and dug her heels in, too, bracing herself for the inevitable surrender to the aching, tingling, tightening within. Brief glimpses she had had of this feeling, but always they had dissipated before completion. Once, she had touched herself in the hope of reaching this place but had been too ashamed to continue. She was not ashamed now. She cared for nothing but the way he slid his fingers inside her and thrust high, the way his tongue swept over the hard, hot centre of her, his other hand reaching up to cup her breast, and the whirl of her climax sent her spinning headlong, pulsing with heat, left breathless, panting, shuddering, clinging, crying shamelessly for more.

He held her tight against his mouth, licking more slowly, bringing her gently down to earth. She opened her eyes and saw stars. Real stars, low in the desert sky. A deep chuckle made her skin prickle and her muscles tighten in some primal response. He was hovering over her, his eyes gleaming with something that looked like triumph. She did not grudge him it but reached for him, pulling him towards her to kiss him deeply, tasting her arousal on his lips. ‘I have never...’

‘I know,’ he replied with another throaty chuckle.

‘I didn’t,’ she said, laughing too.

‘And did you like it,
ma
petite
Colette?’

‘I fear the entire camp must be aware that I did.’

He laughed aloud at that, and she wondered why she felt only this wild excitement and absolutely no shame. Then his erection pulsed against her belly, and the ebb of her climax began to turn, demanding a different kind of satisfaction. She ran her fingers down his spine to rest on the taut muscles of his buttocks and arched up against him.

‘Colette.’ He shuddered. His smile fading, he kissed her again, and then again. She dug her heels farther into the sand, embracing his thighs with hers. The tip of his shaft was nudging between her legs, tantalisingly close. She ached to have him inside her, but she sensed him hesitating. ‘What is wrong?’

He closed his eyes as if in anguish. Then abruptly he rolled away from her and got to his feet. ‘
Non
.
’
He cursed quietly in Arabic. Quickly pulling on the clean tunic that had been left out for him, he handed her another. ‘There is food in my tent, the large one under the palm trees. I will escort you there. Eat and then sleep. I have many things to attend to. We leave at dawn,’ he said, and led her to the tent, where he left her alone with her thoughts and a burning sense of shame.

* * *

For the first two days and nights of the journey he kept his distance, trying to make sense of the emotions the Frenchwoman had awoken in him. Guilt predominated, for he had come alarmingly close to betraying his own code of honour by taking advantage of her. For all that she had been married, she was a relative innocent. Not only was she under his protection, but she had been through a terrifying ordeal, had come horrifically close at that slave market to enduring worse. Under such near-death circumstances, it was not surprising that she behaved so out of character. In the aftermath of a battle, lust was one of the most natural emotions for a soldier, after all.

He had not taken advantage of her fragile mental state, but it had been far more difficult than it ought to have been. Finally, today, watching her tend to the festering sores on the ankles and wrists of several of the freed slaves, admiring the gentle but firm way she dealt with the most horrible of the infections, her calm, authoritative manner earning her patients’ trust, Zafar admitted to himself that it was the simple fact that he had not found it easy to refuse what she offered that was most disturbing. He wanted her with a passion, an intensity he had thought beyond him.

He had assumed, from the fact that she made no effort to close the distance he placed between them, that she regretted what had happened at the oasis. As the third day drew to a close and night fell, Zafar began to see how his abandoning her by the water’s edge left her no option but to do so. She must think herself callously rejected.
That
he must put right immediately.

Though the caravan had settled down for the night, Colette was sitting on the divan wide awake when he arrived in the doorway of the tent. ‘May I?’ Zafar asked.

She scrambled to her feet, covering herself with one of the tasselled silk covers. ‘Of course. It is your tent, Highness.’

‘Zafar,’ he said, waving her back down onto the divan, taking a seat beside her. ‘I wish to talk to you as a man, not a prince.’ She eyed him uncertainly but sat beside him as he bid her, primly holding the emerald silk cover around her. ‘I owe you an apology,’ he said. ‘When I left you at the oasis two nights ago, I thought only of myself. I did not consider how my behaviour must have appeared to you. It was not that I did not desire you or that I was shocked by your reactions to me.’

‘It wasn’t?’

She was blushing, playing with one of the tassels on the cover, refusing to meet his eyes. He took her hand between his. ‘I thought my desire for you was obvious. Your reaction delighted me, Colette. I had not expected and I could see you had not either. I wanted more than anything to complete our lovemaking, but you have been through so much these last days and weeks and you told me yourself that you were behaving quite out of character.’

She blushed. ‘I can certainly say hand on heart that I have never thrown myself in such a brazen manner at any man before, never mind a desert prince in the middle of a desert oasis.’

‘And I can say hand on heart that it was only a supreme effort of will that made me stop. You did nothing to be ashamed of, Colette, but I very nearly did.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It is one of the first laws of the desert, to keep safe those who are under your protection. It is a rule I intend
never
to break.’ He did not say
again
. He had no need to remind himself—the guilt was there always, like a rogue cloud in a clear desert sky.

‘I thought you were just too polite to refuse an overwrought foreigner.’ Colette shook her head, half smiling. ‘I thought I had broken all sorts of protocols and probably offended you in every way possible by making advances, and I’ve been worried that I’d offend you even more by apologising.’

Zafar laughed. ‘And I thought you kept your distance because you regretted what had happened. One thing I have come to realise in our brief acquaintance is how very isolated protocol has made me. I am not infallible, though it is customary that I appear so to my people, and I would prefer that you keep that information to yourself.’

‘Then I didn’t embarrass you?’

She blushed charmingly. Her smile was generous, like the woman herself. He closed his eyes as the memory of her stretched out on the sands beneath him, crying out with pleasure, sent the blood hurtling to his groin. ‘Colette, I deeply regret that you should have thought so.’

‘I thought perhaps it might be that you’re married? I would understand if you were.’

He flinched. ‘No.’ Conscious of her scrutiny, Zafar jumped to his feet and made a show of adjusting the wick of the lamp. ‘I have no—I am not married, and I don’t have a harem—at least, I do have a harem, but it lies empty,’ he said, which was the truth and calmed him enough to allow him to sit back down again. ‘My duty is to protect those in my care. I failed in that duty once before. I vowed never to repeat that error.’

Colette frowned, distractedly pleating the tassels on the cover together, then shook her head emphatically. ‘My actions were nothing to do with being taken prisoner and sold, though I suppose there was an element of being simply glad to be alive. But that was only a small part of it.’

‘Why, then?’ he asked, intrigued.

She did not answer him directly. ‘Zafar, what do you intend to do with me?’

‘Send you back to France, of course. Did you doubt it?’

‘No. Yes. I can’t understand why you are taking me to Kharidja.’

‘It will take time to make the appropriate arrangements. I don’t know what the political situation in Cairo is, and I will not allow you to travel without being assured of your safety.’

‘The first law of the desert again.’

He nodded. ‘You have not answered my question.’

‘I will, but it’s a bit of a long story.’

Zafar pulled off his headdress, throwing it onto the floor and running his hands through his hair. ‘We have all night, and you have my undivided attention.’

* * *

Colette settled back on the divan, curling her feet underneath her, trying to decide where to start. It was an immense relief to discover that she had not misread Zafar’s attraction to her, a more than pleasant surprise to hear that it was every bit as unexpected to him as it had been to her. It had cost him to speak to her as he had done tonight, when he had no need at all to justify himself to her, was indeed quite obviously unaccustomed to justifying himself to anyone. She owed him the truth in return.

‘I told you I was a general’s daughter,’ Colette said. ‘I’ve followed the drum all my life. First with Papa and then with Leon, my husband. I met him when he was one of my father’s junior officers and when Papa died, Leon asked me to marry him. He never pretended that he was in love with me, though I know he cared for me as I did him. Ours was a marriage of convenience. When an army is on a campaign, there are advantages in having a wife to take care of the practical arrangements. I had a lifetime’s experience of doing so, and as I told you, I am also an excellent nurse.’

‘I saw that for myself today. You did not flinch at even the most horrible of those wounds.’

Colette shrugged. ‘What is the point in a fit of squeamishness when there is work to be done? Besides, I have seen much worse. Sometimes a man can lie for days in the sun in the aftermath of a battle before he is brought back to camp.’

‘So you were in Egypt with your husband. Were you happy?’

She pursed her lips. ‘I wasn’t unhappy. I didn’t know any different, you see. Papa instilled in me the need to be useful and Leon was very like Papa.’ She found herself colouring again, this time with mortification, but forced herself to continue. ‘To be very blunt, my husband found carrying out his marital duty something of a chore. I felt guilty for wishing it could be more pleasurable and assumed it was my fault that it was not. I thought I was simply not that kind of woman.’

Zafar cursed in his own language. ‘In my culture, we are taught that such a failure is always the man’s.’

‘In my culture, we are not taught anything, which is part of the problem, I suspect,’ Colette said tartly. ‘I had no idea—but then, you sensed that.’ She broke off, blushing.

‘Your husband sounds like a fool.’

Colette shook her head. ‘He was a good man and a good soldier. Leon died of typhoid in the last throes of the campaign. I stayed behind to nurse the wounded when the other wives were sent home. Then there was a delay in sending more ships, and while we were waiting, I heard of a group of deserters who had been attacked in the desert and I foolishly agreed to be part of a group that went to their aid. We were attacked, I was the only woman, the men were all killed and—
bien
, you know the rest.’

‘You were fortunate indeed not to have been molested.’

‘And even more fortunate in my rescuer,’ Colette said warmly. ‘I haven’t thanked you properly, but...’

‘I don’t want your gratitude, I told you that. I don’t think you realise what a lucky escape you had.’

‘Trust me, I do. I simply don’t see the point in dwelling on it. To snatch victory from the jaws of defeat was one of Papa’s maxims. Even when he lost a battle, he could find something positive.’

‘Admirable, though wrong-minded in my view.’

‘You do like to view every situation in the worst possible light, I’ve noticed. You sit guard in the doorway of this tent every night with your dagger at the ready. I am a very light sleeper,’ Colette said in answer to his questioning look. ‘It is very noble of you, though what danger you think I can possibly be in with an entire caravan of armed men besides yourself to protect me...’

‘You know nothing about the desert,’ Zafar exclaimed. ‘You nothing of its dangers, the ruthlessness of some, the cunning that can make use of the smallest lapse. You know nothing of it.’

His hand had gone to the dagger at his chest, his knuckles white as he tightened his hand around the hilt. Taken aback at the sudden change in his mood, Colette tried to reassure him. ‘I only meant that I feel safe here with you. I cannot imagine that anyone would dare attack—’

‘Then you are beyond naive.’ Zafar took a deep breath. ‘I did not mean to alarm you, but there are things you do not know, things you are better not knowing....’ He broke off, moving to the doorway of the tent to stare out at the desert.

What didn’t she know? It was something far more complicated than a mere underestimating of the power of desert marauders, that was for sure. Colette hesitated, but she knew him well enough by now not to pursue the matter. ‘Zafar, please don’t go back to being a prince, not just yet. I don’t know why you are so upset, but I promise you, I have no intention of allowing myself to be kidnapped again.’