The Sheik Retold(19)

I also felt everything more intensely—the vibrations in the air at his approach even before his weight sunk into the mattress. The gentle touch of his hands on my feet. The pads of his thumbs massaging the ball of one foot and then the other. A sharp scraping sensation on the arch of my foot that the moist fan of hot breath confirmed as his teeth. The smooth sweep of his fingers over my calves, followed by the light abrasion of his beard bristle. The sensation of his hot, wet tongue lapping the hollow place behind my knees.

I was no longer afraid, but drank in every sensation. My body was on fire. I could not help myself given my voluptuary nature. I had lived my entire life indulging my senses with all things beautiful—art, music, food, wine, perfumes. I had never refrained from handling anything or feeling whatever I chose. Nothing had been out of bounds to me. My wealth allowed me these singular privileges, but I had never before indulged my receptors to another's touch. I had long ago shunned the need for such physical contact as a contemptuous feminine weakness, but he had forced my submission to it.

I told myself I was only too weary to fight him, but the truth was that his all-out sensual assault had made me a victim of my own senses—of my own suppressed nature. And now awakened, I was starving for more. I relaxed by degrees as he moved up my body. My anticipation had become impatience fired with an eagerness I fought to hide while I drank it all in—secretly reveling in the fluttery feeling of his fingertips, the moist heat of his open mouth, the scoring sensation of his teeth across my skin. I burned. I ached. A haze of helpless need settled over me, causing me to throb deep inside.

I was not ignorant of the mechanics of coitus, but I had never before experienced even an inkling of sexual desire. I had believed it nonexistent in me. But now it grew in response to him, blooming inside, making me breathless, blurring my mind of all but the ceaseless ache in my loins.

A puff of hot air blew over my mound. His voice was muffled in my nest of curls. "Yes, it is as I suspected. My lamb has the loveliest golden fleece." He nuzzled deeper, and a whimper emerged from my throat. "Is this your revulsion that cries out, ma chère?"

I could visualize the mocking twist of his mouth. He plied that same mouth to my flesh, working hot open-mouth kisses low across my belly from one hip bone to the other, skirting just above my mons. My body quivered. He raised his head from me. "Shall I desist all this nasty unpleasantness now?"

My skin was damp with perspiration, but my mouth was parched. When I tried to respond, a soft, strangled noise emerged. He had sworn to make me revel in that which I most despised, and once more, the power of his will had proven superior to mine. Yet I still swore to deny him the satisfaction of this knowledge.

I set my teeth and stiffened my limbs, but my body betrayed me, belying my sham of repugnance when he slid his fingers between my legs to find the inside of my thighs damp with desire. I was wet with undeniable and unadulterated want and shuddered with ripples of pleasure as he dipped into my wetness and stroked the length of my nether lips.

He chuckled lowly, a smug and self-satisfied sound. "Say it, ma chère," he softly demanded. "Tell me you want this above all things. Tell me you want me."

I did. Desperately, but it was only the fleeting lust of the flesh that I craved—not him. Never him. "You have forced this upon me," I hissed in a rage of frustration. "This means nothing—proves nothing."

"As you will…I can be a patient man—when I choose to be."

His weight shifted away from me, and then it was gone from the bed. He removed the blindfold and gave a single tug on the silk cord binding me to the bed. My arms instantly released from above my head. Just as suddenly, he freed my legs.

I scrambled to my knees, dragging the silken coverings up around me as if their thin shelter were a protection. "Are you finished with me now?" I asked breathlessly.

"Finished?" His expression was mixed mockery and mirth. "Par bleu! I have hardly even begun, but for now, I shall leave you in peace." He strode to the curtained doorway only to turn back to me with a sardonic bow. "Bonne nuit et doux rêves, ma chérie."

He left me alone. Alone in a state of dazed bewilderment and intense sexual frustration—for I knew damned well what I was feeling—and it made me want to screech and claw and rail.

The man was a mystery, an unfathomable enigma. My mind could not reconcile his barbaric ways with the evidence of his education and refinement. I had noticed a dozen incongruities in him—his cultured speech, the well-worn books in the tent, the elegant and fastidious order of his appointments. His cruel words and contradictory tender touch crowded my recollection until my head reeled, yet I was too tired to puzzle it out, too spent in mind and body.

I did not know what would come on the morrow but gave in to my exhaustion and sank into a cocoon of covers. In the course of a single day, my entire being had irrevocably changed. At long last, and with the greatest possible resistance, I was learning obedience and humility—at the hands of this incomprehensible savage.

***

It was midday before I awoke. I had slept the deep and drug-like sleep of one who is utterly drained in body and spirit. Surprisingly, I was neither bleary nor befuddled by my surroundings when I opened my eyes but had instant and complete remembrance of everything. It seemed already years ago, when the poor, silly fool Diana Mayo had ridden blindly into the trap from which her boasted independence had not been able to save her. I had already paid heavily for my determination to ignore the restrictions of my sex, and the payment was not yet over. I shrank at the thought of confronting him again. I lay there for I don't know how long, living again every moment of the past night, until any more thought of it was unendurable.