The Sheik Retold(38)

"Or is this what you prefer?" I finally asked in a breathless tone. I closed my eyes, concentrating on his verge pulsing deep inside me, and squeezed my inner muscles. The silence between us was broken by his sharp intake of breath. I once more had the advance of surprise, and I held on to it as I continued milking him in slow and deliberately cadenced contractions.

He still held my shoulders in a bruising grip. He gradually eased up, and then with a guttural groan, he began to move again. Slowly. Methodically. He receded by inches and then thrust back in. Deep and then shallow. Shallow and then deep.

He raised one of my legs, kissing the length until my ankle rested on his powerful shoulders and then repeated with the other, pausing to lick the hollow behind my knee. It was a sublimely sensitive place that always sent ripples of pleasure through me. Yes, my desert lover knew me well.

My climax coiled deep in my belly with this exquisitely sweet and slow ebb and flow, a purposeful plunge and drag. I was very close, and he knew it. He thrust deep and stilled again, his voice lowering to a tone as smooth as velvet. "You will do as I wish?" The words were posed as a question, but I knew the implied command. Still, I perceived it as an olive branch, another compromise, another truce.

"I have no choice," I whispered the lie.

I did indeed have a choice. I chose my freedom. As soon as he left the camp, I would make my escape. It had to be now, before I lost the desire…before I lost myself completely. I was already slipping away after allowing him to take possession of me in tiny increments. If I did not leave soon, he would own me in truth—body and soul.

For a moment he looked down at me with smoldering eyes. "Good," he said softly, all the former ferocity dying. "You do understand. Take care you do not wake the devil in me again, ma belle."

He then gave me three more hard and purposeful thrusts that sent me shuddering over the abyss and withdrew to spend himself on my belly, his gaze never leaving mine. It was a symbolic gesture. He was marking me as his own. A moment later, wearing the look of a satisfied lover, he cupped my face with both hands. This time his kiss was all that I could ever desire.

***

With his attention on a broken fingernail, Ahmed rose from the bed and padded to the dressing table for a knife. I followed his every movement, watching him with bemusement as he carefully trimmed the nail with his bejeweled jambiya. I had often marveled at, amongst myriad other things about him that puzzled me, the fastidious care he took of his person, especially his well-manicured hands. He had beautiful hands. Large palms with long brown tapered fingers, possessing brutal strength and exquisite tenderness.

He returned to me with the knife still in hand. I thought he intended to lay it on the bedside table, until he came over me with his mouth compressed and his brows drawn together with a murderous look. He raised the knife. "Do not move, ma chère, and it will be over quickly."

My heart froze. By Allah, I would surely kill you first. I closed my eyes and stifled a gasp.

A millisecond later the dagger plunged into the pillow beside my head.

"A deathstalker," he said. "Three times more venomous than a king cobra. One knows them by their bilious color." I gazed in horror and breathless shock at the deadly little yellowish-green creature impaled on the end of his blade.

"This is the second scorpion I have found in the tent this week. Zilah is too careless," he continued in his soft and lazy tone. "You must insist that she puts away your boots and does not leave your clothes lying on the floor."

His manner could not have been more casual! Although he had probably saved my life, I still flushed hotly at the nonchalant reference to the intimacy of our living arrangements and the implied continuance of it.

When he gazed at me again, his expression was once more stern. "I shall indeed bring Raoul with me to this camp, but I promise you, ma belle, were he not my lifetime friend, a man I implicitly trust, you would remain in seclusion for the duration of his stay."

I digested the words he spoke so blithely, appalled that he would even think to put me in seclusion like the women of a harem. But my sheik would always demand from me what I could never give, and he could never give to me what I would demand. We were from other worlds, he and I. Although we had collided with a violent passion that created matchless fireworks in the heavens, our lives could never merge.

Weeks ago I had left Biskra seeking adventure and had found far more than I'd bargained for—thirty days of searing heat and as many nights of scorching passion. But the month I promised myself was at an end. It was time to return to my own world and he had unwittingly provided the opportunity.

***

Later when I rose from bed, my gaze rested on the table beside it. There lay his dagger—the deadly jambiya. I picked it up, examining it slowly, reverently. The sheath alone, wrought of silver, was a bejeweled work of art. If weapons such as these were a show of a man's status, his was that of a king. But for all of its beauty, I was in even greater admiration of its lethal utility. I withdrew the ivory-handled blade and turned it over in my hands. The curve of it lessened the need to bend the wrist, making it a more superior stabbing weapon than a straight blade. The heaviness of it enabled it to inflict deeper and larger wounds, to cut with relative ease through muscle, and slit entire organs. Could I shed his blood with it if he tried to stop my flight?

My pulse raced, and my breath came quick and short at the notion of plunging it into his heart. Weeks ago I could have…and likely would have. But now? No. I knew I could not.