Even his own mother hadn’t recognised him as her firstborn son since he’d been a child, due to her debilitating mental illness. She still, to this day, whenever she saw him, assumed he was her beloved Nathaniel, Sebastian’s younger and only full-blood brother. The fact that she didn’t recognise his brother either and hadn’t for years, despite her obsession with him, offered little comfort. Sebastian had ceased to exist for her long ago.
He’d seen his mother only two days before, in the UK, and even though he expected nothing less after all these years, it still hurt each time to be reminded that she’d chosen to favour another over him.
So to have this woman look at him now and really see him, and want him for just who he was as a man, as Sebastian, was heady. For a long time desire had been largely an intellectual thing for him; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d responded with such base carnality to any woman.
His hands tightened fractionally on her waist and to his intense satisfaction he saw her eyes dilate and the pulse at the base of her throat beat frantically. Her cheeks were still flushed. He had to bite back a groan of pure need. He took a breath and surprised himself by saying, ‘I don’t know you … yet I feel as if I’ve known you forever….’
Aneesa melted inside and felt a tremor run through her. She couldn’t break her gaze from his and just said huskily, ‘I know … me too. It’s … crazy.’
He lifted a hand to twine a loose tendril of long glossy hair around a finger and tugged her gently towards him. Aneesa all but fell back into his arms, and looked up, helpless to resist this vortex that was sucking them under.
His eyes were mesmerising, hypnotising. So when he said, ‘I’d like you to stay with me tonight … let me give you the experience you’ve been denied …’ her heart stopped for an infinitesimal moment.
CHAPTER THREE
ANEESA could barely breathe as it was, especially with his big hand on her waist. She’d been drenched in mortification ever since she’d so boldly all but begged him to kiss her. Even now she burned. But in truth, ever since she’d seen him in the shadows earlier, on some level she’d wished for this moment, not even knowing that she’d see him again. Not even knowing what she’d really wanted. And what she wanted now, with a fierce need, was him.
‘I …’ she began, and stopped. Was she really going to do this? Just throw caution to the wind? He subtly moved her so that her body was flush with his, so that she could feel his thighs against hers through the material of their clothes. When she felt a hard ridge she blushed even fiercer.
She stalled, trying with a desperate feeling of futility to cling onto some kind of sanity. ‘I don’t even know you….’ An insidious suspicion struck her and she pulled back slightly. ‘Do you do this often? I mean, it’s easy for you to just offer to take women to bed like this?’
He quirked a smile, a devastating smile. ‘I’ve never before met a woman and wanted her so badly that I’ve been aching to take her to bed within minutes of meeting her. Trust me. And trust that what’s happening between us isn’t usual for me on any level. Or, I think, you.’
Sebastian realised the import of what he was saying. It was true. He’d never been so overcome with a desire to bed a woman that he hadn’t been able to take her out one night and then seduce her the next, but here now with Aneesa … there was an urgency in his body he’d never felt before. It made him feel vulnerable enough to make boundaries clear from the outset. ‘What I’m proposing is that we have just this one night, where we can act on this desire. Explore it to its fullness. And you … can have your wedding night, not as you planned it … but in your own way.’
Aneesa looked at him and tried very hard to be rational. ‘You’re not just doing this out of pity?’
He smiled again and there was a touch of pain to it. He pulled her even closer so that now she could be in no doubt as to the extent of his arousal. She almost groaned aloud, a liquid heat invading her lower body, making her tremble.
‘Does that feel like pity to you?’
She shook her head dumbly, incapable of speech.
‘I wanted you from the moment I saw you arrive in that courtyard—that’s the truth. Your fiancé used you to suit his own ends … but you are an extremely desirable woman.’
He was effortlessly honing in on the insecurity she’d felt about herself as a woman for as long as Jamal had avoided making love to her. ‘I saw you in the shadows—I thought of you … just before I decided to run….’
His hands moved up from her waist, brushing the sides of her breasts until he cradled her jaw, fingers tunnelling through her unravelling hair, caressing her skull.
This was right. She felt it in every bone of her body. The primal urge to mate with this man was almost overwhelming. She wanted him to be her first lover. She was meant to be here with him, tonight. And in the days and weeks to come when she would have to deal with the consequences of her actions, she would be able to hug this secret moment to herself. Tonight would be the oasis in the storm to come. This was her chance to become a woman with a man who truly desired her—on what should have been her wedding night—and she wanted that experience more than she’d wanted anything in her life.
‘I want you to make love to me, Sebastian. Just for tonight.’
He bent his head and came closer. Aneesa’s heart threatened to jump out of her chest, and just before his mouth met hers again he said, ‘Just one night.’
She nodded her head. How could she explain to him that if her family found out about this on top of what she’d just done she might as well emigrate to Alaska forever? Anything beyond tonight was not an option and she knew that.
The kiss, like last time, started slow and gentle. But any restraint or gentleness fast disappeared in an escalating mutual fire of need. Aneesa blindly took Sebastian’s lead and their tongues duelled in a heady dance. Her hands were on his chest, ostensibly to cling onto something solid, but now they wound up and around his neck, bringing her into even more intimate contact with his lean body.
With a muffled groan that resonated right down to her toes, Sebastian’s hands slipped down her back, skimming over the curves of her waist and hips, to cup her bottom and pull her into him even more. Her breasts were flattened against his chest, nipples chafing against her tight bodice.
When she felt the thrusting force of his arousal at the apex of her legs she broke away, breathing harshly.
Sebastian’s face was flushed, eyes glittering a dark blue. Throatily he said, ‘Aneesa, I know what we just said, but if you want to stop … just say the word.’
Everything in her rejected that thought. She’d been living behind a façade of her own making for so long and suddenly things felt clear and bright for the first time in her life. She shook her head fiercely. ‘No … I don’t want you to stop. Don’t ever stop.’
In a tender gesture that made her heart flutter, he smoothed back some hair from her brow. ‘Why don’t we go somewhere more comfortable?’
She nodded and, taking her hand, Sebastian led her towards the bedrooms. That clarity hit Aneesa as they walked through the quiet and darkened suite—the magnitude of what she was about to do … and yet she knew this was what she wanted.
In all honesty she had no idea what the immediate future held for her now, and this moment in time was something she had control over. Sebastian pushed open a door and they stepped in. Aneesa saw a huge room with floor-to-ceiling windows which looked out over a glittering night-time Mumbai. And then she saw the massive bed in the middle of the room. Her heart tripped once and then took up an unsteady beat.
He let her go briefly to turn on a lamp and it threw out a seductively low light, bathing the room in shadows and burnishing Sebastian with