The Sheikh's Impatient Virgin. Kim Lawrence

because she was conscious of the background clatter as Luke slipped the latch on her front door.

      ‘I won’t be a minute.’ She gave an apologetic grimace and snatched up her robe from a chair.

      ‘I do not have a minute,’ Karim observed grimly.

      His guilt climbed as he thought of his extended absence…his recollection was hazy, but one fact was inescapable: he had presumably, in some aberrant moment of unforgivable, shameful weakness, walked, or at least wandered, away from his responsibilities.

      If he was not there when Amira woke he would never forgive himself.

      The glance he slid her had the chill factor of an arctic front and Eva couldn’t help but contrast his present manner with the heat of his lips on her neck and the urgency in his hard, hot body as it had pressed into hers minutes earlier.

      ‘What time is it?’ he snapped, throwing aside the covers and vaulting with fluid grace from the bed.

      Eva tried not to stare. His body stood up well to daylight scrutiny. Perfect was like that, she thought with a sigh. His eagerness to be gone was not exactly flattering to her ego, but his departure could not, she told herself, be too soon for her.

      ‘I don’t know.’

      The honest response drew a forbidding frown.

      ‘Look, I won’t be a second…’ she called back as she ran to catch Luke. While she was answerable to nobody about whom she shared her bed with—up to this point no one—she felt an urgent need to put the record straight, and she really didn’t want Luke to leave with the wrong idea.