He gave an unsteady laugh. ‘So your sexual appetite matches your temper, does it, Cinders?’
‘Does yours?’ she murmured back, completely forgetting her abysmal track record with men as she felt the brush of his lips over her shoulder.
Her provocative reply fired him up even more. Hassan had never felt quite so out of control before, knowing that what he was about to do was sheer madness and yet somehow powerless to stop himself. Because hadn’t he denied himself the comfort of a woman for too long? He had forgotten how it felt to touch silken skin, and the sweet contrast between the hard male body and its yielding female counterpart.
Yet there were a hundred women more suitable as lovers than she. Women back in that ballroom who had plenty of aristocratic credentials. Who knew how to behave and how not to behave. Who would never have doused him in champagne and then submitted to him so easily. He should go back right now. Renounce this insolent Jackson while he still had the strength left in him to do so.
But now her milky thighs were spreading wide, silently urging him into their secret, molten depths, and Hassan knew that it was too late. With fingers which weren’t quite steady, he reached for a condom. Everything he wanted at that moment was centred on this woman and all he had to do was push his hard flesh into her silken sweetness to find that elusive peace.
Unable to wait any longer, he slithered her skimpy lace panties down, tossing them away before moving over her and positioning himself against her quivering heat. With an urgent moan he entered her, moving deep into her body with a trembling hunger he could barely restrain.
Ella gasped as she felt Hassan’s intimate possession, momentarily dazed as his enormous length and power began to fill her. Surely he was too big for any woman? For a moment she tensed as she allowed her body to accommodate his and she could feel herself stretching and then settling, her blood pumping and her heart giving a little leap of joy. She made an instinctive sound of pleasure and he looked down at her, smoothing some of her tousled hair from her hot cheeks.
‘Does that feel good?’ he demanded.
‘It feels f-fantastic,’ she managed.
‘Then let’s see if I can make it even better, shall we?’
It sounded like an arrogant sexual boast, but somehow she didn’t care. Especially as his words were true. He was making it irresistible. And somehow instinct made her respond to him in a way which relegated her relative inexperience to distant memory. Suddenly, she felt like the woman she had thought she could never be. Who could respond with passion and eagerness. No longer a miserable block of ice but a fiery equal who knew exactly what she wanted.
Her hips rose to meet his as she quickly became attuned to each powerful thrust. Clinging to his sweat-sheened back, she felt the powerful play of muscles moving beneath his silken skin as he thrust into her.
‘Hassan!’ she gasped.
‘Ladheedh!’ he ground out gutturally, in his native tongue Helplessly, her head fell back as he kissed her neck and then her breasts, brushing his hungry lips against the tight buds of her nipples, increasing the urgent pleasure which was building inside her with every second.
Hassan groaned. She felt so hot. So tight. How many nights in the desert had he fantasised about being inside a woman’s body like this, before spilling his warm, wet seed onto his own frustrated fingers?
He drove deep inside her before lifting her legs to wrap them around his back so that he could go deeper still. He could feel her fingers digging into his back, could hear her breathless little moans of pleasure as his own began to snowball. Was it because it had been so long that it felt this good? Or because it was so sudden and unexpected, and with none of the usual prerequisites demanded by even the most predatory of women? He felt as if he was clinging by his fingernails to the edge of a cliff, and at any minute he might simply lose control and slip away.
For a moment, he watched her. She looked lost in her own little world: her hair was splayed against the white of the pillow and her lips were parted so that he could see the gleam of her teeth. He watched as her lashes fluttered open so that their gazes locked but he quickly shut his eyes. For why would a man ever choose to let a woman look at him when he was at his most vulnerable?
Instead he began to concentrate on giving her pleasure, and thus taking back the control he had felt in danger of losing. Over and over again, he edged her to the very brink, like a man determined to showcase his repertoire of sensual skills. He heard her murmured little pleas, the entreaties she made, all warm and muffled against his ears.
‘What?’ he whispered. ‘What is it, my fiery little beauty?’
‘Please …’ Her word trailed away as another wave of sensation swept over her.
He smiled, enjoying his habitual feel of dominance once more. She wasn’t so defiant now, was she? ‘I can’t hear you,’ he whispered.
Ella knew what he was doing. He was manipulating her. Playing with her as a cat would a mouse just before it moved in for the kill. She knew how she should respond—she should tell him to go to hell—but she was too desperate to hold back. Too eager to experience something which had always remained elusively just out of reach. ‘Please, Hassan,’ she whimpered. ‘Oh, please.’
That breathless little plea was his undoing and with one final, powerful thrust he gave her the orgasm she had been begging for, as he had been determined she would do right from the start. But even Hassan could not fail to be carried along on the powerful tide as the spasms began to rack her body and he felt her contracting around him. And somehow, there was a quality in her shuddered little cry which he had never heard before. Something inexplicable which reached out and touched the very heart of him.
Unexpectedly, his own orgasm took him under. It hit him with a powerful force which was strangely bittersweet, so that afterwards he felt as empty as if she had drained him of all life. He heard the shudder of his breath as he sucked air deep into his lungs and felt the sheen of sweat drying on his body. For a few seconds, he felt as close to death as he had ever done in battle, while beneath him, he felt her warm body stir. Long seconds passed before she spoke. He’d been praying that she wouldn’t, that instead she would just drift off into sleep and let some of this curious intensity he felt just ebb away. But it was not to be.
‘Hassan?’ she said drowsily.
‘What?’
She swallowed. ‘That was … amazing.’
‘I know it was.’
‘I can’t believe it happened. It’s never—’
‘Shh,’ he said, because her breathless words were making him uncomfortable. Carefully, he pulled himself away from her body, his skin beginning to chill as reality slowly returned and he realised what he had done. What a hypocrite he had been! So full of proud words and certainties about the correct and proper way to behave. And yet how could he possibly pass judgement on his friend Alex, when he had proved to be just as weak as he? Despite all his contemptuous words on the subject of suitability, he had taken one of the Jackson sisters to his bed, had stripped her bare and made love to her.
Why the hell had he done that?
A cold self-contempt clenched at his heart as he lay there, wondering what he was going to say to her—what could he say to her, other than words of bitter regret? But when he turned his head, he saw that she’d fallen asleep, her head pillowed on her arm. She stirred and murmured something, the dark feathered arcs of her lashes fluttering a little. And he held his breath, unaccountably relieved when she turned over and snuggled down against the pillow.
He closed his eyes as he remembered their steamy moves on the dance floor, and then that very public row. She’d left, he’d followed and neither of them had returned. His jaw tightened. What on earth must the other party guests have thought of such behaviour?
And what the hell did he do now?
He