Eleni felt the sting of humiliation. How insulting his words were—as if she was nothing more than a tiny cog, a part of the sheikh’s huge workforce. But that’s all you are, taunted the voice of reason. All you ever will be. His employee. His horse girl. Or was she really labouring under the illusion that sharing his body gave her any real rights in his life?
‘He probably wants you in his bed, too!’ Kaliq added.
Eleni felt sick. Not just his horse girl, but his sexual toy, too. Until he grew bored with her. And then she felt the shiver of ice over her skin as a fragmented future swam before her eyes. What would happen to her when that day came—when the prince cast her aside—when another lover caught his eye and his imagination? Eleni swallowed down the acid taste of fear as she looked at him.
‘The man is about sixty,’ she said coldly.
Their eyes met. ‘You think that a virile man’s sexual desire is ever diminished by age?’ he questioned, on an arrogant boast.
Eleni swallowed. ‘I hadn’t given it much thought,’ she said listlessly.
His eyes narrowed. What was the matter with her now? Did she not realise that her place was to smile and to please him—not to stand before him creasing her creamy skin with a frown? Perhaps he would just have to show her and drive the lesson home. ‘Come on. Let’s go. I’m taking you home to bed,’ he said roughly.
‘K… KALIQ! Oh, Kaliq! Oh!’
Waiting until the last of her breathless spasms had shuddered against his tongue, Kaliq moved up over Eleni’s naked body and looked down at her flushed face.
‘You liked that, I think?’ he murmured.
Her flush deepened, her lashes fluttering down to conceal her embarrassment. ‘Y-yes.’
‘Look at me,’ Kaliq commanded.
How could she possibly look at him after what he had just done to her? But knowing that he would insist until she capitulated, Eleni reluctantly stared into the mocking ebony of his gaze, scarcely able to believe that the sheikh had been kissing her there and what gasping pleasure it had brought her. Another shudder racked through her naked body and she swallowed. ‘Oh, Kaliq—is such a thing not… not…’
‘Not what, my beauty?’
‘Oh, I don’t know… I don’t know.’ She didn’t seem to know anything any more. ‘Wr-wrong, I suppose.’
He stroked her breast and felt its bud tighten against his questing finger. ‘Why should it be wrong?’ he queried softly.
‘Because it seems wicked, somehow.’ She wriggled her shoulders. ‘And because it feels so good.’ Just as everything they seemed to have spent this past week doing had felt good. Too good, really. Once again she felt the cold wash of fear which had begun to increasingly haunt her. How on earth was she going to be able to cope once her time with Kaliq was over?
Reflectively, he stroked a long wave of dark silken hair from her damp cheek. ‘But sex sometimes does feel wicked,’ he agreed. ‘That is part of its allure. The sense of the forbidden. The illicit.’ And the unexpected, he thought suddenly. Because Eleni had confounded him. He had never expected it to be this amazing. By now he should be growing bored with her body. Her voice should be sounding shrill to his ears. He should be looking for excuses to increasingly avoid her except for night-time—when, perplexingly, the opposite was true.
He found himself seeking her out. Luring her back into bed when they had only just left it. And discovering that she was learning the skills of sex with astonishing speed.
Her words cut into his thoughts. ‘And does it always feel this good?’
Now it was his turn to close his eyes, mainly to block out the irresistible question in hers. Her innocence was part of her own allure, as was her endless curiosity and willingness to learn. He could never recall being so relaxed and easy in a woman’s arms.
When he asked her opinion—even though asking a humble stable girl was in itself madness—she expressed it honestly. With Eleni it was as if he had stumbled upon a dark stone in the desert sand and had cleaned it up to discover that a precious gem lay beneath.
There was true intimacy between them, he realised—with something approaching dismay. And wasn’t there a part of him which wished she had experienced other lovers? So that this sense of sweet wonder she displayed in his arms did not exist—and he could have mocked and taunted her with questions about how the other men matched up to him. So that he would be spared any fleeting guilt when the time came to cast her aside.
‘You ask too many questions!’ he complained.
‘But I thought you liked me to ask questions.’
‘Not always. Now you must return the favour,’ he instructed, without opening his eyes.
Sensing that she had somehow displeased him, Eleni wriggled down and began to butterfly her lips over his torso the way he had taught her to do. She felt him writhe as she touched her tongue to his salty hardness—and he groaned and tangled his hands in her hair.
But even as she put her new-found sexual skills into practice she felt a wrench of heartache which was never too far from the surface. For it was bittersweet to acknowledge the topsy-turvy element which her life had taken on since she had become the sheikh’s lover. Physically, she was glowing like a lamp and feeling on a constant high—but emotionally, she was all over the place.
A week in England had been like a whole lifetime in miniature—a lifetime she never wanted to end. She shared the prince’s bed and ate her meals exclusively with him—and in between times, he had shown her a little of England. On his luxury jet they had flown to York and to Cambridge—when Kaliq took her to look over some of the other horses he was thinking of adding to his stables.
‘I want my polo club to be the most prestigious in the world,’ he told her. ‘To bring the best kind of tourism to Calista—and to benefit its people.’
And then what? Eleni wondered—though she didn’t dare ask. His nature was so restless she suspected that nothing—no achievement in the world—would ever satisfy him.
His life was full of acquisitions, she realised. The garage full of gleaming cars. The light aircraft he kept on a nearby airfield was rarely used and neither was the yacht which was moored down on the south coast, kept perfectly ready and waiting for one of his infrequent visits.
‘When do you sail?’ she asked him one day.
‘When the sea is at its most challenging.’
His answer did not surprise her. Risk was his most constant partner, she realised forlornly—as much a part of his character as his passion and lust for life. Was that why he refused the services of bodyguards wherever possible? Why he drove too fast and jumped his horses too high?
She kept wondering when he would take her back to Calista, but she was too scared to ask that, too—terrified that a wrong word would make it come to pass even sooner. Deep down she recognised that her time as his lover was surely coming to an end. For a man used to the most beautiful and wealthy women in the world—wouldn’t he soon begin to grow bored with his country girl? Especially now that she no longer even had the lure of her virginity to commend her. Maybe the sooner that day came around, the better it would be for her.
Because now, as she lay in his bed, pleasuring him, with the light from the afternoon sun gilding their naked bodies, Eleni realised she had fallen into the very trap he had warned her about. Somewhere along the way she had fallen in love with him. Except that Kaliq had made it sound like a reaction—a