Page 18 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

“You’re going to make me topple to my death,” she gritted at him, which was in no way a sweet thank-you for the consideration he’d shown her. “Is that what you want?”

“Why would I want your death?” he asked, his voice lower than before. It was suggestive, being this close to her. When he could have leaned only the slightest bit forward to taste her, had he wished. “Unless it is a little death you mean. In the French sense of the term.”

He could feel the heat that moved over her then, so bright and intense it singed them both. As if they were both imagining the way she’d come apart beneath his hands in that hotel bed, when Malak had taught her how very much her body thirsted for a man’s touch.

For his touch.

“I would prefer not to die,” she said, and her voice was tighter than before. As if she was fighting not just Malak, but herself. “In a big or little way, thank you very much.”

“Explain to me what you hope to gain with these displays.” Malak stayed where he was, so close to her that his mouth was very nearly touching the satiny expanse of her neck. “Will you stand at attention forever when we are alone in a room? Will you refuse to wear clothes appropriate to your station, preferring to shuffle around the palace in these strange costumes that make the servants imagine you are mad? Where does it end?”

Her breath came raggedly, but when she spoke, her voice was cool. On some level, Malak admired it.

“It ends when I get to go home. Back to my actual life and away from all this...nonsense.”

“You must know that will never happen,” he said, and he didn’t attempt to sugarcoat it. He stated it baldly. Without apology. And moved his head back as he did, so he could look her in the face.

She breathed in hard then, as if he’d hit her.

“I would very much like to blame you for concealing my son from me for all these years,” Malak continued in the same stark way, there in the sweet dark with only a scant centimeter between their bodies. “But I find I cannot. I cannot pretend that I would have returned to find you under any other circumstances than these.” He inclined his head. “I forgive it.”

If he expected her to collapse into gratitude, he was in for a surprise. Because this was Shona. And she only glared at him in a kind of fury.

“How kind.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. Another thing he had never heard directed at him, not before this moment. Not until tonight. He hardly knew how to take it. “How lucky I am, indeed, to have been strong-armed into abandoning my entire life and everything I’ve ever known by a man so...understanding.”

Malak laughed. “You do not seem to comprehend the situation you find yourself in, Shona. If I were less understanding, less kind, I would see that you were punished forever for this sin.”

“I assumed this was the punishment.” She sniffed. “A prison is a prison no matter how many clothes your minions fling across my bed every morning, Malak. You’re holding me hostage no matter how you dress it up. No matter how you dress me up.”

Malak was finished holding himself back. He’d had more than enough of holding himself in check and pretending her defiance did not prick at him, when all he wanted to do was get his hands on her. And reacquaint himself with that impossibly lush mouth and the lithe, curvy body that haunted him.

He needed to teach her how foolish she was to test him in such a blatant manner, as any woman from Khalia would have known full well. Malak had never understood Western women and their inability to understand these intimate battles. Or how best to fight them. Why confront a man head-on and lose when there were so many softer, more devastating ways to fight?

But the truth was, he wanted more than just another hot night with this woman who was now inextricably linked to him for as long as they both drew breath. He wanted more than sex.

Malak wanted nothing short of her total surrender.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t touch you,” he murmured, there on the balcony with his body so close to hers at last. She shivered, and he smiled. “Tell me why I should keep my hands to myself, Shona. When neither one of us wants it.”

“I don’t—”

“Tell me one thing that is not a lie, and who knows? I might let you go. Tonight.”

Her dark eyes found his and held, and he was the one who had to repress a rolling sensation that was entirely too close to a shiver of his own. “I think you’re the one who’s lying.”

Malak smiled at that and then he bent his head, pressing his mouth against the elegant ridge of her collarbone, there where the collar of her tunic exposed it. She jolted, but she didn’t shove at him. She didn’t push him away.

And she tasted better than he had remembered. Better than he’d dreamed. Rich, dark cream, sugar and need.

Heaven, he thought.

“Tell me,” he urged her, with his lips against her skin at last. “Tell me what you need, Shona. And you might just get it.”

“I want...” Her hands gripped the stone she leaned against, but as she spoke, her head tipped back to give him better access. “I want...”

“I know what you want,” he told her, low and gravelly and no longer entirely in control.

And then he stopped playing and set his mouth to hers.