Page 32 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

CHAPTER NINE

ITWASAS if Shona had been swept out to sea.

A wave of sensation crashed over her and dragged her off, tumbling her end over end and tossing her far away from anything like land. She knew she needed to swim in the few moments she had left before she began to drown.

But Shona didn’t know how to swim. She wasn’t sure she knew how to float. So instead, all she could do was cling to Malak as if he was a lifesaver when she knew very well he was the reason she was out there fighting to stay above water in the first place.

Not that any of that seemed to matter much when he kissed her.

He kissed her and he kissed her.

She didn’t know how to keep track of all the feelings and sensations that swirled around her and inside her, so she poured herself into the kiss instead. She didn’t know what she wanted—or she didn’t know how to express it—so she stopped worrying about it and lost herself in the slick magic of his tongue against hers.

He’d called her out and then he’d called her treasure, and how could she be expected to handle that kind of whiplash?

She wound her arms around his neck. She stopped pretending that she didn’t hunger for him with every part of the body that had already betrayed her so comprehensively out on that balcony.

His hands moved down the length of her back—though it hardly felt like her back at the moment, covered as it was in the finest fabric Shona had ever touched—and he made a low noise in the back of his throat when his palms moved over her bottom.

Then the world seemed to move in a dizzy little circle, and when it was done, he was sitting on that bench next to the fountain and she was on his lap, astride him, her back to his front.

He was that strong, she thought in a kind of dazed amazement. He could simply lift her and position her and do as he wished with her.

The notion made her shudder.

“I want you to watch,” he told her, his voice low and gritty with that same need she could feel storming through her. Changing her. Altering the bones inside her skin. Making her imagine things she’d given up on so long ago she’d forgotten it was possible to want them in the first place. “I want you to tell me what you see.”

They were reflected in so many different mirrors. Malak was beautiful, as big and broad as he was lean. He held her so easily, there on his lap with his strong arms wrapped around her waist, and try as she might, she didn’t see anything resembling a treasure. She saw the same thing she’d seen in the reflection back in her rooms.

Seeing herself dressed up in a princess costume only pointed out how far away she was—and would always be—from ever being such a thing.

But she didn’t feel the lurching, awful knot in the pit of her stomach anymore the way she had when she’d first caught sight of herself. And she knew it had everything to do with the way Malak’s hands moved over her. His palms found her breasts and he lingered there, playing with pressure until she moaned and moved against him, wordlessly begging for more. She watched him track his way over her abdomen, then reach down farther, raking up the skirt of the long, emerald-green dress to expose her thighs.

And he didn’t stop there. He pulled up the dress farther and farther, until she was sitting on his lap with only his trousers and her skimpy little panties separating them.

“I can feel your heat,” he said against her ear, his voice as rough as it was warm against her skin.

Shona didn’t want to look anymore. She wanted him, too, with a kind of desperate greed she was afraid to examine too closely. And those things fused together as she leaned back against the wall of his wide chest, angling herself so she could set her mouth to his again.

She lost herself in that kiss, again even as she felt his hands busy beneath them. He tugged at her panties until she felt the tugging give way and understood that he’d ripped them from her body.

It only made the way his tongue dueled with hers that much hotter. Better.

He broke the kiss, his hands at her hips. He lifted her up and laughed a little at the small noise of distress she made, then settled her down on his lap again—except this time, she could feel that extraordinary length of him between them.

Hard. Thick.

Hot.

Better by far than she remembered.

“Watch,” Malak ordered her, his voice deliciously stern.

And Shona did.

His fingers dug into her hips as he lowered her, so slowly it was like an exquisite torture, onto the part of him that was hardest. The part of him she wanted most, as she melted in helpless longing. Her dress slid over her thighs again and hid what he was doing from view in those mirrors, so all she could see was Malak behind her, concentrating fiercely, and her own face.

Her own surrender was like a glare illuminating her.