Nan Ryan (28 page)

Until finally the pleasure became too intense, the ecstasy too profound. She was splintering into a million pieces, erupting in a volcanic frenzy, over and over. Gasps were tearing out of her throat, her whole body was shuddering, and she was sobbing helplessly with ecstatic joy.

A great wrenching, as if she were coming apart, had her in the throes of sexual orgasm. She was coming, over and over now, in a violent, shattering climax.

Crying out in her wild ecstasy, Temple clutched at the silk counterpane and prayed Sharif would not take his dazzling mouth from her.

He didn’t.

He stayed with her throughout the frenzied eruptions, his mouth fused to her, his tongue stroking gently, until all the fierce tremors climaxed into one giant forceful explosion.

Then he moved up to stretch out on the bed beside her. Taking her in his arms, he held her still-jerking body close and kissed her flushed face until all the tiny aftershocks and passed.

Murmuring endearments in soft
, low-timbred Arabic, Sharif held Temple until she was calm and limp in his arms.

Then he brushed one last kiss to her forehead, released her, and rose from the bed. As he undressed, he gazed down at her lying across his bed.

She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. The expression of total serenity on her lovely face made her look young and innocent and trusting. Her fancily dressed hair had come undone and spilled over the black silk counterpane, shimmering like Midas’ gold in the amber lamplight.

Her pale, slender body, stretched out in arrestingly insolent repose, was pure perfection. The luminosity of her flawless ivory skin gave the impression of cool priceless marble. She might have been an ice goddess to be worshiped but not touched, or an exquisite ethereal angel—if not for the sheer black stockings, sassy lace garters, and high-heeled slippers that magically transformed her into a naughty and highly desirable courtesan.

She was, as she lay there below him, stretching lazily and sighing softly, every man’s erotic dream. The consummate combination of appealing girlish innocence and irresistible womanly seductiveness.

By the time he had shed his clothes, Sharif’s whole body ached with the overwhelming impact of his desire. He leaned down and removed Temple’s black slippers. The stockings he purposely left in place, anticipating the provocative feel of their smooth silkiness when her legs were wrapped around him.

He put a knee on the mattress, picked up the limp, sighing Temple, and laid her up among the many black and white pillows and bolsters resting against the tall ebony headboard.

Joining her on the bed, lying down beside her, he held his raging passion in check long enough to kiss and caress her into the beginnings of new arousal.

Temple was shocked at how quickly she awakened to his fiery touch. At first she simply lay there, propped up among the silk-covered pillows, too weak to move, too sated to care, allowing him to gently kiss her lips and stroke her breasts and belly.

But the next thing she knew, she was responding to his kiss, stirring to his touch. In moments she was so faint with desire that when he rose above her, she eagerly allowed him to lift her stockinged legs over his shoulders. She gazed into his hot black eyes as he slowly buried every throbbing inch of his heavy tumescence in her, filling her with himself.

Temple lifted her arms over her head and gripped the ebony headboard as he thrust forcefully into her.

His handsome face shiny with perspiration, his eyes fixed on her face, Sharif drove into her, sliding almost all the way in, then almost all the way out, each thrust penetrating deeper so that Temple could feel herself being stretched to accept him.

Her body rising to meet every powerful plunge of his, she was drowning in the splendid sensations, wanting them to last, to go on and on forever. A master of sexual self-control, Sharif knew how she felt. So he kept her in this suspended state of pleasure, enjoying her joy, able and willing to wait until she became so hot that she begged for release.

Sooner than he’d expected she was murmuring, “Sharif, Sharif … please, I … I want … I …”

“Yes,
chérie,”
he whispered, and immediately speeded his movements.

Faster, harder, he thrust into her, taking her all the way to paradise, giving her sublime pleasure that built and built until she felt she could endure it no longer, could not stand one more second of the startlingly intense rapture.

And then came her wild, wrenching explosion of ecstasy, which brought on his shuddering, spurting climax.

Afterward Sharif gently lowered Temple’s legs to the bed and carefully lay down atop her. They stayed that way for a long, peaceful time, still joined and panting for breath. His black hair ruffling against her chin, Temple sighed and smiled, thinking that making love with Sharif on the black silk counterpane had been even more thrilling than her fantasy. Dreamily she hoped they would do it again sometime.

When Temple’s limp arms finally fell away from him, Sharif lifted his dark head, looked at her, and smiled.

She was sound asleep.

He slid out of her, sat up, slowly stripped the sheer black stockings from her long, slender legs, and tossed them to the floor with the rest of their discarded clothing. Then he stretched out beside her, swept a wide portion of the black silk counterpane up over them, put an arm around her, and drew her soft, bare body close to his.

He fell asleep thinking how highly erotic and enjoyable making love with this beautiful blond woman on the slippery black silk bedspread had been.

They would have to do it again.

From that day forward, the passionate Sheik took Temple to the heights of rapture each night in his big, soft bed. Stretched out on the cool silken sheets of snowy white, they found awesome ecstasy. And sometimes—requesting that Rhikia leave the bed neatly made up—they reached carnal nirvana playing naked on the black silk counterpane.

Still, to Temple’s bitter disappointment, except for their incredible sexual liaison, their relationship did not change. Sharif still went for hours—even days—at a time hardly noticing her. More than one long hot day passed without his so much as speaking to her.

Yet when night fell and the village grew silent, he came to her where she now slept in his bed, and he took her physically—either with great tenderness and patient care, or almost violently with a passion and fire so wonderfully savage, she cried out again and again.

He was as much a paradox as ever, but one thing she knew about him: he could no more resist making love to her each night than she could refuse him. And deep in her heart, she couldn’t help but cling to the slender thread of hope that his total inability to keep from touching her, kissing her, wanting her, meant that he cared for her.

Just a little.

As for how she felt about him, she was uncertain. Reason told her she should hate him, but she didn’t. Couldn’t. Never would she have admitted it to anyone, but the truth was that the weeks she had spent with the enigmatic Sheik was the first time in years she had lost her constant restlessness. The yearning, the edginess, the wish for something more, something, she didn’t know what, had gone.

He was responsible.

The Sheik.

So whatever happened, no matter how it all ended, she would, ironically, look on this time as the desert hostage of Sheik Sharif Aziz Hamid as a warm season in the sun. A secret, precious interlude in which there had been, at long last, fulfillment.

If only physical.

Sharif surprised Temple when, one early morning as the desert dawn was breaking, he awakened her from a deep, dreamless sleep. He touched her cheek and spoke her name softly. When her eyes fluttered open, he leaned over her face and kissed her.

He kept on kissing her until she roused from her drowsiness, stirring against him and sighing softly. Then, wordlessly, he made slow, erotic love to her.

Responding to his skilled, languid lovemaking, Temple wondered at him. This was a first. Never before had he touched her in the morning.

When, afterward, she lay sated and again growing drowsy in his embrace, she learned the reason for the mysterious dawn loving.

Her head on his shoulder, her body curled comfortably against his, she was ready to drift back to sleep when he said, almost apologetically, “I am to have a visitor. An invited guest is arriving today.”

To Temple’s relief, the
Sheik’s guest turned out to be a man.

“Temple, meet my old friend, Chauncey Wellshanse,” Sharif introduced the two at noontime.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wellshanse,” Temple said as she reached out to shake the hand of the tall, blond man beaming down at her.

“Chauncey, Miss Temple Longworth,” said Sharif.

His big square hand enclosing hers firmly, Chauncey Wellshanse said, “Miss Longworth, the pleasure is all mine, I assure you. Tell me that you and I are going to be real good friends.” He shook her hand vigorously as he spoke.

Her laugh was genuine as she nodded and replied, “I certainly hope so. Your accent gives you away, Mr. Wellshanse. You’re American, are you not?”

“Guilty as charged,” Chauncey responded with a nod of his head.

“Let me see if I can guess,” said Temple. “Mmmm … Arkansas. No, Oklahoma. Or perhaps—”

“Why, bite your tongue, Miss Longworth,” Chauncey scolded mockingly. “Honey, I’m a Texan and mighty proud of it.”

Again Temple laughed. “My apologies, Mr. Wellshanse. I should have known. You’ll forgive me?”

“A woman as pretty as you?” The eyebrows above his sparkling blue eyes lifted. “I’d forgive you just about anything. And I
insist
you call me Chauncey.”

Sharif needlessly cleared his throat. Temple and Chauncey turned quickly to look at him. “Lunch is ready,” he announced in a flat, low voice. Extending his hand, he directed them from where they now stood beneath the tent’s shade canopy down to the water’s edge.

“And a good thing, too,” said the smiling Chauncey, “I’m starved.” Still clinging to Temple’s hand, he immediately turned his attention back on her. “How about you, Temple—if I may call you Temple. You have an appetite?”

“I’m famished,” she said, and allowed the tall Texan to take her arm and escort her down to the sequestered, palm-shaded spot some fifty yards below the white tent where comfortable hassocks and pillows and a table for dining had been set up on a thick rug directly beside the water.

Sharif followed, frowning.

Temple liked Chauncey instantly. Immensely attractive in a rough-hewn, unpolished kind of way, he was a big, brawny man with pale blond hair, a healthy ruddy complexion, bright blue eyes that flashed with mischief, a nose that looked as if it had been many times broken, and a mouth full of teeth that showed often in a wide smile.

She was delighted to learn that her fellow American planned to stay at the Sheik’s desert village for an extended period of time. He was friendly and talkative, fond of laughter, and full of fun.

“You must be wondering,” Chauncey said, looking across the table at Temple once they were seated, “how a big ole loudmouthed Texas boy and a taciturn Arabian desert sheik ever came to be friends.”

“Yes. Yes, I was,” Temple said, smiling, and glanced at Sharif.

Chauncey reached out, clamped a broad, sunburned hand atop Sharif’s shoulder, and said, “When old Cold Eyes here showed up at Oxford, he could barely speak English. Am I right, Sharif?” Not waiting for an answer, Chauncey went on, “The two of us were assigned to the same set of rooms in college. I don’t know which of us was the unhappiest, him or me.”

He laughed loudly then, remembering, and told Temple about how they became friends after he, Chauncey, decided he didn’t like Sharif’s looks or his attitude and told him so in loud, simple English to make sure he was understood. Sharif, Chauncey recalled, responded calmly—in broken English—that the feeling was indeed mutual. That he, Sharif Aziz Hamid, would rather share his lodgings with a stinking camel than with Chauncey.

“So I said, ‘How would you like to get that sneer knocked right off your dark face, Arab?’ And Sharif stood up, fixed me with those frigid black eyes, and said—in so many words—‘How would you like to try it, Texan?’”