The Sheikh's Baby Omnibus (25 page)

She was looking at him as every man wanted the woman he desired
to look at him, Vere acknowledged, as he fought against the surging heat of his
physical response to her. She was looking at him as though she had just seen the
world’s rarest and best treasure.

She was a very good actress, that was all, he warned. But his
body wasn’t listening to him and it was too late now to make it listen. Her skin
was the colour of milk, spread against the soft coffee colour of the bedding.
The honey blonde curls on her head were matched by those that nestled against
her sex, providing a covering that served more to draw attention to the soft
flesh beneath than conceal it. He lifted his hand and laid it over her sex,
cupping it and feeling the heavy kick of heat that punched through him as she
arched upwards. Her nipples were flushed a dark rose colour against her
paleness, and when he softly pinched one of them she cried out in longing, and
gripped his shoulders as she urged him down to her.

He could feel the bite of her nails against his skin like a
goad, the slight pain they were inflicting underlining and enhancing the
ferocity of his own passion. Like a dam newly breached it surged and boiled,
flooding through him to sweep aside anything and everything that tried to stand
in its way. It knew no master other than itself, and it dictated where he placed
his lips, his hands, and the words of encouragement and enticement he whispered
so passionately.

He tasted of musk and sweat, sharpened with salt where the cool
night air touched the warm, nude male flesh that wasn’t heated by her own body,
and Sam knew that his scent would be with her for ever, just like every precious
breath of time they were now sharing.

All the reasons she should not be doing this had been left
behind, abandoned and unwanted. In the lamplight she could see the small
indentations left on his skin by her nails. The sight filled her with an almost
primitive surge of female triumph. He was hers now, his flesh bearing her mark
of possession just as all the places of sensuality on her were receiving the
brand of his touch.

He was bending his head, running his tongue over her nipples,
first one and then the other. Both were now swollen and tight, gleaming damply
from his caress.

He covered one with his mouth and tugged delicately on it,
causing a burst of violent pleasure to galvanise her whole body as she felt the
soft, deliriously erotic grate of his teeth against her sensitive flesh.

She must have cried out, because she could hear the echo of her
longing shuddering round the tent. His every touch was a dizzying new pleasure
previously unknown to her and unexplored. Nothing in that youthful fumble long
ago had prepared her for this. It was all so new, like stumbling upon an
unsuspected secret hoard of priceless treasure. She wanted to linger over every
individual piece, taking her pleasure in it and from it, but at the same time
she was being driven by an ever-increasing sense of urgency that would not
rest.

Vere could feel the thundering jolt of his heart slamming into
his chest. Why was he reacting like this? Like a boy with his first woman—all
trembling hands and pounding heart, half afraid that his body was so out of
control that he might end up disappointing her and shaming himself. The ability
to be a considerate and accomplished lover was a skill he had set himself the
task of learning as part of his journey along the road to manhood, along with
many other things. His goal had been to gain that skill, not to take pleasure
for himself, and now he was being overwhelmed by needs and sensations that were
totally new to him.

He wanted her so badly. More than he had ever wanted anything
or anyone. He wanted her, bone and soul deep, burned into him and branded on him
in such a way that she would forever be a part of him. Like a fever, even when
the desire left him it would be inside him, and he was powerless to stop
that.

He reached out to cup her sex with his hand, his fingers
trembling slightly as she yielded to his caress.

Sam moaned, her body trembling beneath the intensity of her
need. She curled her fingers into her palms, silently willing him to touch her
more intimately, and then realising when he did that even that was not enough to
satisfy the hunger gnawing at her.

She was so soft, so wet, and his body wanted her so badly.
He
wanted her so badly, Vere admitted. And that
need pushed aside all the barriers he had shored up against that admission and
the full extent of his own subjugation to it swept over him. He had tried to
avoid this, had even tried to stop it, but now, in a final moment of true
knowledge of himself and his fate, Vere was face-to-face with the truth, heart
to heart with the woman who had brought him to it, and there was no going back.

Vere positioned himself over her, unable to deny himself the
pleasure of caressing her as he prepared to enter her. Her body welcomed him and
embraced him so sweetly that it was like coming home to a place that was his and
his alone. Each stroke, each thrust of their bodies as they came together, was a
perfect meeting of two halves of one whole. This was his fate and he welcomed
it.

This was it—this was what she had yearned and ached for, what
she had been made for. Sam shivered with excitement as she felt each firm thrust
of Vere’s body within her own. How could anything be so perfect, so uplifting
and emotionally intense that it filled her eyes with tears and made her throat
ache with the sounds of her own joy? She could feel every movement of him within
her, every particle of him, as though her own flesh was so extraordinarily
sensitive to his that she was aware of even the smallest pressure of male muscle
against the female flesh that contained him. It had been so long that this might
as well have been her first time. But of course it was not. Then she had—

Sam tensed, horrified, as she suddenly remembered what neither
of them had done and ought to have done.

‘Stop!’ she told Vere urgently.

He hadn’t heard her, Sam recognised. He was so lost in his own
desire and in her own... She struggled to do what her conscience was urging her
to do, but it was far too late. She was as powerless as he was to resist the
swift tide of ecstasy he was driving her to ride. If she had to stop now... But
she couldn’t. Instead she clung to him as she cried out when the pleasure became
too intense and took her to the stars, then gasped and wept tears of joy whilst
the final pulse of the satisfaction he had given her met the forceful surge of
his completion.

The heat of
their mutual desire had
cooled now, and yet Vere was still here with her, still holding her—surely in a
parody of the tenderness she secretly longed for and knew she could not expect.
It was lust that had driven him to have sex with her, that was all. How could it
possibly be anything else after the things he had said to her and the way he had
behaved towards her?

He should go. Vere knew that—just as he knew he should never
have come here in the first place. Had a part of him realised even before they
had left the main camp that this would happen? Had he deliberately planned for
this? He had certainly wanted it—and her. Everything about their coming together
had been wrong, and yet everything about it and her had felt so very right—more
right than he could ever possibly have imagined sexual intimacy to be for him.
Lying here now, with her in his arms, for the first time since the death of his
parents he felt at peace and complete.

What was this? He wasn’t the kind of man who needed a woman to
make him feel complete. He was the ruler of a small and vulnerable state: a man
whose energies were needed to keep the delicate balance of power they shared
with their neighbours.

Maybe so, but he was also a man, and right now all he wanted
was to be that man and be with this woman. This woman who was causing him so
much trouble—a woman who had been bought by another man. Vere knew that he
should reject her and leave her, but somehow he couldn’t. His emotional need to
be with her surmounted what his head was telling him to do.

He lifted his hand to cup her face, feeling his heart turn over
inside his chest when she turned her head to press a small fierce kiss into his
palm. It was as though the sexual release of their lovemaking had opened a door
into his emotions, allowing them to spill out from the place where he had locked
them away. He had wanted her like this from that first heartbeat of recognition,
that first look and touch. It was too late now to deny it. Something about her
compelled and commanded him, overturning every barrier between them.

Sam looked at Vere with helpless adoration. He was being so
tender, so very much the lover she had dreamed he would be from that first
moment of seeing him. The awkward experience that had dealt with her physical
virginity had done nothing to change the status of her emotional and sexual
virginity—that was something she had only experienced now, in Vere’s arms.

Sam knew without him having to say so that Vere wanted them to
make love again—but she had no excuse this time. The practicalities had to be
discussed and dealt with.

‘No,’ she told him gently, staying his hand as it moved down
her body.

Immediately Vere withdrew slightly from her, the old wariness
taking the place of his earlier mood. She was rejecting him, pushing him away,
and he could feel the pain he had always dreaded tightening its grip on his
heart.

‘No?’ he queried sharply.

‘We shouldn’t have done what we did the first time without
taking proper precautions,’ Sam told him.

‘Precautions?’

Vere was looking at her as though she were speaking a foreign
language, Sam thought.

‘I’m not using any form of birth control,’ she told him
quietly. ‘And then there’s the matter of our mutual sexual health. I... . My
last partner was my first, and that was a long time ago, so I know there is no
question of me being a risk to you... .’ She was stumbling a little over her
words now, self-conscious in the reality they were creating in a way she hadn’t
been during their physical intimacy.

Vere registered the surge of male pleasure it gave him to hear
her hesitant admission about her lack of any real kind of sexual history, but it
was pushed slightly to one side by his outrage that she should find it necessary
to question his own sexual morality and healthiness.

Vere looked so affronted that had it not been for the
seriousness of the situation Sam could almost have laughed.

‘You cannot imagine that my sexual health could in any way put
you at risk,’ he challenged her.

‘Why not?’ Sam countered steadily. ‘You’re a sexually active
man, after all.’ Her voice might have sounded steady, but she was glad to be
able to duck her head so that he couldn’t look into her eyes and see there the
pain it caused her to think of him with other women.

‘How do you deduce that?’ Vere demanded peremptorily. ‘Since,
by your own admission, I am only the second man you have given yourself to.’

‘A man in your position is bound to...to have experienced more
of life in every way than a woman in mine,’ Sam answered him and then added
huskily, ‘besides, I cannot imagine that a man could...’

‘Could what?’ Vere demanded, when she suddenly went silent and
refused to look at him.

‘Could make love to a woman as beautifully as you made love to
me without...without having a lot of previous experience,’ Sam said
reluctantly.

Somehow or other he had reached for her hand, was holding it
tightly in his own.

‘If the experience was beautiful then that was because of the
uniqueness of what you brought to it yourself.’

Vere hesitated. He wanted to tell her how much her soft and
honest words meant to him. He want to tell her too that he shared her feelings,
but he had spent too long forcing himself to keep his emotions under control and
hidden, sometimes even from himself.

‘I assure you that there is no risk to your health from the
intimacy we have shared,’ he told her briefly instead, then hesitated before
adding, ‘however, as to the risk of you conceiving my child...’

If she hadn’t known how she felt about him before, she must
know now. On hearing him say those words, at the thought of having his child,
she felt her emotions close around her heart, the pressure of them like a giant
fist, making the organ thud and kick. If only she might!

Sam knew she ought to be shocked by her own reckless thoughts,
but the seed of an unexpected yearning had been placed inside her, and was
already swelling and growing. An unplanned pregnancy was the last thing she
needed in her life. But to have this man’s child...his son...to have a part of
him with her for ever...

Luckily for her that was unlikely to happen, Sam realised as
she did a bit of quick mental arithmetic and then told Vere lightly, ‘I doubt
very much that I will have conceived, given the...the timing.’

‘And if you have?’ Vere challenged her.

‘I haven’t,’ Sam insisted.

Abruptly Vere released her and turned away from her, getting up
from the bed. The glow from the lamp lovingly illuminated every perfect male
line of his body—but not as lovingly as she wanted to trace and kiss them with
her fingers and her lips, Sam thought achingly. She didn’t want him to leave
her. She wanted him to stay with her and hold her, love her...

She wanted what she already knew she could not have, she warned
herself as Vere reached for his clothes in silence.

Vere had no idea why Sam’s assertion that she had not conceived
his child should make him feel that dark bitterness and pain. All he did know
was that it also made him feel angry and alone. Shamefully, it also made him
feel that he wanted to take her back in his arms and make love to her until she
was crying out to him to possess her. And this time when he did so he wanted to
ensure that... That what? That he impregnated her with his seed? That her body,
her womb, would ripen with it and with his child? The fierce clutch of savage
joy at his heart was giving him a message that was totally at odds with the
logical rejection inside his head.