Australia: In Bed with a Sheikh!. Emma Darcy

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ with her journey of discovery. He shared the knowledge he’d picked up from reading local books, fed her interest, indulged her fascination, and watched her with a warmth that kept getting under Sarah’s skin.

      There was something very intoxicating about approval. She’d had so little of it in her life. Yet she found herself wary of its bestowal from Tareq, not quite trusting it, looking for the purpose behind it. Was Tareq subtly plumbing her unfulfilled needs and wants to establish a deeper tie with him?

      I don’t think any pretence will be necessary.

      Better if the woman he used for confronting his uncle was very convincingly stuck on him.

      The fifth day they’d spent on the beach. The sand was gritty with broken-up shells. They lay on loungers shaded by umbrellas, swam in the relatively warm waters of the gulf, picnicked from a hamper Rita had prepared for them. It should have been a blissfully relaxing day, if only Sarah had been able to keep her eyes off Tareq.

      She couldn’t help it. In clothes the man was strikingly handsome. Virtually naked, for hours on end, lying beside her, walking in and out of the water, towelling himself, his physical beauty was almost mesmerisingly addictive, compelling her gaze to linger on his perfectly proportioned and powerfully muscled body. More disquietening was the desire to touch. His skin gleamed like rich, bronze satin and it was a continual strain to clamp down on the impulse to reach out and graze her fingers over it.

      He caught her watching him slap oil around the calves of his long, strong legs. “Want some?” The blue eyes twinkled teasingly, knowingly, shaming her with the realisation he had to be aware of his effect on the opposite sex and she was proving no different from any other woman.

      “No. I’m fine, thank you,” she’d answered stiffly.

      He’d returned to his task, smiling to himself, and there was still a little curve on his lips when he lay back down on the lounger, his eyes closed to her. Was he amused that she couldn’t stop herself from being attracted to him? Satisfied it was beyond her control? Or was she being hopelessly neurotic, reading a connection to her into a smile which might simply be expressing gratification in a lazy, sensuous day.

      Sarah’s gaze slid down over his taut stomach and fastened on the very male bulge at his crotch. She felt a point of sexual heat start burning between her own thighs and quickly turned away from him, squirming both physically and mentally from the wild desire to know what he was like as a lover, to feel that body intimately engaged with hers. She’d never actually lusted over a man before. It made her uncomfortably conscious of her own body, as well as his.

      On the sixth day they’d gone fishing with Captain Bob, which had been another new and exciting experience until she’d had the misfortune to hook a very big fish on her line. She wasn’t strong enough or practised enough to reel it in. Tareq had stood behind her, his arms around her waist, one hand helping to hold the rod in its holster, the other closed over hers on the handle of the reel, showing her how to play the fish on the line.

      It wasn’t a sexual embrace, merely a supportive one, yet it blew away all Sarah’s concentration on what she was supposed to be doing. It was Tareq who eventually landed the fish. All she remembered was his breath warming her ear as he gave instructions, the strength of his fingers pressing on hers, the electric excitement coursing through her body from the contact with his, the sudden scorching hunger to feel everything he could make her feel.

      When he moved away, admiring the catch netted by Captain Bob, Sarah was left trembling violently, shocked by the snaking intensity of sexual need which was still writhing through her. She dropped shakily onto the closest bench seat and stared at the fish, caught no matter how much it struggled. Like her, she thought, only Tareq was still playing her on his line.

      “Let it go,” she’d croaked, then fiercely challenged the quizzical look from Tareq. “I want it released.”

      “Your fish,” he conceded, nodding to Captain Bob.

      It wasn’t really hers. He’d caught it. Perhaps that was why she felt such a savage surge of satisfaction, watching it swim free again, a silver flash in the water, escaping the painful confusion of being pulled into a different, alien world.

      On the seventh day, Tareq had casually announced he was taking her shopping for clothes.

      Defiance had leapt off her tongue. “No!” The thought of parading a range of outfits for Tareq’s approval, having his eyes measuring their effectiveness, how well each garment fitted her figure…her stomach had cramped. She couldn’t bear it.

      Tareq had frowned at her vehemence. “I thought you would enjoy it.” His frown had deepened. “There is also the matter of feeling at ease when we start mixing with others, Sarah.” A quiet, gentle reasoning. “Inevitably, you will suffer considerable scrutiny as my companion. Critical scrutiny.”

      Resentment at her enforced position had spilled out. “And you’d prefer me not to look the little brown mouse at your side.”

      His eyes had sparked with amusement. “You’re more a lioness than a mouse. Protecting your cubs.”

      His reminder of the children made this even more a cat and mouse game to Sarah. Except Tareq wasn’t a mere cat. He was a dangerous, dark, and very sleek panther, prowling around her, waiting to pounce, keeping her in almost intolerable suspense.

      “It is irrelevant to me how you are dressed, Sarah,” he’d declared. “My main concern was to protect you from the bitchiness of other women. However, if you feel armoured enough against their barbs…”

      She wasn’t. She knew she’d hate being looked down upon, hate looking like a fish out of water. “I do need some new clothes,” she’d admitted grudgingly, then in a proud show of independence, had added, “It’s just that I want to go shopping by myself, choose them myself, and pay for them myself.”

      To her intense relief he had let her do precisely that…after the embarrassment of having to accept the thirty thousand dollars he put in her credit account, a three months’ advance on the salary he’d arbitrarily decided upon.

      “But I don’t do anything!” she’d protested.

      “That’s for me to judge,” he’d answered.

      Recognising the futility of arguing, Sarah, nonetheless, had no intention of frittering away anything like that amount on clothes. Sam Bates had driven her to Naples, a shoppers’ paradise with its many fashion boutiques, and she’d managed to find quite a few bargains amongst end of season stock that had been marked down.

      Temporarily freed from the turmoil Tareq stirred, Sarah had enjoyed acquiring a range of clothes she felt really good in, assuring herself she didn’t have to be competitive. As long as she was confident in her appearance, she’d be fine. Though she did wonder if Tareq was as uncaring about it as he said.

      “Pleased with what you’ve bought?” he’d asked on her return to the house, eyeing the shopping bags with interest.

      “Do you want to be shown?” she’d challenged.

      He’d laughed, shaking his head. “I’ll see soon enough.”

      But there’d been something—a cynical glint in his eyes?—that had made Sarah suddenly feel there’d been a purpose in letting her go shopping alone, a test in giving her so much spending power. The sense of being weighed on everything she did had her swinging from fierce belligerence—why СКАЧАТЬ