Possessed by the Sheikh Read online

  She started to exhale and then stopped, gasping aloud in protest as he lifted his mouth from her breast.

  'What is it you want?' His voice sounded thick and raw; the look in his eyes when his gaze roved her semi-nakedness matched the need she could feel burning through her. Mutely she shook her head.

  'Tell me!' he insisted. 'Is it this?'

  He had released her .hands and he was kissing the valley between her breasts, his mouth moving downwards over the flesh he was exposing as he pushed her nightdress lower and then lower still.

  'This—do you want this?'

  'Yes!' she responded in desperation.

  His tongue tip rimmed her navel, and whilst she fought to control the wet heat of the pleasure gripping her, in one fluid movement he removed her nightdress completely, leaving every inch of her open to his sight and touch.

  The sight of his dark head bent over her naked body sent a raw, scalding heat pouring through her. He looked as though he was totally absorbed in her, totally committed to her pleasure.

  His hand touched her thigh, his fingertips stroking lazily along the inside of it whilst she quivered helplessly beneath his erotic touch, gripped by seismic shudders that pulsated through her body.

  Soon he would find her wetness and when he did… When he touched her there…

  The erotic urgency of her own thoughts was only adding to her torment. Xander was kissing the top of her thigh, the inside of her thigh! His tongue was pushing its way demandingly between the swollen lips that should have been guarding her sex. She could feel her own eager wetness. His fingers were parting the lips of her sex, but it was his tongue and not his fingers that discovered her ready eagerness for him, tasting and savouring the intimacy of her as he caressed the engorged arousal of her clitoris.

  It was impossible for her to sustain such an intensity of pleasure and even more impossible for her to withstand it.

  Her body arched and convulsed, and without thinking about what she was doing she reached urgently for him, soliciting the hard, hot, silken thrust of him within her.

  Xander gave in to the need driving him and thrust slowly and deeply into Katrina's waiting warmth.

  Shudders of pleasure racked him as he felt her flesh close firmly around him, her muscles holding him caressing him, as he was gripped by a savage, visceral stab of white-hot reaction. He was supposed to be doing this for her pleasure and not his own, to show her…to give her something she would need so badly that she would never, ever want any other man but him. If he could not have her love, or her understanding or her respect, then he would have her sexual desire to hold her to him.

  Only now the trap he had set for her had sprung back on him and he was caught helplessly within the moaning intensity of his need for her as he moved fiercely within her, drawn deeper by the determined female muscles, programmed to obey only Mother Nature.

  Katrina sobbed with fierce, elemental pleasure against Xander's shoulder, shuddering intensely as her body clung to every thrust of him within her, and then contracted in a frenzy of convulsions that drew from him not just his orgasm, but the seed of life itself.

  Releasing himself from her, Xander was bitterly aware of what he had done. He got up from the bed, leaving Katrina to battle against his rejection and her own tears.

  'I know he's your son, but I don't know how much longer I can bear what he is doing to me.'

  It was late in the afternoon and Katrina had come as she so often did to the cool, shadowed downstairs room that had been Xander's mother's library and private sitting room. Here in this room she felt able to voice her most private thoughts and feelings, out loud as though she were actually speaking them to a real person. A person who was not just Xander's mother, but also her own sympathetic and wise counsellor. Someone who understood how she felt.

  She had discovered the room when Miriam had taken her on a tour of the villa, and somehow she found a solace here she could not find anywhere else, especially not the elegant bedroom where, every night in the privacy of its large bed, Xander took her in his arms and took her to both heaven and hell.

  'I know he believes he is humiliating me, but the truth is that he is humiliating both of us! He hates me for my "Englishness", I know that, but I know too that he is your son and that he cherishes the memory of you, and you too were English. He speaks to me as though he believes I do not respect his cultural heritage, and will not listen to me when I try to tell him that he is wrong. I love the person he is—everything and all that he is, the unique blend of cultures and characteristics that have made him.'

  Her voice dropped. 'I cannot stay with him. I love him so much—too much!—but my love for him is destroying me!'

  On the other side of the swivelling bookcase, which separated the study that had been his mother's from the more formal office that had been his father's, which they had had connected by means of a secret swivelling panel, Xander stood stock-still. His heart was beating in long, slow, reverberating thuds that seemed to echo ominously in his own ears.

  It shocked him to hear Katrina appealing so passionately to his dead mother. He could hear in her voice her loneliness and despair, and a pain he had never expected to feel entered his heart. He had heard what Katrina was saying quite clearly, but how could he believe it? It was true that she had vociferously told him what she thought of him and how much she hated him.

  Anguish seized Katrina, locking her throat muscles and making it impossible for her to speak. Blinking away the threatening tears, she focused on the library shelves, remembering Xander's fury when she had accused him of stealing the books she now knew had been his mother's.

  What if there were to be a child from this bittersweet intimacy they were sharing? Those long, dark hours of kisses and caresses, which she promised herself each time she would not allow to be repeated and yet every night she found she longed for again.

  Had she no pride, no sense of self-preservation? Was she really so weak that she was ready to accept sex when what she ached for was love?

  She heard the door open. It would be Miriam coming to see if she wanted anything! Quickly she snatched a book from the shelves and opened it, hoping to conceal her distress from the housekeeper.

  'What are you reading?'

  She stared in shock. It wasn't Miriam; it was Xander.

  'I…er…' Apprehensively she started to retreat back into the protective shadows, but Xander followed her, plucking the book from her nervous grasp.

  'These are the poems my father wrote for my mother.'

  His words were almost an accusation, as though he believed that just by touching the small leather-bound book she had defiled it, Katrina recognised painfully.

  'I know that the writing of poetry is part of Middle Eastern culture and that poets are honoured and respected for their work,' was all she could think of to say.

  'Their poems are written for public consumption; the verses my father wrote for my mother were not. They were his private avowal of his love for her.'

  'You mean that I am not allowed to read them?' Katrina challenged him. 'Well, then, in that case they should not be on the library shelves!'

  Suddenly she had had enough. Before she could weaken she burst out, 'This can't go on, Xander, and it isn't going to. I want to go home to England. I am going home to England,' she corrected herself. 'And nothing you can say or do will stop me!'

  Before he could respond she fled, almost running past him and through the open door.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  « ^ »

  'You say you want to go back to England, but a marriage is not so easily put aside!'

  They were in the bedroom, Xander having followed her upstairs.

  'I don't care about that,' Katrina told him fiercely.

  'No? Then what do you care about?'

  He had walked past her, propping himself up on the door whilst he folded his arms and watched her.

  Her heart was skittering around inside her chest in nervous anxiety. She cared about him. Him! An
d she cared far too much!

  Deliberately turning away from him so that she wouldn't have to look at him, she said quietly, 'I don't like the way we are living. It isn't…right.'

  'What do you mean?' Xander challenged her. 'What isn't right?'

  He was baiting her, Katrina was sure of it.

  Swinging round, she told him hotly, 'You know what I mean. During the day I hardly ever see you and when I do you virtually ignore me, but at night…'

  She stopped, unable to go on.

  'At night what?' Xander pressed her.

  Katrina shook her head. 'You know what I mean.'

  'At night I take you in my arms and your body responds so hotly to my touch that I scarcely—'

  'Stop it!' The pressure of her own emotions was bringing her perilously close to breaking-point. 'I know how much you enjoy humiliating and tormenting me, Xander. You're a…sadist!'

  'I can scarcely believe my good fortune in having as my wife a woman who gives herself to me so completely and who touches places within me I never imagined can be touched. No, I am not a sadist, Katrina. But I can't allow you to leave me.'

  'Because you think there might be a child?' Katrina challenged him wildly. The words he had spoken had shocked her, but she refused to believe they were anything more than a calculated ploy to undermine her determination to leave.

  'There isn't going to be a child, Xander!'

  'No? You can be so sure?' he marvelled lightly. 'After all, it was only last night…'

  'I knew this morning…' Katrina lied frantically, well aware that, whilst she might have spoken out loud when she'd been alone how much she loved Xander, she had not voiced her other secret—her growing suspicion that she might indeed have conceived Xander's child.

  'Well, then, perhaps I had better make sure that there is to be a child,' Xander murmured. 'For I assure you that if there is, there is no way I will allow my child to go anywhere without me! Although you of course may not feel the same love and devotion to a child of our creating as I would…' His face hardened.

  'Of course I would. I would love our child with all my heart,' Katrina answered him.

  'So why then do you want to leave me?'

  Katrina blinked and then stammered. 'I… I… We don't love one another, Xander.'

  'You love me!'

  She was probably gaping at him like a goldfish, Katrina decided dizzily as she went hot and then cold. How could he possibly know that? How did he know it to be able to state it so positively?

  'I… What makes you think that?' she managed to ask him shakily.

  There was a small pause, and then to her consternation he levered himself away from the door, and turned to lock it, placing the key in his pocket before he started to walk towards her.

  'I heard you telling my mother.'

  She had been sitting down on the bed, but now Katrina struggled to stand up, the better to confront her own nemesis.

  'You couldn't have…' she whispered.

  'But I did,' Xander assured her, slowly repeating for her her very own words, one by one as though he were tasting them first and finding them very much to his pleasure.

  'I didn't mean it.'

  To her disbelief he threw back his head and laughed. 'Liar,' he whispered back, but his whisper fell against her lips and his arms were already enfolding her and binding her to him.

  The slow sweetness of his kiss was melting her mind and her inhibitions. It was impossible for her to resist him.

  'You love me! Say it!' he demanded against her mouth.

  'I do love you,' Katrina admitted woodenly as first one and then another tear spilled from her eyes and rolled down her face.

  'Loving me makes you cry?' he questioned, catching the small drop of moisture with his fingertip. 'Love can hurt. My love for you caused me more pain than I thought I could bear.'

  Katrina went completely still in his arms.

  'Why are you saying that?' she demanded bitterly. 'You don't love me.'

  'Of course I don't,' Xander agreed. 'And that of course is why I ignored everything I have always believed in to fight in the sand for you. Why I allowed El Khalid to force me into marrying you rather than lose you; why I took you to my bed even though I had promised myself I would not do so; why I hated myself with the deepest kind of loathing when I discovered that I had misjudged you and that you were a virgin. And that's why, too, it hurt me so badly when you refused to believe me when I told you those books had belonged to my mother; and why it hurt even more not to be able to tell you the truth about myself and who I was.'

  'You never said anything,' Katrina told him in a small, agonised voice that betrayed her pain.

  'Neither did you,' Xander pointed out gently. 'Marrying you a second time was a way of showing my strong feelings towards you.'

  'I thought it was because the Ruler was insisting that you did. You said that it was…' she said, accusingly.

  'After you had made it very clear that you found the idea of being married to me completely abhorrent!'

  'I felt humiliated because I'd pleaded for you to be given mercy and then I discovered who you really were,' she said sadly. 'I imagined you laughing about it.'

  'My sister-in-law told me that you loved me, but I refused to believe her.'

  'I can't believe you love me,' Katrina murmured wonderingly.

  'Would you like me to show you? I know you said you were… You said you knew today that you weren't pregnant…'

  Katrina went pink.

  'That wasn't exactly true… At the time I just wanted to get away from you.' She hesitated and bit her lip. Loving someone meant trusting them, didn't it?

  'It is possible that I may be carrying our child, Xander, although it is far too soon to be properly sure at the moment,' she continued hurriedly.

  Ignoring her, Xander reached out to cup her chin and tilt her face up so that he could gaze down into her eyes with a look of intensity and tenderness, and open and total commitment.

  'There is only one thing I want more than for you to be the mother of my children, Katrina.'

  'And what…what is that?' she asked him huskily.

  'Your love,' he told her promptly.

  'You have it, Xander.'

  'And I shall cherish it and you for ever.' he promised her emotionally as he bent his head to hers and took sweet possession of her willing mouth.

  EPILOGUE

  « ^

  'Oh, Xander, this is such a wonderful memorial to your mother and so very, very generous of your brother.'

  'It is the perfect memorial to her,' Xander agreed as they stood side by side with other members of Xander's family whilst the Ruler officially opened the Women's University that had been built in Zuran in honour of Xander's mother and his governess.

  'And it was you who suggested it.'

  Katrina smiled lovingly at him as he hoisted their ten-month-old son a little higher in his arms.

  'This isn't too much for you, is it?' he demanded anxiously, unable to stop himself looking betrayingly at the small bump of her new pregnancy.

  'No, it isn't,' Katrina laughed.

  'Pity,' Xander murmured wickedly. 'I was rather hoping we might have an early night tonight.'