Free Innocent in the Sheikh's Harem by Marguerite Kaye Page B

confused by the urgent need to kiss him back, so at odds with what she had been told. Ramiz snaked his arms around her back to pull her close. She could feel the solid hardness of his body pressed into her own softness. She had not thought of herself as soft before. Or curved. She had never encountered such blatant masculinity so close at hand. She was melting, and in the melting she succumbed to temptation and kissed him back.
    Her lips were petal-soft against his, beguilingly untutored. Ramiz pressed his mouth against hers, tasting her delicately. He felt rather than heard her sigh. If he had not known better he would have said she had never been kissed. Certainly she had not been taught to kiss back. Her inexperience inflamed him. A primal instinct which surprised him to possess, to own, sent the blood surging to his shaft. His kiss hardened too, his mouth easing hers open, his tongue finding hers, coaxing at first, then forgetting to coax and instead demanding. She tasted of heat and promised ecstasy. An ecstasy he could not wholly indulge.
    To give is to receive. Tonight he would give, and the giving would have to suffice. Ramiz tore his mouth away. ‘Wait,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Tonight you must allow me to wait upon you.’ Then slowly, tantalisingly slowly, he began his controlled onslaught on Celia’s senses.
    His hands tangled in her hair, pulling out the constraining pins, his fingers combing through the rich copper mass of curls until it was spread over her shoulders, trailing down her back, curling over the pearly white of her bosom. He turned her around to unfasten her dress, his fingers trailing over her skin as he slipped it down over her shoulders to pool at her feet. She could feel his mouth on her neck again, on the knot of her spine. His breath was warm on her skin, but she shivered all the same. He unlaced her stays, pulling her close against him, her back to his chest, her skin against the velvet of his robe. She could feel the hard length of him nestling into the curve of her bottom. So other. So male.
    She shivered again, but now she was hot, with fingers of heat creeping surreptitiously over her skin like the fingers of dawn through the mists of morning. Ramiz wrapped his arms around her, pulling her hard against him, nudging his erection into the soft mound of her buttocks. His hands stroked up from her waist to the curves of her breasts, through the soft fabric of her chemise, stroking so that her skin prickled. Her nipples hardened. He weighed her breasts in his hands, his thumbs scraping the tips, making them pucker, making her stomach clench, and between her legs something that felt like another unfurling bud seemed to clench too.
    He turned her round, kissing her swiftly on the lips before he pulled her chemise over her head, leaving her clad only in her lace-trimmed pantaloons, for she had given up on wearing stockings. Instinctively Celia tried to cover herself, but Ramiz pulled her hands away from her breasts. ‘How can you expect others to enjoy what you cannot admire yourself?’ he said. ‘You are beautiful.’
    Celia blushed. ‘I’m not. I know I’m not. My sister Cassie is beautiful. I’m too thin. I don’t—men don’t— I’m just not.’
    ‘Look at me.’
    She obeyed reluctantly.
    Ramiz wound a thick tress of hair around his hands. ‘The colour of desire. A reflection of the flames which can burn inside you if only you’ll let them.’ He cupped her head to look deep into her eyes. ‘You have a mouth made to frame kisses. The way your lids hide your eyes, they speak of secrets if only a man knows where to look.’ His palms grazed down her shoulders, shaping her breasts. ‘Your skin is like alabaster, like cream, to be touched and tasted.’ He bent his head and took her nipple between his lips, his tongue flicking over the tip, his mouth sucking slowly, then hard, tugging until she moaned, for it felt as if he had set up a path of flames, like a fuse,