Free The Sheikh's Prize by Lynne Graham Page A

rubbing fast, and the golden light already expanding inside her burst through into brilliance and exploded in a series of violent aftershocks throughout her body. The waves of hot, sweet pleasure racked her with compulsive shivers of disbelief and a certain amount of awe, for she had never dreamt that he might make her feel so much. He shuddered over her with a moan of intense masculine satisfaction and then fell still, letting her legs fall back down on the bed and rolling off her to pull her close.
    ‘That was absolutely amazing,’ Zahir breathed, his diction ragged, his accent pronounced, his chest still heaving against her as he pulled her close, their bodies damp with perspiration and sliding against each other.
    But Saffy’s sense of perfect peace lasted for only a few seconds. What struck her as most amazing at that moment was how much other women must have taught him, how much practice he must have had in other beds to have gained the sexual expertise he had just demonstrated. That fast she wanted to thump him hard and kick him out of bed and her hands knotted into fists of restraint below the sheet. Careful, she told herself in fierce and bemused rebuke, for she didn’t recognise the feelings bombarding her. He was her ex-husband, not her lover, and she wasn’t jealous or possessive where he was concerned. He meant absolutely nothing to her and she didn’t understand why he was still holding her and pressing a kiss to her delicate jaw bone as though they had shared something special. After all, she had just used him to have sex for the first time and he had been good...well, amazing, to borrow his word. But that was an acknowledgement that only made her fists knot tighter and her temper flare even higher, for nothing could have been more different from the tentative and inexperienced young husband she remembered than the uninhibited demonstration of raunchy sex he had just treated her to.
    Without hesitation, indeed reacting on pure gut instinct, Saffy pulled free of Zahir and slid off the bed in one strong movement, a mane of rumpled golden hair falling round her pale slender length like a veil. ‘Do I qualify for a car to the airport now?’ she asked thinly, blue eyes cold as the polar wastes.
    Raking long brown fingers through his black hair, Zahir sat up in the tangled sheets, the white linen providing a striking foil for his golden skin. He tensed and swore and, assuming his reaction was the result of her sudden exit from the intimacy of the bed, she flicked him a bitter glance. Yes, he was still unquestionably gorgeous, but she hated him, totally hated him, wanted to be gone now as fast as possible, escaping the scene of the crime. No doubt he thought he had used her but it was the other way round and she would have liked the freedom to tell him that, but was still not prepared to spill her deepest secrets to him.
    ‘I want you to stay until tomorrow,’ Zahir admitted in a low-pitched tone evocative of anticipation.
    Her blue eyes flashed. ‘No. I’m done here. I want to go home right now.’
    Zahir, gloriously unaccustomed to being in receipt of a negative female response since his divorce, stared back at her with faint but perceptible hauteur while he wondered what had gone wrong. ‘I don’t do one-nighters.’
    Her lovely face without expression, Saffy dealt him an impatient glance, eyes as unemotional as stones. ‘I do and, as I said, I’m done.’
    Determined not to meet his gaze, Saffy focused on the neat pile of freshly laundered clothes sitting on a chair and wondered when they had arrived, where they had contrived to get washed and ironed and when they had been returned, for all of those inconsequential thoughts were safer than thinking about the insane passion she had just shared with Zahir. She scooped her clothes up and headed at a brisk pace for the bathroom.
    Zahir leapt out of bed and reached the door a step ahead of her, one brown hand bracing on the door to keep it shut.