Diamond in the Desert (3 page)

Emir promised pleasure. He also promised a chance to forget, and, for however short a time, the prospect of that seemed preferable at this moment to doing battle endlessly on every front. How would it feel to have this big man hold her and bring her pleasure? She must have swayed towards him, for the next thing she knew he was holding her in front of him.

‘Why, Britt,’ he said with amusement. ‘If I’d known how badly you wanted this I’m sure we could have arranged something before the meeting.’

Emir’s blunt approach should have shocked her—annoyed her—but instead it made her want him all the more, and as he brushed her lips with his she found herself instantly hungry, instantly frantic, for more pressure, more intimacy, and for everything to happen fast.

But Emir was even more experienced than she had realised, and now he took pleasure in subjecting her to an agonising delay. As the clock ticked, the tension built and he held her stare with his knowing and faintly amused look. She guessed Emir knew everything about arousal, and could only hope it wouldn’t be long before he decided she had suffered enough. She voiced a cry of relief when he cupped her face in his warm, slightly roughened hands, and another when her patience was rewarded by a kiss that began lightly and then brutally mimicked the act her body so desperately craved.

It was in no way subjugation by a powerful man, but the meeting of eager mates, a fierce coupling between two people who knew exactly what they wanted from each other, and as Emir pressed her back against the boardroom table and set about removing her clothes she gasped in triumph and began ripping at his.

He tossed her jacket aside. She loosened his tie and dragged it off, letting it drop onto the floor. As he ripped her blouse open she battled with the buttons on his shirt. She exclaimed with pleased surprise when he lifted her and she clung to him as he stripped off her tights and her briefs. Suddenly it was all about seeing who could rid themselves of any barriers first. She was mindless sensation—hot flesh brushing, touching, cleaving, in a tangle of limbs and hectic breathing, while Emir remained calm and strong, and certain. He felt so good beneath her hands...so very good—

Too good! You have never felt like this about a man before—

Danger! This man can change your life—

You won’t walk away from this with a smile on your face—

Using sheer force of will, she closed off her annoying inner voice. She wanted this. She needed it. This was her every fantasy come true. Even now as Emir took time to protect them both she saw no reason not to follow her most basic instinct. Why shouldn’t she? Emir was—

Emir was enormous. He was entirely built to scale. Was she ready for this?

He made her forget everything the moment he caressed her breasts. Moaning, she rested back and let him do what he wanted with her. Just this once she wanted to feel that she didn’t have to lead or fight. Just this once she could be the woman she had always dreamed of being—the woman who was with a man who knew how to please her.

And I wonder what he thinks about you—

To hell with what he thinks about me, she raged silently.

To hell with you, don’t you mean?

CHAPTER THREE

B
RITT
WAS
BEAUTIFUL
and willing and he had needs. Willing? She was a wild cat with a body that was strong and firm, yet voluptuous. Her breasts were incredible, up-tilted and full, and he took his time to weigh them appreciatively, smiling when she groaned with pleasure as he circled her nipples very lightly with his thumbnails. She was so responsive, so eager that her nipples had tightened and were thrusting towards him, pink and impertinent, and clearly in need of more attention. He aimed to please. Kissing her neck, he travelled down, part of him already regretting that they had wasted so much time. She shuddered with desire as he blazed a trail through the dust she had collected when she changed her tyre. ‘You’re clean now,’ he said, smiling into her lust-dazed eyes.

She laughed down low in her throat in a way he found really sexy, and then weakened against him as she waited for him to continue his sensory assault.

‘Shall I take the edge off your hunger?’ he offered.

‘Yours too,’ she insisted huskily.

‘If that’s what you want, you tell me what you’d like.’

Her gaze flicked up and her cheeks flushed pink. She wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not.

‘I’m serious,’ he said quietly.

‘Please—’

As she appealed to him he decided that the time he had allowed for this visit to Skavanga wouldn’t be enough. He ran his fingers lightly over her beautiful breasts before moving on to trace the swell of her belly. Lifting her skirt, he nudged her thighs apart. She made it easy for him, so he repaid her gesture by delicately exploring the heated flesh at the apex of her thighs. When she whimpered with pleasure it was all he could do to hold back. So much for his much-vaunted self-control, he mused, as Britt thrust her hips towards him, trying for more contact. He wanted nothing more than to take her now. Clutching his arms, she tilted herself back against the table, moaning with need. Opening her legs a little more for him, she showed him a very different woman from the one in the starchy photograph he had examined in London, but this was the woman he had suspected Britt was hiding all along.

‘You’re quite clinical about this, aren’t you?’ Britt panted in a rare moment of lucidity as he watched her pleasure.

Duty could do that to a man. He never let himself go. Growing up the second son of the third wife had hardly been to his advantage as a youth. He had been forced to watch the cruelty inflicted on his people by those closer to the throne than he was on a daily basis. So, yes, he was cold. He’d had to be to overthrow tyrants that were also his relatives. There was no room now in his life for anything other than the most basic human appetite.

‘Don’t make me wait,’ Britt was begging him.

She needn’t worry. His preference at this moment was to please her.

This was insane. Emir was cold, detached—and the sexiest thing on two legs. He was frighteningly distant, but she was lost in an erotic haze of his making. She needed more—more pressure, more contact—more of him. The more aloof he was, the more her body cried out to him. The ache he’d set up inside her was unbearable. She had to have more of his skilful touches—

An excited cry escaped her throat when she felt the insistent thrust of his erection against her belly. She rubbed herself shamelessly against it, sobbing with pleasure as each delicious contraction of her nerve endings gave some small indication of what was to come. Emir’s hard, warrior frame was even more powerful than she had imagined, and yet he used his hands so delicately in a way that drove her crazy for him. Lacing her fingers through his thick black hair, she dragged him close. He responded by cupping the back of her head to keep her in place as he dipped down and plundered her mouth. Sweeping the table clear, he lifted her and balanced her on the edge. Moving between her legs, he forced them apart with the width of his body. ‘Wrap your legs around me,’ he commanded, pushing them wider still.

She had never obeyed a man’s instructions in her life, but she rushed to obey these. Resting her hands flat on the table behind her, she arched her spine, thrusting her breasts forward, while Emir reared over her, magnificent and erect.

Like a stallion on the point of servicing a mare?

With far more consideration than that—

Are you sure?

She was sure that any more delay would send her crazy. She was also sure that Emir knew exactly what he was doing.

‘Tell me what you want, Britt,’ he demanded fiercely.

‘You know what I want,’ she said.

‘But you must tell me,’ he said in low, cruel voice.

Her throat dried. The harsher he got, the more arousing she found it. No one had ever pushed her boundaries like this before. And she had thought herself liberal where sex was concerned? She was a novice compared to Emir.

She had also thought herself emotion-free, Britt realised, but knew deep in her heart that something had changed inside her. Even when she plumbed the depths of Emir’s cold black eyes she wanted to be the one to draw a response from him—she wanted to learn more about him, and in every way.

‘Say it,’ he instructed.

Her face blazed red. No one spoke to her like that—no one told her what to do. But her body liked what was happening, and was responding with enthusiasm. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, please.’ And then she told him exactly what she wanted him to do to her without sparing a single lurid detail.

Now he was pleased. Now she got through to him. Now he almost smiled.

‘I think I can manage that,’ he said dryly. ‘My only concern is that we may not have sufficient time to work our way through your rather extensive wish list.’

On this occasion, she thought. ‘Perhaps another time,’ she said, matching him for dispassion. But then she glanced at the door. How could she have forgotten that it was still unlocked? Just as she was thinking she must do something about it, Emir touched her in a way that made it impossible for her to move.

‘Don’t you like the risk?’ he said, reading her easily.

She looked at him, and suddenly she loved the risk.

‘Hold me,’ he said softly. ‘Use me—take what you need.’

She hesitated, another first for her. No one had ever given her this freedom. She moved to do as he said and found it took two hands to enclose him.

‘I’m waiting,’ he said.

With those dangerous eyes watching her, she made a pass. Loving it, she made a second, firmer stroke—

Taking control, Emir caught the tip inside her. She gasped and would have pulled away, but he cupped her buttocks firmly in his strong hands and drew her slowly on to him. ‘What are you afraid of?’ he said, staring deep into her eyes. ‘You know I won’t hurt you.’

She didn’t know him at all, but for some reason she trusted him. ‘I’m just—’

‘Hungry,’ he said. ‘I know.’

A sound of sheer pleasure trembled from her throat. She had played games with boys before, she realised, but Emir was a man, and a man like no other man.

‘Am I enough for you?’ he mocked.

She lifted her chin. ‘What do you think?’

He told her exactly what he thought, and while she was still gasping with shock and lust he kissed her, and before she could recover he thrust inside her deeply to the hilt. For a moment she was incapable of thinking or doing, and even breathing was suspended. This wasn’t pleasure, this was an addiction. She could never get enough of this—or of him. The sensation of being completely inhabited while being played by a master was a very short road to release.

‘No,’ he said sharply, stopping her. ‘I’ll tell you when. Look at me, Britt,’ he said fiercely.

On the promise of pleasure she stared into Emir’s molten gaze. She would obey him. She would pay whatever price it took for this to continue.

He was pleased with her. Britt was more responsive than even he had guessed. She was a strong woman who made him want to pleasure her. He loved the challenge that was Britt Skavanga. He loved her fire. He loved her cries of pleasure and the soft little whimpers she made when he thrust repeatedly into her. What had started as a basic function to clear his head had become an exercise in pleasuring Britt.

‘Now,’ he whispered fiercely.

He held her firmly as she rocked into orgasm with a release so violent he trusted his strength more than the boardroom table and held her close, though he could do nothing about the noise she was making, which would probably travel to the next town, and so he smothered it with a kiss. When he let her go, she gasped and called his name. He held her safe, cushioning her against the hard edge of the table with his hands as he soothed her down. Withdrawing carefully, he steadied Britt on her feet before releasing her. Smoothing the hair back from her flushed, damp brow, he stared into her dazed eyes, waiting until he was sure she had recovered. The one thing he had not expected was to feel an ache of longing in his chest. He had not expected to feel anything.

‘Wow,’ she whispered, her voice muffled against his naked chest.

He liked the feeling of Britt resting on him and was in no hurry to move away. If she had been anyone else the next move would have been simple. He would have taken her back to Kareshi with him. But she was too much like him. There would be no diamond mine, no town, no Skavanga Mining, without Britt. Just as he belonged in Kareshi, she was tied here. But still he felt a stab of regret that he couldn’t have this exciting woman. ‘Are you okay?’ he murmured as she stirred.

She lifted her chin to look at him, and as she did this she drew herself up and drew her emotions in. As she pulled herself together he could almost see her forcing herself to get over whatever it was she had briefly felt for him.

‘There are two bathrooms,’ she informed him briskly. ‘You can use the one directly off the boardroom. I have my own en suite attached to my office. We will reconvene this meeting in fifteen minutes.’

A smile of incredulity and, yes, admiration curved his lips as he watched her go. She walked across the room with her head held high like a queen. It might have seemed ridiculous had anyone else tried it, but Britt Skavanga could pull it off.

He showered down quickly in the bathroom she had told him about, and was both surprised and pleased by the quality of the amenities until he remembered that Britt had a hand in everything here. There were high-quality towels on heated rails, as well as shampoo, along with all the bits and pieces that contributed to making a freshen-up session pleasurable. Britt hadn’t forgotten anything—at which point a bolt of very masculine suspicion punched him in the guts. Had she done this before? And if so, how many times?

And why should he care?

He returned to the boardroom to find Britt had arrived before him. She looked composed. She looked as if nothing had happened between them. She looked as she might have looked at the start of the meeting if she hadn’t been forced to change a tyre first. She also looked very alone to him, seated beneath the portraits of her forebears, and once again he got the strongest sense that duty ruled Britt every bit as much as it ruled him.

They both imagined they were privileged and, yes, each was powerful in their own way, but neither of them could choose what they wanted out of life, because the choices had already been made for them.

* * *

She hated herself,
hated herself
for what she had done. Losing control like that. She hadn’t even been able to meet her sex-sated reflection in the bathroom mirror. She had weakened with Emir in a way she must never weaken again. She put it down to a moment of madness before she closed her heart. But as her mind flashed back to what they’d done, and the remembered feeling of being close to him, for however short a time, she desperately wanted more—

She would just have to exercise more control—

‘Is something distracting you, Britt?’ Emir demanded, jolting her back to the present.

‘Should there be something?’ she said in a voice that held no hint that Emir was the only distraction.

‘No,’ he said without expression.

They deserved each other, she thought. But she was curious all the same. Did he really feel nothing? Didn’t his body throb with pleasurable awareness as hers did? Didn’t he want more? Didn’t he yearn to know more about her as she longed to know more about him? Or was she nothing more than an entertainment between coffee breaks for Emir?

And rumour had it she was the hardest of the Skavanga Diamonds?

What a laugh!

Tears of shame were pricking her eyes. She could never make a mistake like this again—

‘Hay fever,’ she explained briskly when Emir glanced suspiciously at her.

‘In Skavanga?’ he said, glancing outside at the icy scene.

‘We have pollen,’ she said coldly, moving on.

She wasn’t sure how she got to the end of the second half of their meeting, but she did. There was too much hanging on the outcome for her to spoil the deal with a clouded mind. So far so good, Britt concluded, wrapping everything up with a carefully rehearsed closing statement. At least she could tell her sisters that she hadn’t been forced to concede anything vital, and that Emir was prepared to move on to the next stage, which would involve a visit to the mine.

‘I’m looking forward to that,’ he said.

There was nothing in his eyes for her. The rest of Emir’s visit would be purely about business—

And why should it be anything else?

She hated herself for the weakness, but she had expected something—some outward sign that their passionate encounter had made an impression on him...but apparently not.

‘Is that everything?’ Emir said as he gathered up his papers. ‘I imagine you want to make an early start in the morning if we’re going to the mine.’

The mine was miles away from anywhere. The only logical place for them to stay was the old cabin Britt’s great-grandfather had built. It was isolated—there were no other people around. Doing a quick risk-assessment of the likely outcome, knowing the passion they shared, she knew she would be far better off arranging for one of her lieutenants to take him...

But Emir would see that as cowardice. And was she frightened of him? Could she even entrust the task of taking him to the mine to anyone else? She should be there. And maybe getting him out of her system once and for all would allow her to sharpen up and concentrate on what really mattered again.