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The teasing tension within her quickened, sharpened, becoming bigger, and more powerful.
She panted and strained against him, wanting to come, not sure she could come and then he slipped his hand between them, stroking her even as he thrust hard into her wet tight body.
She wasn’t prepared for the intensity of the orgasm and she screamed his name as he continued to stroke her, pushing her over the edge, her control shattering, her body climaxing, convulsively tightening around him.
He tensed, strained, his big powerful body arching as he buried himself deep inside her. She was still convulsing around him, her body squeezing him. With a guttural cry, he pulled out, making sure he spilled his seed into the sheets and not her.
She rolled over on the bed, on to her back, eyes closed, still struggling to catch her breath. He followed, lying on his side, next to her, his hand settling low on her hip.
She floated, feeling blissfully relaxed, and yet also very aware of Mikael at her side. She could feel the pressure of his hand, the warmth of his skin, smell his masculine spicy scent, practically hear his steady heartbeat. He was more real to her right now than she was.
He’d become her world in four days. It was exactly as she’d feared.
Jemma opened her eyes to find Mikael looking at her, his dark eyes so beautiful but so impossible to read. “Yes?” she whispered, dazzled, dazed.
“How do you feel?”
She let out a soft laugh and she turned to him, moving into his arms to rest her face on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, smell his scent.
He smelled good. He felt good. He felt perfect, really.
“Good,” she said softly, smiling unsteadily, because her emotions were bubbling up high and fast. “Very, very good.”
They slept for an hour like that and Jemma woke first, sleepily stirring but couldn’t move as Mikael’s arms were around her and his muscular thigh was tucked between hers.
She lifted her head, looked down at him. He was still asleep, his thick black lashes beautiful onyx crescents against the gold of his cheek.
He looked different asleep. Younger. Boyish. Just a man, not a sheikh.
She put her head back down and nestled closer, liking the weight of his arm, the texture of his skin. He felt right. Perfect.
Did other women feel this way after making love? She’d had sex before but it hadn’t felt like this. Like something important had happened. Something significant.
Even now she felt the rippling of emotion, like aftershocks. Something inside her felt aware, awake. Stirred.
Was this love? It couldn’t be. She had to be feeling merely the side effect of seduction, and passion, all the result of his expert lovemaking.
If that was the case, then why did her very heartbeat seem to repeat his name? Mik-ael. Mik-ael. Mik-ael.
A moment later, he shifted, rolling on to his back, carrying her on top of him. His hand tangled in her long hair, and he parted her thighs, pushing her down against his hips. He was hard again, his erection rubbing against her. “Are you too sore to let me love you again?” he asked, his deep voice as husky and smoky as his dark eyes.
“No.”
He lifted her, drawing her down on him, and with his hands on her hips, he helped her ride him, slow and deep, and then faster as the pleasure built.
After they both came, she tumbled forward onto his chest, and he held her. Her eyes closed. She listened to the thud of his heart and breathed him in.
He felt so good. He made her feel safe. Happy.
She was happy. This was the best place she’d been in months, emotionally, physically. In years.
Silence stretched between them, silence and a tingling awareness that everything had changed.
Mikael breathed in, out, and she traveled with his breath, his chest lifting her, carrying her.
That’s how it’d been when they were joined. She’d felt lifted, carried, supported.
It had been so intimate, and yet it wasn’t just sex. It felt like so much more, maybe because it had been so intense, and so physical, it’d demanded all of her, and she’d surrendered.
Making love to him, she gave herself up to him, offering him everything—her body, her mind, her emotions...her heart.
Why her heart? It made no sense. Jemma protected her heart. She’d learned it was necessary for survival. And yet in one morning of lovemaking, she’d dropped her defenses, lost her boundaries and become someone else. Or something else.
Changed.
There was that word again. She couldn’t help going back to it. Changed. Altered. Shattered.
Confused.
How could sex do that? How could sensation be so powerful? She didn’t understand and yet everything inside her felt open. Her heart felt open.
She pressed her palm to his chest, savoring the steady thud of his heart. “Did you really buy my mother a house?” she asked huskily.
His fingers played with her hair, twisting the long strands. “I will go check and see if the escrow has closed. I expect it will have.”
“And then it will be hers?”
“And hers alone,” he agreed.
Jemma hesitated. “Even if I leave here in four days?”
“No one can take it from her.”
Jemma was profoundly moved, but also troubled. “I don’t know what to say. I know I should thank you—”
“You don’t need to thank me. I didn’t buy it for you. I did it for her.”
“You don’t even know her.”
“I met her at Morgan’s wedding. She was kind to me. I liked her. She reminded me of my mother.”
* * *
Mikael left her to check on the status of the house and Jemma showered and dressed, slipping into the long ruby beaded skirt and matching ruby top laid out on the bed. Breakfast was served in the courtyard. She’d just sat down and had her first coffee when Mikael returned.
“Escrow closed. The paperwork has been signed. The house is hers,” he said, taking the chair opposite Jemma’s.
“Thank you,” Jemma said. “Thank you for caring for her. Thank you for wanting the best for her.”
“I do for her what I should have done for my mother.” His brow furrowed, and his voice dropped, cracking. “I was not good to my mother. I failed her, and I will carry that pain, and that shame, with me forever.”
She reached across the table, and covered his hand with hers. “How did you fail her? What did you do?”
“Nothing. That is what I did. Absolutely nothing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When I explain, you’ll be appalled. And you should be. My behavior was selfish and it still disgusts me, but it’s too late to fix things. Too late to make amends.”
Jemma winced at his sharp tone, his voice laced with self-loathing and scorn. “Explain to me.”
“I was twenty-two when I learned the truth about my father and mother, that my father had lied to her, and had destroyed their wedding contract so he could take another wife. I was furious with my father,” he said, “but I’d lost my mother years ago, when I was just a boy, eleven, and I was terrified of losing my father, too. He had so many other children, so many other sons he could admire and love, and so I pretended I didn’t know the truth about the divorce. I pretended that I didn’t know who my father was—a liar, a cheat—and I acted as if my father was this wonderful man.”
“You were his son,” she said. “You were showing him respect.”
“My father had turned his back on my mother. I understood he expected me to do the same. And so I did, even when she came to me on my twenty-fifth birthday, asking for help. She was nervous about her future. She wanted financial assistance, and advice. She was worried she wasn’t managing her money well. She was worried she’d run out if she didn’t have the right investments.”
“Did you help her?”
“No.”
“No?”
His jaw tightened. “I took her to coffee and told her I couldn’t help her, that she’d created this situation by leaving my father. I told her there was nothing I could do.” Mikael averted his face, staring off across the courtyard, his features set. “She didn’t cry. She didn’t beg. She just folded up her papers and slipped them back into her purse, then kissed me, and left.”
Jemma’s eyes burned. “You were young.”
“I wasn’t young. I was angry.” He turned to look at her, expression fierce. “I wanted to punish her for leaving me all those years ago, for leaving me with a father who barely remembered me because he had so many wives and sons and daughters, all clamoring for his attention. So I rejected her, wanting her to hurt as I had hurt.”
Silence stretched.
He drew a deep, rough breath. “I never did help her with her investments, even though I had degrees in finance and economics. Even though I worked in London as an institutional investor until I was nearly thirty.” Mikael shifted restlessly. “I knew money. I knew how to make money. And I could have aided her, protected her, but I didn’t. So she went to your father and trusted him, and we all know how that turned out.”
