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His hand was on her dress now, at her shoulder, fingers tucking under the fabric, pulling it down.
There was something wild and earthy beating inside her as his mouth left hers and trailed down over her jaw, down to where her shoulder was now bare.
Sylvie’s head tipped back, her eyes closed. Her entire world was reduced to this frantic, urgent beat that she had no will to deny as she felt her dress being pulled down, and cool night air drifting over hot skin.
Her head came up. She felt dizzy, drugged. ‘Arkim...’ She was dimly aware that she didn’t even know this man. Yet here she was, entreating him to...to stop? Go on?
When he looked at her, though, those black eyes—like hard diamonds—robbed her of any ability to decide.
‘Shh...let me touch you, Sylvie.’
His mouth wrapped around her name...it made her melt even more. His other hand was on her thigh, between them, inching up under her dress, pushing it up. This was more intimate than she’d ever been with any man, because she didn’t let many get close, but it felt utterly right. Necessary. As if she’d been missing something her whole life and a key had just been slotted into place, unlocking some part of her.
Tacitly, her legs widened. She saw a glimmer of a smile on Arkim’s face and it wasn’t cruel, or judgemental. It was sexy.
He lowered his head to her now bared breast and closed his mouth over the pouting flesh, sucking her nipple deep and then rolling and flicking it with his tongue. Sylvie nearly shot into orbit. Electric shocks pulsed through her and tugged between her legs, where she was wet and aching...
And where Arkim’s fingers were now exploring... Pushing aside her panties and sliding underneath, searching between slick folds and finding where her body gave him access, then thrusting a finger deep inside.
Sylvie’s hands tightened, and it was only then that she realised she had them clasped on Arkim’s head as his mouth suckled her and his finger moved in and out of her body, making a strange and new tension coil unbearably tight within her. Was this what he’d meant about being uptight? Because she felt it too. Deep in her core. Tightening so much it was almost unbearable.
Overcome with emotion at all the sensations rushing through her, she lifted Arkim’s head from her breast, looking into those dark, fathomless eyes. ‘I can’t... What are you...?’
She couldn’t speak. Could only feel. One minute she’d thought he was the devil incarnate, and now...now he was taking her to heaven. She was confused. His whole body was flush against hers, his leg pushing hers apart, his fingers exploring her so intimately...
Frustrated by her lack of ability to say anything, she leant forward and pressed her mouth to his again. But he went still. And then suddenly he was pulling away so fast Sylvie had to stop herself from falling forward. He stood back and looked at her as if she’d grown two heads, his horrified expression clear in the moonlight. His tie was askew and his waistcoat was undone. His hair mussed up. Cheeks flushed.
‘What the hell...?’
Sylvie wanted to say, My thoughts exactly, but she was still struck mute.
Arkim backed away and said harshly, ‘Don’t ever come near me again.’ And then he stalked off, back up the garden and into the light.
Three months ago...
Sylvie couldn’t believe she was back at the house in Richmond again so soon. She usually managed to avoid it, because Sophie lived in central London in the family’s pied-à-terre.
But the pied-à-terre wasn’t suitable for this occasion: a party to celebrate the announcement of her little sister’s engagement...to Arkim Al-Sahid.
Sylvie could still hear the shock in her sister’s voice when she’d phoned her a few days ago: ‘It’s all happened so fast...’
Nothing would have induced Sylvie to come into the bosom of her family again except for this. No way was she going to let her little sister be a pawn in her stepmother’s machinations. Or that man’s.
The man she’d been avoiding thinking about ever since that night. The man who had at first dismissed her and then... She shivered even now, her skin prickling with awareness at the thought of meeting him again.
The memory of what had happened was as sharp and humiliating as if it had happened yesterday. His voice. The disgust. ‘Don’t ever come near me again.’
The shrill tones of Sylvie’s stepmother hectoring some poor employee nearby stopped her thoughts from devolving rapidly into a kaleidoscope of unwelcome images.
Her hands closed over the rim of the sink in the bathroom as she took in her reflection.
Despite her best efforts she could still remember the excoriating wave of humiliation and exposure when she’d watched Arkim Al-Sahid walk away and realised that her breast was bared and her legs still splayed in wanton abandonment. Panties pulled aside. One shoe on, one off. And she’d been complicit—every step of the way. She couldn’t
even say he’d used force.
He’d crooked his finger and she’d all but come running. Panting. Practically begging.
The true magnitude of how easily she’d let him—more or less a complete stranger—reduce her to a quivering wreck was utterly galling.
