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He did it to her over and over again. Until she begged him to release her and then at last he slid her onto the floor and drove into her, as if it were the very first time all over again. She felt her body shatter with the most powerful orgasm she’d ever known but once it began to recede, she felt a sudden sense of unease.
An unease which grew stronger with every second. Because that had been all about power, hadn’t it? Suleiman was a man who was used to getting his own way and by refusing to conform to his wishes she had taken control of the situation. She had taken control and he would use whatever it took to get it back.
Sex.
Power.
Palaces.
Even words of love which sounded wonderful, until you wondered if he actually knew what they meant. Were they just another lever to get her to see things his way? she wondered.
He’d never even seen her in her usual environment. He didn’t know that very important side of her personality.
‘I want to go back to London,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Do you want to come with me or not?’
CHAPTER NINE
‘SAY THAT AGAIN.’
Bathed in the light which flooded into Gabe Steel’s enormous penthouse office, Sara met her boss’s eyes as he drawled his question. He was leaning back in his chair with a look of curiosity in his grey eyes. And Gabe didn’t usually do curiosity. At least, not with his employees. She guessed that leaving him a rather dramatic letter saying she was going away and then asking to be reinstated just a few weeks later was enough to stir anyone’s interest. Even your incredibly high-powered and often cynical boss.
‘I know it sounds incredible,’ she said.
He laughed. ‘Incredible is something of an understatement, Sara. How come you kept it a secret for so long?’
She shrugged. ‘Oh, you know. I’d hate to make out that I’m some poor little rich girl—but everyone treats you differently once they know you’re a princess.’
‘I guess they do.’ His pewter eyes narrowed as he twirled a solid gold pen between his long fingers. ‘So what’s brought about the sudden change of heart?’
Change of heart.
She wondered if Gabe had any idea of how uncannily accurate that particular phrase was. Probably. You didn’t get to be head of one of the world’s biggest advertising agencies without having a finely tuned degree of insight.
‘I was...’ She wondered what he would say if she told him the truth. I was due to get married to a Sultan, but I put a stop to that particular arrangement by having sex with his closest friend. Probably not a good idea. Men could be notoriously tribal about that kind of thing and she didn’t want to portray Suleiman as some sort of bad guy. And anyway, that wasn’t the whole truth, was it? Suleiman wasn’t the reason behind the cancelled wedding. He was just a symptom.
She stared sightlessly out of the penthouse window. A symptom who was currently prowling around her London apartment and making her feel as if she had imprisoned a tiger there.
It was a big apartment—everyone said so. So how come the rooms seemed to have shrunk to the size of matchboxes since Suleiman had accompanied her back from Paris and moved in with her? It had been her mother’s apartment and Sara loved every inch of it, a feeling clearly not shared by her lover.
He had walked through the three huge—or so she’d thought—reception rooms, had barely deigned to look at the kitchen and had given the bedrooms only a cursory glance, before turning to demand where the garden was.
She had hated the way her voice had sounded all defensive. ‘There isn’t one.’
‘No garden?’ He had sounded incredulous, while all her explanations about the convenience of having a nearby park had fallen on deaf ears.
He had complained about the plumbing—which admittedly was fairly ancient—and insisted on having black-out blinds installed in her bedroom. He had commandeered the second bedroom as some kind of makeshift office. Suddenly emails began arriving at odd times of the day and night. Important documents from the US and the Middle East were delivered daily, while a series of efficient sounding staff would ring and she would hear him speaking in his native tongue. She told him it was like living at the United Nations.
He said he was trying to decide whether or not to set up a London headquarters. But that was a big decision which couldn’t be made in a hurry, while Sara seemed to get stuck with the smaller, niggling ones.
She’d been forced to find some kind of laundry service since it seemed that Suleiman liked to change his shirt at least twice a day. It helped explain why he always looked so immaculate, but the practicalities of such high sartorial standards were a pain.
But she tried to tell herself that these were just glitches which could easily be sorted out. That Suleiman had never lived with anyone before and neither had she. She convinced herself that all these problems were solvable, but quickly realised there was one which wasn’t—and that was the problem of time management. Or rather,
her time management. Suleiman was obviously used to having women at his beck and call. He didn’t like it when she got up at seven each morning to get ready for work. Sometimes it seemed as if he was almost jealous of her job.
And that scared her.
It scared her even more than her growing feelings for him.
