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‘Hopefully you managed to answer enough to gain a pass,’ Rafiq said encouragingly. ‘It’s a mistake to do a major post-mortem after an exam. People tend to underestimate their own performance unless they’re exceptionally confident in their abilities. And by the sound of it you have been overshadowed your whole life by a very clever sister, which must have been difficult.’
‘No, it wasn’t!’ Izzy protested defensively as she rose to fetch the main course. ‘I was never envious of Maya. She always tried to help me whenever she could.’
Rafiq registered that he had entered a conversational minefield. ‘We’ll talk about Zenara instead,’ he informed her, disconcerting her by that total change of subject.
In the wake of her protest, Izzy had paled, her innate honesty tugging at her conscience. ‘No, what you said was right, although I never envied her,’ she admitted reluctantly as she reappeared from the kitchen. ‘Sometimes itwasdifficult being Maya’s twin because people would make comparisons and have expectations that I could never meet. But I love her, and I would never admit that to her. It wasn’t her fault.’
‘Of course, it wasn’t. I have a teenaged brother and I am equally protective of him,’ Rafiq confided.
Set at ease again, Izzy smiled at him, appreciating his insight and intelligence. His glorious black-lashed dark eyes shimmered like gold ingots in the subdued lighting and butterflies leapt and soared in her tummy, so that she felt almost intoxicated even on a glass and a half of champagne. ‘Nothing’s more important than family,’ she remarked.
Studying her animated face and the smile that illuminated her porcelain-perfect skin, Rafiq gritted his even white teeth because shestillwasn’t flirting with him and he didn’t know how the conversation had become so serious, as though they were on a date or something. And how would he know whatthatwas like when he’d never been on a date in his life? But when he looked at her, let his attention linger on those big sparkling blue eyes, that wickedly luscious pink mouth full of promise, the delicate little slice of pale skin below her collarbone where a tiny pulse was beating, he burned for her as he had never burned for a woman, the hardness at his groin a constant nagging ache. He wanted to plunge his fingers into that amazing curly hair the glittering peachy colour of a desert dawn.
‘You were going to tell me about your home country,’ Izzy reminded him.
Rafiq pushed his plate away because they had finished eating.
‘My goodness, I’m so busy talking I’m forgetting about the dessert course!’ Izzy exclaimed, leaping out of her chair and vanishing into the kitchen.
Rafiq didn’t want dessert. He wondered what would happen if he simply walked into the kitchen, snatched her up into his arms and carried her into his bedroom. She could thump him, she could sayno. Right at that instant, he felt he could handle either negative reaction better than he could handle being passive when he was much more an aggressive, action-orientated kind of guy. He had been raised to take charge, to steer negotiations and wasn’t sex a form of negotiation? An exchange in which both partners knew the score? She could not have come to the apartment to be alone with him for the meal and have expected any other kind of conclusion...could she? How the hell did he know?
In a blaze of frustration, Rafiq stared at her, catching the glow of awareness in her eyes as she looked back at him. He thrust back his chair and sprang upright. Izzy emerged from the kitchen again carrying bowls of fruit or something. His innate good manners warred with his lust and that seething hunger won hands down, sweeping away every other consideration. As she set down the bowls he stalked around the table and hauled her entire body up into his arms, the pleasure of finally touching her engulfing him in a heady surge.
Izzy blinked and gasped in complete shock. One minute her feet were on the ground and the next she was airborne, and he was kissing her.
‘I am only hungry for you now,’ Rafiq husked in a ragged undertone as her tiny frame quivered in his arms, huge sapphire eyes now locked to him with an appreciation he could no longer misinterpret.
After that explosive kiss, Izzy’s heart was pounding so hard inside her chest she couldn’t get breath into her lungs, and while on one level she felt that pouncing on her like a panther and lifting her off her feet wasn’t quite what she had expected, on another secret level she was thrilled by the glow of wildness in his smouldering gaze and that urgent mouth on hers. It was so exciting, the most exciting thing that hadeverhappened to her and wasn’t that sad, she chided herself, at her age? And Rafiq wasthathungry forher? That was a thrilling assurance for a young woman who had never seemed to inspire passion of that strength in any presentable man before. And he wasn’t just presentable, he was downright drop-dead gorgeous...
CHAPTER THREE
RAFIQCARRIEDIZZYinto the bedroom and laid her down with great care on the bed.
‘This...it is what you want too?’ he was careful to check.
Izzy sat back against the leather headboard, still a little stunned by the speed and mode of her arrival into a more intimate setting. Rafiq was being very direct and of course she understood why it had to be that way. No man could risk a misunderstanding in such a scenario. Even so, colour ran up her face like a banner because the decision she had acknowledged earlier in the kitchen still felt so new and fresh to her; she would sleep with him, finally discover what sex was all about, only, if she was honest, she hadn’t really expected it to happen so fast between them.
‘Yes...this is what I want too,’ she almost whispered, ramming down all her insecurities with ferocious determination because she was convinced that a wildly desirable opportunity with someone like Rafiq was only likely to happen once in her lifetime and she wasn’t planning to squander it. ‘But I’m a little shy, not very experienced,’ she added in cautious warning, in case his hopes were focused on more erotic thrills than she was likely to deliver.
Suddenly, Rafiq felt as though he could finally breathe again. The idea of her walking away, turning her back and rejecting him had been a fear strong enough to freeze him in his tracks because there was something about her, presumably a verysexysomething, that totally set him on fire with lust. He wondered if it was those huge blue eyes or possibly that ripe pink mouth or even the crazy copper curls surrounding that triangular face. Perhaps even the reality that shy didn’t turn him off, as her face said she feared, it actually turned him onmore. Indeed, it meant that he was much less likely to be taken by surprise by anythingshedid.
‘That doesn’t bother me,’ he admitted, hitting the buttons to close the blinds on the window and dim the lights even though, by choice, he would have put her under a spotlight, but her comfort, her ability to relax with him, were more important. He kicked off his shoes and vaulted onto the bed beside her. She startled and his flashing smile tilted his shapely mouth again, his hand coming up to frame her face as he lowered his head and tasted her mouth again with all the urgent demand he was struggling to hold back.
Izzy travelled from nervous tension back into a paradise where everything seemed to be about just one perfect kiss because he was one hell of a kisser. In that line, she was plenty experienced, even though no man had ever kissed her and made her very toes curl until Rafiq. It was as if he lit a spark somewhere down deep inside her, a spark that fostered a spread of warmth in her pelvis and made her thighs tighten. Her whole body turned liquid, her breasts swelling inside her bra, the peaks tightening and pushing against the lace.
His lean, long-fingered hands roamed slowly over her, cupping, touching, moulding, and she quivered, heat roaring through her in an almost unmanageable surge. Her hands lifted and found his wide shoulders to explore and then the long sweep of his back, the literal heat of him burning through the silk of his shirt.
‘Take it off,’ he told her.
Izzy went for the buttons, unwilling to break the kissing to look, and she must have been too slow at the task because with an earthy groan he pulled back from her and just ripped off the shirt, buttons flying everywhere.
‘I guess you don’t value your clothes very much,’ she muttered helplessly.
‘Not when they get in the way of what I want, which is your hands on me,’ Rafiq growled, taking that moment to reach down for the hem of her dress and lift it up and over her head.
Disconcerted to find herself so swiftly reduced to her bra and panties, Izzy tensed, lacking the confidence in her body that was required to feel calm beneath his smouldering dark golden gaze.
‘You aresogorgeous,’ Rafiq breathed raggedly. She glanced up at him in stark shock and it was there in his appreciative gaze that he truly believed that.
