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They were off the escalator now, and he took her wrist. ‘What are you running from?’
‘You!’ she said loudly. ‘You just assume that I’ll sleep with you because you bought me dinner—’
‘I just offered to drive for hours to take you to dinner again…’ Okay, he’d had no intention of driving—his pilot would have taken care of that side of things—but he had offered her way more than he intended and yet still she refused him. ‘What’s so scary about that?’
‘Nothing,’ Felicity snapped. ‘Can’t you accept that I’m just not attracted to you?’
It was a lie, an utter lie, and he dashed it with his mouth, kissing away her fibs. She could hear the tube train screeching into the station, feel the rush of wind around her legs, the thick flow of people walking past. But they all faded as he pressed hard into her. His tongue parted her lips and she felt flames lick around her stomach, felt a stroking deep inside that she’d never felt before, that none of Paul’s fruitless attempts had ever yielded. And still Karim kissed her, his mouth capturing hers so thoroughly she couldn’t breathe, didn’t want to breathe, could only think about kissing him back.
‘I beg to differ.’ He pulled his head back.
She broke down then, in a way she never had before.
Karim stood for the longest time, then pulled out an immaculate handkerchief and flinched just a touch as she blew her nose on his royal coat of arms. He should walk away—because it wasn’t his problem, and clearly there was a problem. He was here for his final fling, his last taste of life before he took on full royal responsibility.
But he felt responsible now.
Tears rarely moved Karim. Hers did.
Walk away, a voice told him. He could not.
After a brief hesitation he took her in his arms, curiously relieved that she didn’t stiffen or shrug him off. Unfamiliar tenderness—compassion, even—was filling him as he led her away from the underground and further complicated his life.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_0e63d6b7-f56c-5bc9-a56a-d7652f63fd2c)
‘SHE didn’t suffer…’ Karim said to Felicity, but for the benefit of the curious onlookers as they took the lift to his suite. ‘We have to take solace in that.’
Her face was in his chest. Her tears were at the gulping stage now, and from the depths emerged the glimmer of a smile. It warmed her that he would do that for her—would soothe the sting of shame as her private misery was momentarily on public display.
She could only vaguely remember getting back to the hotel, with him holding her, leading her through the streets. She had baulked at his offer of a secluded table in the restaurant, and she might live to regret the folly of her ways, but at some very deep level she trusted him. After last night she knew that for Karim no meant no, and the fact he was a doctor helped too. But it wasn’t just that. Yesterday something had been triggered inside her, and Karim was the source—the source of a feeling that had always eluded her. And though she’d tried to walk away, now she willingly walked back.
Even in her highly emotive state there was a slight flash of wonder as they stepped into his suite—if hers was gorgeous, this was truly a palace—yet all she felt was safe. There was actually nothing sexy in it. She sat on his sofa and centred herself for a few moments as Karim rang down and ordered breakfast, then poured her a large brandy. She shook her head.
‘It’s seven a.m.!’
‘We don’t choose when these things happen!’ Karim said, and so she took a sip, and then another. She shivered as violently as she had yesterday, after the accident, despite the warmth of the room, but it was she who broke the gentle silence.
‘I shouldn’t have accepted your invitation for dinner.’
‘Are you involved with someone?’ Karim asked, because that would make sense. Their attraction had been so fierce it would have been hard to deny it—easier, perhaps, to lie a little, to give in to the forces that had propelled them from the moment he had walked into the conference room.
‘We broke up.’ Felicity took another sip of her drink, then put it down—because nothing could calm her till she admitted the truth. ‘I’m not very good at relationships.’
‘Neither am…’ Karim started, but then halted. Because even gentle humour was out of place at this time.
‘There’s no point starting something. It’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to me…’ She wasn’t making much sense. ‘Paul and I were together for a year and we weren’t able to…I mean, I wasn’t able to…’
She actually couldn’t say it, but Karim got to the painful point. ‘You were unable to have sex?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know I am a doctor?’ He watched as his words were absorbed and she nodded. She understood that at this moment he was a doctor—which was maybe why she felt safe, maybe why she had let him lead her to his suite. He was a doctor—another one who would tell her it could be sorted. ‘And I am telling you—you are not frigid.’
She shook her head. She had heard it so many times before.
‘Felicity.’ His voice was firm and so assured—so absolutely assured that she wanted to believe him. ‘You are not frigid.’
Yet no matter how she might want to believe him, how assured he sounded, she knew better.
‘I’ve seen doctors, psychologists. I had a boyfriend for a year and we tried everything. All I ever feel is scared.’
‘Did they work out why?’ He didn’t flinch as she spat out a mirthless laugh. ‘Your sister is ill?’
‘She’s anorexic,’ Felicity said. ‘Well, she’s recovering.’
‘And your mother suffers with extreme anxiety?’
‘I know all that.’ Felicity clawed at her scalp—because she was sick of it—sick of going over and over it in the hope of a different outcome. Always the result was the same. ‘My father was a controlling drunk. There was no abuse as such…’ She hated all the questions, the assumptions—because they were all wrong.
‘Abuse does not have to be sexual or physical to be abuse.’
‘No…’ Felicity breathed, glad that at least he understood that—that her father’s controlling ways had been enough to damage her in a way that wasn’t as obvious as her mother’s or Georgie’s. She had been left with an intense private fear of giving trust, of losing control, that couldn’t be logically explained.
He didn’t make her try.
‘You have never once felt aroused?’
‘No. Never.’
‘Not once in your life?’
‘No…’ Her eyes darted to his, and then back down. This was the reason she was here—because yesterday she had! Yesterday Karim had flicked a switch. She didn’t know how, but she wanted to know why.
He stood torn with rare indecision. He was moved by this beautiful selfless woman who delivered babies, who had so bravely saved a life yesterday, who put her family first and was, for whatever reason, holding a part of herself back, too nervous to trust. The clock was ticking on his last days of freedom. He could be out there enjoying himself, but he actually wanted to be here. He wanted to spend his last days with this shy, deep stranger, to bring passion and joy into her life—and of course there would be a reward for him too!
‘I’m not being a doctor now,’ he said. ‘Because as a doctor I cannot speak like this. But as a man I can fix it.’
‘Paul said the same,’ Felicity sneered—because his was a typical response, such an arrogant thing to say, and it told her he didn’t really understand.
‘I’m not Paul, though.’
She pressed her fingers into her eyelids, because he had made a vital point.
‘And I am telling you that you are not frigid. I assure you, this can be fixed.’
‘How do you know?’ She was angry at his assumption. ‘How do you know that I’m not just going to feel worse if the world’s sexiest—?’ She stopped then, watched his beautiful mouth curve into a smile, and she cringed back on the sofa but sort of smiled too.
‘Compliment accepted,’ Karim said—and then he stopped smiling, serious now, and knowledgeable too. ‘I can fix it. Because to be frigid, or whatever you choose to call it, means you are unable or unwilling. You think you are unable, but you are willing. In the lecture theatre, when we stood in the dark near each other, were you aroused then?’
‘I don’t know—I don’t know…’ She was trying to stand up, like an animal trying to escape, mortified, confused. He held her wrists.
‘Suppose we took it slowly…’ Karim watched her through narrowed eyes. ‘Suppose you said yes to dinner tonight.’
Tears were spilling out of her eyes as he deliberately said the wrong things, and he knew he was right then—knew he was right to say what he said next.
‘So why don’t we get it out of the way—and then…’ He forced her chin up to see his smile. ‘You can actually enjoy dinner.’
‘I don’t know…’ she breathed. ‘I don’t even know how I felt yesterday.’
‘You were aroused,’ he said. ‘I could feel it, I could smell it, and I could taste it.’
‘How?’
‘Because I was aroused too.’
So she hadn’t been imagining it.
And as he watched his words settle in her mind, Karim knew he was right to do what he did next.
‘This,’ Karim said, guiding her hand to his thigh, ‘was how you were feeling.’
She could feel him beneath her hands, long and thick and hard, and so huge it really brought her no comfort. She went to pull her hand away—because if she hadn’t been able to accommodate Paul, then how the hell could she accommodate Karim—but he was speaking on, talking in low, sensual tones that held her hand there. ‘As I stood in that room I could feel it, and I could feel you. I wanted to go over to you…’ She could feel him stretch beneath her fingers, feel a stirring in him just as she had felt herself. She felt him harden as he spoke, yet still her hand stayed. ‘I could of course do nothing about it. I stood there like this and saved it for later.’
‘For later?’
He glanced to the left, to the bedroom and the massive rumpled unmade bed. ‘Last night after dinner I could have called many women. Yet I wanted you.’
She could feel his manhood steeling upwards, feel the strength of his erection beneath her fingers. A sick excitement built in her as she pictured him on that very bed. She was not even looking at him now, just holding him and staring at the bed.
‘I had you last night, Felicity.’
Oh, she could feel a terror building deep within—only it didn’t exactly feel like fear, more a nervous flurry that was usually evident in her chest, but was much lower now, as his voice rumbled on, as he grew in her hand.
‘I stroked myself and thought of you, and I know you did the same.’
‘No.’ She jerked her hand away. ‘I didn’t. I can’t,’ she begged.
‘But do you want to?’
Did she?
It was a dangerous situation, and yet somehow she had never felt safer. He was beautiful, and for the first time she was starting to feel it was not impossible.
‘Yes…’ It was the most honest she had ever been—because right here, right now, she did want to. With him, with this man who knew how to hold her, how to kiss her, how to talk with her. This man who had known to take her by the hand and walk her back to the hotel. It was reckless and dangerous, and there wasn’t a hope of justifying it, but if she couldn’t do it with him today then she could never do it with anyone.
Here, with this beautiful man, was her chance to start her life over, to cast aside the demons that plagued her. She had never been so attracted to anyone. Oh, yes, physically—but everything about him enthralled her. His rich voice, his piercing eyes. And as for his smile…A smile that was turned on her now…
‘What if I can’t?’ Felicity asked—not angrily this time, but because it was what was worrying her the most.
Still Karim smiled. ‘You worry too much.’
Someone knocked at the door and Karim stood. Felicity’s eyes glanced down to his groin, to all that she had felt, but there was no real evidence of it now—just a long shadow against his lean thigh. As Karim called the butler in, it was like a bubble bursting, and real life invaded. Terror caught up with her as she realised what she had agreed to.
‘I am going now for a shower.’ He gestured to the table that was being laden with food fit for a king. ‘You will eat.’
As the butler exited discreetly, Felicity stood, unsure what to do.
‘Eat!’ Karim called from the shower, as if he could read her mind.
Eat?
She didn’t want to eat, she just wanted to get it over with—which was undoubtedly the wrong way to think, but it was how she felt. She was tempted to turn tail and run, listening to the running water. Oh, Karim didn’t know the extent of her problem, couldn’t understand just how real her fear was. That despite honest, desperate efforts by Paul she was so closed up he couldn’t enter.
Karim took his time showering. He wondered, as he dried off and pulled on a bathrobe, if she would still be there when he came out.
Last night he had wanted her, yet he had sensed her nerves, and as his guest it would have been wrong…
He had wanted her, though.
She had him curious.
Karim shaved himself, and thought about her, then grinned in the mirror as he recalled her words and nearly cut himself as he stared at ‘the world’s sexiest man’!
She was cute, Karim decided, paying closer attention to his heavy overnight growth but his mind was still on Felicity.
Karim read women well—he’d had plenty of practice. Yet Felicity was a challenge—which suited Karim fine.
He loved two things in life—women and challenge. Felicity was both.
He knew she was terrified, knew she was probably expecting him to lie her on the bed and devour her for hours, yet he also knew that would be pointless. She wouldn’t relax when in the back of her mind she would be waiting. Despite her protests, despite her insistence that she didn’t like it, he knew he had aroused her back there in the lecture room. And Karim mused on that as he walked out of the bathroom, to see her nervously sitting there, as if she were waiting for a dental extraction. He realised that only when it was impossible to do anything did she relax.
‘I have to make some phone calls,’ Karim said. ‘Important calls. I am sorry, I cannot avoid them.’
‘Of course!’ Felicity smiled, but inwardly her heart sank.
As he leafed through his diary—no doubt wondering where he could pencil in their ‘sex hour‘—he chatted away in Arabic on the phone, and then switched to English. ‘Tell him to call me back in five minutes!’ His voice was dark and full of foreboding. ‘If he calls back one minute later the deal is off!’
He turned to her. ‘Why don’t you have a bath and relax while I make these calls?’ Karim offered.
Though he probably thought he was saying the right thing, Felicity was tempted to pick up her bag and run. If only it were so easy, she thought wryly. How many bubble baths had Paul run for her? There was no chance of her relaxing, knowing what was coming…why couldn’t anyone understand?
‘Look—’ she gave a brittle smile ‘—I really think I ought to just go…’
‘One moment.’ His phone was bleeping again, and he took the call. But with his free hand he pulled her towards him, rolled his eyes at the intrusion, and chatted as he idly stroked her face. Then, still in between talking, he kissed her cheek—lots of tiny little kisses as he spoke on. When the call had ended, he kissed her more thoroughly.
‘Have a nice bath, and then I will be free…’
‘Okay…’ He was so nice to kiss. Clean-shaven now, he smelt of soap and cologne. His hair had been damp against her cheek as he’d kissed her neck, then returned to her face.
