Her mouth fell open and she squirmed slightly but he grabbed her hips. “But you can’t move an inch!” he said, laughing softly at his predicament. “Just give me a moment and I’ll be okay,” he explained.
Sidra was as still as possible, but with him so intimately pressed against her, she had a hard time remaining still. Her body might have recovered from the last few moments, but with him still pressed against her, all her cells were firing up, ready for round two.
When he sighed and pulled away, she knew the moment was over. “I feel like I should say thank you for some reason.”
He laughed and pulled her into his arms again, kissing the top of her head. “Believe me when I say that the pleasure was all mine.”
She shook her head and blushed. “I don’t think so,” she said and looked away.
He chuckled again and took her hand, keeping it in his strong embrace instead of tucking it into his elbow as he had yesterday. “What did you do yesterday?” he asked gently as they walked through the woods, the sun just starting to dapple through the leaves overhead.
She told him about her jaunts through all the major tourist sites, the play and he even wanted to know what she’d had for dinner. “What did you do?” she asked, sincerely interested.
Rashid shrugged his massive shoulders and looked down at her, leaning against a tree and pulling her against him. He still hadn’t recovered from their previous embrace, but she felt too good, too soft to not have her touching him. The pleasure was almost painful because of the intensity to make love to her, but he embraced even that, knowing that he would probably not be able to do anything about that need since she was leaving the day after tomorrow.
“I thought about you.”
Sidra rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Be serious. I’d really like to know what you do during the day.”
Rashid thought about the meetings he’d had in London with the CEO of a major oil company and then the private meetings with the Prime Minister who was trying to convince him to alter his country’s oil policy and grant better access to oil products and get a better deal. There had been the calls from his finance minister about the military exercises in the north of his country, a discussion with his environmental minister about the solar stations and the improvements his scientists were making with the solar panels that would help the world transition from oil energy to more environmental options because he perceived the wave of the future to be non-fossil fuels and he wanted his country to be a resource for those products.
But he didn’t admit to any of that to this beauty in his arms. He didn’t want her to know about that side of his life. He wanted her to be attracted to him because of who he was as a man instead of who he was as a ruler. Right now, she only knew him as Rashid, and from some of the comments she’d made, he suspected that she’d assumed he worked with horses or animals. He had a limited time with her and he didn’t want to alter her innocent perception of him by tainting it with his title. Their precious time together seemed so pure, so unadulterated by the reality of his life and he didn’t want anything to intrude on that.
At least right now. He’d started thinking about her last night and a plan had formed in his mind. He would have to take it slowly, he knew. But if this woman were real, he wasn’t about to let her out of his life.
Focusing on her question, he thought back to yesterday morning. His discussion with the veterinarian came to mind and the instructions he’d given the woman before he’d started his other meetings. He felt no guilt in playing on her misperceptions of his job. “One of the horses is pregnant and about to give birth. I looked at her yesterday, trying to see how she was doing. Another has a sore leg,” he told her, only altering the truth a little in his mind. All of this was true. He did have a mare who was about to give birth and he had checked on her yesterday, but he’d spent only moments with the little lady before heading off to his meeting with the prime minister. His stable manager had given him the other details, and although he didn’t tell Sidra that he’d ministered to all of the horses, he went through all their ailments and training regimens as if he were in charge of them.
He considered all of it a white lie, but one that would benefit both of them in the end. By talking to her about the horses, she would still see him as an individual man, a human being instead of a powerful ruler of one of the wealthiest countries in the world and he could still maintain their romance as if it weren’t tainted by his title, protect her from the sometimes vicious politics that constantly surrounded him on an almost daily basis with everyone inside and outside of the palace trying to gain power by claiming a closer relationship to him than is real.
She listened and laughed. And with each sound of her laughter, he felt more like a powerful sheik than he ever had in his life. He could command armies to move at his whim and financial markets quivered when he made decisions, but her smile made him feel more formidable than any of that. When her eyes glowed with admiration, he thought he could move mountains. And wanted to. Just to see her smile or hear her teasing him one more time.
When the sun was higher over the horizon, Sidra looked down at her watch and realized that more than two hours had passed. “I need to head back to Laura,” Sidra whispered, but her eyes were looking at his mouth, her mind wandering towards how to get him to kiss her once again.
“I guess it’s about that time,” he sighed, wishing they had more time together. He cursed his responsibilities, wanting to spend the day showing her around London himself. He wanted to put her into a limousine and give her private tours of all the main tourist attractions. He could whisk her through the palaces, lunch at the Ritz, then he’d like to fly her home to his own palace and take her into his arms, carry her off to his private suite of rooms and make love to her until they couldn’t move any longer.
“Will you be able to sneak away tomorrow morning?” she asked hopefully.
He smiled and hugged her closely. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
She grinned, feeling like an idiot with her happiness hanging on her sleeve, but she couldn’t help it. The way he looked at her made her feel special and beautiful. She stood on her tip toes and kissed his jaw. “I can’t wait,” she said, then pulled out of his arms.
He caught her around her waist and pulled her back. “That’s not going to work,” he growled and wrapped his strong arms around her. She didn’t mind at all, had actually been hoping for just such a reaction. So when he bent low to kiss her, she pressed her body against him, her face automatically turning up towards his and kissed him back with all the passion she was feeling despite her orgasm of only two hours ago.