One Desert Night - By Maggie Cox Page 0,64

a dream. Nothing looks remotely the same any more. Everything has a celestial light shining on it. Seeing the jewel at last, and...' She lowered her lashes, overcome with shyness all of a sudden. 'I've dreamt of being with you, of becoming your wife for so long. Since that very first time we met, in fact. I knew then that you were the one I'd been waiting for all my life. But when I came back to Kabuyadir to find that you were ruler of the kingdom, no less... Well, I thought I had been dreaming a dream that was totally impossible. Forget it, I told myself. But I couldn't... I couldn't because I love you so much. You mean the world to me, you know.'

He tipped up her chin so that she could not mistake the love that poured from his eyes...from his heart into hers.

'I told you when we first met that I had never felt as strongly about a woman before—as if she were a part of me that I never even knew I had lost until I met her... I still feel that way. In fact the feeling has deepened beyond measuring. But when you came back to Kabuyadir I was a different man from the one who spent that incredible night with you, Gina. After my father died, and then my sister's husband, I lost faith in love. All I seemed able to see was the pain it caused—because if you loved someone it was beyond agony when you lost them. I didn't want to suffer that pain again if I could help it. So I thought to bypass love completely. I fooled myself that I could marry purely to make an alliance that would benefit the kingdom. But I was wrong...so wrong. Just seeing you again taught me that. There are no words to describe how much your love for me thrills and fulfills me. Of all the things I have achieved it is your love, rohi, that will always be my greatest achievement.'

'You have called me that from the beginning...rohi. What does it mean, Zahir?'

He pressed a lingering warm kiss to her delectable lips, then gently drew away. 'It means "my soul" and that is what you have become.'

'I love that,' she breathed on a wistful sigh. 'I love the way that word sounds on your lips. I will always love it.'

'Well?' Reaching behind her head, Zahir opened the clasp that held her hair back, then threaded his fingers through the silken gold locks that tumbled unhindered onto her shoulders.

'Well, what?'

'I have just asked you to be my wife, have I not? I would very much like to hear your answer.'

'Yes!' Her arms went lovingly and firmly round his waist, and although her tight embrace made him wince because of the still tender wound at his side, Zahir had no intention of asking her to ease it. 'Yes, yes, yes,' she uttered passionately. 'A thousand times yes!'

She moved over him in the flickering shadows reflected by the burning candle in the lamp, and her skin was pale as new milk and softer than the finest silk. Zahir released a groan that scraped over gravel as he thrust up high inside her, his sex hardening like hot steel.

'I love you,' he murmured as he filled his hands with her velvet-tipped breasts. 'I love what you do to me... I love how you make me feel.'

Gina's bewitching blue eyes smiled provocatively down at him in the half-light of the Bedouin tent, her unbound hair gleaming gold fire across her pale slender shoulders. 'How do I make you feel? Tell me—and you can be as poetic and romantic as you like, my love.'

'Poetry right now is perhaps a tall order.' His aroused grin was rueful. 'But being inside you like this makes me feel like I'm going to die from the sheer pleasure of you, my Sheikha.'

'Sheikha...doesn't that mean the Sheikh's wife?'

'It does.'

'But I'm not your wife yet, Zahir.'

His hands fell to her softly rounded hips and cupped them possessively. 'But you soon will be,' he declared fiercely, emotion making him thrust harder.

'Oh, my...' She shut her eyes, as if to fully absorb the power of their incredibly passionate union, then opened them again to gently rock her hips forward and back. 'I soon will be.'

'And soon after that...' He held her still for several moments, so that he was acquainted with her body more intimately than he had ever believed possible, until he felt every