Sheikh's Castaway by Alexandra Sellers Read Free Book Online Page B

at random to spoon something luscious onto her plate. Bari tore a piece of bread from the small, tender loaf in front of him, dipped it in spiced olive oil, lifted his chin and slipped the melting morsel between his lips.
    Hunger, not for food, whipped her with a ferocity born of the long days and nights of unsatisfied desire. Days and nights when he had given her everything to build her hunger, and nothing against which to sharpen her resistance.
    A smudge of oil glazed his lower lip. His upper lip pressed down to suck it off, and his eyes caught her gaze as his lips relaxed again into sensual fullness.
    He lowered his lids and reached for the bread. His palm cupped and accommodated to the breastlike roundness of the loaf with deeply sensual appreciation, his long, square fingers dark against the whiteness of the loaf, sure and competent. He offered Noor a torn chunk of bread.
    Her fingertips brushed his knuckles, and she winced as her wrist went weak. The little chunk of bread fell on the table between them. Noor breathed in, her eyes rising irresistibly to meet his gaze. He knew. Of course he knew. She swallowed, licked her dry lips.
    â€œThank you,” she murmured, reaching for the bread again.
    There was cutlery in the picnic basket, but Bari ate using his fingers or bread as his only tools. Somehow, she didn’t know how, this added to the sensual impact of the moment. Then she realized that it was because he was a sensualist. Bari ate with his hands because the sensation of touch added to his pleasure in the food.
    Just so, a part of her whispered, would he take pleasure in her body, if she allowed it. Touch, taste, scent…he gloried in his senses, and his senses would glory in her flesh.
    He lifted a piece of chicken and tore it apart, offering her a morsel from fingers slippery with melted butter and olive oil, then watched in appreciation as her white teeth closed on the tidbit. He grunted when her lips brushed his skin and, in half-involuntary mimicry of his sensual approach, she closed her lips around his fingertip and sucked the spiced oil from his slightly raspy skin.
    A bolt of electricity shot through her, all the way to her toes. Her eyes lifted as if he forced them up to lock with his gaze.
    She was on very dangerous ground, but a treacherous part of her, the part that wanted to give in, kept telling her that nothing had happened. He hadn’t even kissed her, let alone got close to making love. They were only eating.
    But another part of her knew that Bari wasn’t like other men, and that this attraction was like nothing she’d ever felt before, and that the point of no return was almost upon her.
    The hungry part, the part that was desperate to experience Bari’s sensuality at the deepest level, won out, and in involuntary temptation she licked her lips and smiled.
    His eyelids drooped, and a possessive gleam shot out from under the lowered lids to tell her that she was lost. He scooped up another morsel of food and fed it to her with one hand, while the other tenderly stroked her throat and chin.
    Her skin ignited like dry brush at a lightning strike. Noor opened her eyes and her mouth, but though his face was so close, he did not kiss her.
    A delicate assault on her senses began. Resting his elbows on the table, Bari leaned forward to murmur in her ear that she was beautiful, desirable, and that no man could see her and not want her. Then he made her drink from his glass. Like a child—but not like a child.
    He stroked her neck, her shoulder above the pretty gauzy sarong she had tied over her bathing suit, her hand, her wrist. He poured wine into her cupped hand and sucked it out with a sexual need that she felt as a blow. He explored her palm with his tongue and lips as if she, too, were heady wine.
    As they ate, one desire was sated, but another grew. She felt her body’s need for him hammer its urgent message in her blood, her brain, her skin, her breasts, her abdomen.