To Tame a Sheikh by Olivia Gates Read Free Book Online Page B

sessions. They hadn’t slept until morning, too busy talking and experiencing each other in every way, sensual, sexual, mental. His body, already hard, started to pound at him in demand for her.
    He tried to convince it to subside. There was no chance it was having her. Not today. After what he’d done to her—twice—no matter how eager she was, she needed at least a couple of days to recuperate.
    He got to his feet. “Gemma?”
    Silence. He called again, and this time, when the same absence of any sound or movement answered him, the lips that had twitched at imagining her soaking away the aches of his initiation in his tub tightened with alarm. He rushed to the bathroom, burst through the slightly open door.
    He almost slumped to the floor at finding it empty. He was in worse shape than he thought. Being with Gemma had just masked his condition. He’d imagined a dozen macabre scenarios during the minute his calls had met with silence.
    She had to be in the kitchen. There was no way she could hear him there. Images of her tousled and glowing from a shower, dressed in one of his shirts or lost in one of his bathrobes filled his mind. And she’d be awkward and swollen in all the places that would make him ache until he could barely speak.
    He considered walking to her naked, then pulled on pants. She’d let him expose her to every intimacy, had responded with every fiber of her being, but she was still shy when she wasn’t in the throes of pleasure. He didn’t want to test her more, for now. He’d already rushed her in so many ways. So what if she’d asked him to? That didn’t mean he should be so eager to comply. He was the experienced one here, and he shouldn’t behave like an overeager teenager.
    Seconds after this self-lecture, he was almost running to the kitchen. Aih, he would embarrass her again.
    The premonition hit him before he stepped into the kitchen. All through his penthouse. The feeling of…emptiness. Absence.
    The feeling became fact in seconds. The kitchen was also empty.
    He didn’t stop this time. He whirled around and bolted to inspect each room. Nothing.
    Gemma was gone.
    He stood in the middle of his living room, overlooking Manhattan, unable to process the knowledge.
    She couldn’t have just left!
    She must have had an overwhelming reason for leaving. Maybe some emergency. Yes. That made sense. But…if something had happened, why hadn’t she woken him up? To tell him, to let him help? She knew what kind of power he wielded. If any of her loved ones were in trouble, she knew he’d be the most qualified to help.
    Was it possible she didn’t realize he’d do anything for her? Was it possible she didn’t believe, as he did, that they’d transcended all the conventions of relationship development, had taken a short cut to the highest level one could attain? Or was she so independent that she couldn’t bring herself to ask for help because she was determined to deal with whatever problem had cropped up on her own? Or maybe it hadn’t occurred to her to ask, in her rush to whatever the emergency was?
    Stop. He was probably off base in all of his assumptions, was assigning a ludicrous interpretation to something that would be clear the moment she contacted him.
    Something else hit him like a sledgehammer.
    He hadn’t exchanged any contact info with her.
    And it was even worse. He didn’t know her last name.
    Just what had he been thinking last night?
    That was it. He hadn’t been thinking. Of anything but her, what they’d shared from first sight onward. He had, for the first time in his life, lived totally in the moment.
    He’d always held back from fully trusting others, even his closest people, despite believing in their best intentions. He’d guarded himself against the consequences of their mistakes and misdemeanors. But with Gemma, he hadn’t only dropped his guard—it hadn’t been raised in the first place. He’d not had a moment of doubt. She was the woman he’d dreamed