Izzy shifted over to what she had chosen as her side of the bed and told herself that she was not going to watch Rafiq undress. But she did, while for the entire space of each nail-biting second assuring herself that she would naturally close her eyes and stop peeking, perving on him like some sort of sex-starved woman.
After all, she was no longer that naïve any more, she told herself briskly. Unhappily, for some inexplicable reason, having seen Rafiq naked before didn’t seem to be enough to satisfy her renewed curiosity or her fresh interest. The shirt dropped to the floor and her gaze hungrily roamed over his muscular brown torso as if she had never seen a man’s chest in her life. A sort of invasive heat source entered her pelvis at the same moment as she appreciated the corrugated musculature lining his eight-pack, not to mention that Adonis belt of a vee that magically appeared as he began removing the suit trousers. Her nipples peaked and her body shifted restively below the sheet as she noted the dark arrow of hair disappearing below the waistband of his boxers and the sizeable bulge still covered there. And that was the point where shame made her shut her eyes tight, castigating herself for her inability to do so earlier.
Was it her fault that he was so absolutely magnificent naked that she wanted to put her hands all over him? Explore, touch, trace, tease? She buried her burning face in a pillow, praying for her composure to return before he registered how ill at ease she was simply sharing a bed with him again. After all, been there, done that, got more than a T-shirt out of it, why should sleeping with him in the same bed seem so much more dangerously intimate?
Rafiq went for a shower, a freezing-cold one, keen to dispel the treacherous pulse of arousal in case his condition gave her the impression that he wanted more. Of course, he wanted more of the best sex he had ever had, he scoffed at himself, but he wouldn’t do anything about it or make any kind of approach. He might have taken advantage of her once, but he wasn’t about to repeat that mistake. The mother of his unborn children deserved better than that; she deserved his respect, his consideration. And the streak of dark, highly sexed wildness in him that he always kept chained up and suppressed would not get a single chance to escape, he swore inwardly.
Taut with discomfiture from her most recent reflections, Izzy waited until she felt his weight depress the mattress before stretching out a hand to switch off the light. She couldn’t expect him to sleep with the light on all night as she had planned to do because she didn’t like waking up anywhere strange when she was half-asleep. She wasn’t a kid any more. She could sleep fine in the dark in an unfamiliar place, she told herself irritably.
Even so, it seemed to be taking her a very long time to fall asleep because she was so very aware of his presence in the bed. The bed was wide, long, the perfect fit for a wide-shouldered, long-legged male, but he put out heat like a furnace and she swore she could feel that unwelcome heat warming her back and it made her all twitchy and uneasy, a tightening deep inside her nagging at her nerves.
‘Go to sleep, Izzy,’ a voice murmured in the merciful darkness. ‘I’m not about to jump you.’
In silence, her teeth gritted and she wouldn’t let herself screech something back. He thought she was afraid of him now, did he? How dared he? She wasn’t a scared little kid! She compressed her lips and, cursing him thoroughly, lay as still as a corpse and eventually that did the trick and she drifted off to sleep.
Feeling too warm woke her up again. Moonlight was casting a little clarity into the room and she could see that it was still dark but that was the least of her problems, she registered, because she was welded up against a very masculine body like a second skin and, yes, he was too hot but, on another level, he felt incredible. Yet again her teeth clenched together even as a tiny little quiver thrummed through her. It was a case of mind over matter. It was perfectly normal to be attracted to him but, in the circumstances, it would be totally wrong to do anything about it. So, even though she wanted to flip over and investigate that warm hair-roughened, sun-darkened skin with all the wanton attention of a complete pervert, she wasn’t about to do it, was she?
Even if she wasn’t the only one of them with that kind of idea and physical urges at play? After all, she wasn’t stupid. His arousal was aggressively firm against her hip. In fact, she felt rather smug about the truth that he wasn’t impervious to her either. Why should she be the only one suffering?
‘If you don’t stop twitching and shifting, I’ll…’ Rafiq ground out in frustration.
‘You’ll what?’ Izzy positively snarled as she flipped up into sitting position. ‘Go on! Threaten me with some ghastly medieval punishment for breathing!’
‘I was not about to threaten you but you’re certainly not making this easy!’ Rafiq snapped back thickly.
‘Oh, excuse me,’ Izzy said snarkily, flipping back the sheet to slide off the bed, the nightie flipping up to reveal the
