The Stolen Bride Read online

  Gently he turned her around so that her back was to his chest. She felt him start to unbraid her hair and she dropped her head with a delicious shiver skating up her spine. Her hair fell in a sleek black curtain to just between her shoulder blades.

  Then he took the ornately decorated end of the sari that was wound up and over her shoulder and pulled it away where it fell to drape over her arm. She could feel the air caress her bare skin where her bodice was revealed and cut very low. She heard Sebastian’s indrawn breath and then felt his knuckles gliding over her skin. She shivered and said with a tiny moan, ‘Sebastian …’ his name dropping effortlessly from her mouth as if she’d been saying it all her life.

  He pulled her hair over one shoulder and pressed a kiss to the place where her shoulder met her neck and she realised that he was undoing the tiny fastenings holding her bodice together. It was loose in seconds and he pushed it apart to bare her back completely.

  Aneesa couldn’t and didn’t want to stop him when from behind her he pushed her top down her arms until it fell to the floor along with the end of her sari. She was naked from the waist up and Sebastian came right up behind her and snaked his hands around her, trailing them with infinite slowness up over her belly to the underside of her breasts.

  Eyes closed, Aneesa beseeched him silently and couldn’t stop the convulsive shiver when his hands came up and cupped her breasts fully, trapping her nipples between his fingers. She arched her back which pressed her bottom into him and she could feel his arousal, rock hard and insistent.

  Little moans were coming from somewhere as Sebastian kneaded her breasts, making her nipples stand even more erect, and she only realised then that she was the one making the sounds.

  With a smooth move he finally turned her around to face him and Aneesa bit her lip, knowing she should be feeling embarrassed or shy, but unable to drum up anything other than intense need. Sebastian’s eyes dropped to take in her breasts and down to where her hips flared out from a small waist.

  Almost reverently he touched her curves. ‘You’re so beautiful, like nothing I’ve ever seen before….’

  He slowly started to unravel the sari from around her waist, until he reached to where it was tucked into her underskirt. With a flick the voluminous material fell to the floor and he was undoing the catch on the skirt so that it, too, fell. Aneesa stood before him now, naked but for a gold chain around her waist.

  She flushed hotly and felt the need to explain. ‘The women who got me ready had no idea that I wouldn’t be indulging in a traditional wedding night with my husband. They didn’t know that this would have been … wasted on him.’

  Sebastian’s eyes lifted and caught hers, his jaw clenched. ‘Well, it’s not wasted on me—it is an honour for me to see you uncovered like this.’

  Absurdly Aneesa felt tears threaten. But then Sebastian was bending down to her feet where he lifted first one foot and then the other to take off her shoes. Taking each foot in his hand, he kissed where the henna tattoo snaked up in an ornate design to above her ankles.

  And then he took her hands and pressed kisses into each hennaed palm. From where he was, crouched before her, he slowly slid his hands up her legs, first one and then the other, until she had to lean on his shoulders because she was afraid she might fall.

  Her long hair slipped over one shoulder as she looked down. With one hand cupping her bottom Sebastian slid his other hand up between her legs, gently encouraging her to part them for him. Aneesa’s heart stopped dead and her breath caught in her throat as those long fingers delved through her dark curls to her most intimate place, stroking along plump moistness where she could feel a pulse throb.

  Her legs wobbled, knees threatening to give out, as she gasped, ‘Sebastian …’ Her hands tightened on his shoulders, as he seemed to effortlessly know just what to do to stoke her desire higher and higher. Her belly was clenched, her skin tingling all over and her head felt like it might explode.

  ‘It’s … too much …’ It’s not enough! The contradictory thoughts rang in her head.

  She wanted him to stop and never to stop, and it was overwhelming. She nearly cried out when he took his hand away and stood again. He pressed a hot kiss against her mouth and said, ‘Sorry … we’ll take it slower….’

  Aneesa was immediately contrite. ‘No … I mean, I don’t know … I just—’

  He shushed her with a finger to her lips. ‘You don’t have to say anything … it’s OK. This is just the beginning.’

  And then he started to strip, making her mind go blank. His shirt came off to reveal that stunningly beautiful chest again and then his hands were on his trousers. Helplessly her eyes dropped and she watched in fascination as he pulled them down over lean hips and dropped them to the floor. He stood before her, naked except for a pair of briefs and they bulged with his powerful arousal.

  When he pulled them down too, lights exploded behind Aneesa’s eyes to see him revealed in all his glory, massively aroused, and she longed to reach out and explore.

  As if he’d heard her wanton thought, he said huskily, ‘Touch me, Aneesa.’

  Too scared to touch him where she really wanted, hesitantly she lifted her gaze and then reached out to run her hands over his chest, feeling how satin smooth his skin was under the light covering of hair. She scraped his blunt nipples with her nails, exulting in his indrawn breath and the hiss between his teeth.

  And then because it was too hard not to, her gaze dropped again to take in that intimidating arousal which looked as if it had grown even bigger. Tentatively she reached out to touch him. His penis jerked and she bit her lip, reaching out again this time to wrap her hand around him.

  She had a sudden memory of giggling over the Kama Sutra when she was in her teens with friends, when hilarity would disguise their genuine fascination with the explicit pictures they saw. She’d always felt slightly guilty by how fascinating the pictures had been to her, and when on a school trip they’d visited the sacred temples of Khajuraho, famous for their erotic sculptures, she’d been mortified at the achy hot feeling she’d felt in her belly after inspecting them, thinking that there must be something wrong with her.

  But now Aneesa followed a feminine instinct as old as time and she bent down and took him in her mouth. He tasted salty and musky and her belly clenched with desire, but Sebastian was pulling her back up and she could see the fierce slash of colour across his cheeks and his eyes burning.

  ‘Stop … that’s enough for now. I won’t be able to go slowly if you keep doing that….’

  When he’d seen her hennaed hand encircle him and felt the wet touch of her tongue, Sebastian had feared for his control when he’d never had to worry about it before. But something about the way she’d so innocently looked at him with such blatant hunger and had then bent down, giving him an enticing view of the curve of her waist and buttocks, had nearly sent him into orbit.

  He took her hand again and led her to the bed, reaching out to a drawer nearby for protection as he did. He donned it with almost indecent haste and gently pushed her back onto the bed. Seeing her laid there, all curves, peaks and dark dips and hollows, he had to curb an animalistic instinct to brand this woman as his in the most primal way. All sense of urbanity was a mere illusion, and he struggled to claw back control. He bent down, over her, and took her face in his hands and kissed her passionately, exulting when her hands crept around his back and she kissed him with equal fervour.

  Their bodies touched from head to toe, and Aneesa could have wept with relief when she felt Sebastian’s heavy weight over her. She could feel him thrust one leg between hers, his hair-roughened thigh chafing exquisitely against her soft inner thighs, his erection between them.

  Then he drew back and this time explored her, with a thoroughness that had her all but melting into a puddle on the bed. With his mouth on her breast, sucking a hard nipple deep, and his hand between her legs, fingers stroking and exploring her hot wetness, she was all but crying out for some elusive fu
lfilment she’d never craved before.

  Time and reality had been reduced to this man and this room and this aching burgeoning feeling inside her, so when Sebastian moved over her more fully and settled between her legs, she instinctively opened up to him as much as she could.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  She nodded, incapable of speech. And when she felt his blunt head thrust into her, she held in a gasp at the intrusive sensation. Sebastian was infinitely patient, going so slowly that she arched her back and hips towards him, making him curse softly.

  He thrust again and she felt a stinging hot pain for a second but it was obliterated when she felt him slide even deeper inside her, causing her to move her hips experimentally. A delicious coil of sensation was building which was heightened when Sebastian started to move in and out. It rose higher and higher until she was panting in his arms, head back and eyes open wide as he took her on a journey of discovery of her own body.

  She barely heard another muffled curse as his movements became more urgent and with a guttural groan she felt him tense for a long moment before his whole body collapsed over hers.

  Aneesa was still trembling on the cusp of something that felt huge and momentous, but clearly Sebastian was finished. He was slumped over her now, breathing heavily, and she felt curiously dissatisfied, but also inordinately tender, stroking his back, even as she dimly wondered if this was what all the fuss was about.

  A sense of disappointment rushed through her despite her attempts to block it out—what had she hoped for after all? Singing angels and blasting trumpets? She had no experience to call on….

  Sebastian lifted his head then and looked down at her. He grimaced. ‘I’m sorry about that….’

  Aneesa blinked up at him. He was still hard inside her and it was difficult to concentrate when they were so intimately joined. ‘Sorry … for what?’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s never happened to me before—I’ve never lost control like that.’

  Aneesa could see the tortured expression on his face. She lifted a hand to stroke his cheek. ‘It’s OK … really. I wasn’t sure what to expect.’

  A steely thread of something made his voice husky. ‘I won’t let it end like this….’

  ‘What do you … oh …’ She trailed off as he started to move within her; by degrees she could feel him grow harder again. And suddenly that aching feeling was back and intensified, the coil of tension building to such an extent that it made Aneesa want to cry out. Every cell in her body strained to reach the pinnacle.

  Sebastian was remorseless and relentless, stoking the fire inside her higher and higher until her legs wrapped around his back and her hips were moving restlessly beneath him, searching desperately for something.

  He bent his head and drew one nipple into his mouth, sucking fiercely just at the moment that every nerve in Aneesa’s body stretched taut and sang out with exquisite pleasure. When Sebastian thrust one more time, she reached the elusive peak and after a heart-stopping moment of sensation so intense it bordered on being painful, she fell down and down into another world of such acute pleasures that she cried out as she fell.

  She could feel her body clenching around Sebastian’s thick shaft and only then did he thrust again and, with a shout, joined her in her delicious descent, a flood of warm release within her making Aneesa want to clench her legs tight around Sebastian and never let him go.

  This time she couldn’t speak or rationalise anything. All she knew was that singing angels and blasting trumpets would have been a pathetic accompaniment to what had just happened. Because it had surpassed anything she might have ever tried to imagine.

  A delicious feeling of satiety coursed through her body, defying description. She had an intense desire to stay joined with Sebastian. When he drew back slightly and tried to pull away she went with him. He gave a dark chuckle, and when he pulled away again, Aneesa dropped her legs and let him go, even though the desolate feeling nearly stunned her with its power.

  She couldn’t look at him; she was too overwhelmed with what had just happened. Her skin tingled all over and her blood flowed thick and heavy in her veins. He drew her into his side in a possessive embrace, and with one powerful leg flung over hers, Aneesa fell into a deep and exhausted slumber.

  She woke a couple of hours later to see nothing but inky blackness and stars twinkling outside. Sebastian lay with one arm flung over her, the other stretched out in abandon. The sheet was thrown aside and Aneesa felt greedy just looking at his glorious body. The protection was gone—dimly she realised that he must have taken care of it while she slept.

  She moved slightly and winced when she felt the tenderness between her legs. Carefully she moved Sebastian’s arm and lifted the sheet to see that there were spots of blood on her legs.

  Stealthily she got out of bed and pulled her discarded sari around her as she found the bathroom. She closed the door softly and looked at herself in the mirror and almost didn’t recognise herself. Her eyes were huge and slumberous, the kohl smudged, giving her a smokily decadent appearance. Her hair was tangled and tousled over her shoulders and her mouth was swollen from Sebastian’s kisses.

  And her whole body felt different, zinging with energy and yet deliciously lethargic. Wanting to wash away the blood, she turned on the shower and stepped in, after pulling her hair in to a messy knot on her head.

  Standing under the sluicing hot spray, she didn’t feel an ounce of remorse for what had happened even though she knew it would shock her fans and her family to know what she’d just done. It would just have to be her own secret, something she would hug to herself for a long time, perhaps forever….

  After drying herself, she let her hair down again and wrapped the sari around herself once more, in a haphazard fashion. Uncertainty gripped her just before she opened the bathroom door. What would Sebastian expect now? Should she just leave and try to get out of the hotel without anyone seeing her?

  Opening the door hesitantly she saw that Sebastian was still asleep on the bed and she crept over to the window to look out over Mumbai. Suddenly an acute sense of loneliness gripped her for just a moment, as well as a feeling of loss, that tonight was going to be the last time she would see him.

  Sebastian woke with a start and for a second was thoroughly disorientated. He slept so rarely that it was disconcerting to realise he had slept, and more soundly than he had in ages. And then he saw her, standing at the window, with her back to him and that black hair in a luxuriant tangle over her shoulders, the red-and-gold wedding sari wrapped around her naked body.

  And then he felt even more disorientated; he never fell asleep while with a woman. He would lay awake while she slept, or he would get up and work and he would be impatient for her to wake and leave … or else he would have already left. For a secret moment he regarded Aneesa’s body and an acute rush of desire stunned him with its intensity. Never before had he felt such hunger for a woman he’d just bedded.

  She’d been a virgin.

  The memory of taking her, of thrusting into her tight body, nearly had him groaning out loud, his own body already responding forcibly. And he felt a curious tightness in his chest, along with a very unwelcome sense of possessiveness. As that emotion registered he immediately diverted his thoughts back to the physical. He’d never climaxed so hard—he’d practically blacked out for a moment that second time….

  Sensing his wakefulness, Aneesa turned around and something clenched hard in Sebastian’s chest to see her beauty anew. And to see the hesitation on her face. She walked towards him slowly, hands clutching her sari to her chest.

  When she stood near the bed she looked at him and said huskily, ‘Thank you … for tonight.’

  Sebastian smiled and felt his equilibrium return as desire surged effortlessly. ‘My pleasure …’

  He held out an imperious hand, beckoning her to come to him. She stalled. ‘Don’t you want me to go?’

  Sebastian in any other instance with any other woman would have ans
wered in the affirmative but now he said a throaty, ‘No. It’s still the middle of the night. How far do you think you’re going to get wearing a dishevelled wedding sari and looking like you’ve been thoroughly bedded and not by the right man?’

  He saw the blush stain her cheeks and his body responded even more violently. His conscience and guilt struck him when he thought of how tight she’d been, how out of control she’d made him feel. ‘Are you sore?’

  She shook her head, flushing to hear it confirmed that he had noticed she was a virgin. ‘No … I bled a little but I’m fine. I … want to stay too, Sebastian … I want to do that again. Is that awful?’

  Her disarming honesty caught at him somewhere inside. He shook his head and reached out to grab her hand, pulling her to him. ‘No, it’s not awful at all. I want you too…. We have all night and if you’re not too tender—’

  She shook her head. ‘We only have one night. I don’t want to waste a minute of it.’

  A curious sense of loss assailed Sebastian at her words but he blocked it out. There was no room for such emotions in his life. He sat up and started to unwind the sari from her body. She turned around and around, as he unwound it, until it fell to the floor and she was naked again, adorned with nothing except the gold waist chain and the henna tattoo.

  Pulling her down onto the bed beside him, he came up on one elbow and had to take a breath at how beautiful she looked with her hair spread out around her head, and his body tightened when he caught the tantalising scent of exotic musk. When he made love to her this time it was so slow and leisurely that she was the one who lost control and came helplessly, bucking against his hand as he explored her hot wet body, and when he slid into her, he made sure that she exploded around him first, before giving in to his own all-consuming need.

  When Aneesa woke next, she was the one alone in bed. She could see the tentacles of pink in the dawn sky outside and felt a helpless lurch of pain, to know that another day was dawning and her night with Sebastian was over.