He licked his lips and frowned down at Bridget. “I don’t understand.”
Bridget swallowed. “I know what I want, Ravi.” Then she nodded to the dancer. “Thank you for showing us to somewhere private.”
The dancer nodded and smirked at both of them as she drew the curtain closed again. “It is my pleasure to do whatever makes my sheikh the happiest,” she said.
That left Ravi to wander to the divan and sit on it. To his surprise, Bridget didn’t follow. “I confess, I’m a bit confused. If you wanted something more private, we could have gone back to the mansion. Besides, what do you mean that you know what you want?”
“I know. I knew in the limo, but I want to stay, and I want to prove to you how much I mean that,” she said, steeling her shoulders and holding up her chin high. “Did you know I used to dance ballet? I mean, I wasn’t great and I stopped when I was ten because after Mom…” she shook her head and started again. “I had to quit when we didn’t have the money or any way for me to get there, but I used to be an okay dancer.”
Ravi’s eyes widened and the blood starting flowing further south to the hardness building between his legs. His budding erection at least certainly liked where this was going. Truth be told, so did the rest of him. “And?”
She smiled at him and spread out her arms to chest level. A new song was blaring out in the other room, the clarinet and drums setting another sensuous rhythm for the entertainers to dance too. Bridget gave a flick of her hips that left him standing at full attention in more ways than one. With one fluid motion, she pulled off her kaftan and let it fall to the floor. He loved the way she looked, the seeming miles of creamy, white skin. He adored her breasts, not too small, but just right for him to cup his hand around and the gem-studded bra that Kamala had chosen accentuated her curves beautifully.
Bridget started to move in earnest now, her arms moving with a dervish’s flourish as her hips rolled from side to side. As he watched, the bangles and bells around her waist started to beat in time with the music out there, and he felt himself lost in the dance, lost in her. Her belly dipped and twitched with expert precision, and Ravi suspected she was more than just ‘okay’ at ballet as well, even if they were very different types of dances. However, he was wrong on one thing. As the tempo of the music sped up into a rapid tattoo, that was when Bridget truly became a whirling dervish—leaping, twirling, and even arching her back in bends that would have left an untrained person in traction.
Dear Allah, how flexible she is.
Now his hardness was pressing painfully against the fabric of his slacks. Damn, how badly he wanted her. All of her.
As if reading his thoughts, she sashayed over to him, her hips still moving with sultry aplomb in time to the music. Then she straddled him. Bridget smiled and stared at him through heavy lidded eyes. One hand reached up to stroke his hair back from his forehead, and the other reached down to stroke his member through the thin cotton of his pants.
“I know that’s not exactly traditional belly dancing,” she said, stroking him again.
He groaned. “I think I can forgive you just this once for inaccuracy. If you stop stroking me, I think I’ll die right here. Of course, my swan,” he highlighted his point by stroking the delicate arch of her neck. “If you don’t stop touching me, I’m afraid I won’t last long. Damn it, if your touch doesn’t drive me wild.”
Her smile was an inscrutable expression that reminded him of the Mona Lisa. “I don’t think we want to have that.” Then she eased her hips down on him and pressed her body flush with his, her core over his length, her warmth almost sizzling up against him. Bridget threaded her hands through his hair again and let her fingers trail over his ear lobes. He shivered and felt the attraction pulsing through his body and to his erection. “Do you want to get out of here, my sheikh? I think of better things we can be doing,” she practically purred.
He kissed her lips, capturing them with his own. “I thought you’d never ask.”
***
Bridget was in the bathroom beside Ravi’s master suite in his mansion. She came home and gathered up something special that had been left in her dresser; a few things that probably had fit Sabella’s taste, but would work for what Bridget had in mind. However, part of her felt as she had at the dinner and dance: like a girl playing dress up. She was mimicking what she’d seen Sabella do or those dancers, even some of Cindi’s wilder stories.vThis wasn’t her.
Yet, she felt something in the limo, something deep. This was a man who was wounded and, despite the kingdom around him, perhaps as lonely as she was. Certainly, Sheikh Ravi Shamon was an orphan and she was effectively one. Dear old Dad was worse than a dead father, that was for sure. She wanted to touch Ravi. She wanted to reach that wounded soul inside him, that small glimpse she’d already been treated to. Yes, she wanted the sexy god she saw at the beach, but she also wanted to know Ravi, all of him. She used the dance as a way to offer that olive branch, to show him how determined she was to stay and try whatever odd relationship was unfolding between them.
But now she was standing there in a pink satin chemise that fell just below her ass and dipped ridiculously low on her breasts. It left nothing to the imagination. Surely, he had to see through her in a place as intimate as his bedroom, that she wasn’t the one he could possibly want. Her overactive imagination had been running wild for ten minutes as she pretended to wash her hands with lifelike scenarios of her stepping out and him both laughing at her and sending for Sabella instead.
She just wasn’t that girl, and never had been. Surely Ravi would see through that eventually? After all, Kevin had.
“My swan?” Ravi asked. “Are you ready?”
She gulped and took one last deep breath to steady herself. It was better to go out there and do her best, to try to explore what they had and find out if they were fully compatible—no matter how that resolved itself—than it was to run through worst-case scenarios on a loop.
“Come on,” she muttered to herself. “You can do better than skanky Sabella. I know you can!”
Exhaling one last time, she slipped out of the bathroom and into the cavernous bedroom before her. Ravi wasn’t in the bed and that surprised her. Instead, he was standing up, the moonlight playing over the lines of his torso and the ripples of his abs. He put the average washboard to shame. Hell, he put Michelangelo’s David to shame, too. Clearly, he was both genetically gifted and someone who hadn’t missed a workout. Ever.
And he’s all mine. At least until he gets tired of me.
She pushed the thought aside. If she were just some crazy phase of his, then she’d enjoy it for what it was. This was her carpe diem, her chance to seize what was before her and drink deep the best wine life had to offer her. That was what she needed, that self-confidence from the restaurant. That girl she morphed into for one dance would know what to do.
Ravi nodded toward her as he stalked over with all the grace of a lion hunting out on the Savannah to meet her. “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
She felt the heat flush through her cheeks and wished she were darker like Ravi or that perfect Sabella. Then no one would be able to read her so easily, to see her every change in mood just by observing the color on her face and the changes there.
“You’re not bad either, definitely easy on my eyes,” she said. Then, it was almost as if instinct took over her, as it had at the restaurant. Falling to her knees—well sliding to them to avoid hurting herself—Bridget readied herself. It was like falling into a profane prayer, genuflecting before her new god.
What would that make Ravi? God of P90X? Oh, I know! He’s the God of Orgasms.