Behind her closed eyelids soft color existed, compliments of the sun pouring down around her. There was just the summer surrounding her, heating her, causing her to tingle from the tips of her bare toes, over her waxed pu**y and her pale br**sts, to the top of her head.
She stretched beneath the heat, luxuriating in it as she hadn't been able to do for far too long.
She should have joined her mother and aunts in France, she thought. They were sunning themselves on the beach, drinking fruity little drinks with umbrellas in them, and relaxing. If she'd had any idea of the surprise her insane boss had intended for her yesterday, then she definitely would have made plans to join them.
She would have enjoyed the laughter that always resulted when her mother and aunts got together.
Instead, she was lying here, wondering what she was missing and why the hell she was here alone.
Just as she would have been doing if she were in France, she thought with amusement. She would have fussed internally every day she was there as she wondered what she was missing at home.
She would have wondered what Khalid was doing. Sexy, charming, brooding, secretive Khalid.
She blew out a heated breath as the image of him rose behind her closed lashes. So tall, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped. A fantasy come to life if all a woman was looking for was the pleasure to be had from sex alone.
There were times she wished she could settle for just the sex. The stolen moments in the darkness of night, a few hours of satisfaction before she went on her way. If she were more that type of a woman, she wouldn't be as tormented by one man as she was by Khalid.
Stroking her fingertips along the bare flesh of her abdomen left a sense of sensual weakness washing over her. There were days, nights, when she ached for his touch. When every nerve ending in her body, desperate for his caress, seemed to throb just under the skin. A touch she had never known.
She almost laughed at the thought. She was pathetic, and the older she got, the more the ache seemed to intensify. She couldn't get him out of her fantasies, or out of her mind. She wondered if she was obsessed.
Marty never obsessed over anything, and definitely never over a man. Khalid seemed to be the exception to her rule. Rolling over on the thick towel cushioning her from the cement surrounding the pool, Marty drew in a hard, deep breath and tried to force the ever-present erotic images of Khalid out of her mind.
She had decisions to make while she was on vacation, decisions that did not include Khalid's arrogance and sexuality. Decisions that could change her life as well as the direction she had once chosen for it.
The private security firm she had been approached by last month had made an offer she found hard to refuse. An offer she might yet accept.
Climbing the ladder in the bureau was beginning to look next to impossible. Her godfather's position as head of the federal offices held her back in ways she hadn't anticipated. She was protected and watched over, and then Deerfield had the nerve to accuse her of "crying" to Zach when things didn't go her way.
The wall to advancement that she was facing at times seemed insurmountable.
The private security firm, on the other hand, looked promising. She had no blood relation working there, no friends, and, even better, her father and godfather weren't involved in any way. She would have a sense of freedom, fewer rules and regulations, and more action and satisfaction. It seemed like a win/win situation so far.
So far.
She hadn't told her fathers about it yet, she hadn't discussed it with her mother, and every time she considered doing so, something stopped her. As though the thought of it were suddenly abhorrent. But she was an adult; she wasn't going to feel like she had to ask permission to play on the other side of the playground.
And while she was considering options, was she going to pull her towel over her na**d body sometime before Khalid Mustafa stepped from the family room to the patio where she lay?
Peeking from beneath her lashes, she watched as his shadow lingered for long seconds at the French doors before he stepped into the brilliant rays of the sun.
Like a shadow come to life. Black eyes, black hair, deeply bronzed flesh. The man was like a living sex god. Hard muscle shifted beneath the white silk shirt he wore, just as lean, powerful legs flexed inside the form-fitting jeans that covered them.
"You're going to burn." His shadow eased over her, dulling the heat that had been sinking slowly into her back.
"I never burn." She fought to keep the arousal that whipped through her out of her voice as she lay beneath his gaze. "What are you doing here? Zach's at Dad's house. Next house down the street, if you're not sure where that's at."
"I know where it's located." Deep, dark, his voice washed over her senses with a velvety rasp that shouldn't have had the power to send her juices spilling from her vagina.
Why Khalid? she asked herself. What was it about him that made her so damned hot she rivaled the sun, when other men seemed to leave her cold? So cold that the thought of actually ha**ng s*x with one of them was impossible to consider.
"Then why are you here?" She lifted herself up on her elbows and raised her head as he squatted in front of her, his dark head tilted, his thickly lashed eyes narrowing on her.
"You look like a virgin sacrifice. Laid out, naked, and tempting the sun to ravage as it chooses."
Wow. He sure as hell had a gift for words. She had known that about him; she just hadn't expected to have him use it to pay homage to her in quite that manner.
"It hasn't ravaged me yet." She looked up at him. "No matter how much I tempt it."
What was that flaring in his gaze? There was more than simple lust there, though the lust was there in spades. A hunger echoed through her body, tightened her ni**les, and caused her abdomen to clench in anticipation of pleasure.
And how the hell was she supposed to know it would be pleasure? She had to be the only twenty-seven-year-old virgin left in the country. A woman who knew more about sex than the highest-paid call girl and yet had never known the touch of a lover, because she had to be the most stubborn woman in the world, too. She wanted Khalid. She had wanted him since she was fifteen, and no other man was going to do.
"Some would say you're tempting it as you speak," Khalid stated, his gaze flickering down to the rounded curves of her br**sts.
Marty swore she could feel the swollen mounds hardening further, her ni**les aching, throbbing with the need for his touch.