The Sheikh's Diamond (Sheikh's Wedding Bet Series Book 1) by Leslie North Page A

sound of her moan.
    His hands smoothly stroked over her body, loving the feel of her skin and the soft moans she made.
    When he entered her slowly, he knew that he was falling in love. But even as his slow thrusts drove them both to distraction, he knew that it wasn’t enough. He had a responsibility to his family, and he needed to figure out how he could have both.
    He gritted his teeth as he pushed deeper into her warm and inviting depths. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he whispered hoarsely. She only moaned in response, and he held on for as long as possible. He wanted to draw out every minute that he had with her and try to make it last forever.
    When she wrapped her legs around him and shuddered in release, he couldn’t help but fantasize that this passionate and beautiful woman beneath him could one day be his forever. She moaned with her orgasm, and he reached down to capture that moan in a kiss. Everything about her touched his very soul. Enveloped in her warmth and spurred by that idea, he let himself go, and he lost himself in her.
    He was in trouble, because being with Fleur felt like paradise.

Chapter Fourteen
     
    Fleur shook her head at the empty space in front of her. Baffled, she opened her map for the fourth time since they entered the clearing and frowned. “I don’t understand. They haven’t moved in centuries. So where the hell are they?”
    The location of the Samekhi tribe was no secret. It was well documented, and there was absolutely no way that they were wrong. But there wasn’t any evidence to point that any human had been here.
    Masoud wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her close. “Maybe they took a vacation,” he said as he nuzzled her neck.
    She shook her head and pulled away from his grasp. As much as she wanted to bask in the glow of his touch, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. “But there’s no evidence that a tribe has been here in years. No shelters. No fires. No gardens. From the length of the grass, I’d say that no one has been here in at least a decade.”
    “Has anyone seen them in a decade?”
    “No.” Fleur’s shoulders slumped. “Maybe something happened to them. Without them, I wouldn’t even begin to try and find the mines, and I’d never be able to connect it back to Solomon without the diamond. I’m sorry, Masoud. We’ve made this trip for nothing. I’m going to have to look at that diamond again if I’m going to prove my thesis.”
    “We’re here. We might as well look around,” he said as he pulled away from her. She saw the veiled expression on his face and felt uneasy. Was he keeping something from her?
    They’d spent half the night wrapped up in each other’s arms. She’d never experienced anything like it before, and she didn’t regret a single second of it. She was in love with him, and while she knew she could never be his forever, she needed to know that she was more than just a woman of convenience for him. There was something different in the way that he touched her, but she had nothing to compare it to. She wanted to believe he felt something in return.
    She needed to believe it.
    But that wasn’t the most pressing issue, despite how she felt. She was almost certain that Solomon’s Mines were somewhere in the vicinity, but she needed proof. The absence of the tribe meant she didn’t have to worry about human casualties, but it also raised some troubling questions. What happened to them? Why did they suddenly decide that they didn’t need to be in the area anymore?
    They explored the area until dark, but there wasn’t a single shred of evidence to support her theory. Masoud set up camp, and it was only in his arms that she was able to push her sorrows aside. Part of her was relieved that the tribe wasn’t there because she didn’t want an audience to her moans of pleasure. As she straddled and took him inside her, she felt the deepest connection she’d ever had to another human