Gritting his teeth against temptation, he held her wriggling hips still and nudged another tiny bit into her.
Despite her open hunger, she was a novice at this—it was his task as her husband to prepare her, soothe her.. and then storm her. Another tiny nudge.
He did the same again and again, moving slowly deeper until he hit the feminine barrier he'd known was waiting for him. Some wholly primitive part of him growled in approval. She was his. For always. It was right that he was the one to initiate her into this. The only one. Fighting the grip of the primitive within, he took her lips in a voracious kiss and nudged again, this time with more force. That fine barrier stretched and then broke. Hira's fingers dug into his shoulders but she didn't pull away.
Instead she returned his kiss with fierceness that destroyed him. Sure of his welcome, he pushed fully into her almost-shocking heat. The pleasure was indescribable. Lips locked with hers, he moved one hand to her bottom, squeezing and caressing as his other hand moved up to her breast. He could feel her fighting the multiple sensations, trying to control her senses.
"Let go, baby. Let go for me." His husky demand was whispered into her mouth, almost drowned out by the water.
But she'd heard. When he rolled her nipple in his fingers, her body jerked and then she cried out against his lips.
Her surrender was apparent in the way she clung to him as ripples of pleasure tore through her body. In the deepest, most feminine part of her, she clenched around him again and again, an intimate caress that brought him to the edge of insanity. He clung to that edge with every ounce of strength he possessed, determined to hold her safe through her first ride into the firestorm of pleasure.
Almost sobbing with the fury of her ecstasy, her legs locked tight around his hips, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against him, as if she wanted to crawl into his body. It was the final straw.
He started moving faster, speeding his rhythm in a way designed to stroke her already sensitive inner tissues into shuddering abandon. He felt her shock as her body began to react again, felt her mouth open on the skin of his neck as she kissed him there, touched him, stroked her fingers into his wet hair. But she didn't back away.
Her lush body accepted the pleasure he lavished on her. It was all he'd wanted, but she gave him more. With her lips and her hands and the way she held him to her, she not only accepted but actively participated, telling him without words that his pleasure mattered to her. It was his last thought before the spiraling void he'd been circling sucked him in.
He took her over the edge with him, took her on another incandescent ride into a realm where pleasure was the only currency. His and hers.
Five
Hira wasn't sure she was functioning properly. Moving her head with care lest it fall off, she looked beside her to the hunter sharing the bed. Yes, she'd once thought him a civilized man, but that had been a complete delusion. He was about as civilized as a mountain lion. His taking of her—and it had been a taking in the most basic sense—had been domineering, controlling and very, very sexual.
This very uncivilized man thought he owned her even relaxed hi sleep. She was pinned down with«ne heavy arm thrown across her waist and a muscular thigh across her lower legs; now that she'd given herself to him, he wouldn't allow her to back away from their sexual joining.
But was it making love?
No, she thought with a little pang of loss. It hadn't been making love. He desired her but he didn't love her. And as for her? She didn't know what to make of her own emotions. She'd been so sure she'd loved Romaz, and yet she'd never felt this desire to mate with him that she did for her American husband.
From the first moment she'd seen Marc, her feelings had spun as wildly out of control as a desert storm. Turning, she raised one hand and brushed his dark hair off his face, unable to stop the tender caress of her fingertips across his strong jaw.
He fascinated her, this hunter with his scars and his eyes full of shadows. She'd never seen a more magnificent man, and she came from a culture far more primitive in its beliefs about men and women than her new home.
Zulheil's history had made its men toughened, somewhat wild creatures who had to be coaxed to trust a gentle feminine hand.
Had she misjudged her husband and dealt with him in the worst possible way? If he were like the men of her homeland, then he would have to be treated with the same wary tenderness, for wild creatures didn't trust so easily as their civilized brethren. She'd thought him an American millionaire but that was merely a mask. He was far more like Zulheil's desert chieftains, who sometimes took women for the simple reason that they wanted them.
Eyes the shade of aged silver were suddenly looking into hers. "How long have you been awake?" he demanded.
"Hours and hours," she lied. Like those chieftains, he must never be given all he wanted, or he'd become a total dictator.
His lips curved in that slow sexy smile that never failed to weaken her virtue, and he rolled over to lie on top of her, his arousal nudging at her. Shocked, she felt her eyes widen. "Already?"
"The first two times were mere entrees, baby. I'm working toward the main course." He pushed into her.
Gently. Oh, so gently.
Surprised by the tenderness she could feel in the care he took with her well-loved body, she was undone. To her further shock, she accepted him easily, without pain or discomfort, feeling only sweet, hot hunger. He was slow this time around, moving with languorous ease that gave her much pleasure. As passion built, she rode the tide with him, clutching the sheets and letting him kiss and suck her breasts as he would, giving herself to her hunter.
Marc watched Hira move sinuously beneath him and could barely believe she'd been a virgin only hours before. He'd been merciless, not letting her recover from that first joining before taking her again, stroking her to incoherent passion as morning turned to afternoon, his appetite for her and her pleasure out of control. But she'd been with him every step, a sensual, gorgeous creature whose body reacted to his touch like dynamite to fire. He'd never had his hands full of fire before. It was an education.
Though he would never tell her, she'd spoiled him for other women. They damn well were going to stay married forever because he had no intention of going without, now that he knew what was possible. In bed she was his perfect mate, honest and giving with just a whisper of wildness. He wanted to coax more of that wildness from her, in the bedroom and out.
Her breath hissed out from between her lips as he touched her deep in her heat, his engorged flesh stretching her swollen tissues. Slowing the tempo of his hips, he stroked and kissed and caressed, giving her the tenderness he'd denied her earlier. "Was I too rough, cher?"
Exotic eyes of lightest brown met his. "Did I complain?"
He grinned. "You said I made you crazy."
She reached up and cupped his face in her hands. Obligingly he moved close enough for her to kiss him. "Yes. I am insane and that is your punishment."
Chuckling, he inserted a hand between their bodies and caressed her where she was most sensitive. She moved against him, surprising him with her acceptance of the intimacy. To his delight her curious honesty apparently translated into open sensuality in bed. He gave her what she wanted and she returned the favor, locking her long legs around his hips and holding him to her.
Watching her eyes go almost golden as she reached her climax, Marc wondered why this day felt more momentous than their wedding ceremony.
After that incredibly pleasurable day with her husband, Hira decided to truly fight for their marriage. She had taken vows. Though they hadn't been made with full freedom of choice, they had been made. She had many faults, but she wasn't a promise breaker.
Her husband didn't love her, she thought as she walked along a stream that ran near the house. But neither did he treat her with the lack of courtesy that her father always showed her mother. It wasn't much, but it was better than the life she'd e
xpected on her wedding night.
For the past three weeks, ever since she'd admitted her desire for him, he'd been warm and indulgent. Whenever he could delegate work, he'd been teaching her about his Louisiana. Wide-eyed, she'd visited a voodoo practitioner's temple, gorged herself at a backwoods crawfish restaurant and ridden through the gator-infested bayou country that Marc loved so much.
It was a lush land, full of surprises and hidden glory that easily enchanted. Attempting to appreciate this vivid, green country was not the hardest thing in her life. Especially when she saw it through her husband's eyes.
But there was one thing that gave her pause. Every Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon, Marc disappeared.
When she'd asked, he'd said that it had to do with some important business. But while he'd been out last week, his secretary had called looking for him, unable to get through to his mobile phone.
Hira had given the woman a plausible excuse, but she couldn't help wondering where her husband went when he left her each sunny Sunday, and what he did that made him arrive home so very late every Wednesday.
Though it was a painful thing, she accepted that despite the risk she'd taken in giving herself to him, he might have another lover. Romaz hadn't been satisfied with her—why should she be enough for this far more magnificent man? Clenching her fists, she took a deep breath of the wet air. Everything in this land was wet. Even her eyes.
Rubbing her tears off her face with the backs of her hands, she decided that she wouldn't suffer in silence. She wasn't going to spend the rest of her life ignoring her husband's infidelities the way her mother did. Perhaps it had allowed Amira Dazirah to live with some semblance of happiness, but it would never suit her daughter.
Walking out of the woods surrounding their extensive compound, she strode to the house and made her way to the master bedroom. The sound of the shower in the en suite bathroom only gave her a little peace. She knew she shouldn't spy on her husband's affairs but she couldn't bear to simply ask him, couldn't bear to tear open her soul that way. If he told her face-to-face that he had a lover, she wouldn't be able to hide her pain.
She felt ashamed spying, but she would rather feel that than the crushing humiliation that would surely come if she went into a confrontation with no knowledge whatsoever. She needed some shield against Marc, some way to protect herself. As he'd shown her last night, when his hands touched her body, she became his in a way that defied her own mind and soul.
Ears perked to catch the slightest sound, she reached into Marc's jacket pockets and pulled out everything in them. The wallet and keys went straight back in. She started going through the handful of receipts in one pocket. No matter that this was wrong, she had to know, for the idea of her husband finding succor in some other woman's arms was unbearable.
"Gas," she muttered, scanning the receipts. "Groceries. Clothing...from a boys store? Electronic equipment. Flowers." That was all there was. Brow furrowed, she put the receipts away just as the shower shut off.
Giving a soft gasp, she whirled out of the master bedroom and padded quickly into her own. Though she hadn't spent a night there since she'd lain with Marc, it was still her room, full of feminine things and her favorite books, a place of retreat when her hunter of a husband became too dominating or overwhelming. However, she'd rarely been pushed to use it in the past weeks.
She'd found herself drifting into the relaxed living room to sit with Marc, without ever consciously planning such a domestic scene. He never asked her to be with him, but if she was away from him for more than an hour, he came looking. Until now she'd thought that implied growing care for her, and her heart had bloomed. But what if it had been nothing more than a proprietary search for the woman he considered his property?
The instant Marc walked out of the bathroom, he knew that someone had been in the bedroom. Barely a second later he knew it had been his wife. Her elusive scent tantalized his nostrils and threatened to arouse him when he had no intention of being made a slave to desire.
As he dressed, he thought over her distant behavior of the past week. He'd wondered if she was trying out her fledgling sensual wings, seeing if she could control him by withholding her full self from their intimacy. If she was, he'd shown her last night that she was a novice in that game.
He frowned. Had he been too demanding of her? He hadn't let her hold back an inch, asking more and more and still more, not letting her sleep until she'd begged him for rest. Even then a part of him had raged to keep taking her, stamping his mark on her, forcing her to remove the distance he'd glimpsed on her face even in the darkness.
He swore under his breath. Despite her sensual nature, she really was an innocent in that particular arena. His gut twisted at the thought that he might've scared her with his intensity, even though she'd ridden every wave with him.
Hira sat in her room, unable to stop thinking about what she'd found. The groceries, clothing and computer equipment hadn't come to this house. Neither had the flowers, and that hurt most of all. Her husband had never given her flowers, never so much as a tiny trinket to show her that he felt some affection for her. That wasn't to say he was a stingy husband. No, in some ways he was far too generous.
A racy little sports car had been delivered for her personal use a few days after her arrival in America, and just last week, his secretary had accompanied her on a shopping trip to a number of designer boutiques where Marc had set up accounts for her use. But despite his generosity, he'd never once given her anything that might be interpreted as the least bit romantic. Perhaps he didn't wish her to get the idea that she meant more to him than a pleasurable face and body.
So where had the flowers gone?
Who had they gone to?
Her heart felt as if it was slowly breaking into a thousand little pieces. Could it be that her husband had become more than just a lover? Could it be that she was the trophy to show off, while his heart belonged to a woman he couldn't marry for some reason?
It wasn't such a ridiculous idea. Her father's longest-serving mistress was a twice-divorced Parisian dancer whom he'd known since before his marriage. She'd once heard him say to her brother, Fariz, that though he couldn't let the woman go, he'd never considered marrying her—a man of his standing needed a wife with a pristine past.
Pain beat at her temples as, for the first time, she realized that this hunter of an American with his quick mind and compelling eyes meant far more to her than a convenient husband. In her heart she'd claimed him as hers the first time he'd teased her with that slow smile. And that had been back in Zulheil.
She didn't know if she loved him, but she did know she felt things for him she'd never felt for any other man. He was her husband and she wouldn't sit aside and let him betray her. She wasn't a toy he could play with, as he'd played with her last night, and then put back in her box when she became inconvenient.
Gulping, she considered confronting him right then and there. Only a second later she thrust that idea aside. He was half-naked right now and would surely see her entry as an invitation to seduction. No, she couldn't let him touch her body while he thought of another woman.
The past few days had been torture, last night had been pure humiliation, given that she'd been trying to keep her distance while she decided whether or not he was cheating on her. With hands that caressed and teased, lips that lavished attention on every secret corner and husky whispers that rasped along her skin, he'd made her give up all her precious dignity and taken his pleasure in her shuddering climaxes.
She could accept his lack of loving, but it was unbearable that he might be giving some other woman the very affection he couldn't find in his soul for her. She had to know the truth. But how?
"Hira." Marc's deep voice came through the door.
"Yes?" Startled, she stood and walked over to stand on her side of the wooden barrier, hoping he wouldn' t ask her to open it. Today he'd have no trouble seeing past the ice princess to the very human woman u
nderneath, and she couldn't bear that, not when he might be in love with another woman—someone whom he adored far more than her beautiful face and sexually enticing body. Marc might pity his jealous wife, and that would be the greatest cruelty. Alone in this new land, her pride was all she had.
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