She shrieked and smacked at his hand and realised it was useless, so she slid off the saddle, swiping at the tears streaming down her face. She splashed through the shallows, her abaya wet and slapping against her legs, tiny fish panicking and darting every which way before her frantic splashing feet.
She did not even know why she was crying, only that now the tears had started she didn’t know how to turn them off.
‘Aisha!’
She felt his big hands clamp down on her shoulders, she felt the brake of his body and his raw, unsuppressed heat, and she sobbed, hating him all the more for reducing her to this. ‘Leave me alone!’
But he did not leave her alone. He turned her in his hands and she closed her eyes so she could not see his face. There was nothing but silence stretching taut and thin between them. And just when she could not stand it any more, just when she was sure he must be enjoying this moment so very, very much, he crushed her to his chest. ‘Oh, Aisha, what have I done? What have I done?’
If he hadn’t been holding her, she would have collapsed in tears in the shallows.
Instead she sobbed hard against the wall of his chest.
‘Aisha,’ he said, one hand stroking her head, the other behind her, holding her to him, ‘I do not deserve you. I am afraid I will never deserve you.’ He cradled her head in his hand and she felt the press of his mouth on the top of her head; felt the crush of her breasts against his chest; felt the stirrings of unrequited need build again, as if they had been lying in wait for just such an opportunity, ready to resume their pulsing insistence.
‘Can you ever, ever forgive me for the way I have treated you?’
She sniffed. His shirt was sodden against her face. ‘I don’t want to forgive you,’ she whispered against his skin, afraid to pull her face away. Afraid to look at him. ‘I want to hate you.’
There was another achingly long pause and this time she was sure the thin wire connecting them would snap before he answered. ‘I don’t want to be hated.’
‘I can’t,’ she said, releasing another flood of tears. ‘I want to. I’ve tried, but I can’t. And I hate you for it.’
He laughed then, no more than a rumble in his chest, and she wanted to hit him for being able to find humour where there was none—until he said, ‘You do not know what a relief that is. I don’t think I have ever heard more wondrous words in my life.’ He lifted her chin between his fingers and she resisted at first, hating that he was seeing her like this, tear-streaked and swollen-eyed. But his persuasive fingers had their way, and she blinked up at him, saw his dark eyes upon her, the dark features of his face so—tortured.
‘I could never live with myself if you hated me, Aisha, even though I know I deserve it, even though I have made such a mess of this. Can you ever, even in some tiny way, forgive me?’
The tears welled anew. She sniffed. He leant down and kissed first one eye, and then the other. ‘I do not enjoy knowing that I make you cry.’
She pressed her lips together, her skin tingling where his lips had pressed. He leant down and kissed the end of her nose. And, in spite of herself, she jagged up her chin so her nose butted up harder against his lips, wanting the contact, needing more.
His hands grew suddenly warmer around her, scooping down lower and less soothing, more appreciative; the air around them was suddenly super-charged and electric and his dark eyes spoke of more than torture. For in their dark depths she saw heat and desire and the promise of pleasure like she’d never known before.
‘Aisha …’
And she knew before his head dipped that he intended to kiss her. She knew it and did not a thing to prevent it. Because it was what she wanted, this kiss with this man in this time.
His arms tightened around her as he drew her close. ‘Aisha,’ he whispered in the second before their lips connected.
It was like coming home. It was like every time she’d been away from home and returned to the palace in Jemeya and felt its welcome warmth and familiarity wrap around her. It was just like that. Only one thousand times better.
For his kiss didn’t just deliver familiarity. It offered a new dimension. It promised pleasures unbound.
And as she feasted on his hot mouth, and fed from the magic dance of his lips and tongue, all she knew was that she wanted all of those pleasures and she wanted them now. She could all but taste them.
She groaned into his mouth, her hands clutching at his shirt, fisting in the fine cotton as his hands cupped her behind and pulled her close, pulled her hard against the long, hot heat of him. And this time, she knew, she would not be left waiting and wondering. This time she would discover the pleasures she had waited for all these years.
It would not be so bad, she told herself; she would not be giving up on her dream, merely recognising life had changed the parameters. It did not mean it could not still work eventually. And meanwhile.
Meanwhile she could not breathe. Someone had sucked the oxygen out of existence and all that was keeping her going was the heated sweep of his hands on her body, the molten lure of his mouth and the rigid promise of his erection. Those things fed into her own need and stoked the fire beneath her until she was redhot and rabid with desire. Until she knew kissing was not enough.
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Please!’
He lifted his hot tongue from her throat. ‘What do you want, my princess?’
And her hunger and desire coalesced into one indisputable fact. ‘I want you, Zoltan. I want to feel you inside me.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SHE felt him lift his head from hers and look up to the sky. She heard his roar. She felt his triumph in hers. Because she knew she was right.
He carried her back to the camp as he had done that first night, in front of her on his stallion, but this time she was not wrapped in a cloak and bound to him. This time she clung to him herself, looking up at all the harsh angles and dark shadows of his face, wondering how she had never thought them beautiful before.
For he was. Darkly, supremely beautiful.
When they arrived back at the camp, he slid out of the saddle and reached up for her, taking her in his arms as if she were weightless and looking at her as if she were the only woman in the world.
She liked that look as he swung her down. At that moment she wanted to be the only woman in the world for him for ever. But this moment and how it made her feel would do, even if there was no other. Because surely it couldn’t get better than this?
He carried her into the tent and pulled the flap closed, signalling they were not to be disturbed. She swallowed at that. Everyone outside would know what they were doing inside, yet instead of stultifying her somehow that only managed to heighten her excitement.
Then Zoltan was there in front of her again and there was no room to care about anyone else because there was only the two of them. He slid one hand behind her neck. ‘You are so beautiful,’ he said, and even though she knew he was being generous, that her kohl must be smudged and her eyes swollen from tears, the knowledge he could see past that fed into her very soul.
As did the assurance they were already married. He didn’t have to impress her now. He didn’t have to pretend. She was already his wife in name and he could take his time making her so in fact.
She was so grateful he hadn’t pushed her. Maybe she might have taken longer to get to this stage if they hadn’t already been married, but for now there was no reason to delay. This was the man she was wedded to. This was the man she was bound to.
And when she looked up at him, tall and broad and wanting her, it felt not such a bad place to be.
‘Are you still scared?’ he asked as he gathered her into his arms. She nodded, afraid to speak lest he hear the quake in her voice, before he said, ‘Then I will do my best to make it as pleasurable as possible. I owe you that, at least.’
His hot mouth went to work on her to smooth her concerns away as he laid her reverently on the bed. He made no move to undress her, and she wanted to cry with r
elief, for she wasn’t yet ready to bare everything to him. It felt so good, anyway. He made it feel so good.
He made her feel so good.
She liked the way he kissed, giving her all he had to give. Their mouths meshed, his tongue inviting hers into the dance. She liked the way his hands skimmed her body, curving over a hip or cupping a breast, making her gasp when his thumb flicked over a sensitive nipple.
She liked the way his body felt under her hands. Firm. Strong. Sculpted.
Except she was too hot and he was wearing too many clothes. Way too many clothes. She pulled his shirt from his trousers so she could slide her hands up the bare skin of his back, relishing the feel of skin against skin, only it was not nearly enough to satisfy her.
And all the while the need inside her built, the heat inside her escalated. She felt as if she was losing herself, drowning under a wave of sensations, but wanting more, driven to find more.
He gave her more.
His mouth dipped to her breast, his hot tongue laving at her nipple, and she gasped as heat met need in a rush that sent sensation spearing through her, a direct line from breast to her heated core.
She was way too hot, and if his hand hadn’t already been at her knee, smoothing her abaya up from her legs, she would have ripped it off herself. His hand scooped higher, deliciously higher, as his mouth wove magic at her breast and she wound her fingers through his hair hoping that he would pause, there, where her need was so great.
But he did not pause. She whimpered a little as he moved on and drew her gown higher over her belly. He lifted his mouth now, so that he could slip her gown higher, his fingers trailing sparks under her skin, or so it seemed. She unwound her arms and he eased the gown over her head and rocked back on his knees, looking down at her in just her underwear, drinking her in from her toes to her eyes, looking at her in a way that banished her fears that he might find fault with her now when she was so close, that put a fire under her blood. ‘You are beautiful, Princess,’ he said as he unbuttoned his shirt. ‘You are perfection.’
His voice was so thick and tight that it was like gravel against her senses. His dark eyes were almost black, and brimming with need.
She knew little of love-making apart from what she had read in books, but she knew that it must be taking too long because this need inside her burned so hot!
‘I want you,’ she said, wanting him to know that in case he was taking his time because he thought she might yet change her mind. He growled deep in his throat, tore the shirt from his shoulders and undid the buckle of his belt. She watched, transfixed, as his busy, clever hands worked the trousers undone, watched hungrily as he slid them over his hips and kicked them aside.
She gazed at his masculine beauty, at the perfection of his form, at the bulge in his underwear, before he joined her once again on the bed, scooping her back into his arms.
Skin brushed by the cooling air was now brushed with the smooth of his hand and with his heated lips. He kissed her lips, nose and eyes, he trailed kisses down her throat, took her hand and kissed his way up her arm, her wrist, the inside of her elbow and down the other.
He didn’t so much kiss her as worship her body, and when he dispensed with her bra she let it go with no protest. Why would she protest when her breasts wanted his mouth on them with no barrier between them?
His tongue took a wicked trail across her belly and it was almost too much, her body never more alive, never more on fire. And then his hand cupped her mound and her spine arched into the bed. ‘Please,’ she begged.
‘What do you want, Princess?’
‘I want you,’ she gasped. ‘Inside me.’
Laughter rumbled from him and into her as his mouth found her thigh and he proceeded to kiss his way down one leg.
Why was he taking so damned long? Her hands fisted in the covers as she was driven wild with desire, wild with need. She needed him inside her, and he was raining kisses on her instep.
‘Someone is impatient,’ he said as she kicked at him, urging him on.
‘Haven’t I waited long enough?’ she came back with, her chest heaving, pulling her leg away.
‘But if you have waited this long, surely a few more minutes won’t matter?’
‘I might die before then,’ she replied and threw her head back into the pillows as he kissed his way up her inner thigh. ‘Oh God.’
‘Do you like that?’
‘Mmm,’ she managed. He must have been listening because she felt his fingers trace the waistline of her lace panties, felt them sneak under and scoop them down, felt his hands gentle her legs apart.
Oh God.
Every cell in her body tensed and clamped shut. This was it!
It was, and yet it wasn’t, for in one shocked moment she realised his head was still between her thighs. ‘You can’t,’ she said, then he parted her and she felt the sweep of his tongue against her inner lips and she almost cried out with the utter pleasure of it—did cry out when she felt his tongue circle that tiny, concentrated nub of nerve endings.
Already she was lost. She was panting now, lost in a new world with no idea how to find her way out and with no wish to find her way out any time soon. Not until she found this magical place he was taking her.
She hated him for making her wait, for delivering such exquisite torture, hated him and loved him for making her feel so very much.
Just when she thought she could not take any more, she felt his fingers upon her, circling her very core, working in train with his busy lips and tongue. One finger pressed inside her and her muscles clamped down at the invasion. But it was hardly unwanted. A swish of his tongue and she sighed and relaxed, only to feel another push into her alongside it.
Suddenly it was too much. There was too much to enjoy. Too much pleasure. She felt that pleasure spiral upwards, felt her whole being reduced to sensation, and then with a final flick of his clever tongue and press of his fingers inside her she was sent catapulting into the sky.
He held her while she rocked back to earth. He pressed kisses to her belly and breasts and lips where she tasted herself on his mouth.
‘But you …’ she managed, feeling as limp as a rag doll.
‘Think you’re amazing.’
And some part of her that still registered compliments glowed. She had done nothing and he could still say that? She sensed him rise up, heard the swish of fabric over skin and opened her eyes to see him between her legs, his hand guiding his erection towards her. So large. So alive and wondrous.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ she whispered in awed reverence. ‘Do you think.?’
‘Oh,’ he said, leaning down to suck her into his kiss, ‘I know.’
She tasted his mouth on hers then, felt it tug her into his world, convincing her with the persuasive play of his tongue and losing her until with a start she realised he was there, butting and straining against her entrance. Even when she panicked, his hand was there below her to lift her and ease the angle.
But he was there, right there, and she would have panicked but he was also right there with her, taking her higher again with his kiss. Suddenly a pressure became a presence and, with a flash of pain that went as quickly as it had come, he was inside her.
She stilled then, stunned by what had happened, feeling his fullness deep within her body. He was inside her and, now the moment of pain had gone, she felt only that amazing sensation. But was that it? Was this how it was supposed to be?
He kissed her eyes. ‘Are you all right?’ She blinked up at him, seeing his concern in the tiny creases around his eyes, and she knew she loved him, just a little, even then. He shifted his elbows, a movement that shifted his body subtly so very far below and she gasped at the unexpected friction.
‘I’m good,’ she said. ‘You feel so good.’
He growled at that and raised his hips, and she felt the sliding loss of him even as muscles she’d never realised she possessed battled to hang on.
He thrust back into her, this time with gr
eater force. Why had she never done this? she wondered as her head was driven back into the pillows. Why had she waited when the pleasure was so exquisite, so addictive?
Then he withdrew and thrust into her again and she knew why—because she had wanted to save herself for the one who was special, the one who could make her feel this good. Zoltan made her feel this good.
Zoltan was the one.
She had saved herself for the very best.
And with every thrust of his hips she knew that to be true; with every thrust of his hips she knew she would never find a higher place.
But she found it now, when the slide of him inside her turned incendiary, and she combusted in a shattering explosion that featured the sun, moon and stars.
It could have ended there, but she heard his roar, felt his shuddering climax, and it drove her still further through the galaxies until he launched her again into nothingness and the sky gave way to the glow of a tiny kernel of knowledge.
She loved him.
Something had shifted the sands beneath his feet. Something had shifted the foundations of his very world while he wasn’t looking.
Something?
Or someone?
For, while Zoltan’s body pulsed with the post-release hum as he lay back against the pillows, his breathing slowly steadying, his mind grappled with the impossible. She was perfect in every way. How could she be? Yet she had responded instinctively to his every move, naturally and sometimes even wantonly, despite being uneducated and unrehearsed, and her unskilled reactions had stoked the fire raging inside him, higher and higher, until he had even felt himself consumed.
When had that ever happened before?
How could she, a virgin before this night, do such a thing? He had expected to pleasure her, to make this coupling as easy as possible. Never had he expected that he would find paradise himself.
He turned to her, touched the fingers of one hand to the line of her cheek, wanting to put into words how he felt but unsure how to go about it, surprised when he felt moisture there. He sat up. ‘Did I hurt you?’
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