A Christmas Bride for the King

by Abby Green

  Her avid gaze roved over his chest and down to where a line of dark hair dissected his tautly flat belly, down to the dark hair between his legs. Her mouth went dry when she saw his erection, long and thick and very hard. He brought a hand to himself, wrapping long fingers around the column of flesh as if to contain it...and it was the most erotic thing Charlotte had ever seen.

  Her heart was thumping so loud she felt sure he must be able to hear it.

  ‘Come here...’

  She looked up, dizzy. He was watching her with a hunger that might have made her nervous if she’d had any brain cells left. She stepped closer and he took his hand off himself to reach for her, pulling her even closer so they touched. She could feel his arousal between them—insistent, hard.

  He wrapped his arms around her and Charlotte lifted her arms to his neck, stretching up, relishing the friction of his chest against her breasts. Their mouths came together without hesitation, breath moving from one to the other as Salim angled her head so he could access her more fully.

  When their tongues touched she made a groaning sound deep in her throat. He devoured her with a mastery that left her nowhere to hide, and she didn’t want to hide. She revelled in the feel of his much bigger body next to hers, revelled in his strength. Revelled in the inherent differences between them.

  His hands moved up and down her back, learning her shape. One hand cupped a buttock, squeezing gently. She pressed her thighs together to try and contain the rush of liquid heat. But it was impossible when that same hand explored back up her body, over her waist and in between them, finding the underside of her breast and cupping the plump weight.

  He pulled back and looked down, and her gaze followed his to see her pale flesh cupped in his dark hand. He moved his thumb over her hard nipple and she bit her lip.

  Suddenly the languorous energy between them seemed to change and thicken with something much more urgent and sharp.

  ‘I want you, Charlotte...now.’

  She looked up at him and gulped. She’d never seen such an intense look on his face before. His bone structure stood out in stark relief. She nodded, her whole being saying yes to whatever he meant.

  He took her hand and led her over to the bed, pulling her down with him onto the soft, decadent surface. As decadent as her behaviour. Salim raised himself over her and pulled her arms up so that they were over her head.

  He looked at her. ‘Stay like that.’

  Charlotte didn’t think she could move even if she wanted to. She was enslaved.

  He watched her for a moment, as if she might disobey him, and she said roughly, ‘I’m not moving.’

  He smiled—brief and infinitely wicked. Then he looked his fill of her, his gaze slow and thorough.

  The fact that she could fascinate Salim—a king!—on any level was terrifying and heady.

  His hand moved over her, causing her stomach muscles to contract. He cupped her breast again, until it pouted wantonly towards his mouth, and when he bent his head and surrounded her tight nipple with heat and moisture she clasped her hands together over her head, so tightly it hurt. It was the only thing she could do to counteract the intense spiking of pleasure.

  Her back arched helplessly towards him, and when he left one breast he ministered the same brand of torture to the other one, until Charlotte was flushed and panting, her whole body pulsating with need.

  He lifted his head and looked at her, his expression feral. ‘You’re so responsive...why do you hide all this heat under that prim uniform, hmm?’

  Charlotte had no coherent answer except the one in her head that was silent. Because I hadn’t met you yet...

  His hand drifted down again, over her belly and lower, as he said throatily, ‘Let’s see how responsive you really are.’

  He pushed her legs apart with gentle force, and every nerve in Charlotte’s body seemed to migrate to between her legs in anticipation of his touch.

  She still wasn’t prepared when he did touch her, experimentally at first, on the very outside of where she ached most. Teasing her.

  She couldn’t keep her arms up any longer, and gripped his wide shoulders as he moved over her, his weight pressing down on her as that hand explored deeper between her legs. She gasped when his fingers slipped past the folds of aching flesh and released the liquid heat she’d been so desperately trying to contain.

  He went still and muttered an Arabic curse, and for a second Charlotte felt acutely vulnerable. ‘What’s wrong?’

  He shook his head and looked slightly stunned. ‘Nothing... You... I had no idea a woman like you existed...’

  As he spoke he slipped a finger inside her and Charlotte’s thoughts scattered. She was too overcome to analyse what he’d just said or what it might mean.

  She could feel her body resisting this intrusion, but as he explored her with a gentleness that belied the man she’d thought he was she felt her body softening, opening... One finger became two, and stretched her wider, going deeper, making the tension coiling deep within her snap and sharpen, searching for some kind of release.

  She moved against his hand unconsciously, a little overwhelmed with all the sensations he was arousing. He bent his head and found her breast, licking her nipple back to stinging life before sucking it deep as his fingers still touched her intimately.

  His mouth moved down her body, leaving a trail of hot kisses on her damp skin, and then his hand moved from between her legs. She immediately felt bereft—until his shoulders pushed her thighs even further apart.

  She looked down and gasped. ‘What are you—?’

  ‘Shh... I need to taste you...to feel you on my tongue...’ His words sounded slurred, as if he was drunk.

  Too overwhelmed to do anything but submit, she felt him press kisses to her upper inner thighs, the scrape of his short beard sending shivers of sensation all over her body. When his mouth got closer to the very centre of her she went very still, her entire being thinking, No...he won’t... But he did—with a thorough explicitness that made Charlotte’s eyes roll back in her head.

  His tongue licked right into the centre of her body and she couldn’t breathe. Or think. Or move except to try and shy away from such an overload of pleasure. But his big hands were clamped on her thighs, holding her still, and then one hand moved under one buttock, gripping her firmly and lifting her so that he could explore her more fully.

  Charlotte shuddered and gasped against Salim’s mouth, and there was nothing to save her from the fall that came with shocking speed and force.

  Her whole body was throbbing in the aftermath of an explosive orgasm. Salim moved up her body, and when she could open her eyes again she saw there was a distinctly smug look on his face.

  He said roughly, ‘You don’t know how much I have wanted to see you undone like this...’

  In a surprisingly tender move he brushed some hair off her face. She could feel that it was damp, but she was too sated to care what she looked like. Her legs were spread in wanton abandonment and she could feel his body against hers. Hard. Needy.

  Instinctively she reached for him, wanting to know how that stiff column of flesh would feel.

  She wrapped her hand around him and saw how his facial muscles tightened, felt his whole body going still as she moved it experimentally up and down. His silky skin glided over the hard shaft of flesh and it fascinated her...its inherent strength and intense vulnerability.

  Charlotte looked down and saw a bead of moisture. She spread it over the thick head of his erection but he stopped her hand with his.

  She looked at him, suddenly unsure, and he said, ‘If you keep doing that I’ll spill right here...and I need to be inside you.’

  Her heart stuttered as she watched him reach for protection and roll it onto his turgid flesh. He came over her, settling his hips between her legs, widening them further. Her muscles ached, but she barely noticed when she felt her body softening and ripening again.

  He braced himself over her with a powerful arm, his othe
r hand on his own body, guiding himself to her core... But when she expected him to thrust into her body instead he bent his head and kissed her, mimicking penetration with his tongue.

  Charlotte moved against him, twining her arms around his neck, so that when he did thrust between her legs it was in tandem with his mouth and tongue and it stopped her gasp of shock and soothed it all at once.

  He stopped moving for a moment, letting her body get used to his thickness, and she felt the resisting wall of muscle relax infinitesimally, allowing him to slide deeper. He did—with a groan that reverberated deep inside her.

  For a moment it was too much—Charlotte felt impaled, and had an instinct to push him off her—but even as she put her hands to his shoulders and looked up at him the urge to push turned into something else. An urge to wrap her legs around him and keep him there.

  His eyes burned down into hers and held her captive as he started to move in a relentless rhythm, in and out. Gradually Charlotte started to feel that urgency build again, and Salim slid an arm underneath her, arching her up towards him. He found her breast and sucked her nipple deep, and the twin sensations made her blood thunder under her skin.

  Charlotte could feel the climax coming, but couldn’t articulate any words to stop it for fear that she wasn’t ready for it... On some dim level she knew she’d never be ready, and that all she could do was submit and let it sweep her away.

  And that was exactly what it did. Salim’s body moved within hers and she couldn’t remember a time when she’d been a single entity.

  Her body gave up its fight to resist the oncoming storm and shattered into a million pieces, her muscles milking him as he plunged deeper and deeper until he finally reached his own completion and her body claimed his, holding him deep within her as the final spasms of her own climax faded, until there was nothing left but the tattered remnants of the person she’d once been.

  * * *

  Salim knew the sandstorm had passed because there was a sense of stillness outside the tent and the sound of muffled of voices. No doubt the men were already in recovery mode in the early dawn—unearthing anything that had been buried during the storm.

  That storm might have passed, but another one raged inside him. He was sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the tent from the bed, looking at the sleeping figure there warily, as if she might jump up at any moment and bite him.

  He recalled her biting him last night, in the throes of her orgasm, on his shoulder. She’d broken his skin and he’d welcomed it.

  Even now he couldn’t really credit what had happened. The most intensely pleasurable sexual experience of his life. And the most vanilla. Sex with a virgin. You couldn’t get more vanilla than that. And yet... Salim had felt like a novice too—learning his way into a woman’s body for the first time.

  She’d been a virgin.

  The word resounded like an echoing klaxon: virgin, virgin.

  He’d sensed it before he’d known for sure, and he knew that in any other situation, with any other woman, he would have run a mile at the merest suggestion of innocence. But it had only fired up his libido even more.

  So her cooler than cool persona wasn’t just a front. Unlocking her body had only made him think of all that she’d told him about her family and her upbringing. That sense of kinship echoed inside him again—they’d both suffered at the hands of their families and built up walls high enough to keep everyone out.

  But after last night those walls were in danger of tumbling down around Salim’s feet. And he could only imagine how seismic it had been for Charlotte to give up her innocence.

  He’d wanted to bed her because he’d wanted her more than he’d wanted any other woman and he’d naively thought that would be enough. But he could feel a clawing, raging hunger for more. Much more. And...worse...he didn’t just feel physical satisfaction. He’d felt an elusive sense of peace steal over him in the moments just after his explosive orgasm, when his body and Charlotte’s had been joined so tightly that for a second he hadn’t wanted ever to break the connection.

  What was he doing?

  Salim stood up as adrenalin flooded his system—the fight or flight impulse. He was an expert in letting women know not to expect more than a no-strings encounter, and yet Charlotte—with her prim silk shirt and pencil skirts and no fear of him—had burrowed so far under his skin that he had all but forgotten his own strict code of ethics. He’d wanted her that badly.

  A very rare sense of disorientation made him feel dizzy for a moment. He never lost sight of what was important to him. And yet he was in danger of losing sight of a lot more. He was here in Tabat with one aim—to promote and stabilise the country for someone else to run—and yet that had been the last thing on his mind over the past few days as he’d broken bread with these tribes and had felt a mounting sense of ownership take hold.

  As if hearing his inner dialogue, Charlotte moved on the bed and everything in Salim’s body went still and taut. Just then there was a noise from outside the tent—a conspicuous clearing of a throat.

  Salim tore his gaze from the still sleeping woman on the bed and went to the entrance. He found Rafa waiting for him.

  ‘Sire, the storm wasn’t as extensive as we feared so we can leave this morning. But you need to speak with the elders before we go.’

  Salim waited a beat and imagined Charlotte waking up, those green eyes landing on him, looking for something he wasn’t prepared to give.

  ‘Very well,’ he said grimly, ‘let’s go.’

  As he strode away from his tent he ignored the stinging of his conscience. He was just doing what he had done countless times before—walking away from a lover. This was no different and it couldn’t afford to be—because he was in danger of forgetting why he was here at all.

  * * *

  Charlotte rose slowly through the levels of consciousness, registering aches and muscle twinges that told of a vigorous kind of activity she’d never indulged in before.

  But the acute tenderness between her legs made her recall too easily and vividly what it had felt like to have Salim’s powerful body thrusting deep inside hers, over and over again.

  She opened her eyes with a snap, blinking in the dim light of the tent. The first thing she heard were voices from outside. The tent was empty, and when she came up on her elbows she saw her clothes laid out across the bottom of the bed.

  Something curled up inside her.

  What had she expected? To wake and find Salim mooning over her? Hadn’t she gone to great pains to tell him she wasn’t a romantic? That she just wanted dark and decadent things? And hadn’t he obliged? Thoroughly?

  She grabbed her clothes and went into the bathing area, washing quickly, avoiding her reflection in the mirror. When she re-emerged she felt a little disorientated in the empty tent. It was as if last night might have been a mirage, or a feverish erotic dream.

  Suddenly Charlotte was terrified that Salim would appear before she was ready to see him, and she went to the opening of the tent, pulling back the flap of material. She saw sand piled against the surrounding tents, obviously shifted there by the storm, but it appeared not to have caused too much damage.

  There was no one in the immediate vicinity and she escaped back to her own tent. When she got there she took a deep breath—but then almost jumped out of her skin when someone entered just behind her. She whirled around, her heart in her mouth. Assa. Her heart went back to a regular rhythm.

  The girl looked distracted. ‘Good—you’re up, Miss McQuillan. The storm wasn’t as bad as they feared, so we’ll leave for Tabat City shortly. You should gather your things. The king is eager to be back before sunset.’

  I bet he is, thought Charlotte, ignoring the dart of hurt that he didn’t seem to be overly concerned as to her wellbeing this morning.

  She got her things together and packed. The fact that he hadn’t been there when she’d woken, hadn’t thought to wake her, told her in no uncertain terms that she was most likely already con
signed to the box where he stored regretful experiences. If the man had any regrets—which he probably didn’t.

  By the time the staff were loading up the vehicles Charlotte could see Salim in the distance, tall and dominant. He was speaking to the sheikh of the tribe, and then he got into his SUV and it took off ahead of the convoy, flanked by Security in their four by fours.

  Rafa appeared, and to Charlotte’s over-sensitive mind it seemed he looked at her with an expression of pity.

  ‘You will travel with me, Miss McQuillan.’

  She forced a smile, as if this was totally fine, and told herself that she wasn’t devastated by the way Salim obviously couldn’t bear to look at her. The thought that this genteel older gentleman might know what had happened was nearly too much to bear.

  As they drove across the undulating desert, getting closer and closer to civilisation again, Salim’s morning-after treatment of Charlotte continued to grate on her exposed nerves, even though she knew it shouldn’t.

  She cursed herself for having believed that something revelatory had happened last night. It had been sex. Her first sexual experience, yes. But just sex. The fact that Salim hadn’t appeared even to notice that he’d been her first lover was something she shouldn’t be disappointed by. After all, she’d hoped that he wouldn’t notice. But the fact that he hadn’t wasn’t as easy to live with as she’d thought.

  And, worse, it stung her where she was most vulnerable—where her parents had left an indelible mark of rejection and abandonment. This was what she’d wanted to protect herself from, and to think that she’d allowed someone close enough to rip those wounds open again was as humiliating as it was painful.

  She’d deluded herself last night, thinking she could take what Salim offered and remain untouched. She’d wanted him badly enough to lie to herself.

  They reached the palace in Tabat City as the sun was setting over the ancient building, bathing everything with a lush golden light, but Charlotte was oblivious to the beauty, her guts churning.

  She got out of the car and stretched her cramped legs. She saw Salim in the distance, dark shades covering his eyes. He looked in her direction briefly, but then turned and strode into the palace with his retinue following behind him. He’d never looked more king-like than at that moment.