Always.
It took her one hot, slick kiss, then another, to realize with a deep, delicious thrill that this time, Khaled wasn’t holding back.
One of his hands slid around and into her hair, anchoring her for his pleasure as his mouth moved over hers, tongue and teeth and all of that dizzying, heart-pounding passion.
That bright white heat. That impossible flame. That addicting blaze so hot it almost hurt, so hot she was sure it would burn her alive, and she couldn’t imagine wanting anything more.
When he broke away, Cleo let out a small sound of disappointment, and he laughed against her mouth.
It was a sound filled with deep male confidence, power and certainty, and it made Cleo melt.
“These have been the longest months of my life,” he muttered, so low she wondered for a moment if he even knew he was speaking out loud. And then his voice went even rougher. “This is not what I had planned.”
Cleo didn’t know what he meant and with his mouth against her neck, she didn’t care. She wound her arms around his gorgeous shoulders and pressed herself against the length of his magnificent body, and this time, he let her.
He let out a sound like a growl, not for the first time, and then he swept her up into his arms again. The room spun, drunken and beautiful, like the perfect roller coaster. She had only a wild, dizzy impression of the rich colors throughout the tent, the candles in glass lanterns spilling out all of that golden light, and her brand-new husband’s hard, fierce face, dark and intent as he gazed down at her.
He was hers. He was finally hers.
And then she was on her back on that big, wide bed and he was coming over her, pinning her to the soft mattress with all of his ferocious heat and power, and she loved it.
“I was going to take my time,” he told her, his voice harsh, but she knew what that glittering, edgy gleam in his dark eyes meant.
She could feel him, hard and demanding against her, and she shivered. She was too hot, too molten, too needy, and she wasn’t sure he’d ever be close enough.
“I think you took your time,” she managed to say, with only the faintest trace of her former laughter, because this was all far too intense now. “Every day of the past three months.”
He muttered something much darker and then he moved over her, pulling the voluminous skirt of her wedding dress up with him, baring her legs and her thighs and then even higher.
God, the way she wanted him. The way she needed him. She’d never felt anything like it. She couldn’t imagine anyone had.
Khaled held her gaze as he reached down and held the hungry center of her need in his hand.
It was as if she wasn’t wearing those silly scraps of lace at all. She felt the heat of his hand like a jolt of lightning, setting her on fire, and he did nothing for one heartbeat and another but hold her. But wait. Until her hips started reaching for him of their own accord, rocking into that hard palm of his, and she was powerless to stop it.
She didn’t want to stop it.
“Beautiful,” he muttered, and then he pushed the edge of her panties aside and traced the greedy button beneath, and it took Cleo a shuddering breath to realize that the keening sound she heard, edgy and haunted and deliciously needy, came from her. That he’d undone her so easily, with a single touch.
The way he had once before.
“Khaled,” she began, though she had no idea what she meant to say.
Maybe it was more of a prayer, and he only laughed, bracing himself over her with one hand in a fist near her head. And then he twisted his wrist and sent two fingers stroking deep inside her.
And Cleo simply went mad.
She arched into him, wanton and mindless, without a single thought for anything that wasn’t this.
Here. Now. Him.
“Now, Cleo,” he ordered her in that matter-of-fact, authoritative way that made her burn, as if he was the lord and master of her body as well as his country, and she believed it. She felt it. “I cannot wait much longer.”
And she obeyed.
Again and again, she obeyed, shaking and shuddering and falling apart all around him.
And when she came back to herself, when she could breathe again, he was braced above her, the hardest part of him nudged up against her melting softness. Her heart thumped too hard in her chest, and she was caught in all the dark, male heat in his gaze.
“Please,” she whispered, and he thrust deep.
So deep. So perfect. Long and slick and hotter than simple fire.
She didn’t know if she groaned or he did. She didn’t care.
Cleo reached up and held on to him, curling her legs around his hips, and watched his fiercely beautiful face as he set a torturously slow and devilish pace. One deliberately slow thrust, then another, until Cleo was shaking against him, as needy and demanding and wild as if she hadn’t already shattered into pieces.
“Again,” he ordered her.
“I can’t,” she hissed at him, a broken whisper, and the fire inside her raged on.
“Never lie to me, little one,” he whispered, and then he took her mouth with his, wicked and carnal and certain while he thrust so deep below, and she was lost all over again.
And this time, when she burst into too many scattered points of light to remain whole or even herself, he called out her name and followed her.
* * *
Cleo didn’t know how much later it was when Khaled roused himself and slowly peeled her dress from her body. The lanterns still danced with light, and the tent felt hushed all around them, as if the way he looked at her then was sacred.
And if there was that yearning thing in her, dark and deep and lodged behind her heart, that wanted it to be sacred and then some, she ignored it and made herself smile at him. This formidable man who stood at the edge of the vast bed and stripped down in front of her.
Her husband. Her lover. Hers.
Cleo’s mouth went dry. He was even more beautiful without his clothes on, all those smooth, hard planes and lean muscles like poured metal in the flickering light. How could she want him again when she wasn’t sure she’d recovered from having him once already? But her body stirred, that fist low in her belly clenching tight and hot all over again.
“Do you swim?” he asked.
His voice was still rough, and Cleo frowned at him, not understanding why the question bothered her.
“I do,” she said. She propped herself up on her elbows, still wearing the lace panties he’d shoved to one side and the matching lace bra that he’d only revealed afterward, when he’d helped her out of her wedding dress. Something hot and odd twisted around inside her, like a too-sharp band of metal around that low heat, and she didn’t know why. “I was a lifeguard at the town pool for at least five summers after I turned sixteen.”
“Thank goodness. I feel safer already.”
Cleo wanted to smile back at him, but there was that yearning place inside her and the sharp thing besides, and she couldn’t.
“I never thought my husband would be a stranger to me,” she said without thinking it through, then froze.
Khaled stared at her for a moment, imperious and ferocious, and Cleo forced herself to sit up. To stop lolling about like a satiated sex kitten when she felt so ragged and unwieldy inside.
“I told you that you should eat,” he said quietly after a moment, his tone so even and mild that it made her flush with embarrassment at what her own had been. “Hunger affects the mood.”
“I’m not a child,” she said crossly.
He was magnificently nude as he stalked toward her, looking like a warrior god clad only in the force of his will and the candlelight from the glass-paned lanterns, and that thing in her flipped over. Then twisted in on itself.
What are you doing? she demanded. This is happily ev
er after. And when he touched her, she knew it was true. When he touched her, there was no room for anything but happily ever after in him.
“Come,” he said when he was before her, a wall of perfect masculinity. “There are better things to do tonight than pick fights from thin air, Cleo. Let me show you.”
She thought that was the kindest she’d ever seen him, and she didn’t know why it made her want to curl up in a ball and sob.
He reached down and scooped her up again, high against his chest again, and she found her face entirely too close to his. All that fire and awe mixed inside her, making her feel jittery. Making her want things she couldn’t even name.
“I can walk.”
“I don’t want you to walk or you would be walking.”
“And everything must be what you want or the world will fly apart at the seams?”
But that strange heaviness was already spiraling out of her as he held her against the furnacelike heat of his bare chest, and he only raised his brows as he gazed down at her.
“Of course,” he said mildly. “I am the sultan.”
She shouldn’t find his arrogance so comforting, Cleo thought. But she did. She slid an arm around his shoulders as he carried her out into the soft night again.
“Won’t someone see us?” she asked when they were out beneath the stars again, so many of them it was hard to look.
“And if they do?”
“You’re naked! I might as well be!”
“They are trained not to look when they know they shouldn’t,” he replied, amused. “Unlike you, Cleo, they prefer not to risk my wrath.”
When he set her down, it was in a three-sided tent at the edge of the gently murmuring pool of water in the center of the oasis. The tent was lit with more lanterns, piled high with comfortable lounging chairs, towels and pillows and rugs, and there were trays of food set out on low tables.
“Eat,” he ordered her. “Then you and I will swim beneath the moon. And I will make you scream my name into the night until you are hoarse.”
Khaled smiled then, glancing up at her as he threw himself down beside the table and stretched out, a vision of naked male perfection, proud and fierce and hers.
Hers, Cleo reminded herself. He was hers, even if that felt different in the execution than she’d expected it to in all these long months of daydreaming.
“And what if I want to make you scream?” she asked, but she moved to other side of the table and lowered herself down before the trays of food, pita breads and dipping things, fruits and salads and cuts of meats and cheeses, something baked to a deep golden crisp and smelling savory. She realized as she did that she was starving.
“You are welcome to try,” Khaled said, sounding amused as he fixed himself a plate. “But if it is some kind of competition, you should understand that I do not care to lose.”
Cleo took a big bite of pita bread, sighing at the airy, doughy taste. She dipped it into a bowl of handmade hummus, then popped a few olives into her mouth for good measure. Perfect, of course. As was everything that was his.
As this marriage would be. As it was already.
“Does that mean you don’t lose? Or that you’re a sore loser when you do?”
His smile took on that darker edge that made her heartbeat slow down and hit harder.
“Is this what I have to look forward to in my marriage?” he asked in a soft tone, but she heard the steel beneath. “A disrespectful wife who pokes at me at every opportunity?”
“Only when she’s hungry,” Cleo said, and smiled. Then let out a breath when his hard mouth curved slightly, as though she’d dodged something dangerous there in that otherwise cheerful tent.
She told herself it didn’t matter that they were still strangers in so many ways. They weren’t the first people in the world to marry without knowing each other’s every private thought and they wouldn’t be the last, either. And what good was it to know someone, anyway? They could be lying. She’d learned that firsthand. She’d thought she knew every last thing there was to know about Brian because she’d dated him for years, only to find out how wrong she was a mere two weeks before her wedding.
Thinking about Brian here, now, felt like an obscenity. Cleo shoved it away.
What mattered was this thing that wound between her and Khaled and around them, tying them together. She could feel it in the air. Lust and longing, recognition and discovery, and, yes, love, she thought, new and raw and different from anything she’d ever felt before. And she couldn’t think of a single reason he would have married her if he didn’t feel the same—though, she rationalized as they ate their meal in a silence she assured herself was companionable, he was a very closed-off man. A powerful man with tremendous responsibilities. She couldn’t expect him to be emotional and accessible.
And when he touched her, it was magic.
Did there have to be more than that?
Later, they floated in the silky dark water with the moon bright and full above them. He trapped her near one of the edges and took her mouth with that same restrained ferocity that made every part of her skin prickle in delight. They were both naked and sleek in the night, the water only a degree or two cooler than the embrace of the night all around them, and he simply lifted her up and slid inside her, making her gasp.
This time, he wasn’t slow. He took her hard and deep, with a possessiveness and dark need, and she reveled in it. His arms were like bands around her, the hard length of him a deep and wondrous fire within her.
He laughed when she moaned, and then he bent her backward, making Cleo feel as graceful as a dancer in the water and beneath the moon—then he found her breast with his hot, dangerous mouth, and her moan turned into something much needier. Sensation streaked through her, from the tight peak he teased with his lips and his teeth and his tongue to the place where they were joined, where he filled her again and again and tore her apart with every sweet, sure thrust.
“I can’t...” she gritted out.
“My name,” he ordered her, and bit gently on her nipple, and she shuddered around him, a kind of wild, red joy wrapping around her and pulling her taut. “Say it, Cleo. Scream it if you must.”
And she couldn’t keep herself from obeying him then. She didn’t want to do anything but obey him. His name was like a cry, like a prayer, to the moon and the water and the oasis around them. To the desert.
To this man who was her husband. Whom she suspected she loved already and recklessly, far more than was safe. Much less wise. Whom she thought she’d loved almost from the first moment she’d seen him, striding before her like a fierce god in the street.
But when she came back to earth, he was waiting, still so hot and hard inside her, and the look on his beautiful face was stark with passion. His gray eyes gleamed with that edgy need that still raced through her.
“Again, I think,” he said. “I don’t believe that was quite loud enough. The trees still stand, do they not?”
“I don’t like to scream,” she whispered.
“You will,” he promised her, lust and amusement and the whole world in his dark gaze.
“I don’t know how.”
His mouth curved, and he began to move again, slow this time. Sweet and lethal and perfect, and her eyes drifted closed.
“Practice makes perfect,” he said.
And then he showed her what he meant.
CHAPTER FIVE
BACK IN THE palace, Cleo’s days as the sultan’s wife were full.
She took lessons in Arabic, Jhuratan history, formal protocol and etiquette for part of each day, then spent the rest involved with the many charity organizations that clamored for the attention of the sultan’s brand-new bride. There were the endless wardrobe fittings, scrupulously polite meetings with the wives of visiting dignitaries and visit after visit t
o all the places that the sultan deemed worthy of his notice and patronage.
This was what the good life looked like, she told herself. This was her unrealistic fairy tale, and she had every intention of excelling at the duties that came along with it.
“You are very popular with the people,” Khaled had told her when she’d indicated, long weeks after their magical time in the oasis, that she wasn’t exactly thrilled with her role as no more than his distant appendage. He’d studied her as if she was as much a mystery to him as he was still to her—and then he’d pulled her close to taste her mouth, making a sound as if he’d meant to resist her, but couldn’t. “And it costs so little to smile and wave, Cleo. Does it not?”
Khaled believed she could do it—and because he did, so did she.
This particular afternoon she’d toured a home for abandoned children, had tried out her halting Arabic while cutting a ribbon outside a newly constructed school and was now frowning down at the schedule for her next month of duties. Margery, her starchy social secretary, had handed it to her in the backseat of the armored car that whisked them back toward the palace.
“I can’t do all of these benefits.” Cleo glared at the blocks of time in the grid, all the entries filled in with Margery’s pinched block letters, which infuriated her in ways she’d spent a long time these past weeks cautioning herself not to indulge, because she was happy. Ever freaking after. As planned. “There’s something almost every single night.”
Beside her, Margery projected an air of condescension with only the faintest lift of her brow, something Cleo had tolerated a great deal better before her wedding. Cleo didn’t much care for Margery, she realized then. Not that anyone had asked her.
“Your office—” by this Margery meant herself “—has already sent your gracious acceptance to all of the noted events, my lady. It would be considered curious, at best, to pull out now.”
Curious, Cleo had learned, was Margery’s code word for “completely unacceptable.” And “we won’t do it your way no matter who you’re married to.” It was a word she used a lot.
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