The Desert Lord’s Bride

by Olivia Gates

  She did, and with every gulp of cool water felt every cell surging with clarity and energy once more.

  After the second glass of water, he gave her the other drink. She sampled it, winced at the sourness of the first sip, before she fully tasted its richness, the complexity of flavors. She drank it all down thirstily, moaning her enjoyment.

  As she began the second glassful she asked, “What’s this?”

  “It’s a special cocktail of mine, one I use after extreme workouts, a mixture of hibiscus, carob, sugar cane, pomegranate and a few desert fruits, mostly daum and hab’bel azeez.”

  “It’s amazing. An elixir.” She finished the second glass. “Feels like all the vital stuff I lost from sweating gallons is back in residence. In other news, I can feel my back again, so the anesthetic must have worn off. But since I feel no pain and I guess this is me thinking straight again, it seems your trying to make soup out of me worked.” He winced, still anxious as his eyes roamed over her. She leaned back in his embrace, her hand following the slash of his cheekbone lovingly. “I’m fine now. You saved me.”

  He turned his lips into her palm, planted a hot, shuddering kiss. “Only because you saved me.”

  “But I didn’t. It turned out there was no real danger.”

  “There was. It might not be fatal, but the pain can be incapacitating, and the poison is disorienting. And then you didn’t know that was the extent of the danger when you took the sting. Ya Ullah-that you did that, endangered yourself for me…”

  Something painful thrummed inside her chest at the agonized look in his eyes. She didn’t want him to feel bad about it. She never wanted him to feel bad about anything for a second.

  She caught his face in her hands. “You would have done the same for me. And it was better me than you. There was no way I could have gotten you out of the water. Seems through my mess of half-learned knowledge and panic, I made a decision that turned out to be rational, volunteering as the victim of choice.”

  His grated his teeth. “And you’re never going to do something like that again. Swear it to me now. You’ll never put yourself at risk. Not for anyone or anything.”

  His intensity shook her. She’d already acknowledged the inescapability of loving him, but she had to cling to a bit of herself, unsurrendered to him. Otherwise she wouldn’t know how to exist when it was over.

  Escaping both his fervor and her thoughts, she pretended lightness. “I never swear. Dad drilled that into me.” At his aggrieved glance at her deliberate misinterpretation, she rushed on, “And then, all’s well that ends well, OK? I may have ruined our dive, but think of it this way. I managed to arm you with one more adventure on this island. Now how about we concentrate on important stuff? Like the fact that you have your own honest-to-goodness Turkish bath? This is the steam room, right?”

  His eyebrows dipped at her obvious sidetracking maneuver. “The hararet, yes. A Turkish word that comes from the Arabic hararah, or heat. You’re distracting me, right?”

  Her smile was tremulous and entreating. “Is it working?”

  His hold tightened from solicitous to possessive, his gaze melting from aggravated to devouring. “You need only to breathe, to exist, to distract me, to be the one thing I can think of. Don’t you know that by now?”

  Suddenly her body filled with a spike of longing beyond her endurance. “All I know is, when I was disoriented, I could only think that even though every moment we’ve had together has been the best thing that has ever happened to me, I still felt incomplete because you didn’t…because we didn’t…and that it was now too late.”

  Farah’s words ripped through Shehab like shrapnel, tore away the barrier he’d erected to suspend thought until she was safe.

  And the enormity of what she’d done sank through him.

  She’d put herself between him and mortal danger.

  He’d never thought such a sacrifice possible from someone other than his brothers, Farooq and Kamal, or bodyguards who made their livelihoods selling their bodies as shields. He’d never even expected that any of the people who populated his life, in permanence or transit, would sacrifice a measure of their well-being for him. And for Farah to offer the ultimate sacrifice, her very life for his, was beyond comprehension. Beyond endurance.

  He’d brought her here to seduce her. He’d struggled each moment to remind himself she was a means to an end. He’d fought to convince himself that no matter how much he craved her, and though he would marry her, there’d never be emotions involved.

  But with each moment he could no longer connect the reality of the woman who delighted him, who roused every appreciative emotion he’d never thought he had, with the image of the unfeeling, amoral woman she was supposed to be. Then came today.

  Memories bombarded him now that she was no longer in pain or danger. Of every heart-bursting second as she’d charged him, exchanging places with him. As he’d watched her convulse, felt her scream gurgle through the water, electrocuting him with fright. And then what followed, where only the blinding need to carry her to safety, to absorb her fear and agony, had existed.

  And here she was, dismissing her action, refusing credit, making light of it. Then worse, painting him a nightmarish alternate reality when she could have slipped through his fingers never to be reached again. Then came the worst of all. Showing him that her only regret, in the moments when she’d thought she might die, was that she’d die without experiencing intimacy with him.

  Before today, he’d started to think maybe he didn’t have to seduce her all the way, could finalize their marriage then leave it up to her whether they consummated it. He’d thought that might make his deception sting less when she found out about it, give them a chance to work out a viable relationship.

  But she’d made him face the horror of the possibility of loss at any moment, and in their situation, of the extra desolation of losing without ever having lived the pleasure.

  He could swear he heard the last of his control buckling.

  Blind, out of his mind, he caught her to him, filled his hands with her, honey and life and unconditional surrender made flesh, made woman, all woman. And she was his for the taking. And he would take her. And take her.

  “Ana ella ensan,” he groaned over and over in the sweetness she surrendered with such mind-destroying eagerness, to himself, to the fates that had placed her, a temptation he couldn’t resist, a test he was bound to fail, in his path. “Just human…”

  He tore his lips away, sank down to her ample cleavage. She clamped his head to her flesh, stopping his movements, gasped, “If you’re going to stop…please, stop now.”

  He shook off her feeble restraint gently, dragged his teeth along her honeyed swell, looked from that incredible vantage into her eyes, saw the distress bordering on hurt. It was real.

  Everything about her was real.

  And he groaned all that was real inside him, too. “I only stopped before, at the price of pieces of my sanity, because I feared that intimacy, if indulged too fast, would overwhelm us, that other pleasures would go undiscovered under its blinding effect. But I can’t bear that you felt such loss because of the restraint I imposed, thinking I was building up anticipation…”

  She struggled up on one elbow, her other arm hooking around his neck, her face blazing with anxiety. “And it was glorious, Shehab, glorious. You gave me so much, on so many levels, every bit unprecedented and irreplaceable. Experiences I never thought to have. I just got greedy, thinking how much more it would be if…”

  He took her hand off his neck, pushed her back gently until he had her flat on her back on the platform, loomed above her, his gaze greedy on her face and breasts, which shuddered with emotion. “And you were absolutely right. It will be beyond what either of us has ever dreamed possible. I’ll worship you, brand you, turn your body into an instrument of ecstasy, yours and mine. You’re mine to pleasure as I will, aren’t you?”

  Her nod was frantic. “Yes, I’m yours…yours, Shehab.”
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br />   Yours. His. Mine. The concept seared through him, becoming mind-bending fact as he looked down on her, peach-flushed through the perfection of her tan, her pupils engulfing the emerald, crimson lips swollen with his passion, panting for more, beckoning him to come lose his mind, once and for all.

  “Yes, Farah, you’re mine, and I’ll do everything to you, for you, with you…” He dragged down the straps of her swimsuit, exposing her an inch at a time to the rhythm of his words, drawing a whimper at each glide, replacing its cover with his lips, tongue and teeth, coating her velvet firmness in suckles and nibbles, knowing just where to skim and tantalize, where to linger and torment, where to draw harder and devour. Her moans became cries, then keens, then labored gasps.

  The pressure in his loins, the accumulation of need was reaching critical levels. He feared it would be like a dam breaking the moment he thrust inside her. And he couldn’t let their first intimacy be anything less than perfect bliss. And it was no longer because he needed her in his total power. Now the only reality was that he craved her pleasure far more than he craved his, that his pleasure would stem from hers.

  He took pity on her, on himself, slid the swimsuit all the way off her, lingering on a long groan as he slid one foot out after the other. Then he stood back, his heart thundering, looking down on her, laid out before him like an unending feast.

  He’d seen almost all of her before, her breasts on their first night, the rest of her in one-piece swimsuits that left little to the imagination. Or so he’d thought. For there she was. Beyond his imagination. Ripe, strong, tailored to his every fastidious taste and beyond. His female. And she was dying for him as he was for her, quaking with the force of her need.

  “Enti ar’oa memma kont atasawar…” He heard the awe in his voice, knew it was real. Everything he felt was real. More real than anything he’d ever felt before. “More incredible than I’ve imagined. And ya Ullah, ya Farah, how I’ve imagined…”

  She held her arms out in demand, in supplication, and he yanked her to him, bending her over one arm, her breasts an erotic offering to sacrifice anything for. Pouring litanies of passion into her lips, all over her face, he kneaded and weighed one breast, seeking one erect, deep-peach nipple, pinching and rolling it before he moved down, captured the other bud of overpowering femininity and need in his mouth.

  She screamed. With each pull, she screamed again, shuddered apart. His hands glided over her abdomen, closed over her trim mound, stilled. This. Her core. Where he’d merge them, where he’d invade her, where she’d capture him. And she was letting him have it, own it. He squeezed his eyes, her flesh.

  Just as she cried out again, he slid two fingers between the velvet slickness of her exquisite folds, spreading them, getting drunk with the scent of her arousal, the evidence of her desire and dependence made nectar. She was ready for him.

  He slipped a careful finger inside her, needing to know how much, and grunted with another blast of arousal. Soaking, for him, but…so tight. And she lurched, as if he’d hurt her.

  So not so ready for him. But ready for pleasure. And how he’d pleasure her.

  He stroked her, spread honey from her slit before his fingers made way for his thumb to find the knot of flesh where her nerves converged, her trigger. The moment he touched it, he felt as if he’d touched the core of the sun, her cries of pleasure, of his name, strangled, and she bucked in his arms, coming apart in an instantaneous orgasm.

  He roared with pride as he drew out her release, rode its waves, easing two fingers inside her clamping flesh, stroking her inside and out until she sobbed into his mouth. He paused inside her depths, loosening her, nipping her nipples until he felt her flesh rippling around his fingers then began to stroke, until tension reinvaded her body and she was thrashing again.

  “Shehab please…I n-need you.”

  For answer, he spread her core, bent, gave her one long lick. She bucked off the platform. “Please, Shehab…you…you…”

  He subdued her with one hand flat on her abdomen. “I’ve been starving for you, give me everything you have.”

  She still tried to squeeze her legs closed, her eyes wet and beseeching. She was shy? How, when she was so experienced?

  But nothing he’d been told mattered. His instincts told him she wasn’t, that his wild flower of the desert had never allowed anyone this privilege. But she would give it to him, and the privilege would be his alone, now and forever.

  He invoked his claim. “Aren’t you mine?”

  She nodded mutely, her color dangerous.

  He hooked his forearms below her knees, slid her forward, gliding her over the smoothness slick from her sweat until he had her feet propped against the platform’s edge, her thighs spread. He withdrew to look on his arrangement, Farah, open and willing for his ministrations. She overpowered him with her surrender. Blood was a geyser in his head, in his erection. He gritted his teeth, kneeled in front of her, spreading her shaking legs, his hands and lips and teeth devouring their every inch, before he slid her forward until her buttocks were in his hands, bringing her core to him. Her fists bunched, her body tensed up.

  “Don’t be shy, ya hayati. Sit up and watch me worship you, pleasure you, own your every secret. Promise you’ll look me in the eye as I bring you to orgasm this time.”

  She squirmed, hiccupped, then finally nodded, and sat up.

  He spread her core, groaned as lust jackknifed in his system. “Hada ajmal ma ra’ait wa ah’sast-the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, felt.” Overwhelmed, he licked around her lips, capturing them between pulling lips and massaging teeth, circling her trigger, subduing her gently as she bucked with each nip and lick and pull, bringing her to the edge, listening to her explicit pleasure, feeling her flood with it, surge with heat, hurtling toward completion. The moment before it all burst, he blew on her quivering, engorged flesh, withdrew his stimulation until she simmered, keened. He placed a palm on her heart until he felt it start to miss beats. Then he tongue-lashed her trigger and she shredded her throat on ecstasy, unraveled her body on a chain reaction of convulsions. And she looked him in the eyes all through. It was the most erotic, most intimate, most fulfilling experience of his life.

  But then, every experience with her had been that.

  Now he would take her, and union with her would reinvent the terms of eroticism, intimacy and fulfillment. He prayed she was ready enough now.

  First, to bring her to fever pitch again.

  He slid up her sweat-slick body, flattening her to the marble, soaking up her drugged look, the looseness confessing the depth of her satisfaction.

  But as soon as he branded her lips, letting her taste her pleasure on his, her breath hitched, her hips undulated against him, urgent, insistent. She was aroused that much, that fast again? He hadn’t even started stimulating her…

  He withdrew to make sure, and she tore at his swimsuit. “I want to see you-all of you…please…”

  Hearing the last pillar in his mind give, he snatched at her lips with rough, moist kisses, nothing left in him but the corrosive need to bury himself inside her.

  He tore off his swimsuit. She fell to her back, held out her arms, her eyes streaming her plea for him.

  He climbed on top of the platform, covered her, felt her softness cushioning his hardness. She opened her legs, and as he’d long dreamed, he guided them over his waist.

  Then it registered. Her coolness, her shuddering.

  Ya Ullah, how oblivious could he get? After the blows her body had received, her heat-regulating system must be shot.

  He withdrew from her and she cried out. “Shehab…”

  He made her a pacifying gesture, strode below the arches to a wardrobe nestled in the curved marble walls, produced a pestamal shawl and hurried back. He covered her, stood back and marveled at how the red, gold and bronze striped cloth seemed to be made to match her blush-tinged tan, her hundred-shades hair.

  She tried to cling to him and he bent to her lips. “I’m goi
ng nowhere, ya galbi. I’ll be back in seconds.”

  Farah watched him coming back in the seconds he’d promised with steam already billowing around him, a colossus of virile beauty stepping from the shroud of myth and time.

  She felt parched again as she watched the vapors entwining with the evocative lighting, drenching the whole exotic setup in a mystical, hypnotic ambiance, worshiping the perfect sculpture of his endless shoulders and chest, his cabled arms and ridged abdomen. Then her eyes fell on the wrap around his waist, very much like the one he’d covered her with, parting on one rippling, muscled thigh with every step, tenting on an erection that rattled her with arousal and intimidation.

  She lay back, struck mute, her dry mouth suddenly watering, her core cramping, dizzy with the aftershocks of what he’d done to her. Ready for more. For anything. Then he came to stand over her and the sunbeams cascading from the bottle-glass openings in the dome above poured on him, illuminating slashes across his beloved face and glistening, aroused body.

  “Let me warm you, ya galbi.” His croon was hot, dark molasses pouring over her, making her realize how cold she’d been. But warmth was spreading through her now, generated by the wrap, the steam. And what had flames licking through her nerves was the heat of his hands running up her legs and thighs, kneading, bringing circulation gushing back through her limbs. Then he turned her onto her belly, dragged the wrap to cover her legs, exposing everything above them.

  “T’janenni, ya galbi…mind-blowing…” he groaned in her ear before he trailed kisses and suckles all over her back. She squirmed with the incredible new sensations, tried to wriggle around, put her stinging hands on him. A hand in the small of her back kept her in place, before it joined with the other to radiate along her back, following what had to be some magical rite’s patterns. His hands pressed into muscles, smoothed away aches, sought secrets, found triggers she didn’t know she had, comforting, teasing, igniting. He at last spread her buttocks, massaged them, bent to taste and nibble their clenching flesh, concentrating where the scar he hadn’t seen before was. In that helpless position, unable to move or see him, with unadulterated sensations lancing from his fingertips and lips and tongue to bombard her womb, her eyes glazed on the scene that filled her vision, something right out of a sultan story.