The Desert Lord’s Bride

by Olivia Gates

  Then he climbed over her, taking his weight on elbows and knees but still covering her from shoulders to thighs, imprinting her with his power and potency before he bent to suckle at her pulse-point, hard, driving his mark deep, jacking up the level of his torture by arousal. Then he started talking, and life expectancy became a serious issue.

  “I’m already addicted to your taste. I want to have you flowing, have you hurtle over one edge after another so I can have my fill. Do you know how you sound at the peak of pleasure? I want you screaming my name like that as you climax around me over and over. I want to feel those velvet muscles that wrung my fingers wringing me of every drop of pleasure.”

  She was shaking so hard her teeth chattered, and it had nothing to do with being cold. She was coming apart with overstimulation. “Shehab, I can’t breathe…my heart…it’s stampeding…don’t torment me anymore…please…take me.”

  Hearing her say the words, take me, sobbed on her siren’s voice, sabotaged the last of Shehab’s reason.

  “Umrek, ya rohi, command me…” He unclasped their bodies, slid off the platform, turned her, slid her to the edge, brought her trembling thighs around his hips, took hers in one hand, the other bringing his shaft to her entrance, sliding its head into her nectar, spreading it, stimulating her more, lubricating himself, struggling with the need to ram inside her.

  When she whimpered again, arched up to seek more of him, to bring him inside her, he surrendered, flexed his hips, plunged halfway into her heat, going blind with the blast of pleasure.

  When his sight returned, he saw her, arched off the platform, the sensations slashing across her face dominated by shock, by pain. The tightness of the velvet vise enveloping him, even in the absence of a barrier, felt like a virgin’s. Not that he’d been with any virgins, but this must be how tight, how untried, how uncertain of how to receive a lover one would feel.

  And he could only believe the verdict of the body buried in hers. Not only hadn’t she been tasted before, her sexual experience was practically nonexistent. And he’d hurt her.

  “Samheeni, ya rohi,” he panted his agitation. “Forgive me, I should have been more gentle.”

  “No, no…” she moaned, rigidity draining out of her body. “I never dreamed, never…” Her fingers dug into his shoulders, bringing him down to her, forcing him to stroke deeper into her, tearing a hot sharp sound from her depth, a growl from his. He heard exultation mixed with the pain now, and relief flooded him.

  She thrashed, never taking her eyes from his, letting him see every sensation ripping through her, her tan brightening with rising pleasure, seeming to glow against the whiteness she lay on, an image the poets of his land, known for their expertise in exaggeration, would have failed to find words for.

  “You feel…magnificent…inside me…” she panted, the exhilaration thickening her voice, sending more arousal crashing through his body. “I never knew so much pleasure…existed…”

  “Aih, ya rohi, et’mataii…” he rumbled, assurance taking hold. “Take your fill of pleasure.”

  And he watched in awe as she accepted more of him, arching, offering, abandoned. Her cries rose, her hands bunched in his hair, bringing his lips down to hers to drown them both in another exercise of abandon, her core throbbing around his invasion, pouring a surplus of welcome. She’d reached fever pitch so soon. But so had he. Not that it mattered. He’d succumb now, and would remain ready to pleasure her again, and again.

  He withdrew, then plunged, burying himself all the way inside her. And she shattered around him. The feel and sight of her pleasure boiled his seed in his loins. He surged to her womb and her cries intensified, her convulsions reaching new heights, tearing his orgasm from depths he’d never known existed. Overcome, convulsing, he jetted inside her in endless surges, his roars reverberating around the chamber.

  He finally felt her melt beneath him, aftershocks jolting through them both. He still throbbed inside her, hard and ready. Still, she wouldn’t be again. Not tonight.

  He carried her to his bed. The bed he’d spent the past two weeks unable to rest in, imagining her there.

  Now she was, lying over him, her eyes drugged with cell-deep satisfaction, humming a wonderful sound, a score of bliss.

  She slept. He studied her, all the nuances her features, her expressions, her every breath in sleep revealed, reveling in the unprecedented experience, the unknown intimacy, and was almost sorry when she stirred. Then she wobbled up, her now-dry hair raining over his chest, and gave him a smile that made him feel he could indeed fly under his own power.

  “The first moment I saw you…” Her voice was different, awareness-laden, smug. “It was like I turned into a living tuning fork, and your vibe was the frequency that set me off. But no fantasy could have done what you just did to me, what you gave me, justice.”

  “You gave me as much, and more.” Joy burst in her eyes, rained in kisses over him. When the homage reached his heart, it almost rammed out of his ribs for a direct kiss. “But we needed to go through all that we did, to achieve this pinnacle.”

  She murmured in agreement, undulating in a sinuous dance.

  “Shehab, take me again, don’t make me wait.”

  “You’re sore. You can’t take me again.”

  “I can. I want to feel your weight on me, feel you inside me, dominating me, until I’m finished, complete.”

  In answer to her pleas, Shehab sprang out of bed, gave her a bedeviling smile as he scooped her up and carried her to the shower. “All mind-blowing pleasure comes to she who waits.”

  Eight

  “I’ve never heard of strip chess.”

  At her breathless comment, Shehab lifted a face ablaze with the flames of the fire he was stoking, the majestic sunset and the passion perpetually brewing between them.

  They’d dived again today, had had another session in his hammam, prepared a meal together, then he’d seen to some business, as he’d been doing for the past three weeks.

  Since that day he’d made her his, he’d almost never left her side, had concluded his business on site. She’d been ecstatic yet worried he was succumbing to their magic and neglecting his work. He’d assured her the worst of the crisis was over, that he was now smoothing edges. If he had to leave, he would, but he would take her with him this time. He couldn’t be apart from her now. And he never was, never left her side during days and nights spent in the escalating delight of exploring each other.

  He’d taught her to fly, in every way as he’d promised, freely admitting that she’d taught him, in turn, how to truly experience and revel in the flight. He said she’d done the same in everything else, made him feel with new senses. And they’d shared everything, from listening to music, to discussing books, movies, world state and business affairs, to preparing meals and tasting food, to sharing jokes and games and silence, to experiencing every nuance of this place, from its skies to its underwater world, from dawn to dawn.

  He straightened from the fire, looking straight out of impossible female fantasies, in another of those sumptuous traditional garbs he’d promised he’d wear for her to have the pleasure of seeing him in it, and the far more intense delight of getting him out of it.

  This one was more intricate, in gold-embroidered grays and blacks, the open abaya billowing around him in the gentle wind like the swirls of a magic spell.

  He approached her as she sat under the small shade tent they’d put up, facing the fire. The huge bespoke tent he’d had erected for them earlier was at his back by the lapping waves. His movements echoed the tranquility all around them, deepening his impact, and that of the evocative surroundings.

  He came to stand over her, brushed his hand down her cheek. “It does exist, I assure you. You’ve just led a sheltered life.”

  She loved his teasing, its wit and gentleness of intention. He was always true to his early words, laughing with her and never at her. And loving it when she reciprocated.

  She shivered as he came down on his
haunches before her. The weather was hot and dry, would become balmy at twilight, cooling gradually as the night deepened, until he’d have her wrapped in the warmth of cashmere and the velvet of his heat. Right now her shudders were emotion-induced. How she loved him.

  She reached an unsteady hand to the ebony locks that had escaped the darkness of his headdress, and teased back. “While you’ve sampled all life has to offer?”

  To her alarm his eyes became serious. “Is this what you think? That I led an indiscriminate existence?”

  “No. I just meant that you-you’ve…”

  Gentleness reentered his gaze. “It’s not unreasonable to think someone with my wealth and power might not have known where to draw the line, might have sought escalating experiments and risks to stimulate his glutted senses. But I assure you, I have no excessive or perverted tendencies, was never idle to get into mischief, and I am extremely fastidious and wary. But not sampling them doesn’t mean I don’t know all about stripping games. I never saw the appeal, but now, when the game is between us, when it’s you…” his gaze dragged down her body, totally obscured in the filmy layers of her own elaborate green-and-gold outfit “…I believe stripping is one of life’s most worthwhile activities.” He rose, sweeping her up in his arms in one fluid movement, and headed to the bigger tent.

  “So this is why you had us dress up in those elaborate costumes? Many layers to take off.”

  He gave her a scorching smile as he pushed aside the tent flap. And she felt as if a genie might materialize at any moment. Not that he’d know what to offer her. She couldn’t wish for more than this. This man, these feelings, this moment.

  As for this place, it was enormous, enough to hold a banquet for hundreds, with the tented canvas ceiling undulating from wooden poles, the central one soaring at least fifteen feet, the periphery no less than nine. The ground was leveled and completely covered in a breathtaking array of hand-woven Persian carpets. Everything else, the low couches, the strewn pillows, the tables and urns and lanterns and incense burners, all in a mixture of vibrant colors and burnished brass and copper, was a stunning fusion of many ethnic influences. She could decipher Bedouin, Indian, Ottoman and Moroccan among the blend. And she’d bet that below the authentic decorations lurked all the luxury of ultra-modern amenities.

  And in the middle of it all was a twenty-by-twenty-foot chessboard, with pieces made of solid teak and ebony, the tallest, the kings, about four feet tall.

  Shehab came to stand in the middle of the chessboard below a hanging brass lantern with Arabian-windows-style glass, its light weaving among the fumes of the sweet-spicy incense, playing over his face. He gave her a playful squeeze. “How about we let the game begin?”

  Her head bobbed in a swooning nod on his muscled shoulder.

  He set her down on her feet, not giving any sign he’d move away any time soon.

  “Your move.”

  She shivered again at the passion in his voice, moved away reluctantly. She weaved among the pieces, gliding her hands over them, marveling at the perfect smoothness of their polished surfaces, her mind bounding ahead to images of Shehab stripping.

  She’d better get her act together, play a killer game.

  She moved her pawn forward. He moved his. In five more moves she’d taken his first rook, and looked up at him expectantly.

  “Off with your ghotrah.”

  “You have this wrong. The rules are like this. I lose a piece, you strip a piece off of me. You can be as creative, as leisurely as you like in how you do it. And I must stand there and bear it in silence, keeping my hands and every other part of me to myself. Same goes for you, of course. The one who ends up winning has the other at their total disposal for a week.”

  She rushed to him, her hands stinging with anticipation. “I love the rules of strip chess.”

  “Actually, those are my rules.” He let her reach up and free him of his headdress, groaned and stiffened as she dug her fingers in the luxury of his hair. She urged his head lower so she’d have her fill of massaging his scalp, combing through his hair, twisting locks between her fingers before she finally tugged on them, brought his lips to hers, her tongue gliding over their painstaking chiseling, breaching their seal and dipping into the fount of his taste. He was soon breathing hard, groaning continuously, the hardness she kept pressing against turned to the consistency of rock, his whole body buzzing and quivering with the tension of holding back.

  He finally wrenched his inert lips away, staggered back, his heavy-lidded eyes fuming with pent-up frustration. “That everything-off-you stipulation is the most foolish one I’ve ever made. I almost blew an artery.” He shook his head, straightened, moved his bishop and took her knight. “Now I get to pay you back.”

  She stood riveted, clamoring for whatever he chose to do to her. He dragged her to the ground, went down beside her, took off her sandals, made her discover the one thousand erogenous zones connecting her feet’s every bone and inch. When she was whimpering and clawing at him, he withdrew, looked on her condition in satisfaction. “It’s a great game, after all.”

  The game progressed with each getting more creative, inflicting more sensual torment on the other until she was in her lace panties and he in the drawstring pants he had nothing beneath. Then Shehab moved his black queen.

  He came behind her, took her with an arm beneath her screaming-for-mercy breasts, murmured in her ear, “Shah matt.”

  “Wha…?”

  “Those are the Persian words, what became checkmate. Shah, or king, mat, or died. You’re mine now, to do with as I please.”

  Her knees buckled at the sheer depth and darkness of his voice, his passion. “I’m yours anyway, in case you haven’t noticed.” She ground back into him, felt him hot and hard and huge, throbbing into her back. “But you’re wrong.”

  She twisted out of his arms, stumbled between the huge pieces. “This isn’t shah matt. This is only Shah, or whatever check was originally called.” Her trembling hands moved her queen. “Now it’s your king who’s matt.”

  He stared at her move for stupefied moments. Then he burst out laughing, peal after peal of guffaws that sent another river of hormones gushing in her system. “Hada w’Ullah suheeh-by God, it’s true. I didn’t even see this coming. I’ve officially lost my mind, then. Or more accurately, you’ve stolen it.”

  “Turnabout is fair play, since you’ve stolen mine. And now you do as I please.”

  He spread his arms wide. “Always. Anything. E’emorini. Command me.”

  She stumbled back to him, her prize, heat surging and splashing through her like a relentless fountain, turned and pressed her back into the breadth of his body, stood on tiptoes and squashed her buttocks into his erection. “I want you to take me, just like this, no waiting, no bringing me to orgasm first. I want to come around you, and only around you tonight.”

  Something reverberated in his chest, wild and voracious as he snatched her up in his arms, rushed to a compartment at the far end of the tent. Behind the waterfall of damask drapes isolating it lay another setting of senses-soaking sensuality, dominated by a huge bed draped in gold and red satin and flanked by mirror-polished brass panels, with a gleaming copper tray table beside it, laden with fruits and delicacies.

  He placed her on the bed, on her knees, tore the drawstring off, let his pants pool to the ground as he freed himself. Then he thrust inside her in one stroke.

  The blow of sensation as he stretched her beyond her capacity paralyzed her. But it was their reflection in the brass panels, him bending over her back, her kneeling, impaled on his erection, that made her convulse on a sucker-punch orgasm.

  “Aih, come around me, give it all to me,” he growled as she bucked beneath him, screeched and clawed at the satin beneath her fingers. He rode her crest, pressing her down until her face was wetting the satin with tears and sweat, kneading her breasts, her nipples, her mound, spreading her slick core and stroking her everywhere but at the focus of sensations until th
e pressure inside her rose once more, threatened to implode her.

  “I can’t…Shehab…can’t…too much…”

  “You can. You will. Take what you want. Me, unable to wait, driven all the way inside you, your captive, at your mercy. You at mine, taking all of me, like this…” He touched her cervix.

  Sensations buried her, squeezing wild response from her core, her lungs. “Yes…like that…please, don’t stop…”

  He did, withdrew from her. Before she could cry out, he spread her on her back and plunged inside her again, letting her feel the rawness of the strength that could pulverize men twice her size leashed to become carnality, seduction, cherishing. He undulated his hips, stretching her around his invasion, his eyes leaving her one exposed nerve.

  “E’emorini-command me. What’s your pleasure?”

  “Come with me…”

  “Amrek, ya galbi.” And he rammed inside her. She keened, the pleasures gathering in her core smothering each other around him. She dug her fingernails into his buttocks, wanting him to stab her to the heart. He did, gave her the savagery the epicenter of destruction needed to be unleashed.

  She vanished in a moment of whiteout before detonations radiating from his driving manhood razed her, reformed her for the next sweep. Then he joined her in this darkest ecstasy, roaring his completion, his orgasm tapping into hers, boosting its power as his seed splashed into her womb, scorching her and putting out the fire all at once. If not for long, as she knew by now.