The Sheikh's Redemption

by Olivia Gates

  He needed a more definitive demonstration.

  She turned on jellified legs toward the bed in the middle of the room that he’d designed in echoes of her complexion. She climbed on top, spread out in its center and held out her arms to him.

  He moved then. Before her heart could stumble over a few beats, he was at the foot of the bed, looking down at her spread out before him.

  “You will give me everything this time, Roxanne. Everything you have. Everything you are. Everything you didn’t think you had to give. If you withhold anything, I will take nothing.”

  “Everything.” Her nod was frantic. “And I want your everything in return.”

  Something savage blossomed in his gaze. “You know what you’re asking for?”

  He was demanding more than her body. He’d soon find out he had all of her, through and through.

  She struggled to her elbows, meeting his menace with her trust, her vow, her determination. “Oh, yes.”

  He suddenly clamped her feet, dragged her by them, slid her across the satiny sheets. One hand took one of hers, tugged, bringing her slamming into his flesh.

  “I want to invade you, brand you, devour you whole.” She gasped her willingness for anything he’d do to her, tried to wrap herself around him. “But you’ll have to wait for that.”

  A flip had her back in the middle of the bed, lying on her stomach. A firm hand at the small of her back kept her down. She resisted him enough to remain propped on her elbows, so she could watch him as he slid up her body, nipping and kneading his way from the soles of her feet to her nape, ridding her of her panties and bra on the way, leaving her with only her sandals on.

  He worshipped her with his ferocity, owned her with his voracity. Every dig of his fingers in her flesh had the exact force, each nip of his teeth the exact roughness to extract maximum pleasure from every nerve ending. He layered sensations with each press and bite until she felt devoured and assimilated, until she was overloading.

  Something was charring inside her. She undulated back against him in a fever, pressing her clamoring flesh against any part of him in mindless pursuit of assuagement. “Arjook, Haidar…”

  At her cried-out plea, in Arabic, he growled something and flatted her beneath him. She lay there, naked, her every nerve abraded by the sensation of his flesh through his clothes, quaking at the domination of his heated bulk, at each wholly arousing touch.

  “Maafi raja…no pleas, ya naari, only possession.”

  His breath burned her cheek, its scent filling her lungs, and everything inside her snapped. She cried out, twisted on her back, surged up to cling around him, to his lips in desperate kisses.

  “Eight years, Roxanne,” he growled inside her mouth between the tongue thrusts that filled her, conquered her. “Do you know how many times I cursed you for depriving me of this?”

  He transferred his lips to her neck and shoulders, tasting every tremor strumming through her as his hands slid down her body, tormented every fiber into a riot of sensation. He dragged a rough, electrocuting hand between her thighs, kneaded and tormented his way to her core. The heel of his thumb ground against her outer lips at the same moment the wet furnace of his mouth clamped over a throbbing nipple. Sensation slashed her nerves.

  He dealt her another blow as his deft fingers spread her, probed her readiness, two sliding between her engorged, molten inner lips, stilling at her entrance. She flailed, whimpered, arched up into his hand.

  “Do you know what kind of frustration I suffered, wanting to see you like this, to feel you on fire, hunger shaking you apart? How I yearned to do this…”

  Those long, sure fingers plunged inside her. Her hips bucked, her squeal morphing into a shriek when he pumped into her in slow in-out glides, filling her, beckoning at her inner trigger. He growled his satisfaction as her slick flesh gripped back at him, tried to wring its release from his torment.

  “And do you know how it felt being unable to do this? Thinking I’d never own your flesh like this again?”

  Sensation rocketed, more at the emotion and passion fueling his words than at his expert pleasuring. She keened, opened herself wider for him, needing pleasure any way he gave it, offering her surrender.

  “You can have it all now,” she gasped. “And always.”

  “Saherah.” His growl singed her, even as his thumb stroked her tight, nerve-filled bud in rhythmic circles, the exact pressure and speed she needed, escalating her need for release with each stroke. He swallowed every tremulous word, every tear until she was on the verge of shuddering apart. Then he let up.

  She knew what he was doing. He was punishing her. By building up to an eventual, fiercer reward.

  Her body felt it would combust if he didn’t push her over the edge. But this was a test of the extent of her surrender. Letting him give her more than she could dream of, his way.

  Before she could verbalize her submission, he slid down to lay on his stomach between her thighs, draping her legs over his back.

  “And do you know what I suffered, craving the taste of you, knowing I’d never know it again?”

  He inhaled her, rumbled like a lion maddened by the scent of his female, blew a gust of acute sensation over her quivering flesh. Her vision disappeared in a haze of crimson lust as he latched his hot lips over her intimate ones, plunging her into a vortex of need. He eased his fingers back into her, his tongue joining in, licked from where they were buried inside her upward, circling until she was sobbing feverishly. No pleas, though. Just confessions of what he was doing to her.

  When he’d heard enough, taken her to the edge and dragged her back panting and shuddering enough times, he nipped her, knowing exactly where, how hard.

  She convulsed, bucked, smashed her flesh to his mouth, opening herself fully to his double sensual assault, each glide and graze and thrust sending hotter lances skewering through her, pleasure slamming through her in desperate surges. Her climax wrung her out of satisfaction. He growled, drank every drop, kept pushing her, plumbing her flesh for more, until she tumbled from the explosive peak, drained, sated. Stupefied.

  Had he ever driven her to such ecstasy?

  Sight seeping back, her drugged eyes sought his, as if for answers. They sparkled in the ingeniously placed and calibrated lighting of the room and that of the oil lamps she’d lit, heavy with hunger and gratification.

  As if to answer her, he said, “It’s merciful, for both of us, time dulled even my memories. Either that or you have matured from a craving into an addiction.”

  Pride, delight surged, at his confession, at the sight of a long-craved fantasy. Him, clothed, between her legs, her, naked, splayed open over his Herculean shoulders.

  Her hands trembled through his lush hair. “Look who’s talking.”

  He chuckled against her inner thighs, cupped her, desensitizing her before he came up, prowled over her prostrate body on all fours like the sexy beast he was.

  He straddled her hips, started stripping. That got her mind rebooting, her muscles functioning. She had to be the one to expose him. She raised her hands, only to have them join her thighs in the prison of his. “Your amends are far from made.”

  He licked his lips as if still tasting her, tormenting her with his slow striptease, tightening his knees around her thighs and hands, deepening her helplessness, winding her pounding into a tighter rhythm. She almost relinquished the rules of surrender, to beg to touch and taste him, almost passed out with the pressure of need.

  He stood up on the bed, got rid of his pants and boxers in one move. Her senses swam, her mouth watered, the spike of hunger, the pinch of intimidation, the need to feel his daunting manhood, smell it, taste it almost pulling her under.

  But she’d had her chance a week ago. He would punish her for that stunt by denying her the pleasure for a period only he would determine.
He also had other ways of exacting payment.

  He came down over her, pressed his erection to her belly. Feeling the marble smooth and hard column of hot flesh against hers made her writhe, gasp. It awed her that she’d accommodated all that inside her. The remembered sensations as he’d occupied her, stretched her into mindlessness, made her arch up seeking more. He ground harder into her, his knees splaying her thighs, his silk-sprinkled chest teasing her aching nipples.

  The moment he crushed her beneath him, she wrapped herself around him, buried her face in his neck, opened her lips over his pulse. Every steel muscle expanded, bunched, buzzed. She whimpered at the relief of his weight on her, the feel of his power, the taste and texture of his flesh beneath her lips, the sheer delight of breathing him in.

  “Do you know the depth of longing that preyed on me, needing you beneath me like this? Do you know how much of my sanity I lost wanting to be inside you, yearning to have you around me? Knowing I was destined for starvation?”

  His bass groans had regret and agony for the lost years clotting in her heart. “Haidar, habibi, kamm ana aasfah…”

  At hearing her calling him her love, saying how sorry she was, his hands convulsed in her hair, pinned her for the full vehemence of his passion. His lips crashed on hers, silencing her, wrenching keens from her with scorching, desperate kisses. He lifted her off the bed, one hand supporting her head for his ravaging, the other at her back, holding her for his chest to torment her breasts, driving her into more of a frenzy. Her eyes streamed tears from the emotional and carnal torment. What she’d cost them…

  He touched the head of his erection to her entrance, nudged her, bathing himself in her desire. “Guleeli, ya naari—tell me you know, Roxanne. Tell me you suffered the same.”

  She pressed his biceps convulsively, arched for his completion. “I know. And I did. I suffer worse now…”

  His eyes roiled with a dizzying mixture of ferociousness and tenderness. “As you should. Now, ya naari, for all the years without your inferno, your solace, now you pay.”

  He pumped his hips, pushing against her entrance. Though she was melting with readiness, it had always taken a measure of force for him to breach her. His eyes blazed with the need to forge inside her. Her frantic nod begged for the no-holds-barred invasion.

  He lunged, was there, where she needed him, penetrating her in one forceful thrust.

  The expansion of her tissues around his erection was so sudden, the fullness sharpened into pain that exploded into pleasure so fierce, darkness danced at the periphery of her vision.

  She gasped, thrashed. His face clenched with something like agony as he stilled, started to withdraw. She clung to him as she would to a raft as she drowned.

  “Eight years’ worth,” she sobbed. “Take it all now…now.”

  “Aih, ya naari, take it all, give it back to me.” He refilled her, his tongue thrusting inside her mouth with the same ferocity.

  His growls grew dark as he gave her what she’d been disintegrating for, in the exact force and pace. He invaded her, stretched her more with each plunge, forging deeper, the head of his shaft sliding against her internal flesh, setting off a string of discharges that buried her under layers of sensations.

  It all felt maddeningly familiar, yet totally new, a buildup that seemed to originate from her every cell and radiate from his own at once, distilling desperation into a physical symptom.

  Then everything compacted into one unendurable moment that detonated outward. She shattered.

  She heaved so hard she almost lifted him in the air, her flesh pulsing around his so fiercely she couldn’t breathe, not for the first dozen clenches of excruciating pleasure.

  “Aih, ya naari, pay for all my suffering with your pleasure.”

  His rumble snapped something inside her, flooded air into her lungs. She screamed and screamed her ecstasy as he rode her, his hardness pistoning satisfaction into her.

  “Roxanne…” He rose above her, muscles bulging, eyes tempestuous, supernatural in beauty. He threw his head back and roared her name as every muscle in his body locked, his erection lodging against her womb, jetting his own release in long, hard surges, setting off her deepest triggers in one more conflagration.

  He fed her convulsions, pumping her to the last twitches of fulfillment until the world receded…

  * * *

  Roxanne stirred from the depths of bliss.

  She opened her eyes and found herself staring at the breathtaking vista of the sea and the island outside Haidar’s balcony. Contentment expanded inside her, had her turning toward him.

  He wasn’t there.

  “Haidar?”

  No answer. He must be in the shower. Or the kitchen. Or somewhere. Judging by the setting sun outside, she’d been knocked out for the last twelve hours. Or maybe even thirty-six.

  But that was his fault. He’d taken the eight years’ worth almost literally, exacted vengeance by ecstasy until she’d lost count. And consciousness.

  She got out of bed, waddled to the bathroom, wincing at the soreness from his repeated possession. She needed to soak if she hoped to be ready for more.

  She came out of the bath tingling with rejuvenation and anticipation, went in search of him.

  She found him nowhere.

  She called him. His phone was turned off.

  Where was he? What could have made him disappear?

  No answer made sense. As hours passed, terrible explanations started to trickle in, expand, take over rationalizations. That he’d taken her up on her offer but had never intended to stay for an encore. That last night had meant only two things to him—vindication, closure.

  Was that it? He’d gotten them and just…left?

  Unable to accept that verdict, she waited, every sound in the expansive house almost uprooting her heart with hope. But he didn’t return.

  Night had deepened to utter bleakness when she found herself walking to the pier, to the platform where she’d thought her life had started again.

  She looked out to the island that was now an awe-striking shadow under the light of a nascent moon and blazing stars. She’d thought he’d take her there, to explore, to make love, to—

  “I thought you’d be gone.”

  She spun around, saw him approaching through the liquid pain filling her eyes. The conquering lover, the devil-may-care prince, the challenging adversary were all gone.

  A frozen man had replaced them all.

  His eyes regarded her without a spark of the life or lust that had always filled them. His voice was as lifeless. “But then I thought many things and they all turned out to be wrong. Now I can no longer fool myself into believing what I wish to believe.”

  God, what did he mean?

  He was telling her he couldn’t forgive or forget? Worse, that his injuries remained the same whether she’d meant to inflict them or not?

  “So why did you stay? I thought we’d said everything.”

  Was this his real revenge? Give her miles of hope to wrap around her neck, then push her off her skyscraper of foolish dreams?

  But he had to realize this wasn’t just retribution. Whatever injury she’d caused him, he’d survived it. Thrived, even. Shattering her heart now wouldn’t only be for the second time. It would be for the last. There would be no surviving it.

  “If you stayed thinking I’d back down, I won’t. I have to end this now, or there’ll be no surviving it.”

  Had she spoken her thoughts out loud?

  No. He just knew how much he was damaging her.

  Not that she could blame him. He’d walked away, told her to go. She’d pursued him, planned and plotted her own destruction. She’d done this to herself, as she had in the past. No one had forced her to love him, give him more than he’d wanted. The first time she’d been
too young, had had the delusion that she could love again, could come to life again with someone else. Now she’d grown up and out of her false hopes. Now she knew. She could only love, and live, if it was him, with him.

  And he didn’t want her.

  Trembling so hard she could barely summon enough coordination to walk, she stumbled back toward him, wishing he would disappear so she wouldn’t have to feel him this close one last time.

  Then she was passing him, holding her breath so that his scent wouldn’t twist the dagger of longing inside her chest. The stretch of the pier into land was ahead of her. The path to escape. To the nothingness that dominated her future…

  She came to a jolting halt.

  He’d stopped her.

  Before she could cry for him to just “sever the artery and let it bleed out,” as they said here, he took her by the shoulders.

  She struggled to push his hands away. She couldn’t bear this.

  His eyes smoldered down at her as if he was in the grips of a fever. “I can’t let you go, Roxanne. I thought I could, but I can’t. I will take anything for as long as you will give it. And if you prefer, I won’t bring up marriage again.”

  Ten

  Bring up marriage? Again?

  Roxanne stared up at Haidar, nothing making sense anymore.

  His fingers convulsed on her shoulders. “I was an arrogant bastard, making it sound like a fait accompli. I deserved that ‘shut up.’ I shouldn’t have gotten angry when you said it. I shouldn’t have made it an ultimatum, shouldn’t have said that it was marriage or nothing.”

  Every word out of his mouth pushed vague things from the periphery of her mind and into focus. Hazy snippets she might have heard as she’d drifted in and out of oblivion. His voice, hers, the words themselves evaporating like a dream after waking.

  He was saying that, during those unremembered fragments, he’d proposed to her? That she’d answered his proposal with…shut up?

  “If you stayed to tell me I’m an idiot, but that I can stop being one and take what you’re willing to give me, I accept.”