by Olivia Gates
She struggled with an attack of arrhythmia. But he’d demanded. And the truth was his due, the least she could give him when she owed him her very life.
She gave it to him. “From the first moment, you forced me to reassess you. With every action and word, you showed me you are all that’s advertised and far more. Stripped from all the trappings of your power, you proved to be the total opposite of what I thought, with stamina and resourcefulness and bravery that constantly awe me. You showed me you take your duty to protect anyone weaker than you, at whatever cost to you, more seriously than I thought possible in this day and age. I believe you’re one of a kind, Prince Harres Aal Shalaan.”
His gaze lengthened, heated, until she felt she’d burst into flames. Just when she was about to whimper, please, enough, he took her hand, buried his face in its palm for a long moment.
Then raggedly, still against her flesh, he whispered, “You honor me with your opinion. I will always strive to deserve it.”
From then on, the atmosphere seemed charged with emotion, intensifying each sensation into near distress.
As if by agreement, they barely spoke as they had their meal. She was thankful for the silence. It gave her the chance to deal with her upheaval and face herself with more truths.
There were Aal Shalaans who hadn’t hesitated to destroy Todd’s life to gain their ends, but she could no longer dip the whole family in the bile of her anger and prejudice. And just as she didn’t know who exactly among the Aal Shalaans and Ghada’s family were culpable, there could be sides to the story that would change her perspective. Whatever that became, she now believed, from Harres’s example, that the Aal Shalaans weren’t an evil regime that deserved to be deposed.
Which led her to more realizations. And a decision.
Soon it got chilly and they rode through the now sleeping oasis back to the cottage under the blaze of a full moon.
Inside, they took turns bathing.
The moment he came out into the sitting area, she began. “I decided something when I thought I was dying.”
His smile froze, his face slamming shut. “Don’t say that again. Don’t even think it.”
“I need to tell you this.” She waited until he gave a difficult nod, then went on. “When I thought it was over, I thought that if I had a chance to do things over, or a second chance to put things right, I’d do what I really wanted to do, with no thought to obstacles or misgivings or consequences. Then you saved me. And I got cold feet.”
He didn’t ask her to elaborate. He just stared at her, seriousness seizing his face fully for the first time.
She knew this would lead nowhere. And it made no difference.
She loved him. A love that permeated her soul and traversed her being. A love forged in shared danger, fortified by the certainty of mutual reliance. And she was no longer letting anything stop her from expressing that love, from taking what she could with him, of him.
She rose from the low couch, her steps impeded by the ferocity of her emotions. She stopped before him, looked up into the eyes that meant everything to her. Then she made the leap.
“You told me you’d never do anything I didn’t want you to, didn’t beg you to do. So here I am, begging you. I want you, Harres. I want nothing but you.”
Ten
So this was temptation.
Unstoppable, irresistible. To die for.
This golden virago who’d invaded his being, occupied his mind and heart, conquered his reason and priorities.
She stood before him, open, offering everything. He could feel, in every nuance of his essence, the totality of her offer. It wasn’t only of her body and pleasures. She was bestowing all she had, all she was, on him.
And if he closed the gap between them now, he’d take all of her, consume her.
But how could he when he couldn’t give his all in return?
She did have all of him, Harres, the man, the human being. She had since that first night in the desert, when they’d been stripped to their essentials, when their souls had mingled in the most profound ways possible. If he’d had any concerns that the ordeal had augmented his feelings, influenced their depth and direction, the past ten days had erased them, had replaced them with certainty and wonder.
Added to how she’d awed him with the way she’d handled their trials, stood up to and beside him. She’d delighted him with every second of their stay in the oasis. After only a week, even with the language obstacle, she was already the more favorite among the inhabitants.
The day after the feast, she’d set up a clinic, offered her services. He’d thought those who’d relied on healing practices passed down through generations would shy away from her and her modern medical practices and instruments. But she’d anticipated that, offered only her medical skills and whatever the oasis provided of supplies and medicines. After a slow day, she’d been called to an obstructed labor, where she’d saved both mother and twin babies.
Then she’d become a legend. People had flooded in. They’d stood in queues from morning till sunset, when he, who acted as her assistant, insisted the doctor needed rest. She kept proving how she, too, needed nothing beyond her diverse skills to survive and excel anywhere, under any conditions. He told her she was the epitome of the Arabic proverb “A skilled woman weaves with a donkey’s leg” and teased her about being Dr. MacGyver.
She wasn’t just a healer, but a warrior and a protector like him. She shared his soul in all its breadth and peculiarities. He wanted, needed to share the rest of himself with her, for the rest of his life. There was no doubt in him anymore. Harres, the man, was hers. Forever.
And though Harres the prince had divided loyalties, that wasn’t what stopped him from proclaiming his love, his devotion. Only one thing did. Her grievance against his family. If everything she’d told him was the truth, she had legitimate reason to want to bring his family—which she perceived as a unit that worked to the same end of retaining power—to her brand of justice. What if he couldn’t secure her brother’s release and redemption? How could he take her, when he couldn’t promise that in return?
Turmoil ripped the bindings of his heart. And that was before she closed her eyes, her chin trembling as two crystalline tears escaped her luxurious lashes.
Then she raised glistening azure eyes and he nearly had a heart attack. “I thought you wanted me, too….”
He couldn’t bear it. Elal jaheem with the obstacles between them. He would obliterate them.
With a sob, she began to turn away. He grabbed her hand, placed it on his chest, felt as if his heart would ram through it to feel the touch of that hand that healed so many, that had saved him.
Her hand shook under his, each tremor an electric shock. Her words’ effect was more brutal.
“Just forget I said anything. I’ve put you in an awkward position, what with all the things that remain unresolved. And then you’ve probably been flirting with me with no intention of taking it any further, and I understand your motivation, totally—”
“Oh, shut up.”
Her mouth fell open at his growl, her eyes snapping wide, those eyes that glowed an unearthly blue in the vividness of the honey tan the desert sun had poured over her.
He looked down at her in that satiny dress that hung from her shoulders in relaxed pleats to the floor, another that the oasis women had given her in a shade that attempted to emulate the eyes that so fascinated them. The dress was by no stretch sexy. Not on anyone else. On her, it was the ultimate in eroticism.
She fidgeted, tried to escape his gaze. He wouldn’t let her, his other hand capturing her delectable chin.
“Do I have your attention, ya nadda jannati?” He waited until she raised moist eyes to him and gave a hesitant nod. “First, yes, ultimately major issues are unresolved.” She gasped, tried to wriggle out of his hold. He clung tighter, his hold growing gentler until she subsided in it, gave him her wounded gaze. He groaned. “But not where I’m concerned. My father once told me a man is gran
ted one certainty in his life, one perfection. And it’s up to him to recognize it, to seize it, to let it bless his life. He wasted his, for reasons that seemed imperative at the time. My younger brother Shaheen just found his certainty, and learning from our father’s mistake, didn’t let anything stop him from seizing it. I thought my certainty was that I’d never have such perfection. I lived at total peace with that. At least, I did until I found it. Found you. So no, Talia, I don’t want you.”
The eyes that had been misting with an escalation of emotion jerked with stricken confusion. Eyes to bring a man, willingly, eagerly, to his knees.
They brought him to his before her.
She gasped, swayed, then a hot sound of protest broke from her as she tried to pull him back up.
He only brought her hand to his lips and pledged it all to her. “Ana ahebbek, aashagek ya talyeti, ya noor donyeti—I love you, worship you, and more, my Talia, light of my world.”
She went totally still. Her tremors stopped. Her breathing. Her stare emptied of all but shock.
Then she shook her head. “I—I don’t—you don’t have to say that…I just want to be with you while I can…so don’t…don’t…”
He rose, gliding his aching body against hers, catching her around her hips and raising her up until she was blinking her surprise down at him. His heart quivered at the incredible sight and feel of the treasure filling his arms, his lips spreading with the pleasure. “I am getting good at getting you to shut up and listen. And yes, ya talyeti, I do have to say this, because it’s what I feel, all that I feel.”
She wriggled in his arms until she made him put her down. He smiled all his love down at her, willing her to read into his heart. But when the flabbergasted look in her eyes, the distress didn’t waver, uncertainty crept up on him.
Had he seen and felt more from her than there actually was? She wanted to act on the desire that had raged between them from the first moment, but that was all?
The unbearable doubt with all its ramifications hit him like a barrage of bullets in his gut. He swayed back under its brunt.
At last, he rasped the most difficult words he’d ever uttered in his life, “If you don’t reciprocate, just walk away, and we’ll forget I ever said anything.”
With his certainty shattered, the expressions that wove in her eyes tangled in his mind. He stopped trying to analyze them, too afraid to hope, too scared she’d end hope.
“You won’t take me up on my offer?” she said, slow and husky.
His heart contracted. “Not if you don’t feel the same.”
Suddenly, something he’d never thought to see in her eyes almost had him flat on his back. A look of unadulterated seduction, so hungry and demanding and erotic, he could swear he heard hormones roar in his arteries.
His arousal jerked painfully. And that was before she gave him a reason-numbing body rub with her hot firmness.
“Sure I can’t change your mind about that?” she purred against his neck before sinking her teeth in his jaw.
“Talia…” He growled his agonized stimulation, his whole body turning to rock with the need to crush her to him.
Before he could push away, her hands tangled in his hair and dragged his head down.
He knew if she kissed him, he wouldn’t be able to stop. And he’d rather not have her at all than have her in every way but the one that mattered.
He turned his face away, felt her scorching lips latch on to his cheek, open, moist, devouring. “Don’t…”
“Oh, shut up.”
Her aggressive growl ended with a sharp tug on his hair. Then before his overcharged nerves could fire one more impulse, her lips sank onto his, paralyzing him with their hunger, with their softness and fragrance and taste.
Before the pain of it all could travel to his core, shatter it, she moaned inside him, “I thought it was impossible, but I can love you more. You just made me.”
He jerked back, she clung. His whole system was going haywire from the mixed signals. He groaned. “You love me?”
She spread nips and nibbles over his jaw, detonating depth mines of pleasure and ferocity in his blood. “Down to your last pore. I’m sure I’d find even your cellular structure pant-worthy.”
The image her words painted, their import, struck him. And just like that, everything inside him surged with jubilation.
He squeezed her off the ground, held her up high, guffawed. “Only you. Only you would say this, my unique dew droplet. I did have to go fall in love with a doctor.”
She braced her hands on his shoulders, her eyes burning with desire dueling with challenge dipped in insecurity. “Of all the women you wade in, huh? I did hear the Guardian Prince was also the sultan of a worldwide harem.”
He put her down, caught her face in an adamant grip. “Only one woman for me. Ever. You. And I would say everything before you went to waste, but it didn’t. It did serve a great purpose. To make me recognize the certainty of your perfection for me faster, appreciate it with everything in me.”
She only nodded, her eyes now inundating him with everything in her. She believed him. With just his word. And she was making him believe, too. That he had all of her.
He now truly had the whole world.
He bent, breathed her in, angled his lips against hers. Then he sank. He felt life rush through him, passion cresting in dark, overwhelming waves, crashing inside him. Magic. And love. More. Adoration and beyond. His Talia.
“Talyeti, enti elli, wana elek,” he growled in her mouth, between tongue thrusts that breached the sweetness she surrendered with such mind-destroying eagerness. “You’re mine. And I’m yours.”
“Yes, yes…” She snatched at his lips, hers rising in heat. “How do I say ‘my Harres’?”
“Harresi,” he groaned.
“Harresi. My guardian knight.”
And he did feel hers. Owned. And delirious to be so.
He sank to his knees before her again, bunched her dress in his fists, raised it up in inches, replacing it with his lips, tongue, teeth, coating her velvet firmness in suckles and bites, skimming and tantalizing her, lingering and tormenting himself. Her moans echoed his groans, became keens, then pants.
When he could no longer bear it either, he exploded up and took her dress with him. She flung up her supple arms in a sweep of eagerness and surrender, helping him, urging him. He snatched the garment away as if it was his worst enemy. But before he could step back and look on the treasure he’d uncovered, her hands were attacking his clothes with the same vehemence.
She tore the abaya off his shoulders and down his arms. Then with him still entangled in its tethers, she devoured him, her tongue painting him in ravenous greed, her teeth sinking into his flesh in delicate bites, each nip a new lash of arousal. He lurched under the power of each one. Then she moaned, “You taste and feel as magnificent as you look. I want more of you, all of you.”
He roared. The pressure in his loins was becoming unbearable. He had to stop her, pull back from the precipice or this wouldn’t be the languorous seduction he’d planned it to be. Any more and it would be like a dam breaking the moment he thrust inside her.
No. He wouldn’t let her first intimacy with him be less than perfect bliss. He would show her he craved her pleasure far more than he craved his, that his pleasure would always stem from hers.
He tore away from her, snatched his fetters away then stopped. Stood transfixed. Stared at her.
He’d struggled to respect her helplessness when he’d covered her nakedness in the tent. And when he’d tended her in her sickness, his male hormones had been buried under gallons of stress. Now he looked.
She’d wrenched an unprecedented response from him when she’d been disguised as a man. He’d thought her the most beautiful creature in creation when he’d seen only her exquisite head and hands. She’d had him balancing on an edge both distressing and intoxicating with glimpses at her assets. But now…
Now he could see himself truly devouring h
er.
Encased in golden, glowing skin, taut and tight everywhere, her breasts were turgid and peaked, her thighs and hips full and firm, her waist impossible amidst her voluptuousness.
And he could no longer just look, he needed to experience all that, claim it, wallow in it.
“Rao’ah, jenan…” He growled, filling his hands with sunlight and gold and honey made woman. His woman. “A marvel, madness—beauty like this shouldn’t have been sanctioned by the heavens.”
“Look who’s talking,” she moaned as he took the mounds of her breasts into kneading hands, yearning for their weight and feel.
He felt he’d blow an artery without a taste. He bent to have it, laved their peaks, answered their demand for the pull of his suckles, the grazing of his nips.
“Elahati, my goddess.” He swept her up into his arms, didn’t register the journey to the platform bed. He laid her on it, arranged her limbs as if they were flowers, tracing every line demarcating her tawny tan from her still-creamy areas with his tongue. “We’ll sunbathe naked from now on. I want to see your inner lioness fully manifested. We’ll do anything and everything.”
A peach flush evened out her color and her eyes turned almost black as she writhed. “Yes…please, anything…everything…”
The totality of her hunger and trust shot to his heart, tampering with its rhythm. He anchored her as she began to buck beneath him, his fingers lost in the mindless pleasure of spanning her sharp concavity, digging into her taut flesh.
She whimpered a white-hot tremolo that attested to a pleasure she couldn’t breathe for its power. “Harres, take me…daheenah.”
Hearing her say now in his mother tongue felt like a giant hammer shattering the last pillar of his control. He would later swear he’d heard the shrieking snap of his mind giving way, the howling implosion of restraint’s end.
A rumble rolled inside him like distant thunder as he snapped her turquoise panties down her silken legs. She was golden down to her last secret. Rising on his knees, he barely pushed his drawstring pants down enough to release an arousal that was beyond rock now.
