by Olivia Gates
She swerved from the subject, turned lips tingling with the numbness of fear into his neck. “A noble cause.”
She felt a ragged breath empty his lungs as he gave her a tighter squeeze, as if to thank her for circumventing the emotional landmine. “None higher. I got addicted to holding you like this, ever since I rode back to the oasis with you.”
“Buttuli.” She tilted her head back to smile up into his eyes and caught the bleakness there.
Tenderness replaced it, making her wonder if she’d even seen it. But she had. And she wouldn’t bring it up.
What was the point of worrying about the future but to taint the purity of happiness they shared in the present?
She rubbed the hair he’d told her he adored, called spun gold milled from sunshine, against his bare chest. Now that he no longer wore a bandage but a local dressing over his fast-healing wound, she’d been wallowing in the sensory nirvana of touching his sculptured perfection at every opportunity. Which was almost always.
“Harres…”
“Yes, Talia, say my name like that, like you can’t draw another breath if you don’t have me inside you. As I will be, here and now.”
The blow of arousal at the thought of him carrying out his intention, here, was paralyzing. And not just because it was a fantasy she’d thought would forever go unfulfilled. They were out in the open, with the oasis people in the distance.
She thought he was only stimulating her, that he’d wait until they were by the ain, where they’d shared more than one explosive if hurried mating, but then he lifted her, dragged her voluminous dress from beneath her, let it flow over his lap.
Then, as one hand held the bridle, the other slid around to dip below the folds of the neckline, seeking her breasts. Fire forked to her core as his fingers manipulated her nipples. It burst into flames when he sank his teeth in her nape, like a lion securing his mate.
She swooned back, her already open thighs falling apart wider, moisture dampening her panties.
“Do you know what scenting your arousal does to me?” He growled in her ear as his hand slid inside her panties, his palm gently squeezing her for a moment, winding the rhythm of the throbbing there into a frantic pounding. “I want to taste you again, but I’ll have to settle for feeling your heat and your satiny flesh as it softens and melts for me. Show me how much you crave my touch, ya talyeti.”
Beyond caring that they might be seen, she bucked back against him, widening her thighs, giving him full access. “I’m out of my mind craving anything you do to me, all the time. Touch me, feel for yourself, do everything to me.”
With a groan of male possession, he dipped a finger along the molten lips of her sex, sliding its thickness and power on a mind-numbing path to and fro, each pass tightening the coil of agonizing pleasure inside her. She writhed, whimpered, turned her face up to his. He thrust his tongue inside her mouth as he replaced his finger with his thumb and plunged his middle finger inside her. The coil snapped, and she unraveled around him, in his arms on bucking keens. He stroked her inner trigger, stoked it until the climax drained her of the frenzy he’d built inside her.
“Having you lost to pleasure is the most magnificent thing I’ve ever experienced,” he rumbled against her mouth as his fingers still stroked her, avoiding her sensitive bud, until he soothed her, then he changed direction and rhythm, had her climbing to mindlessness again.
Once she was begging, she felt him release himself, his hard length slamming against her buttocks. He whispered in her ear, “Rise up with your thigh muscles like I taught you in the trot.”
He was really going to take her here. Like this. The idea almost drove her over another edge.
She rose up and he positioned himself at her opening.
He was saying, “Settle down on me,” when her muscles jellified. She crashed down on him.
He forged through her inner folds like a hot lance. She thought she’d gotten used to his length and girth, but it seemed that every time felt like the first time, felt as if he filled her more.
Now the pressure reached an edge of pain, of domination that redefined all her concepts of physical intimacy and pleasure. She was addicted to the impossible fullness, the feeling of total occupation, of trapping such a vital part of him so inescapably inside her and drawing both their pleasure from depths she—and he insisted he, too—hadn’t known existed.
By the fourth or fifth buck and fall of the trot she was a mass of tremors, fully at his power, breached to her core, invaded, occupied, pleasured, taken, maddened.
“Ride me…ride me…” was all she could say anymore, all that was left in her mind. She was enervated with an overload of sensation, the pressure becoming beyond her endurance. She needed him to thrust her to release. Before anyone passed.
He only lay back into the trot, let its rhythm layer even more sensation. All the time, he said things that drove her deeper into bondage. “Filling you this way, invading you, being captured by you is all I can think of, I want to be home, inside you, pleasuring you, always….”
And she found another word. “Please.”
She felt him jerk inside her, grow bigger. She keened, writhed, and he growled, nudged Reeh, pounded into her with all the fury of the gallop. Just when she thought her heart would stop and she would dissolve around him and be no more, his fingers massaged her bud in escalating circles, his teeth sinking into her neck again, his growls a carnal current knotting her heart and core. And she detonated.
A scream welled from her depths, too frenzied to form. The next one would have but he caught it in his palm, gave her his flesh to vent her agonized pleasure on.
She bit into the side of his palm, over and over as breaker after breaker of release crashed through her, receded, built only to smash into her again, scattering and reforming her for the next incursion. The convulsions radiated from the deepest point within her body, which he caressed, spread in expanding shock waves, each building where the last began to diminish. Then he plumbed a new depth in her, seeming to impale her to her heart, releasing his ecstasy there. Feeling him fill her to overflowing sent her thrashing once more. She wished…she wished…
She regained lucidity with a jerk. They’d reached al ain. He was still inside her. The pleasure was a continuous flow now, a plateau of contentment. Her head rolled limply over his heart.
“You should have told me you won’t just drive me insane, you’ll regularly knock me out, too.”
He chuckled, a sound of profound male smugness. “I live to please.”
She shuddered as he separated their fusion. “And how.”
He adjusted his clothes and jumped off the horse, holding out his arms for her. “And no one saw us.”
She closed her eyes in mortification. She couldn’t believe she’d risked that. He did drive her insane.
His smile became pure bedevilment. “Let’s hope for better luck next time.”
There was no next time.
It was almost sunset the next day when she felt a bass drone reverberate in her bones.
In moments the distant yet approaching thunder became unmistakable. A helicopter.
Harres’s people had come for them.
Their idyll had come to an end.
Harres turned to her, his eyes eloquent with the same sentiments. But he attempted a smile. “They’ll be here in minutes. Do you want to leave immediately?”
She didn’t want to leave at all.
She only said, “Yes.”
He nodded. “Let’s gather the stuff the oasis people gave us.”
“I only wish I had something to give them, too.”
“You gave them far more than souvenirs, made a lasting difference in so many lives. Many told me they were blessed the day the desert ‘yielded you to them.’ And you can bring them whatever you want later.” She gasped. Then he articulated her wildest hope. “We’ll be back here, ya nadda jannati. I promise.”
In fifteen minutes, she was standing with Harres a hundred feet fro
m the clearing where the helicopter had just landed.
Four men jumped down, walked toward them with movements made of power and purpose, not even acknowledging the brutal wind buffeting them from the still-storming rotors.
As they strode closer, Talia was left in no doubt they were Harres’s blood.
Apparently Aal Shalaan men all descended from a line that had originated the oriental fables of supernatural beings.
The men were close enough to be classed in the same level, yet different enough as to be totally distinct from one another.
But it was the man who’d been in the pilot’s seat who captured and kept her focus. And not because she recognized him as Zohayd’s crown prince.
Amjad Aal Shalaan had an aura about him that lashed out across space and punched air from an onlooker’s body. He reminded her of a majestic black panther, perpetually coiled for attack, complete with startling, searing, soulless emerald eyes. And he had those eyes trained on hers. She could swear she felt her eyeballs about to combust before he turned his attention to his brother.
But that brief eye-lock had been enough for her to have no doubt. He was nothing like Harres. That perfect body housed a dangerous, merciless entity. No one got a second chance with Crown Prince Amjad Aal Shalaan. She doubted anyone got a first one.
For the next few minutes she watched as those male manifestations of the forces of nature descended on Harres with relief and affection. All but Amjad. He held back, his gaze on her.
She felt him slicing through the layers of her character like a mental CAT scan, cutting to her essence like a psychic laser.
Harres introduced the others, Munsoor, Yazeed and Mohab—the latter Ghada’s reluctant fiancé—as the cousins who’d been with him for her retrieval operation. They shook hands with her, expressed their pleasure to see her well, if not exactly who they’d signed on to save. They exchanged with Harres dozens of questions and reports about what had happened since they got separated twenty days ago.
Suddenly Amjad spoke. “Enough with the reunion. You can all debrief each other, or whatever you do in this secret-service game you play, later.” He focused on Harres. “After Shaheen spent the last three weeks tearing the kingdom apart with me looking for you, he couldn’t waste one more moment away from his bride coming to fetch you and has jumped back into her embrace. He sends his ‘love’ from its depths.”
Harres’s lips twisted at him. “You tore apart the kingdom looking for me? I’m so touched. I hope we can now glue it back together.”
Amjad shot him a look of demolishing sarcasm. She was sure a lesser man than Harres would have shriveled up. “The trials and tribulations of the oldest brother and all that. And then I couldn’t let you get lost in the desert with my vital info, now could I? You can glue things back together yourself. Cleanup detail is why a man puts up with younger siblings.”
Talia’s mouth fell open. Harres only hugged her to his side and guffawed. “Aih, I love you, too, Amjad.”
Amjad’s gaze clamped the unit she and Harres formed.
Then he grimaced, rolled his eyes before leveling them on Harres disgustedly. “Not you, too.”
Harres only laughed. “Oh, definitely me, too. And I hereby echo Shaheen’s words. I can’t wait until you make it three.”
Amjad dismissed him like one would an insignificant annoyance, turned to her. Then, as he looked directly into her eyes, he talked about her in third person. “So what does she have over the rest of the women in the northern hemisphere? Since you went through them all, I’d be very interested to know what extra features she has installed that made you shed your sanity.”
Harres nudged Amjad’s shoulder, pointing to his own eyes with two fingers. “Eyes here, Amjad.”
Amjad ignored him, kept looking at her, yet talking about her, not to her. “The way she’s glaring back at me. Fascinating. Fearless, is she? Or is she just so perceptive that she read you right, knew she could pretend fearlessness knowing she has nothing to fear, and that would be what gets to you?”
This time Harres sort of punched him. “Quit your snide mother-in-law routine, Amjad, or prepare to eat some sand.”
Amjad’s sculpted lips twisted, the provocation in his gaze only rising as he looked down at her. “First you let Shaheen sink into Johara’s thrall without throwing so much as a cursory rope and now you’re eagerly rushing to join the collective of beached men. Is she pregnant, too? At least, was she any good…” Amjad allowed a beat for her to start to seethe, for Harres to take offense for real before he continued smoothly. “…for any info we can use?”
Okay. All right. The verdict was in.
They hired this guy to teach goading in hell.
The other three men had slipped away midconfrontation, went back to the helicopter to prepare it for the return flight. And, no doubt, to give the brothers a chance to have at it.
Though Amjad was formidable, Harres was clearly the more physical one and there was no doubt who would win in a fight. That was, if Amjad didn’t fight dirty. Which she was sure he would, and did.
Keeping her hand clasped in his, Harres said with Amjad’s same lethal tranquility, “I’ll say this once, Amjad. Talia is my woman, my princess.” Talia almost collapsed. Harres was saying what he wished for, wasn’t taking into account the implausibility of it all. It felt like heaven. And like hell. And he was going on. “I owe her my life, and I have no life without her from now on. Deal with it. Nicely. Or else.”
Suddenly Amjad addressed her. “See this? Your man, your prince, hits a snag, and he threatens, and may I add, employs, physical violence. Tut, tut. A bleak prognosis for a future with him, don’t you think, doctor?” Then he swung his eyes to Harres. “And I had such high hopes for you. Have fun in your new life of mind-numbing sameness and soul-destroying emotional servitude.”
Before she could finally set him straight, on so many accounts, before Harres could elaborate on his gag order, Amjad turned away, gave the oasis people who’d come to say goodbye a whimsical wave and headed back to the helicopter.
Then, as Talia hugged everyone who came to see her off, crying rivers with Harres beside her promising their return, the aggravating man had the nerve to honk.
Talia’s return to the capital was the total reverse of her departure from it.
Going back in a royal helicopter surrounded by princes was certainly something she couldn’t have even dreamed of when she’d been kidnapped twenty days ago. But being next to Harres as the real world approached made her realize the depth and breadth of the lifetime they’d lived together during that time.
After they landed in the princes’ private airport, Talia changed into the clothes Harres had had delivered there, while he changed, too, before they drove to the palace in separate limos.
He told her they couldn’t afford to have her tied to him. Apart from those who knew the truth, everyone thought he’d dropped off the radar on a mission as usual. But the traitors in the palace would know what this mission involved. If she were seen with him, they’d work out her true identity. So she’d arrive at the palace as a friend of Laylah, his cousin. Once that was established, he’d pretend to hook up with her, and it would seem natural to everyone that he’d be interested in the blonde beauty.
She told him she’d reconnect with her informant, get the rest of the promised info. And he forbade her to. He wouldn’t risk her in any way, not even if the kingdom hung in the balance. He would find another way to discover the truth.
Then, reluctant to leave her but having matters to attend to, he gave her a cell phone so they could call each other until he could start seeing her again. Which he intended to be as soon as possible.
It took arriving at the palace—which was right up there with the Taj Mahal, just far more extensive—to take her mind off the turmoil of their situation, off feeling bereft at being away from him.
When she’d researched Zohayd before coming there, she’d read that the mid-seventeenth-century palace had taken more than thre
e decades to build, and thousands of artisans and craftsmen to build it. But it was one thing looking at detailed photos, no matter how stunning they’d been, and something totally different treading this place with her own feet, feeling the history and grandeur saturating the walls and halls surround her, permeating her senses.
Just being there explained so much about Harres, how such a powerhouse had come into existence. The nobility and power and distinction, the ancient bloodline that had forged this place coursed through him. From what she’d seen of his relatives, it also did in them.
And no matter what he said, she had to do all she could to protect this legacy. Even if she hadn’t fallen in love with him and would therefore do anything to protect him and his loved ones, Harres had been right. The whole kingdom was steeped in peace and prosperity. She’d been prejudiced when she’d thought that it would be better off without the royal family that had clearly done so much to produce and maintain that.
But if she played her cards right, she might help bring the danger to Harres and his family, to the kingdom and the whole region, to an end.
Just as she began to call her informant, reinitiating contact, her alibi for her long absence rehearsed, the phone came alive in her hand.
Knowing it was Harres, she pounced on the answer button.
His beloved voice poured into her ear. “I have news, ya habibati. The investigations and negotiations I had my family do while we were in the oasis bore fruit. Your brother will be released from prison. There won’t be a retrial, just the charges dropped and he will be given a public apology in every international newspaper and anything he demands in compensation.”
To say she was overcome would be to say her love for him was a passing fancy. She began to babble her shocked elation and thanks when he said, “I beg your forgiveness, ya nadda jannati. There is another pressing thing I have to attend. I’ll call again the second I can. Until then, congratulations, ya mashoogati.”
She stared at the phone, reeled. Todd. Released. It was over. Really over. She’d have her brother back. He’d have his life back. It was too much to take in. Harres hadn’t told her that he’d been working to exonerate Todd already. But he had been, and he’d succeeded. And she knew it had all been for her.
