Love. The word, from his lips, set her heart pounding. Her throat constricted, tingled with emotion. Tiny needles prickled her eyes, warning of tears. She made an effort to treat him like the friend that he was, changing the subject in the process.
"I nearly slept with Jimmie deLuca, you know. He was the only boy I was ever horizontal on a bed with. His hand was..." She'd never even told her sisters this. How could she? It wasn't their fault they were gorgeous and outgoing while she had all these hang-ups. "Well, it was down my jeans. And he whispered a name in my ear."
"But not your name." A statement. Not a question.
"Nope," she confirmed. "Not my name."
"So now you chose a man who barely knows your name." His midnight eyes gave her no place to hide, made her feel he saw all her secrets. All except for one.
"I'm choosing a man who won't care what my name is. Tonight," she forced a grin as she popped her butt onto a stool sitting at the counter. She was a decent actress, when she put effort into it. "I'm going to be a slut."
Javad set down his untouched drink. He moved to her side and towered over her. Before she knew what was happening, his hand was on her hip and his masculine scent surrounded her, making her drunker than any appletini.
Her heart burst into a too-fast rhythm. He lowered his mouth towards hers, and she instinctively arched her neck to give him access.
He kissed her slowly, like an ache in the heart. Her skin tingled with the sensation of it, her soul nearly burst with the delicious bittersweet emotion of the man she loved wanting... Who knew what from her?
He sucked her bottom lip into his mouth, making her head tingly. It wasn't like the kiss in the car, rushed and desperate. He took his time, as if he wanted to taste every inch of her.
Whatever he wanted, she gave it fully. She pulled him as close as she dared, and willed him to take everything. His hands wandered to her waist, tugging her off the stool to her feet. The rush of pleasure was almost too much for her jellied knees. But his muscled arm at her back supported her.
When he finally parted her lips with his own, she welcomed him, and tried to draw his tongue inside her. He resisted, turning his movements into a leisurely exploration. She trembled against his hard body, turning helpless, unable to stand without his support. Her hands went weak, barely able to hang on to him. Mindless, she became one seething brew of sensation, feeling nothing but his hands on her spine, knowing nothing but the soft caress of him in her mouth, her senses filled with nothing but the taste of him.
An infinity later, he broke the kiss, moving his beautiful mouth to her neck, licking and sucking his way up her throat to rest at her ear, where he paused.
"I know your name," he whispered, sending chills over the hair on her nape.
She gulped. He could know more about her than any man, if only he wanted to.
With deliberate slowness, he set her back down on the kitchen stool. The heat they'd generated between them evaporated into the night air. How could he be so cool to her? How could he kiss her like that and then set her aside?
His emotions must be so cut off from the rest of him. How could your feelings and your body travel the world separately? Needles of threatening tears pricked the inside of her throat.
"But you want my brother," he said, his face blank.
"Oh yes. Your brother." With a huge effort, she smiled.
Javad looked to the door as if expecting Darius to come through it. "He'll be here any moment."
"Ri-ight." The word nearly broke in the middle. Like her heart.
"And he will do things to you. Things that will make you feel good. Things that will make you forget you are shy."
His words re-ignited heat in her. If only they weren't talking about Darius. Then again, all of this began to seem so out of character for Javad. Why would he say things like that to her? He hid his feelings, but he'd never seemed truly deceptive. He'd kissed her, pressed himself against her. Twice. The Javad she knew wouldn't have done that to toy with her.
Could she... seduce him? She wouldn't know where to begin. Darius would be here soon. Javad might think she was only sleeping with him as a replacement for his brother.
She had no clue why he wanted to talk dirty to her. Maybe her blushes amused him. Her innocence was a joke to him, but he could have as much of it as he cared to take. Even if it was just talk.
He turned away from her and removed his jacket. She took the opportunity to treat herself to a good long stare at the best ass she had ever seen.
"Like what?" she breathed, unable to put any force into her voice, but still prodding. "What will he do to me?"
She expected him to whisper sexy things in her ear. When he turned back to her and loosened his tie instead, she thought it was the most erotic display she'd ever seen. That opinion lasted only until he started unbuttoning his shirt.
She petrified in place, mesmerized by the sight. Nothing had ever been hotter than Javad's chest as he peeled off his shirt and vest, revealing the contours of his muscles. She blushed fire to the tips of her ears, but didn't want to look away. No, she wanted more, wanted to see all of him. His skin was golden all over, with dark hair between his pecs that trailed down toward the contents of his trousers. Which kind of bulged.
She felt the shift in Javad's emotion. Something serious had just changed. Her breath caught in her desert-dry throat as she realized the full implications of this new situation. The wonders really going on here, not the fiction they'd been playing out since the moment he agreed to ask his brother to sleep with her. Her shyness came tumbling back. She felt herself shrink on her stool.
If he'd tried to unzip her dress, she would have felt self-conscious, far too vulnerable. Instead, he offered himself. And what an offer. He must know how beautiful his body was, and what a display he made. He strode toward her, letting his shirt and vest drop behind him, making all her doubts flee, and all her brain cells shut down. Tonight, there was only Javad.
Forever, there would only be Javad.
He stood over her and placed one hand on either side of her, cutting off an escape she didn't want anyway. "Do you intend to touch him?"
His bare chest was so close, but she couldn't bring herself to reach out and connect to him. "Touch who?"
"My brother. When he comes." Javad almost smiled. "It will be more difficult to sleep with him if you don't."
She needed to do it. She wanted to. She even lifted her hand. Yet she couldn't move that last few inches.
He did it for her. He enclosed her fingers in his own and brought them to the center of his chest, between his pecs, where his hair began.
"It makes me feel good when you touch me," he told her, leaning in even closer. She hadn't moved her hand, so he was just encouraging her. Well, she needed it. "Does it make you feel good?"
Good wasn't the word. It was pyrotechnics. It was cayenne. It was the sun in the desert, consuming flame, and she wanted to burn.
She watched her hand caress him as if it didn't belong to her. Her other joined the first to run over both his dark nipples at once. His gold skin was smooth, his dark hair crisp to the touch. His muscles were mahogany underneath. All she wanted to do was plant kisses all over him. Lick his body everywhere he would let her.
"It makes me feel strange," she managed to squeak out, somehow.
"Have you thought of this before?" he asked. "Of running your hand down Darius' chest?"
She shook her head, no longer able to hide anything from him.
"Someone else's, perhaps?" His voice sounded as taut as the muscles as she explored. "Someone closer to you. Someone you were not sure would respond to you. Someone it would be more dangerous to touch?"
Her heart pounded painfully in her ears. This was too much intimacy. She might not be able to come back from it. She might lose herself in him forever. But she couldn't help admitting all her fear.
"I know he doesn't see me like that. He might stop caring about me at all," she told him, as if she was speaking of someon
e else. "He's important to me. And he might... laugh at me. I could take it from anyone else. But if he laughed at me, I would shrivel up and never be right again."
He opened his mouth to say something, but she was tired of talking. "It's too late to worry about that now."
She ran her hand down the zipper of his trousers. "I want to..." The words died on her lips, but she unbuckled his belt. "More practice."
"As you wish," he said, but he pulled her off the stool, drawing her into the modern living room, kissing her neck as they went. It felt so good that she would have fallen if she wasn't leaning on him.
He sat back on the couch and she straddled him, just like in the car. Her boneless fingers fumbled with the fly of his pants, completely unable to work. In the end, she gave up and thrust her hand down his waistband.
He sucked in a breath as she touched his hard cock. The skin over him was unexpectedly soft. She explored the veins, running her fingers over them, following the bulging trails along his length.
He threw back his head, and made a guttural sound that could have indicated pain. Something under her ribs clenched. Maybe she was doing it wrong.
She loosened her fingers. "Does it feel good to you?"
He clasped his hands to her jaw, drawing her mouth to his. He gave her a deep, intoxicating kiss. "So very good," he told her. "You may touch me harder, if you wish."
Even at this moment, he was the diplomat. It would get him what he wanted. She tightened her hand around him with more pressure. "Like this?"
"Just like that," he said, his Adam's Apple bobbing.
"Good to know," she said. "For practice."
"I will take your dress off now," he informed her.
"Your brother isn't coming, is he?" she asked.
He looked her in the eye, searching for the truth. "Do you wish him to?"
She wanted to speak, to tell him everything. That she'd never wanted Darius. That she'd loved him for months. That she wanted him to be the first and last man in her bed.
Instead, she just shook her head.
Chapter Five
She was in the air, lifted without effort in the arms of the man she loved. And who wanted her for himself—for tonight, at least. As he walked up the staircase, she took his earlobe between her teeth and sucked. Her reward was a groan of appreciation. She locked it away in her memory to visit in the lonely nights to come.
He set her on the silken blue sheets of his huge bed with eternal care, and joined her, lying on his side next to her. She ran her hands over his chest as he did as he promised, pulling the straps of her dress down over her shoulders.
At a sudden panicked instinct, she put her hands over her breasts, fighting him for control of her dress, covering herself any way she could. Her heart threatened to burst out through her ribs. It beat so fast it probably could have powered a small city. This was all too threatening. Too close.
"Arya," he said, in a desert-kissed accent she didn't share because she'd grown up in the West.
It was all he needed to say. Her name. It reminded her who he was. Not a man to forget her name. This was Javad. She wanted him to see her. He might not love her, and maybe this was a pity screw, but he would never be disappointed in the body of a woman he cared about enough to take to bed.
She relaxed and let him take control. He moved over her, making her lie back, and kissed her, deeply, sensually, while he placed his hand on her breast, peeling the dress down. Oh, his fingers felt like heaven on her skin. Her breasts became so sensitive they felt like they took up all of her instead of being non-existent. He caressed and suckled them, making moisture flow in her panties.
If that pleasure wasn't enough to send her to paradise, what he did next was. His hand slipped down her stomach, paused to stroke the hair between her legs, then parted the lips of her sex. She whimpered with the embarrassment of being touched there, but the sound turned to gasps as his clever fingers found her clit. Exploring, rhythmic strokes had her arching her back, pressing against his hand in demand for more. A few flicks of the sensitive spot turned her into a wild woman made of nothing but need.
Just when she thought she couldn't feel any better, he slipped two fingers inside. She'd touched herself before, but her clumsy, nervous touches didn't prepare her for the amazing sensation of Javad caressing her in the most intimate way possible. It seemed like only a moment passed before the built-up tension broke and her body released, shuddering with the purest pleasure she'd ever felt.
"You are so beautiful, Arya," he said, between licks of her breasts. "So sensitive. You have such passion. I never knew."
"And you're amazing," she told him, between pants. By some miracle, she managed to hold back her desire to tell him she loved him.
"I want you so much." He looked up at her, his tousled, finally out of place hair hanging over one dark eye. "I cannot wait any more. I am going to take you now."
Yes, she wanted to say. Yes, take me. Make me yours forever. I want you, and I want to belong to you. But if she said any of that, he would likely kick her out of his bed and ban her from the palace for life. Or at least until she was married off. So she kissed him instead, and fumbled with the zipper of his trousers. She won her battle with them as he pulled her dress off, revealing bare flesh no man had ever seen.
He produced a condom from somewhere and rolled it down his impressive erection—though she had little to compare it to except what she'd felt through Jimmie deLuca's jeans and a website or two she'd peeped at. She wanted to tell him not to bother... Stupid as it was, she knew by instinct that she'd have his baby or no one's.
But that was out of the question. So she grabbed what she could of him, digging her nails into his sides, his back, and the muscles of his butt. His cock stroked against her sex, driving her toward the maddening edge of pleasure again.
"Arya," he said. "I am sorry. But I must—"
He pushed inside her. She felt a short burst of pain, which she welcomed, though it made her gasp for air.
He stilled, balancing above her on his elbows. He spoke with caressing words. "I believe it will fade."
The pain, he meant. She nodded. But it was only the pain of passing from one thing to another. Of becoming something new. "I know."
Tonight's pain would pass. It was the pain of tomorrow morning, when they parted, that would last. She put that thought aside and leaned up to kiss him. Their tongues tangled, mimicking the connection of their bodies. As he stayed still inside her, her body seemed to stretch and mold itself to him. She was tight all around him, but her body held him close, and the invasion didn't seem foreign to her. It felt right and good, like he had always been a part of her.
Then she felt... Like she wanted something more. Like simply holding him wasn't enough. As if of their own free will, her legs wrapped around his hips, drawing him farther inside. Her ankles crossed at the small of his back.
A shudder shook Javad's body. He seemed to struggle inside himself. She caressed his neck. "Did I do something wrong? Let me take off the shoes." She began to draw way from him.
"Leave them," he ordered, his voice a gritty baritone she'd never heard from him before.
She'd seen him check out women's feet when other men looked at their chests. Did he have a thing for shoes? Experimentally, she ran one heel lightly up his spine.
Her reward was watching his Adam's Apple bob painfully in his throat. She nearly laughed with feminine power. She knew something about His Highness Javad Shirin that no one else did. She would cling to the intimacy of it for the rest of her life.
Her triumph only lasted a moment. Until he grabbed one of her ankles and put it over his shoulder, making it very clear who was in charge in this bed. All her blood fled to her face. He planted a kiss on the inside of her knee. He was so deep into her... She felt so open and exposed... And incredibly sexy.
He pulled out of her and thrust back in with all the force of his body. Her throat went dry with the pleasure of it, of Javad so far inside, touching places n
o one had ever touched. His crotch touched her clit as he pushed in deep, claiming her.
"Lovely," came his throaty whisper.
She swallowed her response and concentrated on the stirring of her body. Oh, the friction of his chest hair on the back of her thigh. The scent of his arousal, of their mutual desire, was so incredibly earthy and sexy.
His grinding built an amazing pressure inside. Her frustrating position kept her from touching all the places of him that she wanted to. All she could do was wrap her leg tighter around his hips and feel the intensity of the sensation they made together. But she didn’t care about her own pleasure, or anything else. She only wanted Javad to be inside her, to touch her for as long as possible. Because when this ended, so would the best thing in her life.
"Arya," he gasped as he pulled out of her. "Don't hold back."
For an instant, she froze. Was he displeased with her?
"Do not stifle yourself," he said. "Give me your voice." And he plunged deep.
She opened lips she had kept shut tight and let herself cry out, a wordless howl of desire and pleasure. In her mind, that cry meant only one thing. I love you. With that passionate sound, she let herself go, and her body shattered. She dissolved in a firework shower of intense sparks, each one made of more pleasure than she had ever felt before tonight.
He shuddered and arched, every muscle tensing, and followed her in release before collapsing onto his back.
Moments later, his chest still heaving with exertion, he slipped his arm around her and dragged her to him.
"Arya," he said, as if assuring himself of who he had just slept with. He drew her hair from her nape and kissed her from behind. "Arya."
She closed her eyes and pretended that she never had to leave his bed. That every time he said her name in the future, he would say it with such praise and passion. Imagined that she hadn't just made the best decision of her life, and the worst mistake.
Chapter Six
Arya slipped through the side door to her father's house. News of her late night would be in her father's ear before noon, she suspected. She hadn't seen any of the servants, but that didn't mean anything. Right now, that was the least of her worries. She was so distracted by her thoughts that she jumped when a voice came out of the darkened courtyard, too loud over the quiet burbling of the fountain in the center of the garden.
Sheikh With Benefits Page 4
