by Olivia Gates
Her heat rose as she imagined him putting her in it, and more as she, in such languorous detail, saw him taking her out of it. A breath shuddered out of her as the creamy silk slid over her legs, intensifying the heavy throb between them.
She squeezed them together to contain the ache, looked up at him with eyes barely open with the weight of desire.
“So, how bad was it?” she almost moaned.
Malek’s teeth clapped together before grinding out a sound that made her dizzy. “Severe concussion, scalp wound, six badly bruised ribs, lacerated intercostals muscles, collapsed lung, massive hemopneumothorax. And a full body contusion.”
“In other words, I got off pretty lightly.”
“Lightly? Do you want to rid me of what little remains of my sanity? It was only because of that monster emergency bag you so love, which you held up as a shield at the last moment, that you’re not dead. Or, worse, maimed beyond recognition, a paralyzed vegetable!”
“Well, I’m not. You saved me.”
“Only because you saved me.”
“So what do you say we call it even? We are, really.” Before he could rave and rant again she hurried on, “And just where are we? Is this your home?”
He scowled his displeasure at her change of subject and muttered, “We are in Ayn Al-Hayah oasis. I have a retreat here.”
“An oasis! So I wasn’t that far off when I thought I was in heaven. Ayn Al-Hayah.” She sighed, felt a sore spot where he must have placed a chest tube to drain accumulating blood inside her chest. “Eye of life?”
“Ayn here means spring.”
“Hmm. So how long have we been here?”
His scowl softened, his eyes turning amber with deflating anger and mounting awareness. “Just today. You were in and out of consciousness for nineteen days before that.”
“I’ve been in la-la-land for twenty days?”
“Which part of severe concussion didn’t you get? And then you were in pain, and I had you on potent painkillers, and those knocked you out even worse than the concussion did. You’d look awake and then I’d later realize that you had been sleep-talking.”
“Yeah, my threshold to any kind of medication is low. But what about the mission?”
“Elal Jaheem with the mission.” That was roared. “You’re thinking of the mission when it’s a miracle that you’re alive?”
“Well, duh. Of course…” She suddenly sat up. “The people in the Jeep…what happened to them?”
His eyes remained hard, but his voice gentled. “Another batch of miracles. Fractures and concussions and gashes but nothing too serious.”
She subsided against her downy pillow. “Thank God.”
His tension eased, his eyes melted. He came down on the bed, supported by his extended arm. And it hit her harder. The scent of maleness and protectiveness, fiery and clean and musky. Her mouth watered. Her stomach rumbled.
“You’re hungry.” He started to get up and she clutched his hand. The hand that had snatched her from death’s jaws.
“Not for food.” She pulled at it, bringing his un-resisting bulk down to her. “Not for food, ya habibi.”
“Janaan…” he groaned as he sank in her arms, letting her singe her lips with the pleasure of running them all over his jaw, his neck, his cheekbones.
“You shaved for me,” she moaned into his skin. “You knew I’d wake up starving for you, wanted me to feast on you.”
And she tried, trembling with the enormity of having him in her arms again, her hands quaking over the breadth of his back, the leashed power of his arms, sinking in the knotted muscles, in his vitality, his reality, her lips taking hesitant glides over his, her tongue laving them in tiny licks, still not believing their texture and taste.
A rumble poured into her mouth, lancing into her heart just as it spiked her arousal to pain with its unadulterated passion.
Then he broke away from her.
She felt as if he’d backhanded her, fell back onto her pillow, gasping, her eyes gushing her misery.
He was panting, his face taut with agony. Then the words shuddered out of him. “Nothing has changed, ya hayati.”
A sob overcame her as she tried to reach for him again. He resisted her. This time his rejection clamped her chest with the frost of suspicion.
Stone cold, she got out of bed on unsteady legs. “You’ve researched me, haven’t you? You’re afraid getting involved with me, even temporarily, an illegitimate daughter and half-sister to Damhoorian men of ill repute would be too damaging…”
He exploded to his feet, his rage rattling her teeth.
“Enti majnoonah?” he thundered. “Are you totally crazy, or is this the drugs talking? You think I’d care if you were Al Shy’taan’s—Satan’s—daughter? And afraid of getting involved? The whole kingdom is certain you are my mistress. I spent a night in your hotel room. The whole mission saw me weeping and roaring for you. I brought you here, put you in my bed. And you think I care what the world says or thinks? You think I’m denying you and myself for those petty reasons?”
“Then why?” she cried. “The only other reason I can think of is you don’t want me any more.”
He advanced on her, forcing her to stumble backward with his insistent momentum, until he had her plastered to the wall. Then he showed her just how huge his desire was, how much he wanted her.
“Is this proof enough for you, ya majnoonah? And beyond going insane with lusting for your every inch, I worship you, I crave your every glance and word and thought and emotion—everything that makes you you.”
She clung to him and he stepped away, thwarting her. She cried out her confusion, “Then why won’t you have mercy on me?”
“Because I still don’t have the right to choose my wife.”
Wife.
And it came to her. Fully formed. What she’d never allowed herself to even think about. The images, the daily details, every sensation and thought and common occurrence of an existence as his wife. It brought a fresh wave of anguish. She sobbed as if her heart would break.
He snatched her up in his arms, carried her to bed, curved himself around her. “Domoo’ek aghla men hayati—your tears are more precious than my life, ya galbi, argooki, don’t cry.”
It was only on account of hearing his voice about to fracture that she found the control to leash in her anguish.
“I never thought I was qualified to be your wife—” she started.
He cut her off with a snarl. “You are my wife. In my heart and soul. But because I can’t choose you, I can never have one. And I won’t.”
The way he’d said that…! “You mean…?”
“I’ll take the crown but I will not take a wife.”
“B-but how can you not? The heir you need, the expectations of the whole kingdom…”
“I’m not having a child if it isn’t with you. Let the crown go to someone else after me.”
This was—was too much. Too much. Too huge.
She felt shock relinquish its choke hold on her every cell, heard herself stammering, “But i-if you d-decided that, how can you say that nothing has changed? Everything has!”
“Nothing has. I still can’t take you as my wife.”
“You don’t have to! I only ever wanted to be with you for as long as you didn’t have a wife. And if you won’t, I can be with you forever…” She stopped, mortification rising at her presumption. “F-for as long as you want me.”
“And what will I give you in return? Will you accept sharing my privileges?”
Her lips pursed. “We’ve covered this, once and for all.”
“So if you won’t accept my support and protection, what do I have to offer you? My love? My body?”
A giggle of incredulity ripped out of her chest. “Is there anything more this life can offer?”
“No, Janaan. You of all people need more than someone who says he loves you and never delivers.”
“If you’re alluding to my father, there is just no comparison. My
father deserted my mother and me for—what did you call them? Self-preserving, petty reasons. While you—”
His growl interrupted her. “It doesn’t matter how grand my reasons are. I can’t let you invest yourself, body and soul, as I know you would, in a relationship with no future. You need a man who can give you the family you never had, the family you of all women were born to nurture and cherish. Damn the day I was born, but I can’t be that man.”
Jay felt her sanity ebbing. Malek was in her arms, telling her he’d never take another woman, that he’d love her forever, but he wouldn’t be hers either.
“You think you’re protecting me? Don’t you see you’re hurting me, destroying me?”
“The pain of an hour rather than that of every hour, as we say here. You may never forgive me for being unable to be with you, for crushing your heart as I crushed mine, but you’ll remember I didn’t compound your involvement, your addiction…”
She struggled out of his arms, looked at him with tears pouring down her face. “I could have died, Malek.”
His reaction was spectacular. As if she’d shot him point-blank in the chest.
And it all gushed out of her. “I could have died without having lived. I haven’t lived, Malek, because you won’t let me, because you won’t make me yours. What if I die tomorrow? Be gone in seconds, like Majd? Won’t you let me live now?”
Jan’s words showered Malek like shrapnel. He could swear he heard them slashing the last of his control, snapping it.
He surged up, blind, out of his mind, reliving the agony of fear, of helplessness, of rage and regret. He caught her to him, filled his hands with her, honey and sunlight and unconditional love made flesh, made woman, all woman. His woman.
“Ana ella ensan,” he growled in her mouth, between tongue thrusts that breached the sweetness she surrendered with such mind-destroying eagerness. “I’m only human…”
He tore his lips away and she whimpered. He only sank worshiping kisses all the way down to her ample cleavage.
“You’re not pulling away?” she gasped.
“Never again,” he groaned, suckling her honeyed flesh. “There’ll be no turning back. I’ll worship you, brand you, give you all of me, turn your body into an instrument of ecstasy, yours and mine. You’re mine to pleasure as I will, aren’t you?”
Her nod was frantic. “Yes, yes. I’m yours. Yours. Love me, ya habibi, show me what being alive feels like.”
He fell to his haunches under the import, the conviction of her words, groaning, “Maboodati…”
He bunched her nightdress in his fists, looked up at his goddess, peach-flushed, eyes almost black, the totality of her hunger and trust shooting to his heart, tampering with its rhythm, crimson lips swollen with his passion, panting for more, beckoning him to lose his mind, once and for all.
He raised the nightdress up, exposing her an inch at a time, replacing it with his lips, tongue, teeth, coating her velvet firmness in suckles and nibbles, knowing just where to skim and tantalize, where to linger and torment, where to draw harder and devour. Her moans became cries, then keens, then loud, labored gasps.
The pressure in his loins was reaching unbearable levels until he feared the first time wouldn’t be the languorous seduction he’d hoped it would be. The accumulation of need had reached critical levels and it would be like a dam breaking the moment he thrust inside her.
No. He couldn’t let her first intimacy with him be anything less than perfect bliss. He had to show her what she meant to him. Show her he craved her pleasure far more than he craved his own, that his pleasure stemmed from hers.
Yes. He’d show her how he cherished her, what he’d give, what he’d endure to give her the best, give her everything. Always.
Her nightdress was now past her midriff, past her ability to stand the sensual torment. He took pity on her, straightened, taking the nightdress with him, over her breasts, over her head.
He stood back, took his first gulp of her, exposed but for the lacy morsel Hessuh had helped Janaan put on before he’d brought her here, and almost dropped to his knees again.
He’d seen parts of her as he’d treated her, but he’d been out of his mind with fear, his surgeon side in full control. Now he saw her as a woman, not a patient. And there she was. Beyond his fantasies. Ripe, strong, tailored to his every last fastidious taste and beyond. His woman. And she was dying for him, as he was for her, quaking with the force of her need, weeping with it.
Her arms stretched out in demand, in supplication, and sabotaged what was left of his reason.
He yanked her to him, bending her over one arm, her breasts an erotic offering. Pouring litanies of worship into her lips, all over her face, he kneaded, weighed one breast, seeking one erect, deep peach nipple, pinching and rolling it before he moved down, captured the other bud of overpowering femininity and need in his mouth, felt as if he’d captured a vital, missing part of his life’s meaning.
She screamed. With each pull she screamed again, shuddered. His hands glided over her abdomen, shaking with the privilege, the freedom, closing over her trim mound, stilled in awe. This was his home. His home inside her. And she was letting him have it, own it. He squeezed his eyes, her flesh.
Just as she screamed again, he slid two fingers between the velvet slickness of her exquisite folds, spreading them, getting drunk with the scent of her arousal, the evidence of her love and dependence. She was ready for him.
He slipped a careful finger inside her, needing to know how much and went blind with another blast of arousal. Soaking, for him, but…so tight. And she lurched, as if he’d hurt her.
So not so ready for him. But ready for pleasure. And how he’d pleasure her.
He stroked her, spread honey from her slit before his fingers made way for his thumb to find the knot of flesh where her nerves converged, her trigger. The moment he touched it, he felt as if he’d touched the core of the sun, her cries of love, of his name, strangled and she bucked in his arms.
He roared with pride, swept her off her feet, deposited her with all the cherishing and gentleness pouring out of his being for her onto the bed, crashed to his knees in front of her, spreading her shaking legs, bringing them over his shoulders, his hands and lips and teeth devouring their every inch. Tension invaded her body again, until she was thrashing again.
“Malek, please…I n-need you…”
For answer, he spread her core, gave her one long lick. She bucked off the bed, screamed again. “Please, Malek…you…you…”
He subdued her with one hand flat on her abdomen. “Let me taste you, taste your pleasure,” he begged. “I’ve been starving for you. Let me have my fill, give me everything you have.”
She still tried to squeeze her legs closed, her eyes wet and beseeching. And he realized. She was shy!
Following on the heels of this realization came the certainty. No one had ever tasted her before. His wild flower of the desert had never allowed anyone this privilege! And she would give it to him. The privilege was his alone, now and forever.
He staked his claim. “Aren’t you mine?”
She nodded mutely, her color high.
He surged up, dragged pillows, propped her up against them so she was half-sitting. He withdrew to look at his arrangement, Janaan, open and willing for his ministrations. Blood whooshed, a geyser in his head, in his erection. He gritted his teeth, watched her hands convulsing in the sheets, her body tensing up.
“Don’t be shy, ya hayati. And don’t close your eyes. Watch me worship you, pleasure you, own your every secret. Look me in the eye as I bring you to orgasm this time.”
She squirmed, hiccupped. “Malek, I can’t, please…”
“You can. You will.” He latched onto her core. He drank her, her essence, her need, her pleasure. Then when he knew her body was screaming for release, he tongue-lashed her clitoris, and she shredded her throat on ecstasy, unraveled her body on a chain reaction of convulsions. And looked him in the eyes all through. It was t
he most erotic, most intimate, most fulfilling experience of his life.
But, then, every touch, every glance from her had been that. Now he’d take her, and union with her would reinvent the terms of eroticism, intimacy and fulfillment. He prayed she was ready enough now.
First, to bring her to fever pitch again.
He slid up her sweat-slick body, snatching the pillows from beneath her, flattening her to the bed, soaking up her drugged look, the looseness confessing the depth of her satisfaction.
But as soon as he branded her lips, letting her taste her pleasure on his, her breath hitched, her cool sweat evaporated on a blast of heat radiating from her core. She was aroused that much, that fast again? He hadn’t even started stimulating her.
He withdrew to make sure, and she clutched at him, tearing the abaya from his shoulders. “I want to see you—all of you. Oh, please, I don’t want pleasure—I want you, I’m dying to feel you, deep inside me, filling my body, please…”
Hearing the last pillar in his mind give, he snatched at her lips with rough, moist kisses, nothing left in him but the corrosive need to bury himself inside her, fill her, dominate her, surrender to her, knowing that it was what she needed too.
He heaved himself up, tore off his abaya and pants. She fell on her back, held out her arms, her eyes streaming her plea for him.
He surged back to her, covered her, felt her beloved flesh cushioning his hardness. She opened her legs and, as he’d long dreamed, he guided them over his waist.
He fused their lips for feverish seconds before he reared up, his eyes seeking hers, his erection seeking her entrance.
Finding both hot and molten, he growled his surrender, sank into her in one forceful thrust.
Home. At last. At last.
It was on the second thrust that he realized why the first one had taken such force, found such resistance, why her beloved body had bowed up in such rigid shock. Why his ears were still ringing with her scream.
She was a virgin.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SHE HAD BEEN a virgin.
Malek lay on top of Janaan, buried in her depths, the realization pummeling him, paralyzing him.
