by Tara Pammi
Amira wanted to say no, but that she was finally beginning to understand him.
To understand the hold Queen Namani’s words still had over him.
She was a perfect woman in his mind—his mother who had spurred him on and on to better things in life. Filled his mind with useless words about destiny and loneliness. And who had made him blind to everything else.
She wanted to argue that the queen had done him more harm than good. She wanted to tell him what she knew of Galila’s childhood and how uncaring and neglectful she had been of Zufar, Malak and Galila.
That Zufar, who represented everything Adir did not have, for all his legitimacy hadn’t even had what Adir had received from their mother. That Adir’s arrival, the knowledge of the letters she had written him, would have been punishment enough to all three of his siblings.
But she could say none of it.
Because Adir was not prepared to hear her.
He wouldn’t see the truth. Maybe Queen Namani had truly loved this son she’d been forced to give up, had been weak and selfish, and he had become an outlet for her to thumb her nose at her husband and even her other children.
He wouldn’t see that he had become a silent rebellion for a weak woman.
The very thought made Amira want to growl in pain. That she had cast this honorable man in such hard words made her want to rage.
Queen Namani had not only given him up, but also used him for her own agenda.
He would never be prepared to hear the truth. He would never realize that, for all he was in the dark about his father’s identity, he didn’t need it.
Adir Al-Zabah was a man to be reckoned with, a natural leader, a born king.
This husband of hers, who was noble and thought of his tribes and their needs, was still haunted by a past he couldn’t fix. And he couldn’t see that Queen Namani had stolen more from him than he could ever imagine—the chance of having a relationship with his siblings, the chance to let the past be left in the past.
The chance of ever inviting more into his life.
And while he was mired in the complex truths of the past, while he was still under the hold of his mother’s ghost, there would be room for nothing else in his life.
Or his heart.
It would only ever be a marriage of convenience.
He would only ever be her husband by law. He could never own a place in her heart. He could never hurt her, for she knew what not to expect from him.
And the strange realization gave her the courage to give comfort. The guts to simply offer what he needed from her tonight.
She offered the only thing she knew he would allow her to do. Her legs shook as she let her body sway toward him, giving herself over.
She went to her knees between his thighs, her own need drowning out other cries. His fingers manacled her wrists, his anger vibrating in the air around them.
Amber eyes darkened to a burnished copper, his mouth set into a flat uncompromising line, he held her gaze.
Breath punched up through her throat as her breasts pressed against his hard chest, her soft belly sinking against his abdomen, the press of his arousal a brand against her skin.
“I’m sorry,” she said, leaning her forehead against his. “You’re right. I don’t understand. I can’t imagine the...frustration you must feel. I can’t imagine the strength it takes for you to be who you are.”
She pressed her lips to his and whispered her apology. Again and again. Between soft kisses and hurried breaths. Between the raspy purr of her lips against his and the enticing swirl of her tongue inviting him.
She couldn’t bear it if he told her it meant nothing to him except that it would ensure her obedience. If he said it was his due in that arrogant way of his.
If he said she was weak for still living in her naive world.
She still had a life with him, with their baby. She had a family of her own—the three of them and more, in the coming years. She had a taste of his reluctant respect, she had his name and she had his desire. That had to be enough.
That would be enough.
She clasped his cheeks, the bristle of his beard rasping against her palms in sensuous torture. His nostrils flared, his hips pressing roughly against hers, even as he sought to control his anger. And his lust. This relentless need she could see in his eyes. Because it was the same for her.
Another wet, warm kiss against his mouth, the scent of him coiling lazily in her limbs. She dragged the tips of her teeth against his hard jaw. Felt the reward of his fingers roughly tangling in her hair.
She thrust her tongue into his unwilling mouth when he growled. Stroked it against his tongue, like he had done to her just a few days ago. The length and breadth of her pressed into him, she made love to his mouth with hers, willing his control to shatter. Willing him to take over.
And when, with a growl that reverberated up through his chest, he claimed ownership of the kiss, she shivered all over. In relief, in desire.
When he thrust his tongue into her mouth roughly, hungrily, she welcomed him. She welcomed the tips of his fingers digging into her hips, she reveled in how his chest crushed her sensitive breasts. She gloried in the evidence of his hard arousal against her lower belly, in the molten warmth he created at her sex.
His fingers crawled into her hair, pulling and tugging at the pins in it until it fell to her waist. She moaned loudly when he sank his fingers into the thick mass and pulled her closer.
Possessive and rough, his control was in shreds at her feet. He was shaking with desire and Amira answered in kind. Answered with the only truth he would allow between them.
“I’m glad I met you, Adir. I’m glad you’re my husband, that you will be the father to my child. I’m so glad that I chose you that night. And I would gladly do so again and again, given half the chance.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I’M SO GLAD that I chose you that night. And I would gladly do so again and again.
How did such an innocent know what words to say to ensnare such a jaded man as him? To push him to the edge of his control?
How could one surrender and gain victory at the same time? Her words and her eyes, her kisses lit a fire in Adir’s blood.
He took her mouth with a feral hunger he could not corral into submission. She melted under his kiss, her lips so sweet yet incinerating, her moans soft but packing a punch, her strokes to keep up with him so inexperienced and yet filled with a ferocious desire that matched his own.
Hands on her back, he crushed her to him while he groped for the zipper of the dress, like a teenage boy touching his first woman. She threw her head back, baring her neck to him—another invitation he could not resist. Her pulse thrummed violently at her neck, the scent of her rose perfume emanating from her soft skin.
While he tugged the hidden zipper down with one hand, he scored the long line of her neck with his teeth. He dug his teeth in at her pulse point and suckled that skin into his mouth, eager for the taste of her to sink into his very marrow.
She tasted of sweat and sweetness, an incredibly erotic combination that only made him hunger for more.
“I will taste you everywhere tonight, ya habibi,” he promised, his voice gone so deep and husky that even he barely recognized it. That night, he had barely had the time to indulge himself, hardly any time to explore the heady explosion her body promised. “I will lick your flesh, sink my teeth in wherever I please. I will taste the honey between your legs and you will fracture from the unbearable pleasure of it.”
He did so, hard and deep, until her pale golden skin bore his mark, like a savage from centuries ago. Lust pounded in his blood as her skin instantly bruised.
She jerked closer to him, her knees trembling, her breath a rough accompaniment to his caresses.
A sob broke out of her as he softly licked the bruise he had given her. When sh
e thrashed against him, searching for more, eager for more, he gave it to her by rocking into the cradle of her thighs. Pressing his erection against the warmth he knew was waiting for him.
She let out another sob as she flung her arms around his shoulders and clung to him.
For every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction—she was Newton’s law embodied. He smiled, making a note to tell her of his idiotic comparison. His smart wife would surely get a kick out of that.
“Adir, please... I want more. This dress...it rubs and caresses...”
“Then we will rip it off, ya habibi.” He grabbed the neckline in his hands when she jerked back from him, her arms protectively held against the bodice of the gown. He had forgotten that he had undone the zipper. A pale golden shoulder peeked at him as the bodice loosened. And the upper curve of one breast was a tantalizing reminder of what awaited him.
Cheeks pink with color, hair a glorious mess around her face, lips swollen with his rough kisses—she was a wet dream come true. A complex, blood-pounding combination of innocence and sensuality.
“No.” She settled the fabric over her chest with her palm in a loving caress. Unwittingly making her nipples poke against the slithery silk.
Adir groaned and rubbed his hand against his face. “Come back to me, Amira.”
She shook her head, making the long locks cover her face. “I...” She licked her lips and flinched with pain at the indent he had left on her lower lip with his teeth. Instead of feeling guilty for hurting her, lust swirled through him, demanding more. “I will not let you tear this dress. My wedding dress... It’s a symbol of so many things to me, so many good things, it’s precious to me. I mean to keep it for decades to come.”
Decades to come. It was a vow spoken between them, a promise given freely in a relationship he had forced on her.
The rightness of her words soothed a place he didn’t realize needed soothing, filled a void he hadn’t known existed within him.
He didn’t tell her he had no intention of tearing something that was clearly so important to her. Instead, he raised a brow, as if considering her request. For all her innocence and surrender, his wife had a backbone of steel. If she thought he was ordering her around, she would take back that surrender.
And he needed it right now more than he needed air.
“Then you may take it off and put it away.”
The fire pit hissed in the silence, while outside the tents, the soft tinkle of instruments permeated the air. They were still celebrating his union with this enchantress. He was a fool to have wasted so many hours roiling in that chief’s comments when he should have been here with her.
Enjoying this.
“Take it off? Here?” she asked softly, finally, taking in the light from the solar lanterns around them. Since he hadn’t been disturbing her sleep, he hadn’t turned any of them down.
A golden glow filled the room, the colorful rugs and throws reflecting a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes onto her form.
Not an inch of her would be hidden from his sight, a realization she seemed to come to at the same moment, for she frowned and looked around again. Her wide eyes filled her face, her cheeks flushing with color.
“But don’t you want to go back there?” She pointed behind her to where his vast bed awaited, shrouded in darkness. Another fire pit and the fur rugs provided warmth there.
“No, not today. Some other time, some other night, I will come to that bed, find you in the darkness and be inside you while you slowly surface from sleep, while you’re still dreaming of me. Today, I want you here.”
Swallowing nervously, she looked at the thin walls reflecting their silhouettes.
“No one would dare wander close to our tent, ya habibiti. Nor dare even to glance at even their sheikha’s shadow. The night will not carry any of the sounds we make. Now take off that dress and return to me, before I lose the little patience I’m struggling to keep. Come here, Amira,” he said, patting the space between his thighs. Slowly, he relaxed into his stance.
Her doe-like gaze went to the place on the divan he pointed to and then to his throbbing erection—pressing upward and blatantly clear against the soft fabric of his robes.
If she stared at him any harder... He laughed, his balls becoming tighter. His blood pounded with such savage hunger that he wondered if he should even be touching her right then. But he let that concern him only for a second longer. The idea of not being inside her within the next few breaths was unendurable.
She would take him and he would ensure she was sobbing with pleasure by the end of it.
“Look at me,” he commanded and she obediently did. More out of curiosity than true obedience, he had no doubt. Slowly, he reached for the hem of his robes and pulled them up and over his head.
Leaving himself utterly naked to her roving gaze.
She gasped, a soft, feminine sound that he wanted to hear again and again, and much more loudly. She had made that sound when he had thrust into her—a cross between pain and pleasure, a gasp of wonder.
He needed that in his ears again, he needed her warm breath fluttering the hair on his chest, he needed the silky slide of her thighs against his hair-roughened ones. He needed the soft cries she emitted when he moved inside her, the low keening sound she made in her throat when she climaxed.
He got harder and longer as she studied that part of him, her teeth digging into her lower lip.
“Oh... I... I don’t remember you being that...big.” Again, a lick of her lower lip. A nervous swallow. But she didn’t shy away from studying him greedily. She didn’t even do it covertly. No, she looked at him boldly, possessively. “You will hurt me.”
“Not today, not ever again. You’re a nurse, remember your studies, Amira. You were a virgin last time. The queen’s famed gardens are not the most conducive place to making a woman’s first time great and—”
“It was great. It was...” She closed her eyes and swayed and the bodice of her dress slipped a little further, showing him the thin strap of her slip. A bold red strap.
His blood heated a little more. But he waited and watched, the thrust of her breasts, the small smile playing around her lips a reward in itself.
“So good.” She opened her eyes and a fierce blush moved up her chest and neck to her cheeks. “I touched myself after...a few times. Between my legs,” she clarified, as if he couldn’t understand. As if he wasn’t stopping himself from pouncing on her by the skin of her teeth.
The image of her touching herself, her fingers delving between those folds, the wetness that had soaked his fingers that night coating her own, the bundle of nerves at the top throbbing for his touch...
“And?” A word that reverberated with rough need.
“And it was not the same. I... I was able to arouse myself... I closed my eyes and thought of you...your weight on me, your hard thighs, the muscles in your back flexing under my touch, the way you moved in and out... I couldn’t breathe for wanting you back inside me again, but whatever I did with my fingers, it was not enough. I could not...bring myself to...” and then, in front of his eyes, his shy wife transformed into something else, owned her desire “...to orgasm.” She paused. “I... I shouldn’t have told you that. I don’t want you to think...” Dismay filled her eyes. “Your opinion means a lot to me, Adir.”
And just like that, she unmanned him by her candor, by her open vulnerability. In this, he would give her honesty, too. He had the ability to, at least. “You’ve no idea how arousing it is to know that you get wet just by thinking of me. Knowing that I can bring you to that edge of desire. But what I would not ever tolerate is you thinking of another man like that. Is that understood?”
“Yes. Will you promise not to think of another woman moving forward, too, Adir? I feel such rage if I even think of you touching another woman, looking at another woman.”
“You�
�re all I want, ya habibiti. For four months, you’re all I’ve thought of as I’ve brought myself to release. And tonight, it will be pleasure unlike you’ve ever known before.”
“Even more than that night?”
He smiled wickedly, loving that much about her. Her curiosity, her innate zest for more out of life would always win over any other fear, any atrocities she had been dealt. “Yes, much, much more,” he promised fiercely.
She nodded, and the line that tied her brows cleared. Slowly, holding his gaze, with utter care for the damned garment, she pushed it off her shoulders and chest.
The soft red...thing she wore underneath was silky, flimsy and so provocative as it bared half her breasts. Which he realized, with an utterly masculine satisfaction, were already fuller and lusher.
The low V neckline barely skated the line over her nipples.
Adir’s breath caught in his throat as she wiggled her hips to let the dress pool down at her feet. There was a flash of a sleek thigh as she stepped over the dress. The black lace hem ended miles above her knees, baring all of her toned thighs and barely, just barely hiding her sex from his sight.
She turned and picked up the dress gently, and in the process flashed her buttocks at him. Adir smiled, wondering if he should tell her what he was sure was inadvertent.
The sight of her bare bottom while she bent over the dress... He wanted to crawl to her, push her head down to the rug and bury himself inside her, to take her like that. He was almost off the divan before he countered the urge.
Not tonight. His wife was adventurous, yes, but one step at a time.
Another time, he promised himself, when her belly was big with his child and he could not cover her body like he could now. Then he would take her from behind, in that utterly dominating position, and yet he would have to be gentle, for he could no more bear the thought of hurting her than he could bear the thought of walking away from the desert—the only home he had ever known.
