by Jennie Lucas
She closed her eyes in the shelter of his arms. She pressed her cheek against the warmth of his neck.
Time felt as mixed and confused as the smashed, upside-down cars in the road. For the space of a dream, she’d been sixteen again, with her whole life ahead of her, certain of Kareef’s devotion and his strong arms around her.
Those same arms were around her now, even more powerful and muscled than they’d been before. What had happened?
“Get a doctor!” Kareef turned and thundered.
She was dimly aware of bodyguards rushing around them, shouting into cell phones, but they all seemed far away. She and Kareef were at the eye of the storm.
She looked at him and saw the blood on his clothes, the tears in the white fabric of his shirt, and a chill went through her. Trembling, she reached her hand toward his face, toward the thin lines of red streaking his chiseled cheekbone. “You’re bleeding.”
He jerked his head away. “It’s nothing.”
He didn’t want her to touch him. That much was absolutely clear. She felt her cheeks go hot as she put her hand down. She pressed her lips together, wanting to cry. So much had changed since the time of her beautiful dream. “But—you should see a doctor.”
He rose to his feet, holding her. “Unnecessary. But for you…” He looked down at Jasmine. “Can you stand alone?”
“Yes.” Her head was pounding, but she would not try to lean against him. She would not make him push her away. If he did not want her to touch him, she would stand alone on her own two feet if it killed her.
Releasing her hand, he brushed dirt off the shoulders of her pink blouson minidress. “Your hat is gone,” he muttered.
She looked up at him in a daze. “It doesn’t matter.”
“We’ll have someone find it.” Taking a damp towel from a bodyguard, Kareef wiped her forehead, then paused. “You’ve got a small cut on your scalp,” he said matter-of-factly, his voice calm, as if trying not to scare her. He turned back to his bodyguard. “We must take Miss Kouri back to the hospital.”
Miss Kouri. So he’d reverted to that. He was already keeping his distance, as if he’d already divorced her.
The bodyguard shook his head at Kareef. “The cars are totaled, your highness.” His voice grew bitter, angry. “That mare escaped into the road again. Youssef had to swerve to avoid her.”
Kareef looked past the smashed, upside-down Rolls-Royce toward the black horse still standing in the road. “Ah, Bara’ah. Even put out to pasture,” he murmured softly, “you’re up to your old tricks.”
Jasmine followed his gaze. The slender black mare, chewing lone wisps of grass that had grown through the cracks of the pavement, looked back with placid amusement.
“Get her back in her paddock,” Kareef said. “Get a new car from my garage.”
His garage?
Jasmine looked down the road and saw a wide, low-slung ranch house of brown wood, surrounded by paddocks and palm trees.
Comfortable and peaceful, without any of Umar’s gilded, lavish ostentatiousness, Kareef’s home was a green oasis in the vast wasteland of the desert.
He’d done it. He’d created the house he’d once promised her. But he’d done it alone….
Her hands tightened. And Kareef wanted to take her away. He wanted to take her back to the city, to leave her in some sterile, beeping hospital room—alone. Perhaps he intended to run inside and get the emerald, and divorce her on the way?
It was what she’d thought she wanted—a quick divorce without seduction, without entanglements. But now, she suddenly felt like crying.
“I don’t want to go to the hospital.”
At the sound of her voice, Kareef and the bodyguard turned to her in surprise, as if they’d forgotten she was there.
“But Jasmine,” Kareef replied gently and slowly, as if speaking to a recalcitrant child, “you need to see a doctor.”
“No hospital.” Dark hair blew in her eyes from her collapsing chignon. Pushing back her hair, she saw blood on her hands. Looking down, she saw drops of blood on the pink silk of her dress.
Just like the last time she’d been in an accident. The last time she’d seen her own blood. After the accident—before the scandal…
She suddenly couldn’t get enough air.
She couldn’t breathe.
Panicking, she put her hands on her head as she tried to get air in her lungs. More dark tendrils tumbled from her chignon as the world started to spin around her.
Kareef’s eyes narrowed. “Jasmine?”
Her breath came in short, shallow gasps as she backed away from him. Everything was a blur, going in circles faster and faster. No matter which way she looked, she saw something that trapped her. The home of her dreams. The man of her dreams. The blood on her dress…
Kareef grabbed her before she could fall. His intense blue eyes stared down at her. She dimly heard him shouting. She saw his men rushing to obey.
She saw Kareef’s lips moving, saw the concern in his blue eyes, but couldn’t hear what he was saying. She could only hear the ragged pant of her own breathing, the frantic pounding of her own heart.
Colors continued to spin around her as her knees started to slide. In the distance she saw the black mare staring back at her. Black like the horse who’d thrown her long ago. Black like the accident that had caused her to lose everything.
Black.
Black.
Black…
Suddenly, Kareef’s worried face came into sharp focus.
“You’re awake,” he said in a low voice. “Do you know who I am?”
Jasmine discovered that she was lying on her back in a bedroom she didn’t recognize. Her head was pounding; her throat was dry.
She tried to sit up. “Where—where am I?”
“Don’t try to move,” he said, pushing her back gently on the bed. “My own doctor’s on the way.”
Her head was flat on the pillow as she looked slowly around the bedroom. It was large, rustic and comfortable, with a king-sized bed and spartan furnishings. It was very masculine, smelling of leather and wood. She looked at the small fireplace made out of hewn rock. “I’m in your bedroom?”
“So you know who I am,” Kareef said, sounding relieved.
Jasmine gave a derisive snort. “The illustrious king of Qusay, the adored and revered prince of Qais, the delight of all harem girls everywhere, the…”
“How hard did that glass hit your head?” he demanded, but his mouth quirked up into a smile. He’d been worried, she realized. Very worried.
“Did I faint?” She tried to sit up, to show them both she was all right.
“Don’t move!”
“I feel fine!”
“The doctor will be the judge of that.”
“You said I have a small cut on my scalp. That doesn’t require a team of specialists. Stick a bandage on my head.”
“And you fainted,” he reminded her.
Her cheeks went hot with embarrassment. She felt sure her fainting had nothing to do with the bump on her head and had been instead some kind of panic attack—but how could she explain that without bringing up the long-ago accident she absolutely, positively did not want to talk about?
She didn’t need to bring it up. His next words proved that.
“What is it about you and doctors?” he said softly, looking down at her. “Why do you refuse to let me take decent care of you?”
Their eyes locked, and she sucked in her breath. She knew what he was thinking about.
After the horse-riding accident, he’d pleaded to fetch a doctor. But she’d refused. She been desperate to keep her shame a secret, to protect her family. Please, Kareef, just hold me, I’ll be fine, she’d cried. But when she’d started shaking with fever, he’d broken his word. He’d returned with a doctor and two servants he thought he could trust.
One of the servants had been Marwan, who’d betrayed them the instant Kareef disappeared into the desert. Her family had been devastated, nearly destr
oyed. Because of her.
Blinking fast, she turned her head away.
Kareef leaned over the bed. With the prison of his arms on the mattress around her, she slowly looked up into his face.
Their faces was inches apart. Tension coiled between them.
“Here,” he muttered, looking away. “Let me fix this.”
He reached behind her and rearranged the pillows. He lifted her, and she closed her eyes, relishing the warmth and strength of his arms. Then he gently pushed her back against the pillows, into a sitting position. He stroked her hair.
“Better?” he said in a low voice.
His mouth was inches from her own. She felt the warmth of his breath against her skin. It made her shiver from her mouth to her earlobes to her nipples and neck. Even her supposedly injured scalp tingled with a feeling that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with—
She cut off the thought. With Kareef so close to her, she was having difficulty thinking straight. What question had he asked her? She licked her lips. “I’m much…much better….”
“The doctor will be here soon,” he said hoarsely. The hard muscles of his body seemed strained, almost shaking, as if he were struggling to hold himself in check. “Any moment, he will be here….”
He started to pull away. And suddenly Jasmine couldn’t bear to lose his arms around her. Not after she’d been so cold for so long. Not when they were this close, this man she’d tried to hate, this man she’d never stopped craving.
Leaning up, she pressed her mouth to his.
It was a short kiss. A peck. Just enough to feel the roughness of his lips, his masculine power and strength. But it caused a hot fever to spread through her body.
Kareef looked down at her in shock. She heard his hoarse, ragged breath as his hands gripped her shoulders.
Then, with a growl, he pushed her back against the pillow as the simmering conflagration exploded into fire. He kissed her, hard and deep. His kiss was hungry. Brutal.
He kissed her as if he’d been starving for her half his life.
His arms wrapped around her, pressing Jasmine back against the pillows. He enfolded her small body with his larger one. His mouth was rough and savage against hers, bruising her lips even as his hands caressed the back of her head, holding her like a fragile rose.
The hot demand of his kiss seared her, sending sparks down her body. Her breasts felt heavy, her nipples tightening to painful intensity. An ache of longing coiled low in her belly, curling lower, lower still, between her thighs.
His mouth never left hers as he stroked down the front of her body, from the smooth curve of her collarbone to her flat belly, seeing her with his fingertips. His feather-light touch against the smooth pink silk of her blouson dress caused exquisite agony of sensation. His kiss deepened, became more demanding. He gripped her bare arms, her shoulders, holding her down.
How many nights had she dreamed of this? Of feeling his hands on her skin, of being in his bed?
She was dreaming. She had to be. And she prayed she would never wake.
His large hands splayed across her silken belly in the bright sunlight of the windows. He plundered her lips, spreading her mouth wide to accept his tongue.
A soft moan escaped her. She wrapped her hands around his neck to hold his body against her. Their tongues intertwined, mingled, fought. His lips bruised hers—or was it the other way around? She no longer knew. Neither of them could hold thirteen years of desire in check. They barely kept themselves from causing injury to the other beneath the weight of their mutual, insatiable hunger.
It was better than it had been at sixteen. Now, at twenty-nine, she knew how rare this fire truly was.
She reached her hands beneath his shirt and felt the heat of his skin, the hard knots of his muscles and taut belly. Felt the soft coarse hair between the hard nubs of his nipples. With an intake of breath, he pulled back, grabbing her wrists.
“Tonight, you are mine. Whatever the cost.” His voice was low and dark, as if ripped from the depths of his soul. “I will make you forget all the others.”
Their eyes locked in a moment that seemed to stretch out to infinity. She swallowed.
“There have been no others,” she whispered. “Only you. How could I give my body to another, when I am still your wife?”
Her cheeks went hot, and she couldn’t meet his eyes. Would he mock her pathetic fidelity? Would he laugh at her?
Then she heard his harsh intake of breath. “Jasmine.”
Suddenly, his hands were in her long tangled hair, his body pressed against hers. His blue eyes were dark and hungry as he tilted back her head, exposing her throat.
“Jasmine. My first,” he breathed. “My only.”
Her heartbeat tripled. Could he mean…?
No! It wasn’t possible. He was a handsome, powerful sheikh, the king of Qusay. He couldn’t have spent the last thirteen years as she had done—with a lonely bed and an aching heart!
But as Kareef’s eyes burned through hers, she felt the truth. He stroked down her cheek, tracing his thumb against her bottom lip. Trembling, she closed her eyes as he touched her. This couldn’t be happening…couldn’t be…
Cupping her chin in his hands, he kissed her fiercely. His kiss was so deep and pure that she was reborn in the blaze, fired in the crucible of their desire. His hands moved beneath the pink dress, pressing rough and raw against her skin. He ripped the silk off her body, and she felt his hands everywhere. On the skin of her back as he undid her bra in a single swift movement. On her belly and hips as he pulled her white panties off, ripping them down over her long legs.
And suddenly, she was naked and spread across his bed.
Rising abruptly from the bed, he pinned her with his hot gaze as he slowly unbuttoned his tattered white shirt and cuffs. He dropped the shirt to the ground, then kicked off his black shoes and pants. From where she lay, naked on his white bedspread, she looked up at him and drew in her breath.
His tanned body was magnificent in the brilliant, blinding sunlight from the windows, casting a halo over him like a dark angel. Shadows flickered over his well-built chest and downward, against a line of black hair that stretched past his taut belly to the thick length of him, so hard for her, jutted and proud in its unyielding, brutal masculine demand.
A cry caught in her throat as she looked at him. He knelt over her on the bed, his muscular thighs stretching over hers as he ran his broad hands down the length of her flat belly.
His fingers, once rough, became tantalizingly light. His fingertips barely made contact with her skin as he traced her hips and thighs. He cupped her breasts, feeling their weight, worshipping them. Kneeling over her, he kissed her neck, then her mouth.
He kissed her with reverence that seared her to the ends of her soul. His hands caressed her heavy, aching breasts and she closed her eyes. She nearly protested as his lips left hers. Then she felt him move down her body as he lowered his mouth to her breast. Feeling his lips suckle her aching nipple, his tongue swirling against her and his teeth creating a pleasure almost like pain, she gasped, arching her back.
Whatever it cost her, she didn’t want him to stop.
His lips and tongue were pure fire against her skin as he tasted her, sucking and biting each breast until her breath came in short little gasps and she cried out. His hands cupped her, squeezing the full flesh with increasing intensity until her breasts lifted of their own accord to meet his mouth. She felt the warmth of the bright sun against her skin, heard her own gasps as if from a distance. His hard body moved against hers, and desire swept her up with the intensity of need, suspending her breathless in midair.
He kissed down the soft length of her belly, pressing her breasts together to lick the deep crevice between them.
She felt the coarse hair of his muscular thighs move against her legs as he moved farther down her body. She felt the hard jut of his erection press against her, demanding attention, jerking hard when it brushed briefly against her
skin. But he didn’t position himself between her legs. Instead, she felt his hands caress her hips, between her thighs.
With a growl, he spread her legs apart.
She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the light. If she opened her eyes and saw his head between her thighs, she feared she’d lose control.
His jawline was rough and scratchy against her tender skin. She felt the heat of his breath against her thighs as, stretching her wide with his fingers, he took a long, languorous taste of her.
She cried out, arching her back violently. The back of her head sank into the soft piles of pillows as she shook beneath the shocking, unendurable waves of bliss.
The pleasure, oh God, the pleasure! Tension twisted and coiled inside her, sending her higher with every sweep of his tongue, with every tiny curling flick of his tip against her wet body. Her chin tilted back higher as her eyes closed, almost rolling back in her head. Her breaths came in increasingly desperate pants as his powerful tongue worked against her, widely lapping one moment, the next moment swirling light circles against the painfully taut center of her longing. Reaching up his hands to feel her breasts, he continued to lick her. His tongue was a wet, hard column of heat and he slowly thrust it inside her.
New trembling started deep inside Jasmine. She put her hands up against the headboard to brace herself. She felt dizzy, her body spinning out of control.
He thrust his tongue farther inside her, stroking her hard nub softly with his thumb. Then he moved his tongue upward to her most sensitive spot and suckled her there, swirling her with his tongue as he pushed a thick finger inside her.
Then two fingers. Then—three.
Oh God…. She couldn’t take this, she couldn’t…
Her body shook as if by an earthquake traveling hundreds of miles an hour. Harder, higher, faster… Her body and soul opened to him like cracks in the desert rock, letting in the sun and wind. She felt him move up her body to kiss her neck, positioning his hard, wide length between her thighs. His hands grasped her wrists against the headboard, holding her fast. Holding her down.
