Kitabı oku: «To Tame a Sheikh / His Thirty-Day Fiancée», sayfa 3
Before she could snap her arms across her nakedness, he dragged her dress beyond her waist to her hips, dropping downward with it. He ended up on his knees before her.
Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. From unbearable stimulation. From the way he looked her up and down, as if he would truly gobble her up.
Then he pulled her to him, rumbling, “Now, I worship you.”
She would have keeled over him if his shoulders hadn’t stopped her forward pitch. He added to her imbalance, burying hot lips into her flesh. She whimpered at each press into her abdomen, every tongue thrust into her navel, each tooth drag across her breasts. Her moans sharpened as he gently clamped her nipples, until a cry rushed out at his first hard pull. “Shaheen … please.”
In answer, he bunched her skirt in his hands, his thumbs hooking into the top of her panties. Then, in one magical move, every shred of covering was shed off of her.
Standing in nothing but her shoes with her clothes pooled at her feet, she felt the world recede. Shaheen looked up, the worshipping he’d promised her setting the hard nobility of his face ablaze.
This was beyond unprecedented. Beyond unparalleled. She was with Shaheen. Standing before him naked. She was about to be his in the flesh, just as she was already his in every other way.
She watched as he raised each leg to kiss and fondle from calf to thigh, her consciousness flickering like a bulb about to short out. She heard his magnificent voice as he raggedly lavished far better than poetry on her, spontaneous wonder pouring out in whatever language expressed it best.
She moaned constantly, becoming a literal puddle of arousal by the time he rose. She would have collapsed at his feet if he hadn’t swept her up as he stood.
When she flopped in his arms like a ragdoll, he whispered into her ear, “Wrap yourself around me, my Gemma. Cling to me with all of your priceless flesh and desire.”
That injected power into her limp muscles. She wanted to. He wanted her to. She only ever wished to give him what he wanted.
She clasped her arms around his shoulders, her thighs around his hips. And it was indescribable. Feeling all of his heat and bulk and power and arousal encased within her limbs, being draped around all of that. She’d be forever empty and anchorless when she no longer had him to enfold, to hang on to like this.
But she had him now.
She rested her head against his shoulder as he strode across his penthouse with her clasped in his arms. Her eyes remained open, but she registered only impressions of his character, his taste and wealth imbuing the spaces, all the more impressive for being unpretentious. Then he crossed into a bedroom. His bedroom.
This was the last thing she’d expected would happen when she’d embarked upon her mission to see him one last time. That she’d end up in his bedroom. In his bed.
But she wanted to be here more than literally anything.
Her senses revved out of their stupor. This was where he slept, where he woke up, where he read and showered and shaved, where he dressed and undressed. Where he pleasured himself. And where she was convinced he’d never pleasured another.
This was his sanctum, when he lived in New York. And he was giving her the exclusive privilege of being here. It would be a one-time pass. She had to make all she could of it.
The huge, high-ceilinged room was lit with only a bedside lamp. Her gaze, avid to soak in more of his privacies and secrets, had just registered the slashes of bold décor, gradations of dark grays and greens with accents of hardwood the color of his eyes when her wandering ones came to a hiccupping halt.
He pressed her against the door as she’d vaguely hoped he would before, held her there with only his bulk bearing down on her.
She shuddered at the sensory overload. The coolness of the polished wood against her back, the feel of him pressing against her, the heat and hardness of his erection against her intimate flesh with nothing but his clothes between them.
Until minutes ago she’d been too shy to inspect his arousal. Even now she couldn’t make the leap of imagining anything beyond this. Her mind almost shut down at the thought of having him inside her. And he hadn’t even kissed her on the lips yet….
He raised his head from razing his way down her throat. “And now, I pleasure you, ya galbi.”
Hearing him call her “my heart” tore a sob from her depths.
He frowned at the sound. “Gemma, if you want me to stop, I will. If you’re not totally sure …”
She dragged his head down to her, took the kiss she’d been starving for all of her life.
He stilled under her uncoordinated frenzy, let her smash her lips against his, imploring his reciprocation, his taking over, before he wrenched his lips away.
“What’s wrong, my Gemma?” He swept her around, took her to the bed, laid her down on it, where the lighting afforded him the best view of her. And he jerked up in dismay. “You’re crying!”
Her hands flailed over his shoulders, trying to drag him back to her. “I-I’m not … I just want you, too much. I can’t wait anymore. Please take me, Shaheen. T-take me now.”
The concern on his face dissipated, sheer ferocity slamming down in its place. “I want to take you. I want to invade you and ride you until you weep with pleasure this time. But I can’t. I have to ready you for me first or I’ll hurt you.”
“You won’t. I’m ready. Just … just …”
“Galbi, let me pace this. I need to make it perfect for you.”
“It will be perfect. Anything with you is perfect.”
He growled something as he dragged her onto his lap. “Don’t say one more word, Gemma. If you don’t want to have a raving lunatic all over you. I’ve never even imagined being out of control. But I am now.”
She sobbed a giggle. “If this is you out of control, I’d hate to see you in it. You’d probably kill me with frustration.”
This time it was his lips that stopped her words, in that kiss she’d imagined since she was old enough to know what kisses were. It turned out she’d never even come close to knowing.
This was a kiss. This tender ferociousness. This gentle devouring. Only this. Shaheen possessing her lips, each sweep and pull and thrust layering sensations, burying her in pleasure. His scent and taste and feel filling her, his hunger finishing her.
She undulated beneath him, until he subdued her, held her arms above her head as his other hand flowed down from her face to her shoulder, ending up cupping the aching heaviness of one breast. “You’re only allowed to moan for more, and cry out with pleasure. That will be enough to drive me out of my mind.”
“Let me see you,” she moaned.
“Not yet. And you’re already breaking the rules.”
“You said I could moan for more. I am, for more of you.”
“You’ll have all of me, every way you like. Just not now.”
“You’re being unfair,” she whimpered.
“It’s you who’s unfair. Nothing should be this magnificent.”
She tried to free her hands. She needed them on him, any part of him, without the barrier of clothes.
He growled deep in his chest, spread her back and continued owning her body with his sensual torment. But it was only when he slid her hips to the edge of the bed and kneeled before her again that she realized his intention. Her heart stuttered.
It was stupid to feel embarrassed at having his mouth and hands on her intimate flesh when she was begging for far more. But there it was. She tried to close her legs.
He insisted, caressed them apart. “Open yourself to me, let me feast on you. Let me prepare you.”
“I’m prepared,” she cried out. “Please!”
“I don’t want to hold back when I take you, and only a few climaxes will prepare you for my possession.”
“A few …?” She choked on incredulity.
What was he going to do to her?
Anything. She’d take anything and everything he did to her.
She opened herself to him and those long, perfect fingers caressed her feminine lips apart, slid through her molten need. She keened, lurched with jolts of sensation almost too much to bear. And that was before he dipped one finger in. Each slow inch felt like pure pleasure. It made her realize how empty she’d felt. How only having him inside her would fill the void.
She tried to drag him up to her with her legs. He only opened her fully and burned her to the core in his ragged hunger.
She malfunctioned completely as his magnificent head settled between her thighs and his lips and tongue scorched the heart of her femininity. The sight, the concept of what he was doing to her, giving her, was almost more incapacitating than the physical sensations.
Through the delirium, she watched him cosset her, strum her, drink her, revel in her essence, in her need and taste and pleasure. He seemed to know when she couldn’t take any more.
“Now, ya roh galbi, let me see and hear how much I pleasure you.” Then his tongue swept her flesh again.
Her body unraveled in a chain-reaction of convulsions, in soul-racking ecstasy, as she held his eyes all through, letting him see what he was doing to her.
She subsided, unable even to beg him to come to her, and he began again, varying his method, renewing her desperation, deepening her surrender.
She’d lost count of how many times he’d wrung her pleasure when at one point he kept her on the brink, came up to straddle her.
He painted her with caresses, kneaded her breasts, gently squeezed her nipples. “I’ve never seen or tasted anything so beautiful.”
Her hands shook on his belt, trying to undo it. “I want to see you—all of you. I want you, inside me, filling my body. Please, Shaheen, please now.”
He surged up to stand over the bed, over her, stripping off his clothes with barely leashed violence and absolute economy.
Though she was dying for him, the one opportunity she’d have to see his exposed glory took precedence. She swayed to her knees, gaping at his proportionate perfection, the rippling power encased in polished bronze and accentuated with dark silk.
With a cry she surged forward, her hands and lips seeking all she could reach of him, wanting them everywhere at once.
“Shaheen …” she moaned between kisses “… you’re more beautiful than I imagined … I want to worship each inch of you, too.”
He threaded his fingers through her hair. “Later, ya hayati, we’ll worship each other inch for inch. Now I take you. And you take me.”
“Yes.” She fell to her back, held out her arms.
He surged to her, covered her. She cried out, reveling in how her softness cushioned his hardness.
Perfect. No, sublime. Like he’d said.
She opened her legs, as she’d always opened everything she was to him. He guided them over his waist, his eyes seeking hers, solicitous and tempestuous, his erection seeking her entrance.
Finding both hot and molten, he growled his surrender at last, sank into her in one forceful thrust.
She’d been certain it wouldn’t hurt, that she was ready.
But she couldn’t have been ready for this. For him.
And it wasn’t only her untried body. She was sure experience wouldn’t have helped her withstand the first invasion of his girth and length.
It was on the second thrust that he seemed to realize. Why the first had taken such force, found such resistance, why her cry had been so sharp, why her body was so tense and trembling.
He froze. Shock rippled over his face. At last he choked out, “You’re a virgin?”
“It’s okay … I’m okay. Don’t stop … please, Shaheen, don’t stop.”
“B’Ellahi!” he rasped, tried to pull out of her.
She clamped her quaking legs over his hips, stopping him from exiting her body.
“Stop, Gemma!” he growled, resisting her. “I’m hurting you.”
“Yes.” This made him heave up, his eyes horrified. She only clung harder to him, arms and legs and core. “And the pain is nothing compared to how you feel inside me, is making it all the more … intense. I feel you … branding me. Please … you said you wouldn’t hold back.”
“This was before I knew you were …!” He shook his head, his disbelief and bewilderment rising. “Ya Ullah, I’m your first.”
“Are you … disappointed?”
“Disappointed? Try flabbergasted, overwhelmed. Ya Ullah.”
Mortification flooded her. Her limbs relinquished their hold on him. “I should have told you. It wasn’t a conscious decision not to … but you have no reason to believe that …” She swallowed the weeping jag that was building behind the barrier of her throat. “Let me up. I’ll go and you’ll never—”
He slid deeper into her, gentler, slower, his eyes heating again. “Does this feel like I’m sorry I’m your first? I already knew you were the biggest gift I’d ever received. But now you’ve bestowed this on me, and the gift is even bigger. I wish I could offer you something of the same magnitude.”
“You are giving me the biggest gift, too.” Tears were overtaking her. And that would spoil everything. Her lips trembled with what she hoped approximated teasing. “Figuratively and literally.” He inhaled sharply, grew even bigger inside her. Even through the burning, she thrust her hips upward, engulfing more of his erection. “So if you really want to give me a gift, don’t hold back. Give me all of you.”
“You do want a raving lunatic all over you, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, please.”
“You say, yes, please, and everything insides me snaps,” he growled as he rose, cupped her hips in his hands, tilted her and thrust himself to the hilt inside her. It was overwhelming, being stretched by him, being full of him, beyond her capacity.
He withdrew, and she cried out at the loss, urged him to sink back into her. He resisted her squirming pleas for a moment, his shaft resting at her entrance before he sank slowly back inside her.
She cried out a hot gust of passion, opening wider for him. He watched her, gauging her reactions, adjusting his movements to her every gasp and grimace, waiting for the pleasure to submerge the pain before he let her really have all of him, before he quickened his pace. All through, he kept her at fever pitch, caressing her all over, suckling her breasts, draining her lips, raining wonder over her.
Then he groaned into her lips, “Glorious, ya galbi, inside and out, literally and figuratively. Everything about you, with you.”
She keened as her depths started to ripple around him. As if he knew, he tilted her, angled his thrusts, and snapped the coil of tension inside her. Convulsion after convulsion squeezed shrieks out of her, clamped her tight around him, inside and out.
Only then did he let go, a moment she’d replay in her memory forever. The sight and feel of him as he surrendered inside her to the ecstasy that union with her brought him. She peaked again as he threw his head back on a roar of pleasure, as the heat of his release surged into her womb until she felt filled, never to be empty again.
Shaking with aftershocks, she whimpered as he moved, needing him to come down on top of her. He swept her around instead, took her over him, careful not to jar her, to remain inside her.
She lay on top of him, the biggest part of her soul, satiated in ways she couldn’t have imagined, in perfect peace for the first time in her life.
As he encompassed her in caresses and murmurs of appreciation, awe overtook her at everything that had happened tonight.
Then he made it infinitely better.
He shifted, brought her to her side facing him, kissed her deeply, leisurely, then whispered into her lips, “This was, hands down, the best thing that has ever happened to me. You are.”
She believed he meant it.
But he wasn’t free to mean it.
The knowledge expanded inside her soaring heart, a ton of dejection bringing it crashing to the ground of reality.
But she still had the rest of tonight with him.
Shaking off despondence, she focused on the miracle in progress, in her arms.
She suckled the tongue rubbing against hers, caressed the muscled back rippling beneath her fingers, smiled into his kiss. “Your feelings, sir, are a mere reflection of mine.”
He pulled back to look down at her, his own smile bliss and bedevilment at once as he pressed her buttocks closer, driving his intact arousal deeper into her. “Then it’s up to me to prove to you how authentic my feelings are.”
And for the rest of the night, he left her in no doubt.
Johara drank in the magnificent sight Shaheen made.
Sprawled on his back, the dark green cotton sheet twisted around one thigh and leaving the rest of him bare for her to devour, he had one muscled arm arced over his head, the other with its palm flat over his heart. He looked as if he were holding the kisses she’d planted there before she’d left his side, telling him she’d go to the bathroom and would be back in moments, in place.
Her heart constricted. Her vision blurred.
And she choked out her pledge. “I will always love you, ya habibi.”
He sighed in his sleep, his lips curving in contentment.
Even though she was across the room, she thought he said, “I love you, too, my Gemma.”
Tears poured thicker, as if they were flowing from her heart. She closed the door and walked away from his room and out of his penthouse. Out of his life.
She felt as if hers was over.
Four
The moment he opened his eyes, Shaheen knew something was wrong. Wonderfully wrong.
He was … serene.
He remained still, closed his eyes again, to savor the alien sensation of absolute contentment.
Yes. Alien. He’d never felt like this, even on his best days.
He’d always been aware of all he had to be thankful for, had never taken any of his privileges for granted. He’d accepted the prices he had to pay for them, had even considered the payments and the load they placed on his shoulders more privileges. He’d reveled in all the challenges and hardships that making use of those privileges had dictated.
What he’d never been as fond of were the constraints they placed on his choices, the frustration he encountered when bowing to their demands meant doing less than what he thought was right.
Usually he relegated those limitations to the back of his mind, but they were still there, a source of constant tension.
There was not a trace of that now. He felt something he’d only ever experienced partially, had never imagined feeling in full. Peace. Permeating. Absolute.
And it was because of her.
Gemma. Even her name was perfection. Everything he’d felt from her, seen of her, had with her had been that. And the wonder of it seemed to have wiped him clean of all that had come before her. That he had to exert conscious effort to remember anything but her was amazing. One night with her felt like the sum total of his experience in life.
He stretched, humming to the tune of satisfaction and elation that strummed through him.
So this was passion. He hadn’t felt anything like it before. He’d known passion for commitment, for success, for details, he felt love for his family, had felt mild and ephemeral interest in some women. But he’d never imagined anything so encompassing, so consuming. From the moment he’d laid eyes on her, his feelings had engulfed him whole, had overwhelmed his reason and control. Not that what he felt went against either. She satisfied the first and he felt no need to employ the second. Being with her had emptied him of tension and inhibition, had freed him to focus his all on the wonder of being with her, experiencing her, savoring every moment with her.
He did feel he’d known her all his life.
And now he couldn’t imagine his life without her. The life she’d derailed. And righted.
He sighed deeply as images and sensations of the previous night and early morning cascaded through his mind and body.
He had taken her as if he’d been craving her all his life. He hadn’t even been able to stop when he’d found he’d been her first. Or later, when he’d told himself he wouldn’t do it again that night. But she’d again hijacked his sense and control …
Suddenly unease slithered through him, unraveling his surreal state of bliss.
He’d approached her, taken her, as if he was free to make his own choices and pursue his own destiny. And he wasn’t.
How had he forgotten that for a minute, let alone a night?
But he had forgotten. Totally. And he remembered now.
Dammit, no. It made no difference what was demanded—no, needed—of him. There was no way he could blindly point at a bride from the royal catalogue now.
He had no idea how he’d be able to avoid the arranged marriage, but he would. No matter the pressures or the exigencies. Everything in him demanded that he make Gemma his.
He foresaw an epic battle.
He wiped both hands over his face, bunched them in his hair, pulled with a steady, stinging tension as if that would counteract the pressure building inside him.
What a mess.
But what a delight, too.
On the heels of visualizing the upcoming strife, images of her, of them together, conversing, caressing, joined, filled his mind again. In a balance where all the troubles he had piling ahead were weighed against being with Gemma, there was absolutely no contest. Claiming her outweighed the whole world.
He sat up, swung his legs off the bed. He ran his hands over the place where she’d slept—or at least lain—in between their lovemaking sessions. They hadn’t slept until morning, too busy talking and experiencing each other in every way, sensual, sexual, mental. His body, already hard, started to pound at him in demand for her.
He tried to convince it to subside. There was no chance it was having her. Not today. After what he’d done to her—twice—no matter how eager she was, she needed at least a couple of days to recuperate.
He got to his feet. “Gemma?”
Silence. He called again, and this time, when the same absence of any sound or movement answered him, the lips that had twitched at imagining her soaking away the aches of his initiation in his tub tightened with alarm. He rushed to the bathroom, burst through the slightly open door.
He almost slumped to the floor at finding it empty. He was in worse shape than he thought. Being with Gemma had just masked his condition. He’d imagined a dozen macabre scenarios during the minute his calls had met with silence.
She had to be in the kitchen. There was no way she could hear him there. Images of her tousled and glowing from a shower, dressed in one of his shirts or lost in one of his bathrobes filled his mind. And she’d be awkward and swollen in all the places that would make him ache until he could barely speak.
He considered walking to her naked, then pulled on pants. She’d let him expose her to every intimacy, had responded with every fiber of her being, but she was still shy when she wasn’t in the throes of pleasure. He didn’t want to test her more, for now. He’d already rushed her in so many ways. So what if she’d asked him to? That didn’t mean he should be so eager to comply. He was the experienced one here, and he shouldn’t behave like an overeager teenager.
Seconds after this self-lecture, he was almost running to the kitchen. Aih, he would embarrass her again.
The premonition hit him before he stepped into the kitchen. All through his penthouse. The feeling of … emptiness. Absence.
The feeling became fact in seconds. The kitchen was also empty.
He didn’t stop this time. He whirled around and bolted to inspect each room. Nothing.
Gemma was gone.
He stood in the middle of his living room, overlooking Manhattan, unable to process the knowledge.
She couldn’t have just left!
She must have had an overwhelming reason for leaving. Maybe some emergency. Yes. That made sense. But … if something had happened, why hadn’t she woken him up? To tell him, to let him help? She knew what kind of power he wielded. If any of her loved ones were in trouble, she knew he’d be the most qualified to help.
Was it possible she didn’t realize he’d do anything for her? Was it possible she didn’t believe, as he did, that they’d transcended all the conventions of relationship development, had taken a short cut to the highest level one could attain? Or was she so independent that she couldn’t bring herself to ask for help because she was determined to deal with whatever problem had cropped up on her own? Or maybe it hadn’t occurred to her to ask, in her rush to whatever the emergency was?
Stop. He was probably off base in all of his assumptions, was assigning a ludicrous interpretation to something that would be clear the moment she contacted him.
Something else hit him like a sledgehammer.
He hadn’t exchanged any contact info with her.
And it was even worse. He didn’t know her last name.
Just what had he been thinking last night?
That was it. He hadn’t been thinking. Of anything but her, what they’d shared from first sight onward. He had, for the first time in his life, lived totally in the moment.
He’d always held back from fully trusting others, even his closest people, despite believing in their best intentions. He’d guarded himself against the consequences of their mistakes and misdemeanors. But with Gemma, he hadn’t only dropped his guard—it hadn’t been raised in the first place. He’d not had a moment of doubt. She was the woman he’d dreamed of but never truly thought he’d find.
The one.
And she was gone. After giving him the most perfect night of his life, after giving him herself and a glimpse of a magnificent future filled with an unprecedented connection, she was just … gone.
Calm down. She’d have an explanation, a perfectly reasonable one, for leaving without waking him up. It had to be the only thing she could have done, or she wouldn’t have done it. She wouldn’t have left him like that if it weren’t.
So he should cool it. He might not know her last name or her whereabouts, but she knew his. All he had to do was wait for her.
She’d come back the moment she could.
Gemma didn’t come back.
It seemed she’d disappeared off the face of the earth.
He’d thought his security detail would have kept tabs on her. But when they’d seen her leave in the early-morning hours, all they’d worried about was him. They’d called to make sure he was okay, and when he’d answered, what he’d remembered doing only when they reminded him, clearly fine but sleepy and brooking no further interruption, they’d let her go. They hadn’t seen any reason to follow her. That had destroyed his biggest hope of finding her, and the hope of doing so was becoming dimmer by the minute.
He’d widened his search until it had encompassed the whole United States. No one had heard of her.
With the evidence suggesting that she’d never existed on American soil, he’d begun to think that she and the enchanted night they’d spent together had been a figment of his imagination. Even with his one proof of her existence—the photo he’d taken of her—everyone insisted they’d never seen her. Everyone his people had questioned had commented that they would have remembered someone like her. And they didn’t. As for her name, it rang no bells.
It was as if she’d never existed.
An explanation had reared its head constantly during his frantic search. He’d knocked it out of the way, determined not to let it have a hearing. But once he’d breathed again with the certainty that she hadn’t had an accident or worse, he found his options narrowing down until they’d dwindled to nothing.
Nothing but that explanation made sense.
There was no escaping it anymore. He had to face it, no matter how mutilating it was.
She didn’t want to see him again.
She might have been the woman who’d turned his life upside down, but it seemed he’d been nothing to her but a one-night stand. A man she’d chosen to initiate her nubile body into the rites of passion and unlock her limitless sexual potential. Perhaps he’d seemed exotic to her, a man from a different culture and country whom she could cut out of her life once the adventure was over.
Now that resignation had replaced desperation and he’d given up on the dream of her, there was nothing to fight for anymore, nothing to keep him here.
It was time he returned to Zohayd to confront his duty.
To embrace his nightmare.
“Shaheen.”
That was all his father said, minutes after Shaheen had walked into his office.
It was enough. Disappointment and exasperation blared in the toneless delivery of his name.
Shaheen didn’t blame him. He had ignored his father and the rest of the world for the past eight weeks. After that single phone call telling his father he was not coming home as promised, he’d made himself unavailable to anyone. He hadn’t explained why.
His father had left him a dozen messages, had sent emissaries to bring him back or to at least get him to explain his reneging on the decision he’d arrived at only days before.
His father rose from behind his desk, majestic and packed with power and ire and wreathed in the full-blown regalia of the King of Zohayd.
Shaheen held his gaze as his father approached him. King Atef Aal Shalaan made no attempt to hug him as he usually did, but instead stood there, flaying him with his displeasure-radiating glower. His father was a couple of inches shorter, yet broader with more than three decades head start in maturity and responsibility. Shaheen had always thought his shoulders broad enough to carry the weight of the kingdom’s fate on them. And that was not to mention his overwhelming presence.
Yet King Atef needed far more than presence to keep the kingdom at peace, to keep his enemies in check and his allies in line. More than ever, he had to appease the most powerful of those who constantly snapped at the heels of the ruling house, demanding their cut of power, prestige and proceeds. And that was something only Shaheen could deliver by sacrificing himself at the literal altar.
