Marriage Behind the Fa?ade (10 page)

“For heaven’s sake, Malik, I was barely outside five minutes! I’m not dying!”

Though she might if he kept the cold water running on her like that—except that it sort of felt good sluicing over her. Perhaps she’d been hotter than she’d thought.

“You were overcome.” One hand held her firmly under the water. His sleeve was soaked, but the rest of him remained dry as he refused to let her go.

“It was only a moment! I needed to sit.”

“Where did you think you were going? This is the Maktal Desert! You could have been killed, if not by the heat, then by a scorpion or a viper.”

A viper? Sydney shivered, and not from the water.

“I just wanted to go somewhere other than this tent! I was bored, and you weren’t here….” She trailed off, realizing how ridiculous she sounded. Exactly like the child he’d accused her of being only last night.

“A very good reason to risk your life,” he growled.

Sydney closed her eyes, fury and frustration welling within her. She had to do something or burst with it. Without thinking about the possible consequences, she cupped a hand and slung water at Malik. It hit him in the face, dripped down over his tanned features. One drop clung to his lower lip, and a dull ache began in her core.

No.

She would
not
want him. She lashed out again, slinging more water at him, soaking the front of his
dishdasha.

“This is how you wish to play?” he asked dangerously. Then he shoved the dark covering from his hair, let it fall as he pushed her all the way under the spray, water rolling over her face for the first time.

Sydney came up sputtering. And furious.

She reached for him, wrapped her hands in the fabric of his clothes. She didn’t expect she could move him, but she threw all her weight backward—and he stumbled into the shower. Water plastered his dark clothes to his body, and Sydney burst into a fit of giggles at the look of surprise on his face.

“How do you like it?” she asked.

His face was thunderous—but then he shoved his wet hair back and grinned at her. Her heart lurched. “I like it just fine,” he said, his gaze dropping over her. Sydney glanced down—and squeaked in surprise. Her white garments were transparent. It wasn’t quite like being naked, but close enough. The fabric clung to her, outlining her breasts, the dark nipples, the shadowed cleft between her legs.

She looked up again, met his hot gaze. The raw lust she saw there threatened to double her over with need. Everything was happening so fast, the atmosphere between them changing, becoming more charged, more desperate.

“Malik,” she choked out as he closed the distance between them. She wanted him—and she didn’t. It terrified her to think of making love with him again—and it terrified her to think of
never
doing so.

She didn’t know what he would do—but she realized his hand was shaking as he reached out. Shaking as he palmed her breast, his thumb brushing over the jutting peak of her nipple. Sensation streaked through her. Flames licked at her belly.

The water did nothing to cool this fire eating her up inside. Because nothing could cool her now. The fire needed to burn out, and the only way it would burn out …

“You’ve done it now,
habibti,”
Malik said, smiling roguishly.

Her heart thrummed. “D-done what?”

He took her hand in his, pressed his lips to her upturned palm.

And then he placed her hand against his chest before sliding it oh, so slowly down his body.

CHAPTER TEN

THE wet fabric molded to his perfect frame, delineating muscle and sinew—but Sydney didn’t need to see how the fabric clung to know he was hard.

The evidence—powerful, impressive, mouth-watering—thrust against her palm.

She couldn’t take her eyes off his beautiful face. His eyes were bright, his jaw set in stone as if he were enduring a great torment. Sydney’s body was aching, melting, throbbing with need. Touching him like this.

She swallowed. She knew that she had only to drop her hand away and he would turn and go.

Instead, she traced the hard ridge, her pulse thundering in her ears. He sucked in a breath, his eyes burning even brighter if that were possible. Then he pulled her to him, wet body to wet body, his arm hard around her. He hesitated only a moment before he dipped his head and covered her mouth with his.

There was never any doubt she would open to him. Her lips parted, her tongue tangling with his on a moan. He gripped her tight, kissed her with all the pent-up frustration and want that had been building between them.

His hands began to move on her body, divesting her of her clothes. She wanted to laugh—with joy, with nervous anticipation. This was Malik, her husband. The man she’d loved.

For one wild moment, she thought she should have said no, should have stopped him.

But it was too late now.

Too late.

She would play with fire and hope she survived.

As her clothes peeled away, the air from the fans cooled her even more. Goose bumps prickled across her skin. Malik broke the kiss to let his eyes travel her body. She dropped her gaze, self-conscious and unsure.

“You are beautiful,” he said, his voice husky. And then he picked her up and sat her on the waist-high ledge surrounding the shower.

His dark head lowered. He took one tight nipple in his mouth, sucking it lightly while she squirmed and gasped. She could feel her sex tightening, swelling, aching with need for this man.

As if he knew it, he slipped a finger over her, caressed her silky curls, traced her outer lips. His finger glided into her moist heat, and she groaned with pleasure.

“Ah, Sydney,” he said, “I’ve missed this.”

Her heart squeezed even as pleasure rippled through her.
I’ve missed this.
Not,
I’ve missed you.

But her thoughts fractured as he sunk a finger into her. A second joined the first, and then his thumb parted her, ghosted over her clitoris. She thought she would weep from the painful need he evoked. It had been so long, too long….

“Malik—”

“Yes,” he murmured. “Yes. I have not forgotten even a moment of making love to you. I know what you need,
habibti.
I know what you want.”

His mouth closed over her other stiff nipple, and she threw her head back as he sucked harder this time. A sharp current of pleasure spiked from her nipple to her clitoris, making her moan with need. He repeated the motion again and again, driving her insane for him.

She wanted him. Fiercely. Now. Deep within her, driving her—driving them both—toward completion.

But he would make her wait for it. She knew that.

Malik was the consummate lover. He was attuned to her body as if it were his own. He knew how to make her shudder and jolt and beg and cry. He knew how to wring every last bit of sensation from her, until she was utterly spent. Until all she could do was lay boneless and content and wait for her strength to return.

It had always been this way with him, this headlong rush into hedonism that was so unlike her. Nothing had ever made her want to abandon herself to pleasure. Nothing but Malik.

It frightened her, this dark need for him. She shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be allowing herself to fall so hard again—but she was powerless to stop it from happening. She didn’t
want
to stop it from happening. If she had to crash and burn, what a way to go.

His fingers moved in and out of her body, his thumb working against her sensitive bud until she knew she would fly apart at any moment.

But it was too soon. She didn’t want to go over the edge yet. She’d waited so long now that she wanted to prolong the pleasure for a little longer. Prolong the torture.

“I want to see you,” she cried. Somehow, she did not know how, she managed to form the words. Managed to speak them.

His dark eyes gleamed bright as he straightened. His fingers ceased their torture. “Then strip me,
zawjati.”

She looked at his traditional Jahfaran clothes, at the wet black material, and frowned. “I don’t know how.”

“I will help you.”

She hopped off the ledge and he guided her hands to the fastenings. It took her only a moment to figure out how to rip them open. And then she was peeling the wet robes off, revealing his naked torso while he chuckled at her.

“So eager. I like this.”

She couldn’t stop herself from touching him, from running her hands over the peaks and valleys of muscle and sinew. The hard planes of his body that made her mouth water, made her long to press her lips just there and taste him again.

Malik might be wealthy and privileged, but he was a son of the desert. The kind of man whose strength wasn’t feigned, but real strength forged from the harshness of the environment he came from.

Though he probably maintained his physique in a gym, he didn’t look like the kind of man who jogged on sterile treadmills or lifted cold bars of steel. He looked as if he’d been formed during hot, hard work beneath a blistering sun.

Sydney frowned at the trousers and riding boots he wore. Those boots weren’t coming off easily, and she didn’t want to wait. She untied the trousers and slipped them open until they hung low on his hips.

And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she pressed her hot, open mouth to his nipple as she found the hard ridge of his erection and squeezed. Malik sucked in a sharp breath, his hands coming up to cup her head.

“This won’t last if you keep doing that,” he warned her.

Sydney smiled against his skin. She loved knowing she could make him dance on the edge of control. And when he lost that control … oh, God, it was spectacular.

The water was no longer flowing over them. She wasn’t sure when he’d turned it off, but she was glad. Now, all she could taste was Malik. The warm honey of his skin. That combination of soap and man that she loved so much.

She trailed her tongue down the valley between his pectorals, skimmed over his tight abdomen. And then she freed him from his trousers and took him in her mouth while he made a sound that wasn’t quite human.

His entire body stiffened. She glanced up. His head was tilted back, the muscles in his neck corded tight, as if he were fighting for control. His hands gripped the back of her head, fisted in her wet hair.

She swirled her tongue around the silky head of his erection. Her hand shaped him. He was like velvet and diamonds. So soft, and so hard at once. She wanted to bring him to completion this way, but he wasn’t going to allow it.

He pushed her away, put his hands around her hips, and lifted her onto the ledge again. She clung to him, her mouth finding and fusing with his, their tongues tangling deeply and urgently.

And then she felt him, felt the hot head of his penis as he began to push inside her. She shifted her hips so she could take him deeper. She was impatient, needy. Greedy.

Malik held her hard, the tips of his fingers digging into her hips. She knew it was because he needed to hold onto his control, no other reason. He’d always been so rigidly controlled, even here—until he broke and let the passion overwhelm him.

She welcomed the fierceness of his passion. Craved it. Could not wait for the storm to break.

Sydney wrapped her arms around his neck, arched her body toward him. She wanted to drink him in, wanted all of him.
Now.

But Malik was still in control. He pressed forward slowly, so slowly—and then he thrust to the heart of her, making them both groan with the exquisite pleasure of his possession.

He broke their kiss, pressed his lips to her jaw, her throat, while she clung to him. He didn’t move, but she could feel the length of him throbbing deep within her. It was exquisite, this joining. She remembered why she’d been helpless before, why she’d followed him halfway around the world. Why she’d believed enough to marry him, though a part of her had known the truth.

She wasn’t a weak woman, wasn’t a particularly sensual one—except with Malik. Whatever he wanted, when they were like this, she would give.

Her hands slipped over his shoulders, down his back, trying to bring him closer as she arched and wiggled her hips toward him. His intake of breath was sharp.

“Sydney,” he said, his voice broken. On the edge.

Exactly as she wanted him.

“Now, Malik,” she urged. “Now.”

He gripped her hips harder still—and then he withdrew, pulling so far out she thought he was planning to leave her insatiate and aching.

And then he thrust forward again, joining them once more. Sydney wanted to laugh with joy—and yet her breath froze, her lungs incapable of filling as the pleasure washed over her in blistering waves.

He thrust again, and then again—and her body caught fire until she was shuddering, until her very fingertips sizzled with the force of her orgasm. She was caught, too quickly, her entire being folding in on itself before bursting into a million liquid shards.

She knew she cried his name, knew that he was feeling a special kind of male triumph in that moment. He owned her, body and soul, and he knew it. She wanted to damn him for it, but she couldn’t.

She wanted more—more Malik, more pleasure, more of his hard length thrusting into her.

She knew—without asking, without words—that he’d regained his strength. That somehow her surrender was required for him to be in control again.

Such exquisite control.

“Are you all right?” Malik asked.

Sydney shook her head, buried her face against his throat. His pulse throbbed in his neck, letting her know that he wasn’t quite as controlled as she’d thought after all. The pieces of her slid together, reformed into something that she didn’t quite recognize.

Or rather, something she
did
recognize, and dreaded. A woman who
needed.

Malik tilted her chin back with a finger. His eyes searched hers, and the concern she saw there made her heart lurch. “Did I hurt you?” he asked, his voice so tender.

“No,” she said. Then again, stronger, “No.”

There were different kinds of hurts. But she knew he was talking about physical pain, and that was definitely not a problem. Emotional pain was another story.

“Good,” he said. “Because I need you, Sydney. I need you.”

And then he was kissing her again, and she was opening to him, taking him deep inside. He held her hips hard, thrusting into her, their bodies melding together. His strokes were deep, expert, driving.

She gave herself up to him, gave herself up to the rhythm and beauty of it. Sydney wrapped her legs around him, arched her body so that her breasts could press against his bare chest.

His mouth moved over her throat, his voice saying words in Arabic, and then he bent and took her nipple in his mouth, pulling hard so that the spike of pleasure shot to her sex. She was on fire for him, her body primed and ready for another shattering orgasm.

She felt as if she were swelling with something too wonderful to be contained, as if she would fly apart any second. Malik’s thrusts grew more frenzied, his hold on her tighter.

And then his hand slid between them, finding her sweet spot, sending her over the edge.

She splintered apart in one long wave, coming with a gasp, his name spilling from her lips.

It did not end there. She was holding on to him, shuddering, her legs wrapped high around his hips as continued to pump into her. But his strokes were slower, more deliberate.

Not so frenzied.

And she knew he was drawing this out, giving her every moment of pleasure he could while waiting to take his own.

“Malik,” she said. But it came out as a sob.

“Again, Sydney. I want to watch you come again.”

She squeezed her eyes tight, tried not to focus on the sensations beginning to build in her core. Because she would be senseless in his arms if she let him keep taking her over the edge like this.

“I can’t,” she cried.

“You know you can.” It was a firm command.

And then he lifted her up, his big hands splaying across her bottom as he carried her out of the bathing room and into the bedroom. Their bodies were still joined. His gaze was hot on hers, intense. She wondered how he did it, how he kept such a tight rein on his need.

But she pushed the thought away because she didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to consider that she might not mean anything to him, that he was capable of this because he had no emotional attachment.

Because it was just sex.

He put a knee on the bed, tumbled her back onto the mattress. And then he was withdrawing from her, sliding down her body. Before she could protest, he slid his thumbs into her sex, spread her open.

His tongue touched her hot flesh, his mouth closing over her clitoris. He suckled the sensitive flesh there with the same intensity as he’d shown to her nipples. His tongue darted over her, his teeth nibbling oh, so gently.

Her release sucked the air from her lungs. She sobbed his name, begged him to stop.

But not because it hurt, and not because she didn’t like it.

It was simply too intense, too soul-shattering. She would never be free of him this way. Never be able to love another man, to be with another man if this is what she had to remember.

“Again,” he said, before driving her once more to the peak.