To Touch a Sheikh (9 page)

His attempt at teasing broke her. She jabbed an elbow back into his steel gut in punishment for the macabre visual, turned to him, cupped his face with one hand, the other scooping up more of his balm. The hands on her froze, dropped to his sides as she started painting his skin with the healing mixture, tracing every line of power, every slash of beauty and jut of distinction that constituted his incomparable face.

She moaned and sighed with every sweep of tactile nirvana. To be touching him, to have him surrendering to her touch, was far more poignant than she'd even imagined. And how she'd imagined.

She'd feared she'd lost him. First a chance with him, then him for real. But she hadn't. And she had to embrace everything about him, capture every breath, savor every nuance.

“Amjad…”

She closed her eyes on a ragged moan, pressed her face to his neck, inhaled his intoxicating scent. For a long, long moment, he
remained as unmoving as a stone statue. Then something fierce and razing emanated from him, shuddering through her every bone.

She raised her face, her lids heavy with need as she trembled up the last inch separating their faces.

His eyes remained cast down as she brushed her cheek against his, before her lips mimicked the poignant motion against his own.

He didn't turn into her caress, didn't complete it. But it was enough for now that he let her revel in him.

But soon, she needed one more thing.

She whispered her plea for it against his closed eyes. “Tell me, Amjad. Tell me you believe me.”

 

He didn't tell her.

After a heart-hammering moment when she thought he would, he rose, sweeping her up in his arms. She clung to his neck, hope spurting inside her as he took her to the bedroom. But he only placed her on the nine-by-nine-foot mattress as if he was afraid her skin would peel. Then, without looking back at her, he strode out.

She heard him clanging around in the kitchen as distressingly delicious aromas wafted to her churning stomach.

Just as she almost joined him, he came in with a bed tray, placed it across her, instructing her to clean her plate. She just looked at him. He exhaled, went out, came back with his own tray, sat at the end of the bed and attacked his meal. She didn't know how she got her throat to work through the chokehold of his brooding.

After clearing their dinner away, he prepared her a bath laced with another healing preparation. She thought she'd boil its water with her frustration as she sensed him pacing outside like a caged tiger. He called out every few minutes to make sure she was still awake. As if she'd ever sleep again.

She hadn't. She lay in bed four hours later, obsessively
listening for any movement outside, watching seconds accumulating on the bedside digital clock…

“Tell
me,
Maram.”

She jerked up, for a second feeling self-conscious. She'd long pushed the sheets away, was down to her bra and panties. There was no hiding in the cloak of darkness either. The room was suffused in the fiery light of the corridor's oil lamps.

Every worry evaporated when she saw him at the room's opening, half his juggernaut's body cast in caresses of illumination, the other plunged into arcane shadow. He wore only his pants.

She'd only ever gotten glimpses of his body beneath clothes. A couple of buttons undone to afford her a stretch of polished bronze vitality. A rolled-up sleeve to tantalize her with the same in cabled sinew and muscles.

Nothing could have prepared her for his unbridled reality. And she literally didn't know the half of it yet.

Besides a face that would make gods weep with envy, the ancient birthright encoded in its every line, his semi-exposed body made it seem that he'd stepped out of a Middle Eastern fable, an entity of infinite magic. His proportions were…poetic, combining strength with grace, size with agility, endless potential for destruction and protection. He was encased in the flawlessness of burnished coppery velvet adorned by perfect patterns of virile silk. Every bulge and slope of muscle sculpted his shoulders and chest and abdomen from distilled maleness.

Then came the impact of his stance.

He stood as if at the mouth of a cave where unknown but certain danger awaited, legs braced apart, face lowered, chest expanded, fists clenched at thighs bulging with tension.

Her lips and limbs tingled. Her hands and insides itched. Her eyes and mouth watered. Everything else melted.

And he'd asked her to tell him.

Tell him what? How far out of her mind she was for him? If she'd wait forever until he relented, let her in?

He made his question specific. “How are you not afraid?”

Of what? Loving? Him? Loving him?

Whatever the question, the answer was the same. “I'm so the opposite of afraid.”

“You did demonstrate how…idiotically fearless you are. In every sense of the word. But you
should
fear me.”

Her heart quivered to a standstill.

This was the moment she'd waited and worked for since she'd laid eyes on him. The full disclosure, the terms' vetting and setting. The final negotiation. Before he surrendered. Before he let her give him herself. Let her have him.

She rose to her knees, trembling so hard that her teeth almost clattered. “I would fear anything and anyone but you.”

“How did you come by this certainty?”

His bass rasp shivered down each quailing nerve. She had to be very, very careful. The wild, wounded tiger was giving her one chance to reach out and pet him. If she got it right, he'd let her do more. He'd be hers for life. She knew it.

But if she didn't get it right…

She
would.
At any price.

“Do you have—” she was going to say
the rest of your life,
but decided to change it to “—a few years? I'll tell you,
show
you one way how I did, each day.”

“What if I told you I don't deserve your trust?”

Her lips trembled on a smile at the ferocity of his last struggle. “Don't bother. You have it. So if
you
think you don't deserve it, how about doing all you can from now on so that you do?”

The wings of his eyebrows snapped lower, his lashes descending to hide those incandescent eyes that seemed to sear the air surrounding them with emerald fire.

It was seconds before he raised his gaze, leveled it on her as if he'd reached a decision. Then he moved. Even though he did with the imperceptible approach of a predator, her heart slammed against her ribs as if he'd already pounced.

Not that she was worried. All she wanted was to throw herself down, arrange herself in the most convenient pose for him to devour properly.

He stalked closer, menace radiating off him. “You should at least be…very worried that you're going to unleash an unknown force that has been lying dormant.”

She blinked. “You…you mean you haven't had a…woman in a long time?”

“No, that's not what I meant.”

Disappointment zigzagged through her. Seemed she'd hoped that he…hadn't. Not since he'd seen her. Which was ridiculous. Though, not really. She hadn't looked at another man since she'd seen him. But then, he hadn't shared her conviction that they belonged together. But still… She bit down on the stupid ache.

He went on. “But
that's
right, too. I haven't. In a
very
long time. When news of that was added to the pre-pregnant state of my ex-monstress, rumors arose that I'd joined…another team.”

A laugh exploded out of her. “No
way.
Anyone within a square mile of you would know which team you play for.
When
you play.”

“When the ‘when' became never, and no evidence to my…defection was unearthed, it was suggested that I've left our species' mating realm behind altogether. Which I have.” Suddenly his grim lips twisted in mockery. “But I hear it's like riding a bike.”

Everything inside her stopped. To take in the enormity of what he was confessing so offhandedly. She expected him to laugh and say, “Gotcha.” Or something. He didn't, just resumed pouring the soul-baring intensity of his gaze over her.

She spluttered. “You're not joking!” He shook his head. “Just…uh…how long has it been?”

Please, please, say, “Since I saw you.”

He only watched her as if he was trying to read her mind. When she felt she'd burst with anticipation, he shrugged. “How long do
you
think?”

She suddenly knew. “You—you mean you haven't since…since…”

One eyebrow rose in wicked prodding. “Go on, you can say it.”

And she whispered what felt like the most painful three words of her life. “Since your w-wife?”

He made a sound of derision. “You're chronologically right. But wrong about the ‘wife' part. I didn't have a wife. I had a disastrous political pact gone murderous. A booby trap. So I hope you're not going all soap opera on me and thinking I haven't had a woman since then because of a fatally wounded heart.”

While that made her want to whoop for joy, knowing that he hadn't suffered the cruelty of someone he'd trusted with his heart, that made his abstinence even more…momentous.

For a man as overwhelmingly sexual to swear off women, on principle, was an even bigger hurdle for her to overcome than a specific connection gone terribly wrong.

On the other hand, knowing that he hadn't been in love before was huge. Incredible. Unbelievable.

She shook her head dazedly. “Wow. Just…
wow.
”

He huffed, irony dripping from the sound, from his stare. “Seems I should have come clean from the start. Who knew that was all I needed to…discourage you? Finding out about my defunct sexual status brought you to your senses, didn't it?”

She gaped at him. And gaped some more. Then she burst out laughing with elation so fierce that her insides ached.

She could almost see the thunderclouds her reaction generated above his head. Before lightning struck her, she rushed to explain her delirious bout. “It actually incinerated them right off.”

She slipped off the bed, feeling she was barely touching the floor as she slinked toward him. She'd always wanted it all, of him, with him. But not in her most far-fetched fantasies had she dared formulate anything that came close to this.

Who knew, indeed? That she'd be the one this…god would unleash all his desires on. It made her feel lucky beyond reason. It made her feel invincible, unstoppable, a goddess of feminine hunger and seduction.

She stopped before him, her gaze sweeping him from his perfect feet to his awesome head, as if with a leisurely lick. Her
senses rioted, as if she'd already tasted each part of him, savored all his delights.

Then she finally,
finally
reached for him.

Her hands slipped around his steel-fleshed waist, spread low on his muscle-corded back, pulled him against her burning flesh.

At the long-coveted contact, she shuddered, looked up into his storming eyes and gasped, “Thanks for saving it up. I'll now take all you've got.”

A
mjad unlocked Maram's hands from his flesh, pushed away from her embrace.

Before she could protest, he started circling her, like a predator trying to decide where he'd first sink his fangs into the prey begging him to take her down. His eyes burned around her, until she felt flames encompassing her down to her toes.

Then he stopped. Towered over her, from behind. She felt his body compressing the air at her back as he leaned, bringing his force and virility bearing down on her, until she moaned with needing it to be his full weight and greed.

Then his lips were at her ear. She wanted him to close the moist heat of his mouth on it, drive her further out of her mind. He only feathered it as he opened his lips, the phantom contact thundering through her in shockwaves of response.

She felt as if he'd turned into a huge magnet, had her pressing back against him without volition. He only let her get an impression of heat and hardness before he receded, left her with the pounding of her heart, of her core, shaking her. He leaned and let out a slow gust of scorching breath in her ear. It stormed through her, more devastating than the sandstorm.

“If you want all I got, you got it.”

Stimulation ripped through her, spilled from her lips on a sharp cry as she swung around.

Before she could drag him down for that kiss she'd been starving for, her tormentor's hands on her shoulders aborted her surge.

“On one condition.”

The rumbled qualification corkscrewed through her with danger and dark promise. She panted for it all. “Anything.”

His hands tightened, his voice hitting its deepest recesses, his eyes almost scary in warning and intent. “Again with the carte blanche to conditions you haven't heard.”

She squirmed, trying to break his ban on making him an unconditional offering of herself. “And again I say, anything for
you.
” When he didn't relent, she stopped, exhaled. “State your condition. And
hurry.
”

Lethal appreciation of her imperative pleading spread on his lips. Hers stung, needing his beneath them. “Tell me
exactly how
you want…all I got.”

She shivered. “I already told you.”

“You told me a bunch of sentimental euphemisms. I want specifics.”

He wanted certainty. Hers before his.

She placed trembling hands on top of his, pledged it. “I want every inch of you. Against me, around me, inside me. I want every freedom with you, every intimacy. I want us to share whatever would drive us both beyond anything we knew about ourselves and our limits. I want your tenderness and impatience and ferocity. I want the full range and power of your moods and passion and possession. I will revel in it all, as I've reveled in every second I've ever spent with you.”

His hands clamped her shoulders tighter with each word. They finally clenched, as did his eyes, squeezing her flesh and insides in a vise that accelerated her melting.

The moment she thought he'd haul her against him, he pushed
away. She gaped after him as he strode around the bed, put its width between them, leaned a knee on it.

Then, moving in deliberate slowness, as if to underline the seriousness of the action, he drew an imaginary line, bisecting the bed lengthwise, as if he was cutting through reality.

“Cross this line, and there will be no turning back. I give you all I got. And I
take
all you got. Make no mistake about that ‘all' part. Every way I want it.”

Imaginings piled on so hard, so hot, they cut off coherence. It flickered back on a wavering whisper. “Trying to scare me?”

He planted both fists on the bed, leaned almost across his line, the vastness of his hunger deluging her. “If it's working, then you'd better walk away now, before it's too late.”

She managed a huff and a smirk. “You have it backward.
You're
Prince Walks Away.”

He straightened from his crouch. “I'll be Prince Devours Away if
you
don't.” He slid a palm down the chiseled planes of his chest and abdomen, stopping at his low, low pants' waist, as if demonstrating the extent of what she'd get if she didn't, his eyes seething with sensual menace. “So what will it be?”

She leaned one knee on the bed before she collapsed in a puddle of longing. “Are we talking…kinky stuff?”

He echoed her movement. “And if we are?”

Her other knee followed, struggling not to fly across the bed and tackle him down on it. “Which part of ‘I trust you' didn't you get?”

He again mirrored her action. “And which part of ‘maybe I'm not to be trusted' didn't you?”

She braced a palm on the cotton sheet that felt like sandpaper against her sizzling skin. “Here's the thing. I trusted you with my life, twice. I'm here at your mercy if you so choose, and you made me feel safer than I've ever been.
Dis
trusting you becomes impossible, don't you think? I risked my life for you twice, too. You think anything else compares? So whatever you believe you lack to be eligible for my trust, I know you'll do whatever it takes to deserve it. Even if you turn out to be the King of Kink
and not just the Prince of Snarkiness, I know you'll make me love it.”

His gaze relinquished hers to lower to the sheet his fingers had bunched up as if it was her hair, her flesh. “You know so many things I know nothing about.” He raised his gaze again, slammed it into hers. “I don't have the slightest idea what I'll become the moment I touch you, and worse, the moment you touch me.”

She put her other palm on the sheets before the force of his carnal threat knocked her off balance. She began prowling on the bed, toward his line. “How about telling me what you do know? How you want me? Specifics only, please.”

He let her advance, receding farther. “Sure you can handle those?” She nodded, spilling her hair around her breasts. Those eyes flared, before they glazed over with what looked like aching remembrance. “Since you first trained those reason-destroying eyes on me and had those will-depleting lips spilling witchcraft into my system, Princess Haram, you commandeered every second I used to have for self-generated thoughts, consumed my once-restful nights with exhausting fantasies of you. I understood just how dangerous you were when you forced me to turn to…self-help outlets in your honor. When that only made things worse, when every exposure to you aggravated my condition, you rose to the top of my keep-at-bay-at-any-price list. I would have kept my distance, suffered in resigned sarcasm. But you wouldn't let me.” He leaned on both hands again, gearing to be unleashed. “So if you give me yourself now, I'll first take four years of torment out on every inch of your mind-annihilating body.
Then
I'll gorge on every spark of your magnificent being.”

She was shaking from head to toe now. With the effort it took her not to charge at him, sink her teeth into his flesh wherever they landed. “And I was…what? Speaking a language you didn't understand? I told you that's exactly what I want.”

“
Aih,
but you left out one thing. A time frame. 'Cause
here's
the thing. Once I start, I won't be appeased.”

This…this was far beyond anything she'd dared wish for.

He was telling her, in his own inimitable way, that he was taking her up on her offer of everything and raising her an open end. Maybe even their own brand of forever.

She trembled forward, a foot from his line now, from everything to make life worth living, from a future he'd always be the major part of. Amjad. The one made for her and she for him.

“Were you there the past four years?” she choked out with the enormity of it all. “And I won't stop either. I very clearly can't.”

“No matter what happens? You won't change your mind?”

“If nothing changed it by now, nothing ever will.”

His palm rose, stopping her before she made that final move across his line. “The words, Maram. Give them to me.”

His bass rasp, laden with a vulnerability, with a need she'd never dreamed he'd bare to her, made her almost weep.

She swallowed the tears, crossed his line, slipped her hands around the chest heaving almost as agitatedly as hers. “If you don't…if you don't want me to, I will never change my mind.”

He looked down into eyes she knew were red and filled with tears, and his own darkened with accepting her pledge. She felt everything decelerate, even the storm outside, like a slow-motion sequence from a movie accompanied by frantic heartbeats and labored breathing to emphasize the gravity of the moments.

What he did next almost burst her heart.

His hands closed around her rib cage, raised her until her knees left the bed, until her legs dragged on it. He held her in his power, looking up at her as if she was the most incredible thing he'd ever laid eyes on.

Then he lowered her, buried his face in her bosom. For long moments, he burrowed into her, until she felt as if he'd traversed the physical limits of her body, melded with her, until she felt as if his lips were kissing her heart.

When she thought she would explode for real, he slid her down his body, every curve slotting into his angles until her lips glided over his face to his.

“Maram…” He breathed inside her. The heat and hunger he made of her name made her cry out.

She shuddered harder, her lips trembling over his. “Yes, Amjad, yes…”

He bit into her lower lip with enough force to still it, to show her the power of his craving. His long, deep groan filled her as he applied more pressure until she whimpered, collapsed to her back, the hands clenching around his neck taking him over her.

His chest barely touched her breasts as he loomed over her, plucking at her lips in a maddening tasting too voracious to assuage. She pulled at him harder, crushed her lips to his, her breasts to his chest. His rough rider's hand slid a path of nerve-combusting abrasion from her waist to one thigh, hooking beneath her knee, bringing it over his hip. Then he ground his hardness against her readiness through the chafing restriction of their clothes. She arched up into him, clamped her leg tighter around him, a carte blanche for anything he wanted to do to her.

Her undulations became quakes as he began suckling her lips, drawing each into his mouth in long, smooth pulls between groans of her name, drawing more plumpness into her flesh, more molten agony from her core. Her whimpers became incessant.

“Please, Amjad, please…”

He stabbed his fingers into her hair at the nape of her neck, secured her head, relinquished her lips to spread his promise against her cheeks, her eyelids, her jaw. “I will…please you until you can take no more, until you can never have enough. I've craved you for so long, Maram…too long.”

Then he swooped down, took her lips with the wrenching power she craved. She opened for him, encouraging him to take more, plunge deeper. And he did, thrust inside her welcoming heat, tongue and ferocity, filled her, overwhelmed her.

Her senses rioted at the taste of him, even better than his scent and feel combined. She needed more, more, tried to hurry him, have it. He obeyed, his tongue invading her, dueling with hers, drinking deeper of her essence. Her senses rode rapids of
delight as he gave her and took her and finished her, his growls detailing his enjoyment of her, of her frenzy.

Then he tore his lips from hers.

Before she could cry out with loss, he turned her over on her stomach, straddled her hips. She gasped at the thrill of his domination, turned her face to look back and meet his eyes.

The smile crinkling them was feral as he snapped open her bra, slipped the utilitarian garment off her arms. She rose on her elbows to help him free her swollen flesh from its shackles. She arched back when he replaced it with his rough, warm palms, tossed her head, turned farther, begging for his lips. They took hers in a hot, moist vise, groaned his demand deep inside her,
“Areeni kamm tebgheeni.”

Hearing him revert to Arabic, demanding she show him how much she craved him, hurled her over another threshold of arousal. She showed him, sucked on his tongue in abandon, writhed beneath him, smashing her breasts into his hands.

He weighed and kneaded her bursting flesh in his hard fingers, gave her unspoken admission back to her,
“Abghaki ya, Maram, koll kelmah, koll get'ah, koll naffas. Enti sehr, jonoon.”

As if it wasn't enough to hear him say, in that moving groan, how he craved her—every word and part and breath of her, that she was magic, madness—his teeth nipped her lips at the same moment that he pinched her nipples. The amalgam of his confessions and the sensations sent a bolt to her core.

She bucked to move him so that she could turn back over and capture him where she needed him most.

He restrained her, the purr of a lustful great cat resounding deep in his chest. “
Hadi ma'dobati
—this is
my
feast, you are, in case you haven't realized.”

She subsided, her lips twitching in humor-laced distress as he ran his hands all over her back, first in gossamer sweeps, then massaging tracings, then blunt nail scratchings until every nerve burst into a conflagration, until she sobbed.

“
Aih,
cry for me for real.” He ground his hardness against her buttocks, sinking his fingers into her hair, tugging on it as if it
was reins. “Do you know how many times your imaginary cries turned my brain to mush? How many times I burned to no avail imagining you cushioning me this way? Or risked damaging my hands so they'd stop giving me phantom sensations of running all over your velvet flesh like this?”

She threw him a smoldering glance over her shoulder. “Thrilled to know you suffered for your pigheadedness as much as you made me suffer.”

“Then let me thrill you more.” He sank his fingertips into her scalp, every press unraveling a new reserve of lust within her. “I woke up hard and in agony every day still fresh from dreams where I felt you quake with pleasure, with need…” He transferred his sensual exploitation to her back, dug pathways of pure pleasure into her muscles until she did. “Like this.” He retraced the path of distressing delight up. “Do you know how many times I was about to deliver killing blows to deserving adversaries only for an image like
this
—” he swept her hair from her nape, bent and sank his teeth there, like a lion securing his mate for a rough ride “—to invade my mind so that I ended up merely damaging them? I even let a couple go unscathed. Do you know how many times I'll punish you for each instance?”