Darker Side of Desire & the Sheikh's Pregnant Prisoner(53)

For him, she would face her fears.

She would not only face them, but she would never give him reason to be ashamed of her, she decided with a fierceness that was new to her.

“Why did they all show up in such force? To express their disapproval of me?”

“The Dahab approve of you and arrived to honor you. And the rest of the tribes follow where they lead.” He shook his head, as if signaling to end the matter. “But I’ve had enough politics today to last me a lifetime, Lauren. I don’t wish to discuss it anymore.”

Commanding and absolute, his voice sent a shiver up her spine. It felt like dismissal. But something lingered in his face too, something that set a twisty feeling in her gut and she decided to let the matter drop. For now. “Okay.”

Before she could turn around, one of his hands snaked up and caught around her nape, tugging her closer. The rasp of his hard chest against hers sent fire blasting into every nerve ending. Her lashes fell down and she dug her fingers into his shoulders. But even after his midnight swim, his skin was still hot.

“You’re very submissive all of a sudden. Why?”

“Not submissive. Understanding,” she corrected him, “and slowly learning to choose which battles to fight.”

He pushed out a breath and his body seemed to tense up even more. “You’re sure you’ve had enough rest?” he muttered against her temple. “I’ll be gentle, I promise.” Low and deep, his words shot straight through to the core of her, leaving her writhing in her own skin.

“I fell asleep the moment—” The words barely left her before his mouth crashed down on hers.

She wanted to say she didn’t need him to be gentle. She wanted to say that whatever it was that was burning inside him, she could see it. She wanted to say that she’d, always, want all of him—the tenderness and the passion, but also the harsher, tougher aspects of him.

The part that regretted a brother’s death even though he’d made his life hell.

The part that hated the father just as much as the part that still, somehow, loved and grieved for him. Deeply.

The part that had been stunned that she’d come looking for him all the way to Behraat.

Even the part that had made him walk away from her as much as the part that admitted that what they’d shared hadn’t been cheap.

All the parts that made him Zafir.

All of him. Always, she realized with a shiver.

But he didn’t give her a chance to say any of that, and she was perversely glad because it was easier to surrender to the pleasure between them than face what she knew would change her entire life.





CHAPTER ELEVEN

HOT AND SLICK and expertly teasing, his wicked mouth was all she’d dreamed about in the past few weeks. The taste of him was erotic, the drag of his mouth righting her world, chasing away the silly anxiety, rocking through her with the force of an earthquake.

She wound her arms around his shoulders, hanging on as he drove her mindless with his desperate caresses.

The light in the room was only a soft glow yet she felt as if there was an explosion of color, sensation and dizzying excitement around her. Attar of roses and some wild fragrance from the desert and the scent of Zafir’s masculinity, it was a cocktail she got drunk on.

Silk that had been soft when she had worn it this morning now rasped roughly against her knotting nipples. The lace of panties rubbed against her wet folds.

She knew him, her body screamed with a roar of delight.

She knew this mouth, knew those deep strokes of his tongue, knew the bite of teeth that grazed her lip, not so gently, knew the hoarse grunt that fell from him when she tangled her tongue with his. Knew the hunger and passion he kept buried beneath his isolation, knew the heart of him.

And then he was pushing her back with his large body, back toward the bed, all the while his mouth devoured hers with rough, almost desperate strokes.

With his hands on her hips, he braced her fall onto the bed. Stood at the edge and looked down at her with molten gaze. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“That I wish I could use telekinesis to make that towel drop,” she drawled, pushing to her elbows.

“If my wife wishes it…” he said and then the towel was falling to the floor.

“Oh…” Fractured and desperate, the sound fell from her lips as she studied him to her heart’s content.

Washboard abdomen, tapered hips, rock-hard thighs and the thick-veined length of his erection that rose up toward his belly…her womb tightened remembering the pleasure he could wield. She smoothed her hands down her belly as if she could calm the need clamoring inside of her. As if control of any sort wasn’t a big, fat lie around him.

Powerful sheikh or not outside of this tent, here he was, quite simply, her man. Panty-meltingly gorgeous with a body honed to hard strength.

I will touch no woman ever again.

“You’re all mine, Sheikh,” she said, boldly raking a fingertip down one rock-hard thigh.

His hands drifted to her ankles and clasped one and softly slid her up the bed. He climbed up after her, pinning her to the bed by her dress, his hips snuggling between her legs, his weight on his elbows.

Muscles gleaming in the flickering light, copper-hued skin stretched tight over those pectorals, he leaned over her like some dark warrior claiming his prize.

He pulled back to his knees. One calloused hand found her ankle, moved up her leg, palm down. “Your mouth, that’s what got us into this trouble in the first place, yes?”

The soft skin behind her knee, the sensitive skin of her inner thigh, from the line of her hip to the seam of her silk panties, those fingers learned all of her anew. It cost her several breaths to find her voice, unsteady and hoarse as it is. “So, what, this is all my fault?”

Her thighs squeezed as his big, callused palm pressed farther. Gaze greedy and hot and all kinds of wicked, he watched her reaction. As if he enjoyed her coming apart as much as he enjoyed making her.

Head rolling back, shoulders coming away from the bed, she moaned as his palm covered her mound and pressed. All of her being pulsed under his hand, wet, and aching and desperate.

His other hand snuck under her dress and then he was pulling those wisps of lace down with one hand and pulling her down on the bed to straddle his legs.

While she watched hungrily, hanging upon the knife-edge of desire, he bared her lower body while her dress stayed snug over her aching breasts. Her legs, her thighs and the slick, drenched folds of her womanhood, all of her.

And looked at her.

“Beautiful,” he muttered in a tight, clenched voice, the glow from the lanterns highlighting the sharp sweep of his cheekbones, the sensuality of his lower lip.

After all this time, Lauren felt the heat rushing and pooling under her skin, flushing her with color. She hadn’t been a virgin, but nothing had prepared her for his brand of pulse-pounding, soul-baring kind of passion in New York. Without promises, without the usual, useless rituals of dating, without her knowledge even, he had stolen a part of her and imprinted himself on her.

No wonder she had followed him across the world.

“Zafir…please…”

His hand on her knee stopped her when she tried, too late but still, to shield her sex from his hungry gaze. And by the glint of masculine satisfaction in his gaze, he knew it. He liked that she trusted him, that she was putty in his hands while he did as he pleased.

He parted her sex with a possessive, intrusive, yet arousing touch and stroked her.

A hoarse moan left her mouth.

“Wet…you’re so wet for me. How do I take this slow?” He sounded almost angry as if his loss of control was her fault. As if he didn’t thoroughly relish having her drenched in the desire he created in her with one mere look.

Lauren saw the deft flick of his wrist before she felt his long fingers inside her.

A million nerve endings in her groin went ballistic.

Sobbing and moaning, Lauren gave in to the fire he set inside of her.

Her body arched off the bed as he slicked his fingers in and out while his thumb pressed down at the swollen nub crying for his attention. Again and again, he pressed on that bundle while she writhed under his touch.

And just when a tremor started in her lower belly, he withdrew his fingers.

She cried, so close to release and yet so far away again. Her fists landed on his shoulder, his chest as he knelt over her. Opening her eyes, she met the dark, male heat glittering in his.

A golden flame, an incinerating hunger.

“I can’t wait any longer,” he said, through clenched teeth, his hands roughly pushing the silk folds out of his way. Almost apologetic. “I should have known…”

Holding her hips down, he pushed into her wet heat with one firm stroke.

Their mingled groans ricocheted in the tent.

Twisting the sheets with her fists, Lauren let her legs go slack. Even having known this intimacy with him, her slick channel was still not prepared for how big he was.

After six years of celibacy, she had flinched when he had entered her that first evening in New York.

Again now, she had to breathe, short, panting bursts, through the invasion of his velvet heat, brace herself for the raw, mind-numbing friction in the walls of her sex.

Skin damp, clenched muscles rock hard beneath her fingers, he exhaled. Something almost like regret lingered around his mouth as he touched her damp brow. “You’re fine?”

“Yes,” Lauren breathed and wiggled her hips. A fist of need twisted her lower belly afresh.