As he crossed into her bedroom, she was roused from her delicious lethargy again. Numair had entered her most private place. And she suddenly wished she’d installed so many more lights, so she could revel in every single detail of his perfect body when he finally let her see it. As it was, there were only her bedside lamps and two lamp stands in the opposite corners. But she suddenly noticed something else.
Her bold decor in gradations of teaks and greens with accents of ebony seemed to echo his coloring.
Raising her gaze to him as he closed the door, as if he was making sure he had her locked away with him from the world, she melted a caress down his chiseled cheek. “See this place? My inner sanctum?”
His smile was scalding. “It’s all you.”
“Actually, it’s all you.” His hands tightened on her back and buttocks, his pupils flaring in surprise. She elaborated. “Every color here is yours. Your skin, your eyes, your hair. It’s as if I’ve picked every one to suit you, as a tribute to your beauty. Seems my preference for the color scheme was some kind of prophecy.”
His eyes went supernova as he bore down on her against the door he’d just closed. “Everything you say, everything you do, everything about you, sends me out of my mind. Your bill is getting heavier. And I will exact payment in full, ya galbi.”
She shuddered at the impact of his sensual threat, the sensory overload of being sandwiched between his heat and the cool door, of feeling the steel of his erection nudging her oversensitized intimate flesh.
But it was hearing him call her “my heart” in her mother tongue that tore a sob from her depths, made her drag his head down and crash those cruelly arousing lips down on hers.
When he pulled away, his face had transformed into that of a total predator. “I wasn’t exaggerating before. You are tampering with my sanity, Jenan. I’ve never even imagined being out of control. But I am now. So don’t touch me again, don’t hurry me, don’t say a thing, if you don’t want to have a raving lunatic all over you.”
She giggled. “If this is you out of control, I’d hate to see you in it. You’d probably kill me with frustration—”
His lips crashed on hers, swallowing her words.
She’d imagined being kissed since she was old enough to know what kisses were. She’d tried many, many kisses before. It turned out she shouldn’t have bothered imagining or trying.
This was a kiss. From those lips. This man. A kiss from now on could only be his, each sweep and thrust burying her under an avalanche of sensations.
Then she was flat on her back, and he was on top of her, like last night. But she was now fully naked and on her bed. And she combusted. She undulated beneath him, writhed, whimpered for him to please, please hurry. But he subdued her, took his time. He held her arms above her head as his other hand flowed down her face, her shoulder, ending up squeezing the aching heaviness of one breast.
His eyes were vehement with warning. “You can’t implore me to hurry. You can only moan in pleasure. That’s as much as I can endure.”
“Let me see you,” she moaned.
“You’re already breaking the rules.”
“You’re unfair,” she lamented.
“It’s your beauty that’s unfair.”
She tried to free her hands, needing them on any part of him without the barrier of clothes.
He only immobilized her, then, growling deep like a feasting predator, he continued owning her body.
He took her to the brink so many times, until tears slid down the sides of her face and wet her hair. Only then did he come up to straddle her.
He kneaded her breasts, grazed her nipples. “I’ve never seen or tasted anything so beautiful.”
Her hands shook on his belt. “I want to see you—I want you filling me. Please, Numair, please, now.”
He escaped her flailing efforts, tore off his shoes and socks, then surged up to stand on the bed over her, his endless legs like pillars of a great statue on both sides of her. Then he started stripping, exposing his glory.
She rose to her elbows, gaping at his proportionate perfection, all that rippling power encased in polished teak, accentuated with dark silk. But her heart fisted until it emptied at the evidence of violence he’d suffered. She’d expected he’d led a life full of danger, what had led to his current expertise. But his body painted a far harsher life than she’d even imagined.
A cry spilled from her as she surged up, hands and lips trembling over his scars. Once she’d reached the one just beside his heart, she felt pain echoing what he must have once felt, and tears filled her eyes.
His hand closed over both of hers over his heart. “It was long ago, in another life.”