Her tears flowed. “You must have suffered so much...”
“I survived, and it made me stronger.” He came down on his knees, dragged her up and crushed her to his length, his lips scorching her face. “And it all brought me here, to this point in time, to you.”
What he said was so poignant, the spasm in her chest intensified.
He raised her face to his. “Do my scars repel you?”
That turned off her distress like a tap. “No. Like those harsh, merciless things I felt in your nature, these marks of suffering and endurance make you even more unbearably arousing to me. They make me want to devour you even more. Numair—” she moaned between kisses all over him, reaching for the briefs that did nothing to imprison his erection “—you’re more beautiful than I even imagined. I want to worship each inch of you.”
With a groan of relief, he dodged her groping lips and hands and tore off his briefs in barely leashed ferocity. “Later, ya hayati, much later.”
Hearing him use another of the lavish endearments used in her region, “my life” this time, made her collapse back on the bed, shaking with anticipation, but also intimidation. She’d never seen anything approaching his girth and length and hardness.
He came down over her again, threaded his fingers through her hair. “Now I take you. And you take me.”
Though she doubted she could take him, she arched up into him, held out her trembling arms. “Yes.”
He impacted her with his full weight, made her cry out, reveling in how her softness cushioned his hardness.
Perfect. No, sublime. Just like he’d said.
She opened her legs wider, and he guided them over his waist. Then he stilled over her.
Squeezing his eyes, he rose off her to reach for his pants, produced a condom from its back pocket. Tearing the foil with his teeth, he rose on his knees between her splayed thighs and started to roll it over his erection.
His actions finally registered. He was protecting her. He was giving her the choice. And she made it.
Her hand shot out, convulsing over his, stopping his action.
His eyes spewed surprise. “Are you protected?”
She shook her head.
The triumph that flared in his eyes almost knocked her out. “You’re saying yes.”
She nodded, tears beginning to flow again. She was saying yes to everything. She wanted him to claim her fully, wanted his seed inside her, knowing it would probably take root, hoping with everything in her that it would.
“You don’t want to wait? Until after I demonstrate why you should say yes?”
“I had all the demonstrations I need the moment I saw you standing on that threshold last night.”
His face seized with such pride and possessiveness, it would have made her run screaming before, but it was exactly what she needed from him now.
Her surrender deepened as he cupped her hips in a huge hand, tilting her, prostrating her. Holding her gaze, he dragged it down to where he held his erection with the other hand. He made her watch as he nudged his scorching crown against the knot where her nerves converged. She rose off the bed on a shrill cry of ecstasy. He slid up and down, circling her quivering bud as he bathed himself in her readiness, until she writhed, her gasps fracturing. Once he’d made sure he’d taken her back to the edge of insanity, he positioned himself at her entrance. Then he plunged inside her, feeling like a newly forged sword just out of the fire.
She screamed at the pain and shock of his invasion.
Even after she’d seen how big he was, she’d hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much, since she’d had sex before and she was so ready. But it seemed she couldn’t have been ready for him. Nothing would have made her withstand that first thrust. She doubted nothing ever would, that he’d always hurt her at first. And he’d give her unimaginable pleasure in contrast afterward. Even though the pleasure hadn’t come yet, she knew it would. And it would be devastating.
On the second thrust, he seemed to realize her pain.
He froze above her, his voice a bass rasp. “Weren’t you married before?”
His question elicited an amused huff. “I thought so. Seems I wasn’t.”
“You’re so tight, as if your body was never tried.”
“It wasn’t. Not by you.” She shuddered beneath him, the pain receding, tremors of deep delight starting to seep into the flesh clenched around him. “I do feel it’s my first time.”
Her actual first time had been nothing like this. It had been a disappointment wrapped in a vague ache. It had been on her wedding night. If it had been before, the marriage itself wouldn’t have happened.
“I hurt you.” He sounded more distressed than she did.