He didn’t lower his head to cover her offered mouth. He made her set a hand behind his head and draw him down into her kiss. Then he had the gall not to respond to her first uncertain advances. All men wanted to kiss her. Didn’t he realize that?
She forced her tongue between his lips and pressed harder, rocking her mouth under his as she pulled his tongue into her own mouth.
He made a growling, primal noise and encircled her with hard arms as he took over the kiss with passionate roughness. It lasted for a few uncontrolled, thrilling heartbeats before he caught her arms in a firm grip and set them apart from each other.
His gaze clashed into hers with accusation, as if she’d forced him to react in a way he didn’t care for.
But that brief crack in his control only fueled her resolve. She brushed his hands off her arms and pressed his wrists behind his back, meeting his fierce glare with a scolding one.
“You just gave yourself to me, didn’t you? Are you going back on that? What are you afraid of?”
Her breasts grazed his chest and their thighs brushed through the fabric of her skirt and his pants. She could feel he was aroused and that bolstered her confidence even more.
“I’m not afraid of anything.” His voice was gritty, his words pushed through clenched teeth. “But what are you planning to do? Lose your virginity here on my desk?”
“I’m going to make love to you with my mouth,” she dared to say, and felt the jolt that went through him. The muscled wrists in her hands became rock-hard, strained tendons as he bunched his hands into tight fists.
She smiled under a rush of feminine power.
“Do you like that idea?” She drew back a little and brought one hand to his fly. She caressed his hard flesh through the fabric. “I think you do.” She did. Her hand was trembling.
His nostrils flared, but he held himself very still. She couldn’t tell if he was trying to act unaffected or if they were playing a game of chicken and he was waiting for her to lose her nerve first.
She might. She’d never done anything so boldly wicked.
With two shaking hands, she unbuttoned his shirt and spread it wide, indulging herself by splaying her hands across his hot skin and the light sprinkle of hair. She turned her face back and forth against the contours of his pecs, played her touch over his rib cage before she licked at his nipples to see if he reacted.
He did. He made a harsh noise and his fist went into her hair, but he didn’t force her to stop. When she offered her mouth this time, he took it like a starving man, without hesitation, greedy and rapacious.
She almost lost herself to that kiss. Her blood was running like wildfire, her oxygen all but eaten up. She longed to let him take control, but she also needed to prove to both of them that she wasn’t alone in this sea of lust.
She ran her hands over his buttocks, then traced her fingers beneath the waistband of his pants until she came to the front.
She unbuckled and unzipped, stepped back enough to open his pants and push them down his hips. Then she eased the black line of his shorts down, exposing the thick flesh that had been keeping her up nights. Her breaths were coming in deep pants, like she’d been running for an hour, breasts rising and falling.
“You’ve taken this far enough,” he said grimly, catching her hand before she touched him.
“You don’t want me to?” She looked up at him with craving nearly blinding her.
Whatever he saw in her expression caused his own pupils to expand. The heat between them was like flames, licking back and forth, scorching. Shadows of struggle fought with a glaze of desperate hunger in his eyes.
“I want to,” she assured him in a husky whisper, sinking to her knees before him.
She didn’t know exactly what to do, but there didn’t seem to be a wrong move as she lightly caressed and explored, getting to know his shape. Her first touch had him sucking in a breath. His flesh seemed to welcome her grasp with pulses of enjoyment. He muttered imprecations between ragged breaths, but didn’t stop her.
He watched her with a fierce, avid gaze that only encouraged her to steady him for the first dab of her tongue.
Then he tipped back his head and groaned loudly at the ceiling, like it was pain and pleasure combined. She lost herself then, did everything she could to pleasure him with exactly as much devotion as he had shown her in the Bedouin tent. And when he was reaching the peak of his endurance, when his hand was in her hair and he was warning her he couldn’t last, she was so aroused, she couldn’t resist touching herself and finding release at the same time he did.
* * *
Karim left his stained, sweat-damp clothing on the floor of the closet and dressed in fresh pants and a shirt, shaken and stunned—utterly stunned—by what his wife had just done to him.
He came back into the main room and she was already gone from the bathroom where she had retreated moments after taking him to such heights of ecstasy that he had thought he was dying.
What a way to go.
He looked around the room he passionately hated and knew his regard for it had been completely rewritten. He would always think of her now, when he was in here. Galila on her knees before him, hair a silk rope that bound both his fists to the back of her head. Her mouth working over his tip, her slender fingers a vice of pleasure around his shaft. And then, when his fantasy-turned-reality could not possibly have become more erotic, she had burrowed her hand beneath her skirt and pleasure had hummed in her throat as they found satisfaction together.
How could any man withstand such a thing?
He ran his hand down his face, trying to put his melted features into some semblance of control before he had to rejoin his staff, let alone ambassadors from around the world.
He had been avoiding her, it was true. The more he wanted her, the more he fought against going to her. Making himself wait until their “wedding night” had seemed a suitable, if arbitrary way of proving he could control his lust and resist her.
Like hell. He had lost the battle the second he’d been told she was waiting for him, never mind when she had sidled up to him and kissed him.
This had been a defeat, one he already regretted, even as his blood purred in his veins and every bit of tension in his body had left him.
With regret, he squatted and swept his hand across the nap of the carpet, erasing where his own footprints faced the impression of her knees.
As he squatted there, from this vantage, he was the height he had been when his father had sat at that desk, rambling about things Karim hadn’t even comprehended.
I love her. Do you understand? Your mother can never know. She doesn’t know. Doesn’t understand what this kind of love is like. Pray you never experience it, my son. It destroys your soul. And now she says it’s over. How do I go on? I can’t. Do you understand, Karim? I cannot live without her. I’m sorry, but I can’t.
Karim hadn’t understood. But the memory was a timely reminder as to why he had been trying to avoid giving in to his desire for Galila. Such intense passion could very easily become addictive. Obsessive and soul-destroying.
As he straightened, he pulled on the cloak of control he’d been wearing since bringing her here, determined to set her at a distance and keep her there. Permanently this time.
It wasn’t easy. An hour later, she arrived at his side wearing a hijab, since the ambassador and his wife were Muslim. Somehow her conservative gown and face framed in closely draped indigo were more provocative than one of her knee-length skirts with a fitted jacket.
Galila was beautiful no matter what she wore, but he could barely keep his gaze off the lips that had left a stain of pink on his flesh, or the lashes that had framed the wide eyes that had looked up at him.
He quickly made a remark about a political situation and drew the ambassador aside so he wouldn’t embarrass himself by becoming freshly aroused.
This constant flow of dinners and entertaining had been partly a series of prescheduled meetings, but also a necessary means of introducing his wife to key dignitaries before the celebration that would cement her as his wife and queen. Their marriage had been surprise enough. With all the rumblings of concern at lower levels, he had to ensure she was accepted.
Galila, he had to acknowledge, had a particular gift for charming people onto her side. She flowed effortlessly from small talk over the best shoe designer in Milan to a policy discussion. If she had a question, she asked it in a way that never seemed impertinent. If she had an opinion, she always managed to voice it in a way that was nonconfrontational but made her point.
As for the reports he received daily on the various decisions she was making as queen, well, he was grateful to have fewer things to worry about so he could concentrate on the ones that had broader impact.
“Oh, you know my father?” she asked with surprise now, voice drawing Karim back to the dinner and the conversation.
“That’s an overstatement,” the ambassador said with an embarrassed wave of his hand. “I met him, well, it must have been thirty years ago? I was quite young, just starting my first career as a translator. He came to our country as part of a diplomatic tour. He has such a sharp mind. I very much admired him and only wanted to express my concern for his health, given he stepped aside recently. I hope he’s well?”
“Grieving my mother.” Galila stiffened slightly, just enough for Karim to notice, but this was another area where she seemed to finesse her way without a misstep.