THE TRUE KING OF DAHAAR(68)
Here in the palace there was still a fragile thread of sanity intact inside her, a small shred of propriety.
She scooped up a handful of water and threw it on her face, to stifle the hysterical little laugh that threatened to escape her.
It was so pathetic—this tiny little nod to decorum, this bone-deep clinging to tradition when her entire world was crumbling under the weight of her very own confusion.
Pulling her wet hair back with one hand, she reached for a towel, when he suddenly appeared at the entrance to the bathroom.
His jet-black hair gleamed with wetness, his unshaved chin adding to the dangerous glint in his dark eyes. His collarbone stuck out from the opening of his white cotton shirt.
The sheer decadence of the marble-and-gold decor, the glitter of the mirror that caught the tiny little lights from the chandelier in the dome-shaped ceiling, the extravagantly soft cotton in her fingers—everything she had marveled over on her first night here in the palace—vanished in his presence.
Nothing could match the stark power of the man looking at her as though he owned her. Nothing could add or take away from the raw sensuality that was a very part of his nature.
He didn’t say a word, his gaze traveling over her nakedness thoroughly, the fire in it burning higher and hotter. And she didn’t shy from it, though her fingers tightened over the towel.
“Get out of the tub.”
His words, spoken in low, raw tones did what the savage gleam in his eyes hadn’t. It sent a prickle of apprehension across her skin, drawing goose bumps. Something felt wrong, something more than the fact that she had pushed him into reliving his worst nightmare because she had wanted to be sure she had made the right decision.
“I’m sorry about last night, Azeez. I never meant to push you—”
He leveled another look at her, and more words wouldn’t come. A chill that had nothing to do with her nudity clamped her spine. Shivering, she took the chance to dry her skin.
The sound of the water whooshing out of the tub was gone, leaving them in heavy, sweltering silence. She dragged the towel against herself over one arm, then the other. His looming presence called to her like nothing she had ever known, and she looked up.
Molten fire blazed in his eyes. The fire of the desire between them, she understood. But this thing that was swelling and arcing between them, it was tempered with something else, something that she didn’t understand.
She was already as fragile as a house of cards. One harsh breath of air and she felt as if she would come undone.
He had never refrained from telling her what he thought, never held back the force of his passion, or fury or anything.
Holding one edge of the towel over her breasts, she pressed it to her midriff, and suddenly realized he was within touching distance. A soft gasp fell from her mouth as he plucked the towel from her hand, threw it behind him. His long fingers clasped tight around her wrist, he pulled her forward until she landed against his chest, splashing his unbuttoned cotton shirt with drops of water.
Her fingers latched on to the soft fabric, her nipples tightening into needy little points. And then and only then did she realize the storm of fierce emotion that he was holding at bay with sheer will. It was in the way his fingers held her hips—pressing, possessing, branding instead of caressing, in the way he pushed the rigid length of his arousal into her belly, in the way he shivered, as if it cost him every ounce of control not to snap.