The Last Prince of Dahaar(44)
His fingers moved over her neck, to the slight opening of her shirt. His tongue laved at her lower lip again, and his hand covered her breast, the tips of his fingers splayed against the shape.
She jerked, a pang of delicious need shooting down between her legs.
He didn’t move his hand farther, his harsh breaths the only sounds around them. His lips caressed her neck, breathing words into her very cells. “You are turning me inside out, Zohra.”
Her name on his mouth, the ragged edge of need in it was an intimate caress, a crack in the fortress around him.
She clasped her fingers around his wrist, and held his palm over her breast, needing the pleasure only he could give. She pushed herself into his touch, shuddering as the tip of his finger grazed her taut nipple. Need knotted there.
His hand tightened over her breast and she moaned.
Before she could draw a much-needed breath, she felt the air around her turn chilly, felt the sharp sting of his retreat.
His cheekbones were flushed with color under the olive skin, his eyes hazy with desire. His chest rose and fell with each breath. His fingers held her with a hard grip. The first sign that not every aspect of him was under control.
Except, he released her and stepped back. Her gut tensed.
She moved closer to him again, every sense alive, as though waking from a long slumber. “Don’t call it a mistake.”
He didn’t. The bleakness in his gaze, the tension simmering around him said it all. “I should not have stayed back or asked to see you.” He ran a hand through his hair, palpable rage vibrating beneath his jerky movements. “It will not happen again.”
“I have never met another man who detested himself more for what he is, for possessing the smallest weakness. Despite your best efforts, you are a man, not God. There is a limit to how much you can rise above a man’s needs and desires.”
“God...Zohra? I am barely even a man.”
“By whose standards? Will you forever measure yourself against your brother?”
A muscle tightened in his jaw, his gaze flashing absolute fury. “Don’t. You. Dare. Mention. Him.”
Zohra backed down. She couldn’t bear to see the anguish in his expression. She took his fist in her hands, unclenching his long fingers one by one.
Ayaan closed his eyes, unable to think with her hand in his. Her skin was soft against his, her fingers trembling. He shivered, every cell in him hungering for her, to touch and shape every rise and dip of her body, to give in to what both of them wanted. Would she be that soft everywhere? Would she welcome his touch everywhere as eagerly as she had enjoyed his kiss? Would she be shocked at all the ways he thought of having her?
“You like being near me, you like touching me,” she said, the boldness she sought not hiding the little shiver spewing into her words. “That’s why you are here. You made a conscious decision, didn’t you, Ayaan?”
He drew a ragged breath in, realized why she had never uttered his name. His name on her lips sounded like an intimate caress that crossed an invisible boundary that neither of them had wanted to breach.
“Tonight you decided to indulge yourself. But tomorrow you will despise yourself for taking this moment. You can’t even bear to look at me.”
He snatched his hand back, shock robbing him of speech. Every word she said could have been plucked out of his mind. Almost as though she had a direct line to his thoughts.