The Sheikh’s Bargain Bride(46)

He didn’t make love to her again immediately but simply took time to indulge himself in the pleasure of looking at Anna’s beauty: her cool, blonde hair, blonder where the harsh desert sun had caught the top-most strands, more golden beneath. Fine hair, that poured like silk over the pillow and his muscled, brown fore-arm. He loved watching Anna’s pleasure: it was not superficial, but a deeply-felt thing that took its time forming and took its time dissipating. He loved watching her and absorbing the fact that somehow she had come to mean more to him than he did himself.

Strangely the thought didn’t appall him, it was so right. She completed him in a way that he didn’t even know was necessary. The only thing that appalled him was how he’d used her: the angry, bitter things he’d said to her when he’d believed she was not only married to his brother but, later, pregnant with his child; the force with which he’d coerced her into marrying him; the way he’d trapped this beautiful, free woman who didn’t ever deserve to be trapped again.

He lay alongside her but not touching her for a long time. Her eyes fluttered from time to time and drifted into a light sleep before awaking with that slow, pleasurable stretching of the limbs, the same sensuous pleasure gained from the feel of the fine cotton sheets against her body. Then she’d turn, knowing he was there, aware that he was still watching her but totally unselfconscious, she’d return his gaze.

Only then did he reach out for her. He needed to know her—every part of her, needed to press it into his memory. His hand hesitated briefly before his fingers pressed lightly to her temples before brushing down her face, her neck. There he stayed, fascinated by the solid push of skin containing her pulse—the beat of her heart. But he couldn’t touch that tiny patch of skin—it held too much that he wanted. It put fear into his heart because it seemed so fragile a thing to contain so much life.

Then her hand came over his and wove her fingers into his and pushed them high above them together, a union   of flesh, bone and sinew in the soft light of the drizzly afternoon. She twisted their hands first one way and then the other. His dark brown skin a stark contrast to her moon-white flesh; his large, muscled fingers and hand obedient to the sway and pull of her slender white fingers.

Then she pulled their hands to her lips and closed her eyes and kissed their joint fists. She opened her eyes and continued to gaze at their hands as tightly entwined as a heart.

“Something’s changed.”

Her words were so soft they seemed to come from an echo of his own thoughts. When she looked at him he realized the words were hers. He nodded.

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“I can’t. You won’t like it.”

“That’s never stopped you telling me things before. Try me.”

How could he put into words how much she was to him now, how he felt their lives and souls were entwined in a way that he knew would be repugnant to the woman who had always stated that her one desire was to live independently of people, of family, to be free. It would be the one thing that would drive her away. And he could never use force to keep her again.

“I’ll show you instead.”

She’d never before heard his voice so tender, never felt his touch so tentative as if exploring the unknown. Whether he was unsure of her reaction or of his own, she didn’t know. All she knew for certain was that something had definitely changed within him.

She knew that he felt responsible for his brother’s death, guilty that his harsh world-view had trapped his brother in a life from which he could have rescued him, if he’d only been more open. It was as if the knowledge had crack the tough outer shell with which Zahir faced the world.

He held himself above her and kissed her lingeringly on the lips. His knees positioned between hers, wedging open her legs, she felt the pulse of her body there, as he kissed the pulse in her neck and then down further. He cupped each hand under her breasts and suckled each nipple in turn until he was satisfied. But she wasn’t. She moaned and lifted up her hips to wrap her legs around his. But he wasn’t ready yet. He smiled and shook his head as he dipped his mouth to kiss her lower, much lower, sucking and nipping her sensitive skin and tasting her arousal until she shook and cried out his name.

It was her turn now and she swiftly slid down the bed and took him fully into her mouth, wanting to taste him as he had tasted her. She felt his buttocks clench under her hands as she pulled and sucked him into her mouth, loving the feel of his shaft against her lips, loving the taste of him against her tongue, and loving the fact that his control was finally breaking down.