The Sheikh’s Disobedient Bride(48)
Pain flickered through him, orange spots before his eyes and he curled the fingers of his right hand into a fist. All these years and he still remembered, all these years he felt the same shock and despair.
If Ara hadn’t opened the gates for the others…if Ara had just done what he’d always told her to do. If she’d listened, if she’d been less brave…
Tair’s hand opened and clenched again, and as he clenched his fist, the muscles corded all the way up his arm, tightening, squeezing.
He missed them. He’d missed his wife and son more than he could admit, more than he could bear.
Zaki in his arms, Zaki dying, Zaki’s blood running, spilling, no way to save the child he’d loved from the moment of conception in his mother’s womb.
Tair closed his eyes.My son, I have never forgotten you. My son, I will never forget.
“Tair.”
The soft voice, warm, tender, whispered to him and for a moment he could have sworn it was Ara. Ara speaking.
“Tair. What are you thinking?”
But of course it wasn’t Ara. Ara was dead.
He opened his eyes, and even though he knew Ara was gone, he half expected to see her standing there, Ara his brave heart, his courageous foolish dead wife.
“Tair.” Tally had climbed from the pool and she was naked, wet, shivering. “You’re so far away. What are you thinking?”
Tair looked at her, slender, bare, beautiful woman and he held out a hand to her and she came to him as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And maybe it was.
Tally felt Tair fold her to him and seconds ago she’d been cold, and yet in his arms she felt warm, nearly as warm as he was. Instinctively she lifted her face, wanting his kiss, needing his kiss, sensing that just maybe he needed her kiss, too. Men were so complicated and simple—male, hard, arrogant, but then tender on the inside with their profound need for a woman’s touch. For a woman’s love.
Hot tears burned the back of her eyes and a lump filled her throat as she felt Tair draw her closer, fitting her naked body to his. She ought to feel self-conscious, ought to feel strange with him but there was nothing strange in being held in his arms, or being close against his heart. He with his wounds across his chest had been wounded in other ways, and she didn’t know what those wounds were but they mattered to her.
He mattered to her.
Maybe more than her own freedom.
CHAPTER TEN
WITHher still pressed to him, Tair began walking backward, leading her away from the pool and into his room.
As he walked, he kissed the side of her neck, just beneath her earlobe, and then worked his way down all the way to her collarbone. Hot forks of sensation raced through her and she couldn’t suppress the shivers of pleasure.
She knew where he was going, seeing his great bed with the silk coverlet from the corner of her eye. “Is this wise?” she whispered, forced to cling to him, her legs weak as he kissed the rise of her collarbone and then the small hollow at her throat.
“Yes,” he murmured against her skin, “very wise. I’m losing my patience with waiting to make you mine.”
His deep rough voice hummed and vibrated through her. Her head spun, dizzy from her shallow breathing and yet she couldn’t slow her pulse, her heart beating too hard and fast. Tally felt wild with desire and excitement. How was it possible to feel so much? She was exquisitely aware of his hands, his mouth, his warmth and frantically sucked in air as he cupped her breasts, letting the weight of them fill his hands.
There was something so seductive and yet so gratifying in his touch. She recognized him at a level that couldn’t be explained. But she knew him in some deep primal part of her, knew him as a man, and her man. And yes, she thought, arms wrapping around his neck, her skin alive, body rippling, she was his. His.
Tally pressed closer, impatiently unbuttoning his shirt to kiss the warm spice-scented skin that stretched across his chest, the warm fragrant skin just above the scars. She’d never been bold with men but Tair made her brave, Tair made her want to seize all the life she could and make it hers, including sex, if not love. And opening his shirt wider, she touched her lips to the scars marring his chest thinking this is where she wanted him to want her, carry her, here in his heart.
His horrible awful barbarian heart.
The heart she wanted more than anything.
He lifted his head to look down into her eyes. “You know you’re mine. You know there’s no leaving me. This is where you belong. You know this now.”
His words rushed over her, through her, even as his voice hummed in her veins and skin. It was hard to think clearly, hard to think of anything at all but getting closer, eliminating the last bit of distance between them. She needed him, not just his mouth and mind, but his body, his powerful fearsome body with the corded tendons and rippling strength, the biceps and quadriceps, the roping of muscle beneath bronzed warrior skin.