He’d just called her the most beautiful creature in the universe. He probably didn’t realize he had spoken in his native tongue, or he would have tagged it with a translation.
“J…” Her voice vanished on a convulsive swallow as he drew nearer still, as if to inhale her name when she uttered it like the most pleasurable fragrance, like life-sustaining air.
And she realized she couldn’t tell him who she was.
If she did, he’d pull back. There would be embarrassment, consternation followed by distance and decorum. And she couldn’t bear to lose this moment of spontaneity with him.
It would be the last thing she had of him.
“Gemma.”
She almost slapped herself upside the head. Gemma? Did she have to go for a literal translation? How obvious could she get?
But then, she’d started to say her name, and he would have thought it suspicious if she’d gone on to say Dana or Sara or something. Gemma had been the only name that had come to her that started with a
J
sound.
Before she made it worse, she had to tell him how nice it was to meet him and walk away.
Run
away. Without looking back. She had the rest of her life to look back on this magical encounter.
He thwarted her feverish plans, pressed her head closer as he sighed his contentment. “Gemma. Perfect,
ya joharti.
” She lurched at hearing her real name. Before she could have a heart attack, he loosened his embrace, smiled his pleasure. “That’s ‘my jewel’ in my mother tongue. So, my precious Gemma, will you come with me?”
“Where?” she choked.
“As long as you’re with me, does it matter?”
Not to Johara. Not when measured against wringing this opportunity to be with Shaheen of its last possible glance and smile, touch and comeback. Of the sheer unbridled joy of being the object of his interest, the target of his appreciation, the instigator of his desire.
Another breaker of pleasure frothed inside her as she beheld him, a vision made man, sitting across from her in the exclusive restaurant he’d made literally so for their dinner.
They’d been talking nonstop since they’d left McCormick’s penthouse. She’d answered his questions about herself without specifying names or places, and nothing she told him had rung any bells. That still rankled, but her thankfulness for this time out of time his unawareness afforded her with him surpassed any disappointment.
“Do you want to know what the maitre d’ told me after emptying the restaurant?” His eyes glittered at her as his hand covered her upturned palm with hypnotic strokes. “That such heavy-handed tactics wouldn’t work on a lady of such refinement as you.”
She giggled, surrendered her hand to his possession. “A very astute gentleman.”
He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I wish you had told me that before
he
emptied half of my supposed no-limit credit card.”
She giggled again at his mock woe. Even in her upheaval, the thrill rose. Her fantasies throughout the years had gotten it right. Their connection
was
there. And he was showering her with the delighted, delighting banter that had always textured and colored her life.
He remained the man she’d loved since she could remember. No, he was better than that man. Much, much better.
She sighed at the bittersweetness of it all. “But seriously, you shouldn’t have gone to any expense. I thought we’d agreed it didn’t matter where we were.”
“I wanted to be alone with you.”
“We could have been alone walking down the pier.”
“That did occur to me, but you’re not dressed for the cold night.” He lowered his gaze as if pondering the pattern he was painting with his fingers on her palm. He raised his eyes a moment later and she gasped. Gentleness and humor were gone, that grim god of the desert back. She shuddered with the fierceness of her response. “You know where I really want to be alone with you, Gemma. In my place. In my bed.”
She squeezed her eyelids shut as emotion tore through her.
She couldn’t handle this. She shouldn’t have sought him out…
His tough rider’s fingers smoothed over her eyes, making her open them, so that there was no escaping his fierceness, his intention. “I want you, Gemma. I never knew wanting like this existed, that I could feel anything of this intensity and purity.”
“Purity?”
“Yes. It’s unclouded, untainted, absolute. I want you, in every way. And you want me in the same way. I know I wouldn’t be feeling like this if you didn’t also. My desire surges from me as much as it stems from you. It flows to you and is reflected back at me exponentially, then back to you in a never-ending cycle. It’s taking on a life of its own, growing too powerful to deny. With every breath its power heightens, sharpens. Will you let me fulfill our desire? Will you let me worship you?”
“Shaheen, please—”
He suddenly pushed his chair back, stood up. Before her heart could stumble on its next beat, he was bending to pluck her from her chair and into his arms. Her head lolled back over his arm with shock as he tightened his hold behind her back, beneath her knees and buried his lips in the neck she exposed to him. “This is all I want to do. Please you. I never want to stop pleasing you.”
Voices yelled inside her head.
Tell him who you are. He’ll stop this torment the moment he realizes your identity.
And he’d be furious with her for hiding it. She couldn’t let it end like that. With him feeling deceived. And hating her.
She had to say no. He’d abide by her refusal. She hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. From the moment he’d caught her eyes and zapped her control across the room, she’d been reacting without volition.
Then she opened her mouth and without any trace of it she whispered, “Yes. Please.”
After he swept her into his arms and obtained her unconditional capitulation, he put her down, let her walk out of the restaurant and to his limo. He gave his driver an order in Arabic to take the most roundabout way home then sat beside her talking, about everything under the sun. All through the long drive to his penthouse, he didn’t touch her at all, except for resuming his thorough fascination with her hand.
For a stretch, he showed her family photos on his phone. He had a few of his father and brothers. They looked much like she remembered, just older and harsher towering specimens of manhood. But the photos were mostly of his aunt Bahiyah, his half sister, Aliyah, and his cousin, Laylah, the only three females born in their family in five generations straight. Shaheen said they were the only ones worth taking and keeping photos of, the vivacious centerpieces of their all-male family, splashes of beauty and grace and exuberance among the range of darkness and drive of what the ladies called their testosterone-compromised relatives.
Aliyah, who was three years older than Johara and who’d seldom been around in the eight years Johara had lived in the palace, had been thought to be King Atef’s niece. It was only two years ago that it had been revealed that Princess Bahiyah had adopted her and passed her off as hers from her American husband, when she was actually the king’s daughter from an American lover. Instead of causing a scandal, the discovery had aborted the looming wars in the region when Aliyah entered a political marriage with the new king of Judar, Kamal Aal Masood.
Aliyah looked nothing like the sallow, spaced-out girl she remembered. In fact, she looked the epitome of femininity and elegance. And bliss. It was apparent her forced marriage to Kamal had become a love match. Like Shaheen’s impending marriage would no doubt become. For what woman wouldn’t worship him?
She blinked away the mist of dejection and concentrated on Laylah’s photos. The twelve-year old girl she’d been when Johara had last seen her had fulfilled all the promise she’d shown of becoming a spectacular beauty. Johara had never had a chance to really know her, since Laylah’s mother, Queen Sondoss’s sister, had never let her mingle with the help, as Aram had put it.
Shaheen said Laylah was one of three reasons he forgave his stepmother for existing, since she’d married her sister to his uncle, the other two being his half brothers, Haidar and Jalal. He also said that the ladies reveled in giving their male family members—especially Shaheen and his brothers—a view of a life that didn’t have to bend to their wishes. Because of that, along with many other things he could see they shared with Johara, he was certain they would set the palace on fire getting along.
Everything he said alluded to his taking it for granted that her presence in his life would continue beyond tonight. But he must know there was no chance of that.
Yet not only had he already secured her surrender, so he had no reason to say anything more to encourage it, he seemed to believe in what he was saying, to have forgotten the marriage of state he’d announced his intention to enter only four days ago.
She guessed that the marriage was what had been weighing so heavily on him when she’d first seen him. He was loathe to succumb to duty. But it seemed to have slipped his mind since he’d seen her.
She wouldn’t remind him. They’d both remember harsh reality soon enough, live with it for the rest of their lives.
Tonight was theirs.
So here she was, standing in the middle of his extensive, austerely masculine foyer, watching him as he hung his jacket and her wrap with tranquil, precise movements.
Why was he wasting their precious time together?
She might not have known what to expect, but she’d thought he’d escalate the urgency he’d shown so far. She’d had visions of him carrying her to the limo, drowning her in kisses all the way here, pressing her against the door the moment they entered and showing her how eager for her he was.
Had he remembered his commitments and decided to cool things off, let her down easy?
She should spare him the discomfort, should leave. She shouldn’t have come at all, shouldn’t have said yes, shouldn’t have gone to that party…
Something whirred, flashed. She blinked in surprise, her left eye riddled in blue spots.
He’d snapped a photo of her with his phone. Now he walked toward her, big and lithe, gloriously male and impossibly beautiful. But it was his expression that made her sway, sending her heart swinging in her chest like a pendulum.
The lightness of the trek here was gone, sizzling sensuality replacing it, setting his eyes deeper on fire and his charisma to a higher level.
He stopped a foot away, reached for the hands he seemed so enamored with. “You looked so…pensive. And if possible, even more breathtaking. This photo is the stuff of the immortal masterpieces the old masters would have begged to portray.” He took her hands to his lips, giving each finger a knuckle-by-knuckle introduction to the cosseting of his lips, his eyes empty of all but seriousness. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“No.” The denial shot out of her, its fierceness mortifying her as it rang around them. But she had to know. “A-are you?”
He huffed. “The only thoughts I’m having are where to begin worshipping you and how to stop from swallowing you whole.”
So that was why he was holding back. He feared being too aggressive. She was being insecure again.
But who could blame her? All through the years, her love for him had been emotional, spiritual, with slight sensual overtones. She’d never imagined he could actually want her, and when she’d fantasized that he did, even in the freedom of her own imagination, he’d done no more than hold and kiss her. Yet she couldn’t breathe with wanting all he was willing to give her, with needing to experience him to the fullest.
She swayed closer, her heartbeats merging like the wings of a hummingbird with the enormity of what she was feeling, what she was about to reveal. “B-begin anywhere, Shaheen. J-just begin. And don’t stop your self. I don’t want you to stop.”
His eyes flared with her every faltering word. When she fell into embarrassed, panting silence, he entwined her hands in his, brought them to her face, twisting their embrace around so the backs of his hands stroked up and down her flaming cheeks.
“Then I’ll begin here. Your skin. It’s incredible, like every part of you. Lush, thick cream, free of paleness and fragility. It doesn’t flush with your emotions, no matter how strong, only becomes more vital, more vivid. It’s glowing now. Your eyes are gleaming like polished onyxes under spotlights, inundating me with an avalanche of expressions, each intoxicating in its clarity and beauty. And your lips. The way they mold to your every thought, the way they take the shape of your every emotion, the way they tremble to the frequency of each sensation…each tremor shudders through me until I am nothing but uncontainable hunger.”
She almost choked with stimulation. “I was right. You are made up of nothing but original bones and poetic cells.”
His lips twitched in a lethal mix of appreciation and predation as he touched the pad of his thumb to hers, stilling those tremors that so affected him. “It seems you didn’t hear my last words clearly.”
Her lips trembled even more as humor warred with anticipation and agitation. He rubbed his thumbs against them, his breathing becoming harsher.
She closed her eyes to savor the long-dreamed-about sensations. Her wildest imaginings hadn’t prepared her for reality. She moaned with the pleasure that corkscrewed through her, emanating from his breath, his nearness, his touch, to her every inch, her deepest reaches. Then her lips did what they’d been longing to do for most of her life—caressed the fragrant warmth and power pressed to them with a trembling kiss.
She heard his intake of breath. It sliced away more of the leashes of her inhibition. She opened her lips, grazed her teeth against his skin. Its texture, its scent, brought more moist heat surging from her core.
A fiercer inhalation expanded his chest until it pressed against her swelling breasts. She knew he could scent her arousal, felt the wildness it sent seething through him. It made her light-headed, the knowledge that she could do this to him, that he was doing this to her, that they had this to share.
Feeling bolder, she swept her tongue against his skin. Her knees did buckle at her first taste of him. He disentangled his other hand, caught her around the waist. She kept her eyes closed as she dove deeper into the sensations, her whole existence centering on his thumb against her tongue as he began to thrust it gently in and out of her mouth.
“This is extremely dangerous.” His bass hiss made her eyes snap open. His bore into them before moving to her lips with burning intent as he fed them his thumb, as they suckled it with increasing greed and abandon. She knew what he meant. He still elaborated. “That you want me as fiercely as I want you.”
She nodded, breath leaving her body under choppy pressure. She felt she was disintegrating with need for him.
He let go of her waist, grazed across her lower teeth as he slid his thumb lingeringly from between her lips, then dropped his forehead to hers, nuzzling her, inhaling her. “This is unparalleled. Agonizing but sublime.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Though she had no experience to back up her belief, she knew the protracted inflammation of their senses was far more satisfying than any frenzied mindless coupling would be.
He eased her away only to glide both arms around her back, to her dress’s zipper. He slid it down with torturous slowness, never letting go of her eyes as he went back up to unclasp her bra. She gasped as its constriction eased, and again at the spike of ferocity in his eyes as he monitored her reaction. He drew more gasps from her as he caressed her dress and bra loose, then in one silky sweep, freed her from their shackles.
Before she could snap her arms across her nakedness, he dragged her dress beyond her waist to her hips, dropping downward with it. He ended up on his knees before her.
Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. From unbearable stimulation. From the way he looked her up and down, as if he would truly gobble her up.
Then he pulled her to him, rumbling, “Now, I worship you.”
She would have keeled over him if his shoulders hadn’t stopped her forward pitch. He added to her imbalance, burying hot lips into her flesh. She whimpered at each press into her abdomen, every tongue thrust into her navel, each tooth drag across her breasts. Her moans sharpened as he gently clamped her nipples, until a cry rushed out at his first hard pull. “Shaheen…
please.
”
In answer, he bunched her skirt in his hands, his thumbs hooking into the top of her panties. Then, in one magical move, every shred of covering was shed off of her.
Standing in nothing but her shoes with her clothes pooled at her feet, she felt the world recede. Shaheen looked up, the worshipping he’d promised her setting the hard nobility of his face ablaze.
This was beyond unprecedented. Beyond unparalleled.
She was with Shaheen.
Standing before him naked. She was about to be his in the flesh, just as she was already his in every other way.
She watched as he raised each leg to kiss and fondle from calf to thigh, her consciousness flickering like a bulb about to short out. She heard his magnificent voice as he raggedly lavished far better than poetry on her, spontaneous wonder pouring out in whatever language expressed it best.
She moaned constantly, becoming a literal puddle of arousal by the time he rose. She would have collapsed at his feet if he hadn’t swept her up as he stood.
When she flopped in his arms like a ragdoll, he whispered into her ear, “Wrap yourself around me, my Gemma. Cling to me with all of your priceless flesh and desire.”
That injected power into her limp muscles. She wanted to.
He
wanted her to. She only ever wished to give him what he wanted.
She clasped her arms around his shoulders, her thighs around his hips. And it was indescribable. Feeling all of his heat and bulk and power and arousal encased within her limbs, being draped around all of that. She’d be forever empty and anchorless when she no longer had him to enfold, to hang on to like this.
But she had him now.
She rested her head against his shoulder as he strode across his penthouse with her clasped in his arms. Her eyes remained open, but she registered only impressions of his character, his taste and wealth imbuing the spaces, all the more impressive for being unpretentious. Then he crossed into a bedroom. His bedroom.
This was the last thing she’d expected would happen when she’d embarked upon her mission to see him one last time. That she’d end up in his bedroom. In his bed.
But she wanted to be here more than literally anything.
Her senses revved out of their stupor. This was where he slept, where he woke up, where he read and showered and shaved, where he dressed and undressed. Where he pleasured himself. And where she was convinced he’d never pleasured another.
This was his sanctum, when he lived in New York. And he was giving her the exclusive privilege of being here. It would be a one-time pass. She had to make all she could of it.
The huge, high-ceilinged room was lit with only a bedside lamp. Her gaze, avid to soak in more of his privacies and secrets, had just registered the slashes of bold décor, gradations of dark grays and greens with accents of hardwood the color of his eyes when her wandering ones came to a hiccupping halt.