To Touch a Sheikh (10 page)

She arched her hips up, urging him to fulfill his threat. He stilled her movements, lay on top of her, keeping her eyes captive. She writhed beneath him until he thrust at her, mimicking what she was burning for him to do for real, tremors of receding control traversing his great body.

“Do you feel it, Maram? What you've done to me?”

That was what he'd warned her about. That she was undoing the leash of a being of such destructive potential.

She wasn't worried. She knew things about him he didn't know himself. She knew he'd never lose control. What he was losing was his distance, his separateness. As he had been since they'd arrived here, succumbing to the power of what they had between them, which would only get stronger, better, the more he did.

He reared up. She moaned at losing his anchoring weight. He
didn't give time for disappointment to sink in, turned her onto her back still trapped between his thighs. She surged, reached for him.

He held out a warning finger. “Don't touch me.”

Her mouth dropped open. “That is one thing you
don't
joke about.”

He caught her grasping hands, slammed them down to the bed in one of his. “No touching. For your own protection. We have no idea what I'll turn into at your touch, remember?”

She keened as her salivary glands stung. She was literally drooling over him, needed her lips and tongue on his flesh, her teeth in it. “That's not protection. That's the punishment you were threatening.”

“That, too.” His ruthless smile had blood thundering in her head, her loins. Then he brought it to a boil as he released her hands only to slide down her body, sweeping her panties all the way off her feet. He rocked back on his heels and stilled as he looked on her full nakedness for the first time.

A frisson of delicious dread sheared down her spine at the look in his eyes. When he finally took her, he would shatter her.

If she didn't shatter first with wanting him too much.

“Beauty like this won't go unpunished,
ya saherati.
”

She sobbed, her delight that he found her as beautiful as everything about him confessed, her protest that he'd call her his witch when he was the one incapacitating her with his spell.

He took her feet in both hands, alternated his lips between them. They quaked at each electrifying touch, at the more enervating thought of having him kiss her feet. He firmed his grip then did worse, forcing her to withstand the sight, the sensations as he suckled her toes, rumbling his enjoyment. “This is another thing I almost had accidents fantasizing about.”

When he made sure he'd blown her every fuse, he moved up to her calves, trailed up a path of sensual destruction to her inner thighs. He opened his mouth over her tender flesh, making her feel he was devouring her for real. “And when
this
exploded in
my mind, I always did something drastic. Now you know why I'm called the Mad Prince.”

Her body contorted under his onslaught, breath shearing its way into her lungs. “You didn't have to be. I was always yours for the taking, you magnificent fool.”

He looked up, eyes twin emerald infernos, sable hair raining over his leonine forehead. Then, with his mouth set, he slid back up her body, igniting every fuse she'd thought burned out until he thrust at her through his clothing, bent to her breasts and introduced her to a new level of mindlessness.

Between long, hard pulls on her nipples, he swirled them with his tongue, grazed them with his teeth, blew the stimulation of his demands on them. “Why don't you tell me some more, about how you're mine? Emphasize the ‘for the taking' part.”

Her hands trembled between them, flailing over the zipper keeping him from her. “Nothing…to emphasize…I'm yours…so take me.”

In answer he only stopped her fumbling hands, came over her, straddled her midriff, unzipped his pants, slowly. Oh, so slowly.

A clench of intimidation sank its talons in her gut and core at the sight of his girth and length even as everything inside her flooded at his beauty and sleekness. She craved his occupation, not only for the ecstasy it would wring from her flesh, but because she'd also have full intimacy with his desire and essence. With him. Giving her pleasure without that
was
punishment.

He held his shaft, doing what her hands, now imprisoned by his thighs, burned to do, stroking himself inches from her.

“Is this what you want?”

She had no words to say how much. She nodded frantically.

“Thrilled to know. Because you can't have it.” A smothered shriek of frustration escaped her as she managed to free her hands. He held them back, kept her from lunging for him, his smile almost smoking with sensual malice. “Not yet.”

Before she could contest his mercilessness, he slid down her body again, his hand gliding over her quivering flesh until he
cupped her mound. She lurched up into his hold and his deft fingers nudged her soaked folds apart. The blow of sensation, of having his fingers gliding along her most intimate flesh, paralyzed her. He swallowed her keen, stroked her to the rhythm of his thrusting tongue inside her mouth. She was too inflamed, would find release with just one more touch…

He withdrew before giving it to her. She lay limp, watching him going lower, until he lay on the bed on his stomach, between her thighs, draping both over his back. He breathed her in, growling his appreciation over her engorged flesh. That lashed her out of her stupor, had her clawing at him.

He groaned his pleasure as her fingers sank in his scalp, his shoulders. “I've been going insane for four years imagining the scent and taste of you. Good thing I couldn't imagine it fully, or I would have invaded Ossaylan and claimed you as a war prize.”

She was about to scoff that if she'd known that was how he felt, she would have raided Zohayd long ago and carried
him
off, when he took her most intimate flesh in a voracious kiss. She keened, arched her hips toward his mouth, giving him every license. He took it all, thrusting light then hard, sweeping short then long, suckling, layering sensation upon sensation until she was buried. He brought her to the edge, snatched her away, never pushing her over, too many times to count.

When her breath fractured, her pleas stifled, he spoke, so close, sending the shock of each syllable throughout her system. “Now give me the sight that I regularly went insane imagining. You, in the throes of pleasure only I can bring you. Come for me, Maram.”

She did, on his command. The discharge of years of craving was so explosive that she writhed with detonation after detonation until she felt her spine might snap.

He had no mercy, slipped two fingers inside her, sharpening her pleasure even as he continued to lap up its flood. He didn't stop until she slumped in his hold, satiated, soothed.

He loomed over her on all fours, watching as she trembled with what he'd done to her. Mute, saturated with pleasure,
hungrier for
him,
she watched emotions emanating from him, coming too fast and thick for her to decipher. To withstand.

But she knew what he was waiting for. One final offering of herself, after the edge of hunger had been assuaged. An unpressured choice. A certain need for him, not prodded by arousal. And she made him the offering.

She spread shaking thighs, reached out quaking arms for him. “Amjad, I only ever craved pleasure
with
you. Take me, I beg you. I've needed you for too long, too.”

Each word seemed to wrench through him. He dragged her thighs around his hips, bunched her hair in a grip that trembled to quell its ferociousness, securing her for his mouth's plundering, his other hand clenching her buttocks.

He transferred the hand in her hair to his shaft as he tilted her hips, ran himself through her flowing need, inflaming her, bathing himself, seeming to struggle to temper his ferocity.

She couldn't bear for him to, cried out, “Come inside me, Amjad, join us. Invade me,
ya habibi, fill
me.” The words
my love
fell on him like a whip. His face twisted in carnal suffering as something seemed to shatter inside him and he plunged into her with the force of the snapping momentum.

She screamed, at the excruciating fullness, beyond her capacity…tearing her apart… “Yes, Amjad, yes…”

But he rested inside her, let her flesh ripple and reform around him, bent to crush her lips in another exercise of abandon.

She opened all she was for him, for his potency and need, tightening around his invasion until he growled, “
Ya Ullah,
so tight,
so right.
Scorching, Maram, annihilating, like I knew you would be.”

Her head thrashed, words fracturing out of her. “I thought I knew how…
you
would be. I knew nothing…
nothing
. Take me,
ya rohi,
finish me…”

“Sahrah.”
His threw his head back at her invocation, calling her a witch on an elemental groan as he withdrew.

Then he rammed back into her, the accumulation of years of frustration and hunger behind the thrust. His hardness scraped
against her, abrading her every nerve for the maximum sensation it could take, the rush of response it could yield. She wanted him to occupy her, wanted to capture him forever, but she was overloading. The feel of him, the sight of him, the
thought
of him, inside her, after so much waiting and craving… Beyond description, beyond her ability to withstand.

She screamed again, at the sensations, with frustration that they were coming so soon. She arched up as she felt her inner flesh rippling around him, everything compacting into a pinpoint of insanity. She felt him everywhere, invading her to her heart, wrapping around her last nerve ending.

And she splintered, ecstasy pulsing from the deepest point inside her, where he was buried, to radiate in one shockwave after another, squeezing her around him inside and out, her arms crushing him to her, satisfaction flooding her along with regret that it would end.

But it didn't seem that it would. He rode her all through, his words pouring fuel on her conflagration. “
Aih, etmatat'ee, ya Maram.
Take your pleasure all over me, take it all.
Take
it.”

With each thrust, the world flickered, diffused, only his beloved face in focus, clenched in pleasure, his eyes vehement with his greed for hers.

She heard her own voice, sobbing her plea. “
Habibi
…you, too. Take your pleasure inside me…give it all to me…”

And he gave. The sight of his face seizing, the feel of him succumbing to the ecstasy
she
gave him,
him,
expanding and throbbing inside her with the powerful pulse of his climax. It had her thrashing, weeping, unable to endure the spike in pleasure.

Everything blurred, wavered, faded…

Heavy breathing and slow heartbeats echoed from the end of a long tunnel. The scent of satisfaction flooded her lungs. Awareness trickled back into a body so sated that it was numb. She felt one thing. Amjad. Still filling her, still hard.

She opened lids weighing a ton each, saw him swim in and out of focus, kneeling between her thighs, her hips pressed to
his, one palm kneading her breasts, the other gliding over her shoulders, her arms, her belly, soothing, cherishing.

Everything he'd given her swamped her with amazement, with gratitude. Her most lavish fantasies of being with him hadn't come close to reality. She felt transfigured, reborn.

She ran a trembling finger down the grooves of his muscles, down to the point where they were merged before looking up at him again, her face quivering on a smile of teasing and adoration. “Overachiever.”

“At your…service.
Any
time. Literally. Guaranteed.”

His chuckle made her shudder all over him. He expanded until the fullness turned into an edge of dominance, a sharpness of sensation that was frightening and more glorious for it. The idea of him, melding with her, at her mercy as she was at his, filled volumes inside her, body and mind and soul.

But he was withdrawing. And she felt something. Or rather, didn't feel it.

When she thought he'd reached completion…he hadn't!

M
aram struggled up on her elbows, gasped as it drove him deeper, had him almost breaching her womb.

His eyes flared as he instinctively flexed his hips, seeking to complete her domination, before he grimaced, continued withdrawing, left her body on a long groan. “I didn't mean right now. I'm a beast, but not that much of one. You need to…recover.”

“You…haven't,” she exclaimed.

His eyebrows shot up. “And here I thought this…” he looked down at his intact erection, his mouth twisting “…means I have.”

She shook her head. He knew what she was talking about, was glossing over it.

One of his eyebrows descended. “Seems you're not all there. Don't get me wrong, it
was
one of my most…ferocious fantasies to make you faint with pleasure, then be in a fugue for a considerable time afterward. I
am
chest-poundingly…smug I succeeded.”

Suddenly, she felt near tears. He had given her that much pleasure and more. But she hadn't given him any. He didn't even want to try again, was pretending it was for her sake that he didn't.

And why would he try again? Once was enough for him to find out she didn't fire his blood as he'd thought she would. And that she knew most men didn't need anyone special to…enjoy themselves…made it worse.

She and her ex hadn't been very compatible. After him, she'd had two brief liaisons with men who'd considered her a passing fancy, as she had them. All three men had had no problem finding satisfaction with her—it had been she who hadn't found them worth sticking around for.

Now she knew how they'd felt when they'd realized they couldn't please her. Only multiplied by a million, because Amjad was the only man she'd ever wanted to please, the one who'd brought her unimaginable pleasure.

Feeling exposed and inadequate, she scrambled for the pillow, ventured a look at him after she'd barricaded herself behind it.

He was rising to his knees, a frown spreading across his face. “What's going on?”

“Nothing. Evidently.” She snatched a look at his undiminished arousal, the evidence that underlined her failure even as it made her insides spasm with needing him there again.

After a nerve-snapping moment, he rasped, “Are you sorry…already?”

She winced. “You would be, when after all this buildup, all these expectations, it all fizzled to nothing.”

“It did?”

She gestured shakily at his evidence it had, the…emptiness inside her incontrovertible proof. “You know it did.”

He lowered his gaze to the mattress, his eyebrows obliterating his eyes, his lower lips caught in his teeth.

He finally raked a hand through his hair, brushing it out of eyes that became bleak as he leveled them on her.

“This is one scenario I hadn't considered. That you'd enjoy it, and it still wouldn't matter…” He stopped, got off the bed.

He dragged his pants on spastically, having difficulty pulling up the zipper over his still-too-impressive manhood.

He stood bathed in the light of the morning-seeping shutters
before he looked back at her, eyes heavy, face shuttered. “So all this was for one roll in the…sand? If that was all you wanted, you should have told me long ago. If I'd known it was a one-off, you wouldn't have needed to go to these lengths to get me to…oblige you, and I wouldn't be in this…”

He bit off some vicious self-imprecation, then strode out of the room, brow furrowed, jaw and hands clenched.

She lay staring at the point where he'd disappeared, her heart shriveling inside her. He…he'd looked so…so…
hurt.

But…if he was, maybe she'd misunderstood. Maybe he
had
enjoyed being with her, but had held back, fearing he'd impregnate her? Or something?

As she replayed the scene, it seemed
he'd
misunderstood, too, thought she'd been talking about herself.

Power poured into her body, propelling her after him.

She found him flat on his back on the settee, one arm thrown over his eyes, the other dangling off its edge. The dejection blasting off him had her heart slamming her forward.

Without taking his arm off his eyes he hissed, “Don't come near me. I advise you not to again until this damn mess is over.”

She didn't falter, reached for his arm.

He jerked it away, snapped up sitting in one impossible move, his eyes almost evaporating her with fury as he took in her nakedness. “What the hell do you want now? Feeling aroused again and sorry you prematurely ended my…services?”

She held her ground, even as she quailed at his barely leashed anger. “I wouldn't end those even at gunpoint.”

Disbelieving disgust crackled from his depth as he started to rise. She put both hands on his shoulders, keeping him in place.

“Take your hands off me, Maram.”

Before he could shake her off she blurted out, “I was talking about you, not me. I meant
I
disappointed you. You gave me…indescribable pleasure, but then I thought I didn't give you the s-same…and…I felt…felt…” Her eyes flooded. “
Did
I? And please,
please
be your skin-flayingly honest self. I need to know the truth.”

He'd gone still as she babbled, his eyes losing their rage, settling into watchfulness, then slow realization before something blasted from them. Relief?

He placed his hands on hers, not to remove them, but to press them tighter to his shoulders. “If you gave me any more pleasure I would have expired. I came close as it was.”

She believed him, as she always did. But…

She whispered her confusion, “Then…why…? How…?”

It was clear he understood what she meant now, the wickedness dawning in his eyes the most welcome thing she'd ever seen, making her realize how brutally the minutes when it had all seemed to have gone wrong had hit her.

He pulled her down on his lap, his smile sensuous taunting and supreme male satisfaction as she gasped at coming into contact with his revived desire. “It seems you've only had experience with…short-term men. I, as you well know, am a
very
long-term man.”

“I thought you wouldn't be…especially after so long.”

He took her lips in a fierce kiss that showed her how much those moments of alienation had affected him, too. “It's because it
was
after so long of wanting you. When I finally had you, I decided to exercise something I learned long ago, so the pleasure wouldn't end.”

She keened as he tasted her from shoulder to breast, his teeth grazing her senses into a riot. “It didn't have to end. We could have started again.”

He hauled her straddling his hips, his hands spread across her back and buttock as he bent her backward. She bowed back, her breasts a wanton offering, her hair touching his thighs at the first pull of his lips on her nipple.

“I wanted it to continue, not end, then restart,” he groaned between suckles and nips. “I never tried this with anyone before, but this…technique was why it appeared I hadn't almost died of pleasure inside you.”

She still didn't know what he was talking about, tried to hold herself back until explanations were out of the way. She failed,
rocked against him, in a fever for him, gasped, “And that's the truth?”

“Apart from the very hard evidence—” he thrust himself at her drenched core for emphasis “—when have I
ever
been less than mutilatingly truthful?”

She ground back at him, words choppy now as she rode him. “Maybe you…suddenly grew scruples about…my sexual sensibilities…after I went to such lengths…to seduce you…only to follow it by this…moronic demonstration of insecurity.”

“First, I'm incapable of growing scruples about anyone's sensibilities, sexual or otherwise, you included, so never fear.” She giggled, loving his abrasive straightforwardness more than ever. “Second, I
let
myself be seduced. Third, now that I know what was behind this…interesting incident, I find your ‘moronic insecurity' a cross between hilarious and endearing, considering you are the goddess of sensuality and seduction. Fourth, haven't you ever heard of sexual continence? Something all Eastern philosophies advocate?”

She raised her head from her surrender to his pleasuring, the practice coming to her in vague snippets. “Sex without orgasm?”

His lips twitched, a dozen devils dancing in his eyes. “Without…release. Reaching a pinnacle of pleasure that plateaus in intense, sustained ecstasy that can make me go on and on. And on.”

He punctuated each
and on
with a harder pull on her nipples, a harder thrust against her core. Even without entering her, she knew he'd bring her to completion again.

She pushed away, wanting only the pleasure of his possession. He let her break the rhythm hurtling her to climax, but kept her simmering with caresses and suckling.

She had to force more words out. “I didn't really think it possible…but if anyone…is capable of anything…it's you. But…” She struggled to voice her last concern, her belated confession. “If this was in
any
part because you're worried, don't, I'm…safe.”

He raised his eyes from worshipping and tormenting her. She expected him to ask why she was.

He didn't. “I'm ashamed to say it didn't cross my mind.” The moment of grimness passed and his eyes were back to tantalizing. “But it's good to know, in case we feel like…variations.”

“Oh, yes, please.” She longed to have him fill her, in every way. “But for now, I literally can't wait to explore this ‘on and on. And on' concept.”

A chuckle revved in his chest as he stood up, wrapping her around him. “I can teach you the technique, and we can keep at it to infinity. We do have years to make up for.”

She laughed her eagerness for anything he'd teach her, show her, share with her, let him arrange her among the cushions, run fevered appreciation all over her, feeling like the feast he'd said she was. Soon, she couldn't bear not to reciprocate, begged him to let her, made a case for it now that they were sure he wouldn't turn into some hulking monster at her touch.

And he finally let her touch him. Let her do anything to him. It was even more mind-blowing than having him doing things to her. His size daunted her, his texture amazed her, his scent and taste intoxicated her. And that was before she reached his manhood.

Hunger spiraled from her gut as she flicked her tongue over him, almost passed out as the feel and flavor of his satin and steel eddied in her system. With a cry of urgency, she fell on him, took all she could of him.

He caressed her head and face as he let her feast on him. She was lost in sensation, in his groans of enjoyment when his hand twisted in her hair, stopped her.

At her protest, he said raggedly, “I may be all-capable, but let's not test me beyond endurance. If you're up for it, how about we begin your first lesson in on and on, and on?”

She threw herself among the cushions, opened her arms to him.

As he filled them with as much impatience, she moaned, “I heard it can be mystical, unifying.”

“
Aih.
I never believed
that
part before.”

“How about we test its accuracy?”

And for the rest of the day and night, they did. With one-hundred-percent positive results.

 

Maram had gone to heaven, didn't even have to die beforehand.

Although she'd come close to it, as Amjad had said, from pleasure.

They'd made love everywhere, while cooking, eating, showering, bathing, playing music, even playing video games. Every touch and breath and word, every intimacy and surrender and abandon drove her deeper into addiction. Every sensation, sustained or explosive, left her feeling she'd never hunger again, yet expanded her capacity for more. And more he gave her.

Most amazing of all was the unity his exercise in control and the total rescinding of it to each other brought them.

She was draped over him, wallowing in contentment, savoring him, when something from outside their cocoon registered.

She raised an unsteady head. “Can you hear that?”

He stretched beneath her, making her a more comfortable bed of his body, nuzzled her neck like an affectionate lion. “Besides the bliss humming through our bodies, I can hear nothing.”

“Exactly.” Feeling loath to point it out, as if she'd make it real only when she did, she whispered, “The storm has died down.”

He blinked, as if coming out of a trance.

After a breath-bating silence, he said, “So it has.”

Suddenly she was scared.

The reason for their being here was no more. Would what they had raging between them subside, too?

As if in answer, he swept her around, bore down on her, intimacy and teasing spreading over his beloved face. “Good thing the desert finally deigned to end its tantrum. Now I can
show you the rest of my ‘lair.' Get ready to be devoured in every place I've fantasized about having you in.”

She looked into his eyes and knew.

Nothing had changed. Or ever would.

Delight burst out in a giggle as she gave him back his earlier promise. “At your service.
Any
time. Literally. Guaranteed.”

 

Amjad looked at the end of his world as he knew it.

She was pirouetting before him in the rain. Everything he'd never thought existed. Tailored to his ruthlessly specific demands. Femininity and wit and generosity, intelligence and honesty and fearlessness. Hungering for him with her all.

As he did for her with his, and beyond.

He circled her, savoring her from every angle.

In one of his shirts, soaked and transparent, Maram looked like the goddess he'd told her she was. Lithe, graceful, vital. Indomitable, irrepressible, irresistible. Dancing in the deluge that had come to wash the sandstorm away, to reshape the desert and replenish the springs and wells, she was more than this.