In Too Deep

by Brenda Jackson; Olivia Gates

  His glower deepened. Then something flared over his features, so sexual and savage she felt her core melt in ferocious response.

  “Suheeh?” he drawled, slow and devastating, a predator certain his mate was in the bag, certain he could prolong her torment and his gratification to his heart’s content. “Really? The only under and over I’m interested in are when they involve you and me during lovemaking. So let’s drop all acting and get down to the truth.” He tugged her hand and brought her slamming against his steel length. One hand splayed across her back, searing the flesh exposed by the dipping back of her top through the sheer dupatta covering it, the other hand sinking into her left buttock, yanking her to him, grinding her against his thigh. A moan of unwilling stimulation bubbled from her depths. Her head fell back, her mouth opened, her lips stung and swelled as if he’d already ravished them. He documented her reaction, merciless satisfaction blazing in his eyes. “This is the only truth. That you want me. As much as I want you.”

  She tried to break free, feeling as if she were drowning. As she was—in sensation, in yearning. Every syllable he uttered, every press of his fingers, every abrasion of his clothes on her exposed skin, every gust of his breath brushing any oversensitive part of her, was an aphrodisiac overdose. She felt she was being submerged in him, in her need for him.

  It made her angrier.

  He was only manipulating her, feeling nothing himself. And she’d be damned if she’d let him pull her strings like that.

  She wrenched free, any attempt to make this look like anything but an all-out fight dissipating.

  For she was fighting. For her sanity, her sense of self. What he was taking over, with such ease, just because he could, not because he wanted her.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she spat. “You told me how it is this morning. You don’t get to change the rules as you please. I don’t know why you’re doing this and I don’t care. Just let go of me.”

  He hauled her back, crashed her into him once again, his arms a vise. “I’m never letting go of you.”

  She stilled in his arms, chagrin and embarrassment drenching her. “For God’s sake, stop. Everyone’s watching us.”

  “Let them watch.”

  “But this isn’t what you want them to watch. At least, if you don’t let me go, it won’t be.”

  “Is this how you want to play it now, Sabrina? You want me to make you succumb, take it out of your hands? You want me to arouse you out of your mind and take you so you can have what you want and not be responsible? I’d be happy to oblige. I made you beg for me once. This time, I won’t have to take it easy or go slow, to make allowances for your inexperience and discomfort. This time I can show you just how much you inflame me and hold nothing back, exploiting every inch of your made-for-pleasure body, giving you so much satisfaction you’ll faint with it.”

  She felt the world distorting, as if she’d pass out from testosterone overexposure. She struggled to focus, choking, “Stop it, Adham. If you don’t, I will make a scene. And not the kind of scene you want your friends and the paparazzi to witness.”

  The sensuality on his face deepened as he leaned back, his hands shaping her, exploring her curves, cascading fire through every cell. He stopped at her breasts, kneaded and weighed them, rubbed circles of insanity around her nipples through the layered material of her top. “Show me, Sabrina. Do your worst.”

  A second before she felt she’d faint for real, she smacked his hands off her and spun around.

  She didn’t get far. He caught her at the tent’s entrance, turned her and snatched her off her feet. His hands clamped her back, her buttocks, opening her thighs in her flaring lehenga over his hips. One hand held her in place as the other snatched her dupatta out of the way to sink into her curls, holding her face upturned to his, her neck arched back.

  He swooped down to latch his lips on her pulse, growling against its frantic beating, his voice feral. “I shouldn’t want you, I should keep this cold and all business. But you inflamed me, drove me mad, from that first moment I laid eyes on you. W’hada gabl mat’sallemeeli nafssek—And this was before you surrendered yourself to me. Men hada’l yaum w’ana fen’nar—I’ve been in hell since that day, craving you and knowing I shouldn’t. But I don’t care anymore why we married. You’re caught in the same trap, you crave me just as much. And desire this fierce can’t be denied.”

  Everything stilled inside her, desperation and anguish extinguished like a candle in a hurricane.

  He wanted her, too? It hadn’t been an act to make her succumb to his plans? He’d tried to keep it business, but his desire for her was overriding his intentions and his control?

  If this was true, then his desire was fiercer than anything she’d wished for. This meant there was hope for their marriage. Far more hope than she’d dared imagine. “Adham…I don’t…”

  He misinterpreted what she’d started saying and overrode her. “You do. I can feel your desire, can sense it. Your body is humming with need for me against your will—seeking, offering, begging for mine. I can feel your heart racing mine, your blood thundering below my fingertips.”

  She would have been mortified that he could read her reactions so explicitly if her reserves of mortification hadn’t been depleted thinking of the scandal they were creating. And if she didn’t want him to know how he made her feel. But now she did.

  Then everything ceased. Adham wrenched his lips from her neck, raising his head only to swoop down again to claim her mouth.

  She cried out at the feel of his heat and moistness, of his tongue driving inside her, rubbing against hers. His growls poured into her, welling in surges of pleasure throughout her body.

  He finished her, drained her, layering arousal in bolts to her breasts, her gut, her core. Heat built until she writhed with it, opening herself up, inviting his domination.

  He raised her, brought his erection grinding into her long-molten core. Sensation sharpened, cleaving a cry from her depths.

  And despite the pounding in her head, the shearing from her lungs and his, she felt it.

  The commotion of curiosity and amusement and disbelief. The shuffling and whirs and flashes of people rushing to document their mindless disregard of everything but their conflagration.

  He raised his head, his eyes almost black and unseeing as they panned the crowd surrounding them. Then, with a growl, he bent, hauling her high in his arms.

  “I’m taking you home, Sabrina.” His words held the conviction and power of a pledge. “And I’m making you mine, in every way. Tonight and forever.”

  Seven

  Sabrina clung to Adham’s neck as he strode out of the tent, the whole world receding from her awareness, shrinking to the confines of his body.

  She registered nothing but its powerful perfection moving against hers with his every stride, his hands rhythmically squeezing her flesh. She saw his face clenched on such drive and felt weakness invading her every muscle, in preparation to have all this ferocity unleashed on her.

  She didn’t know how long he’d walked or what distance he’d covered. Time was suspended, space was compacted, until she found herself inside a limo with dark windows and a soundproof, mirrored partition. Adham laid her down and came to rest on top of her. Her legs opened in eagerness to accommodate his bulk. He lay over her, giving her what she needed of his weight, supporting enough of it so as not to oppress her. He devoured her lips, his hands everywhere, creating erogenous zones all over her, his hips driving between her splayed thighs in a simulation of the possession she was quaking for.

  She heard her voice, thick and choppy, pleading for him. He rose off her, dragging her up. She swayed with the car’s smooth movement as it shot across the streets, with the imbalance he’d struck inside her, feeling as if the burn in her blood would consume her if she didn’t get under his skin. “Sabrina, galbi, I need to feel your desire, taste your pleasure.”

  Before she could understand what he meant or tell him he could do whatever he li
ked with her, he hauled her on his lap, her back to his front, her thighs splitting wide over one of his. He stretched back so her upper body fell to the side and into the curve of his left arm. His hands came around her, undoing her front fastening.

  She moaned his name as her breasts spilled out of the imprisonment of the corsetlike top and into his hands. He bent, leaning around her, engulfing one nipple and then the other in the moist heat of his mouth. Her cries rose, lengthened, her writhing getting more frantic. He didn’t give her a chance to process the feelings as his right hand dragged her lehenga up, yanking her panties down. Then his palm was cupping her mound, squeezing it, condensing the throbbing there into a pinpoint of insanity.

  He let go before it all spilled over. In her haze, she realized. He knew that she needed intimacy, not release. And he was giving it to her. The closeness of owning her flesh as intimately as she did.

  Two strong, certain fingers parted her feminine lips, delving into the desire flowing there for him. He lifted his head from her breasts to swallow her sobs of overstimulation. He glided in her moistness, from her bud to her opening, until she bucked, begged. Only then he slid inside her, adding a third finger, replacing his fingers at her bud with his thumb. Her keen poured into his mouth. He withdrew his fingers, corkscrewing the tension inside her to a weeping pitch.

  “Take your pleasure, ya jameelati. Areeni jamalek wenti b’tjeeli…show me your beauty as you come for me.”

  She’d been trying to hold back, needing to come with him deep inside her. But he was, if in another way. And he wanted her to give him this surrender. She’d give him anything he wanted.

  He thrust his fingers back in, along with his tongue deep inside her mouth. And the tension snapped, over and over, uncoiling then folding back on itself, only to lash out again as her orgasm quaked through her like the ebb and flow of a stormy sea.

  His gaze bathed her in his possessiveness, in his profoundly male satisfaction at the sight of her racked with pleasure, begging to be at his total mercy, to be taken, pleasured any way he could think of.

  He held his fingers deep inside her, letting her quiver to the last tremor of satisfaction around them, before he slowly removed them, brought them up to his lips, licked them, growling his enjoyment at tasting her.

  He gathered her, folded her, held her tight in his arms. His eyes were incandescent in the dimness, flaring gold with each passing streetlight filtering through the darkened windows.

  “Do you know what it is, seeing and feeling you taking your fill of the pleasure I bring you, ya hayati? Tasting it? It’s the most beautiful thing in my world.”

  Her heart swelled so hard, so fast, she whimpered with it. She couldn’t utter a word. She’d been at her lowest point, and had given up on him. She’d been trying to contemplate a life of emotional exile, loving him and knowing he’d never love her back.

  Now he’d given her this. And it wasn’t only sex, or pleasure. He was opening himself up to her, letting her see inside him. This was for her, not for the eyes and ears of the world. And it was sincere. She just knew it was.

  Tenderness swamped her, welled from her in feverish kisses and caresses all over his face. He rumbled a string of native praises to her as he kissed and caressed her in return.

  The car stopped. In seconds he’d helped fasten her top and had her out and in his arms.

  He took her where she’d thought she’d never be—the room he’d chosen as his in this sprawling house.

  It was not as enormous or extravagantly decorated as the one he’d given her, but because it was permeated by his scent and presence, it was in a class of its own. Any place where he chose to live his most private moments was the best place she’d ever been.

  He laid her down at the foot of his bed and proceeded to strip from her the outfit and jewelry in excruciating slowness, pausing at every inch of flesh he exposed to fondle and worship and praise. By the time he had her naked, her teeth were clattering, her heart in hyperdrive, desperate for an end to the sensual torment.

  He then stood up to admire her sight, arranged among black silk pillows and sheets. Then, as if he hadn’t tormented her enough, he started his own striptease.

  He first shrugged off the silk abaya. It slid from his daunting shoulders and slithered to the floor with a resigned sigh. His gold-embroidered top, wrapped cummerbund and boots followed. He left the low-riding loose pants on.

  Before she could cry out her indignation, he kneeled before her. His hands traveled up legs that went boneless at his first touch, his to do with as he chose. It pleased him to spread them, to drag her by them, to bring them over his shoulders. “Daheenah adoogek men jedd—now I taste you for real. I’ve been addicted to your taste from that first time. I’ve been starving for more of you.” He opened her lips, gave her core one long lick, groaning in response to her cry. “Say you’ll always let me taste you, always want me to.”

  She wanted to tell him but her tongue twisted in her mouth, paralyzed with anticipation. She only keened, her hair falling all over her face with the vigorousness of her nod. Satisfied with her condition, with her response, he clamped her feminine lips in a devouring kiss. He licked and suckled at her swollen flesh, thrust inside her with his tongue, drank deep of her pleasure. He took her to the edge again and again, only to pull her back, set her to a simmer, then build her desperation once more until she felt the ache inside her reaching critical mass. She begged him with her hands in his hair, with her body writhing in mounting agony as she tried to pull him up, to have him penetrate her, ride her, put her out of her misery.

  He resisted her, lashed her trigger and sent her convulsing and shrieking into another racking orgasm.

  He drank her dry, kept licking her, soothing, defusing the surplus of sensations, until her oversensitized flesh subsided. And she wanted him more than ever.

  She struggled to her elbows, looked down on the magnificent sight he made, kneeling between her legs, his lion’s head rubbing her thighs, his lips worshipping them. Her heart spilled a fresh batch of palpitations.

  “Adham, stop tormenting me. Don’t make me wait anymore.”

  He raised eyes blazing with satisfaction at her renewed agitation, at his own pent-up arousal. He rose, pushing her back across the bed with his shoulders against her legs until he had her in the middle. Then he rose above her on all fours. “Release me.”

  At his command, though her hands felt like they were no longer under her control, she fumbled with his pants. She somehow undid the zipper and pushed them halfway down his muscled thighs, exposing their bronzed splendor. He took pity on her, pushed them all the way down, kicked them off. He held her hands and guided them into removing his tight boxers. And she gasped.

  His erection sprang hard and long and heavy, slamming against his belly. Just the sight exacerbated her swooning state.

  He noted her reaction with those all-seeing eyes as he again had his hands and lips all over her triggers.

  “I pleasured you in the car, and again now,” he groaned against her nipples, her pulses, her lips, “not only because I crave your pleasure as much and more than I do mine, but because I need to know that your desire is all mine, all about needing my possession. Tell me.”

  “I want you,” she moaned. “I’ve been going out of my mind with wanting you. I want you all the time, doing everything to me. Please, Adham, habibi, take me.”

  He rose to loom over her, a god of virility and beauty, almost menacing in the fierceness of his focus, the ferocity of his lust. He pushed her with gentle power until she lay flat beneath the cage of his muscle and maleness. He drove one knee between hers, winding the throbbing between her thighs to a tighter rhythm.

  “How do you want me to take you? The first time?”

  She didn’t hesitate. She knew just how. “Fill my arms, let me wrap myself around you as you fill me.”

  “And the second?”

  “Cover me, lie on top of me, over my back, let me feel all of you pressing me into the
bed as you possess me.”

  He bent to pull hard on one nipple, grazing the other with his blunt fingernail. “And the third and fourth and fifth time?”

  Her delirium intensified with each suckle and flick. “Anything—anything at all. Just do it all.”

  He rose over her again. “Then give it to me. Everything you have, everything you are. I will have it all.”

  “Yes. Yes.” She stabbed her fingers into the mane raining around his face, brought him down to her for a compulsive kiss. She tore her lips away, needing to know, panting. “And you’ll give it all to me, too?”

  “All that I have. All that I am. It’s all yours, ya malekati, my owner. Take it. Take me. All of me.” He reared back between her splayed thighs, his erection throbbing over her mound and reaching up to her belly button, heavy and engorged. He glided its underside between her lips, nudging her trigger over and over. She arched up, opening herself, hurrying him. He only rose on one knee, taking her one desire out of reach. “Show me what you want.”

  Unable to heed any inhibition, unable to wait to take advantage of the freedom he was offering her, she reached a trembling hand to his erection. She couldn’t close around his girth. Intimidation shuddered through her even as another surge of readiness flooded her core. She stroked the velvet-over-steel shaft in wonder, rubbing the smooth head with the fluid silk seeping from its slit, her tongue tingling with the need to taste it. Promising herself she’d beg for the privilege later, she tugged at his shaft.

  He growled, deep and dark, thrust his hips at her, watching her with an intensity she felt left its marks all over her skin. He let her drag him closer to her sex, still keeping his eyes on hers. But with the first touch of their intimate flesh, he threw his head back in an agonized growl, a duet with her keen. Then, as if they’d agreed, they both lowered their gazes to the sight of the intimacy she was performing.

  She slid his head along her inner lips, bathing it in her moistness. Unbearably aroused, rumbles reverberated from deep within him on every glide, a sharper cry from her each time it nudged her slit. She kept going on and on, until he was shaking as hard as she was, his breathing as labored as hers. She knew she’d tumble into oblivion any second now, had to do it with him buried deep inside her.