by Olivia Gates
“And I never knew what wanting was until you.” Her tears spilled at his declaration. He kissed them away, put her hands to his shirt. “Show me how much you want me, ya galbi.”
The hunger that spread over her face made him unable to bear the speed with which she exposed him. He ripped anything that couldn’t be undone fast enough, hoping she wouldn’t be alarmed at his savagery. Relief flooded him when it only inflamed her more.
But it wasn’t every dig of her fingers, nip of her teeth, pull of her lips, or even that she overcame her shyness and stroked and tasted his manhood that made him almost berserk. It was her words that singed him through to his soul and served as the ultimate aphrodisiac.
“I always thought you the most beautiful thing in the world, Shaheen,” she sobbed. “I want you all over me, inside me.”
“Give me your pleasure first, ya galbi.”
Before she could protest, he clamped one nipple between his lips, suckled her, nipped her, gorging on the feel and taste. Her cries of pleasure amplified in his inflamed brain as her body begged for his invasion. He glided the length of his nakedness against hers, reveling in how her satin firmness cushioned his rougher hardness. He pushed her legs apart with his knees, opened her folds with one hand. He stumbled to the brink just gliding his fingers along her molten heat, just smelling her arousal.
He drew harder on her nipple, giving her two fingers to suckle, while his other hand rubbed shaking circles over the knot of flesh where her nerves converged. She writhed, moaned, rippled beneath him, demanding more. He gave her more, two fingers pumping into her tight, flowing heat. After a few languorous thrusts, she bowed up on a stifled cry. Then she came apart.
“Aih, ya galbi, show me how much you want everything I do to you.” He feasted on the sight as she took her fill of pleasure, her inhibitions almost gone. Each grip and release of her inner flesh on his fingers transmitted to his arousal.
He still waited until she subsided, then stimulated her again. She pushed his hand away with a sharp cry of impatience, snared him with her legs, trying to get him to mount her.
He smiled his approval into her stormy eyes. “Aih, show me what you want of me, tell me how you want it.”
“I want you to take me, hard. Don’t you dare hold anything back this time. Give me all of you—” her fingers dug into his shoulders, wrenching him down on top of her with all the power of her fervor “—now!”
Before he complied, he reached for the bedside drawer. He was ready with protection this time. She stayed his hand, shook her head. Holding her heavy-with-need gaze, he read her message. She was telling him it was safe to take her. And he couldn’t draw another breath if he didn’t, if he didn’t give her all of him. He gripped her buttocks, tilted her, growled, “Khodini kolli…take all of me, ya joharti,” and plunged.
He hit her womb on that first thrust, obeying her need for his total invasion, secure she was ready, that any discomfort would only sharpen her pleasure. She engulfed him back with a piercing keen, consumed him in what felt like a velvet inferno.
He rested his forehead on hers, feeling like he was truly home, his hold on consciousness loosening.
Then she arched beneath him, until he felt she took him into her core, her streaming eyes making him feel she’d taken him into her heart. She was embedded in his.
With a pledge that he’d never let her go, he withdrew all the way then thrust back, fierce and full.
He rode every satin scream as hard as she’d demanded, his rumbling echoing her cries. Her tightness clamped harder around his length, pouring more red-hot pleasure over his flesh, until she convulsed beneath him.
Seeing her abandon, feeling the force of her pleasure, shattered him. He plummeted after her into the abyss of ecstasy, slid himself all the way inside her and released his essence.
Time ceased to matter, to exist, as he came down on top of her as she demanded, anchoring her after the tumult.
Then he brought her over him, a drape of satisfaction, everything he wanted wanting him back, and back in his arms.
“Ahebbek, ya joharti. Aashagek. Enti hayati kollaha.”
She jerked at the words he whispered against her cooling forehead. Then she pushed feebly against him, demanding to be released from their union.
It took a moment before he could bring himself to release her, worry replacing satiation and bliss at her agitated breathing and renewed tears, which he was sure didn’t indicate renewed arousal.
“Don’t…say things like that again.” She wiped tears away, half stricken, half furious. “I believe you want me like you’ve never wanted another, but don’t say what you can’t possibly feel.”
He sat up, caught her face in both hands, made her look at him. “That is how I feel. And more.”
Thicker tears overflowed from her reddened eyes. “How can you? How can you love me, worship me, think that I’m all your life? Before today, we had only one night together.”
“We had eight years. And all the years we’ve been apart. I loved you each moment of those.” A sob tore through her as she shook her head, tried to escape his grip again. He wouldn’t release her, persisted. “Why do you find it unbelievable? You loved me each moment of those years.”
She dipped her head, her hair swishing forward in waves that looked like sun rays spun into glossy satin, obscuring her expression. “I…never said I loved you.”
“Yes, because you’re trying not to ‘compromise’ me, or ‘impose’ on me, by keeping this on the level of the senses, and away from the domains of the heart and soul.”
She bit her trembling lower lip. “W-why do you think that?”
“Because I know you. I’ve known everything about you since you were six and grew up under my proud eyes. You didn’t just share everything you thought with me, you shared how you thought. I can predict everything that goes inside your brilliant if misguided mind and your magnanimous, self-sacrificing heart. That’s why I love you so completely. And you love me as totally, as fiercely. I feel it. I felt it from the first moment I met you again. I might not have recognized you consciously, but everything in me knew you, and knew I had always loved you.”
She gaped at him. And gaped at him. Then she burst in tears.
“Oh, Shaheen…I n-never dreamed you c-could feel the same.” Words tore from her between sobs. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have tried to see you again. I don’t want to complicate your life.”
He pressed her hard, stopping her self-blame again. “As I told you last night, you’ve done nothing but make my life worthwhile. In the past, being with you was the best thing that ever happened to me…until Aram made me feel like a dirty old man.” She jerked at that. He almost kicked himself for bringing it up. He tried to divert her. “Then, from the night we met again—”
She wouldn’t be diverted. “How did Aram make you feel like that?” He shrugged. She clung to his arm, ebony eyes entreating, undeniable. “Tell me, please.”
How could he resist her when she looked at him that way?
And then, he wanted no secrets between them. Ever again.
He exhaled. “You remember how I used to spend every possible second with you and Aram, either individually or together. Then one day, after a squash match—he’d trounced me, too—I related something clever that you’d said to me the day before, and he tore into me. Called me a cruel, spoiled prince, accused me of ignoring him for years whenever he’d tried to warn me about treating you too indulgently, to stop encouraging your hopeless crush on me. Then he threatened me.”
“Wh-what did he threaten you with?”
“Not death or serious injury, don’t worry. But that was actually what shook me most—how intense but nonviolent he was. It was as if he hated me, and had for a long time. I would have preferred it if he’d beaten me up, broken a few bones. I would have healed from that. But I never healed from losing his friendship. He told me that if I didn’t keep you away from me, he’d make my father order me to never come near you again.”<
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“So that was why you suddenly shunned us!”
He nodded. “I tried to defend myself at first, said you were the little sister I never had and how dare he say I’d think of you—or encourage you to think of me—that way.”
“So you never thought of me…that way?”
“No.” She seemed dismayed at his emphatic negation. “Come on, Johara, I was a man of twenty-two, you were a kid of fourteen. I would have been a pervert if I had thought of you that way. But you were my girl, the only one who ‘got’ me. I had to explain myself to everyone else, even to Aram and my family, but not to you. I loved you, in every way but that way. I love you in every way now.”
He poured his emotions into her eyes, then her lips. She surfaced from the mating of their mouths, panting. Then pleasure drained from her face as the pall of what they’d been discussing resurfaced. “What happened after that?”
He sighed again. “Aram said he didn’t give a damn what I thought or felt. He only cared that I was emotionally exploiting you. And he couldn’t stand by until I damaged you irrevocably. I realized he was doing what he thought best to protect you, which is why I was never really angry at him. Perhaps subconsciously, I was waiting for you to grow up so that I could feel that way about you. So in a fit of mortification, I swore I’d never talk to you, or him, again, that neither of you would have to put up with the ‘cruel, spoiled prince’ anymore. That’s why I pulled away, in a misguided effort to keep my word to him.
“Then, as I agonized over how much I’d inadvertently hurt my best friends, you left Zohayd, and your father announced that you wouldn’t be coming back. My last memory of you was of your forlorn face as you left the palace. I felt I’d betrayed our friendship. I left Zohayd soon afterward, and came back only sporadically through the years, until Aram left Zohayd a few years back. I felt I didn’t have the right to try to heal our friendship.”
She stared at him, chest heaving, emotions flashing in dizzying succession over her ultra-expressive face.
Then she threw herself at him, crushed him to her. “Ah, ya habibi, I’m so sorry. Aram was so wrong.”
His lips twisted as he looked down at their entwined nakedness. “I think he was so right.”
“He was wrong then. That’s what counts. You never led me on, never hurt me. I owe most of what I am today to your friendship. I think I’m not as messed up as he feared I’d be.”
“You’re perfection itself, inside and out.”
“See? He was absolutely wrong. Ooh!” She punched a pillow. “And the rat even told me you said you stopped talking to us because we were ‘the help.’”
“What?” he shouted. “All right, now I am angry at him.”
“Makes two of us. Just wait until I get ahold of him. I’m going to have his overprotective hide!”
“I hope you didn’t believe him!”
She slid a leg between his, stroked his face, laying everything inside her wide-open for him to read, to drink deeply of. “Does it look like I did?”
“No, alhamdulel’lah, thank God.” He stroked her back in wonder. “You’re all I want. It’s all I want, to be with you.”
A grimace wiped away her loving expression. “Wanting it and being able to do it are polar opposites here.”
He threaded his fingers through her hair, cupped her head through its thickness, took her lips in a fierce kiss. “Things might be complicated now, but I will resolve everything—”
“Please, don’t. Don’t promise me anything. I don’t want you burdening yourself with what you can’t accomplish, or with the guilt when you fail to. I will take what I can have with you, and I’ll always be happy that I did. That I love you. That you love me.”
Before he could protest, she dragged him to her, drowned him in delirious passion, taking the reins this time.
In the aftermath of pleasure, she slept in his arms. He remained awake, watching her.
And he knew he couldn’t tell her. About the jewels, or about his plan. He couldn’t bring the ugliness of the outside world into their happiness now. He wouldn’t sully hers if at all possible.
It was up to him to make it so.
For the next two weeks, Johara spent a few hours every morning helping her father pack, resolve any standing issues and train his replacements before she slipped away to Shaheen’s villa to throw herself in his arms.
He told her again and again not to worry, that he was working on securing a way for them to be together.
She believed he’d fail. That her time with him was counting down. Again. On a slower scale than that night she’d thought would be all she’d have of him, but counting down still. And when their time ran out, it would break them both.
But she couldn’t think of that now. She was bound on filling every second they had left with wonder and happiness and pleasure. Maybe if they charged every cell they could with love and closeness and cherishing, they might be able to endure the desolation of a life without each other.
She opened the front door to his villa, knowing she’d find it empty. He wasn’t here. A message ten minutes ago had told her he’d been detained, but would be there soon. And that he adored her.
She sighed in anticipation, soaking up the masculine elegance surrounding her. Acres of polished marble the color of the awe-inspiring beaches just steps from the back porch, whitewashed walls, deep brown furniture the color of the palm trees that seemed to form a natural fortress wall around the villa, and accents in gradations of emerald like the breathtaking sea that greeted her from every window, spreading to the horizon.
“I was told, but I couldn’t believe it.”
For the moment it took the words to sink into her brain, she had the conviction that Shaheen’s voice was the one that caressed her ears and slid down every inch of her skin, his presence that reached out to envelop her.
But even before she spun around, she knew. It was almost Shaheen’s voice, almost his presence. But it wasn’t him.
This voice had the same beauty and depth and influence, but instead of warmth it held an arctic chill, instead of emotion there was a void. This presence wasn’t permeated by humor and gentleness and compassion, but by sarcasm and aggression and cruelty. She knew who it was before she saw him.
Amjad.
Shaheen’s oldest brother. The crown prince of Zohayd. One of the most unstoppable forces in the world of finance.
And the most feared man in the region.
Her jaw almost dropped as she watched him approach her with the languid, majestic prowl of a stalking tiger.
This must be what a fallen angel looked like. Impossible beauty, hair-raising aura. His luminescent emerald eyes were said to be the only of their kind in the Aal Shalaan family in five centuries, inherited directly from Ezzat Aal Shalaan, the founder of Zohayd. Many even said Amjad was his replica, with the same imposing physique, frightening intelligence and overwhelming charisma. Some believed he was Ezzat reincarnated.
It was also said their lives followed much the same lines. Ezzat’s first wife had also plotted to murder him.
But that was where their destinies diverged. Ezzat had found his true love only a year after aborting the plot against his life, had lived with her in harmony from the time he’d married her at thirty-one till the day he’d died at eighty-five.
Amjad had exposed his treacherous wife eight years ago, and there was no sign that he’d find someone to love. In fact, from what she’d heard, he seemed determined to wrestle destiny into submission, thwarting any of its attempts to bring him any measure of closeness again.
“Now I see that what I thought to be ridiculous hyperbole is actually pathetic understatement. You’ve become a goddess, Johara.”
Johara blinked at Amjad, stunned.
His smile would probably cause a meltdown were any of Zohayd’s female population within sight and earshot. But it shocked her to see that predatory sensuality on the face of the man she’d always considered her oldest brother.
Not knowing what
to say to that, she said what she did feel. “It’s so good to see you, Amjad.”
His eyes crinkled, making them even more chilling. “Is it?”
She swallowed, suddenly feeling like a mouse about to be made a bored cat’s swatting toy. “Yes, of course. It’s been so many years. You’re looking well.”
“Just well?” Amjad’s spectacular lips turned down in a pout. “I usually get a more…enthusiastic response from the ladies.”
She cleared her throat. “You know how you look, Amjad. Surely the last thing a man of your caliber needs is an ego stroke.”
“Ouch.” He winced, looking anything but hurt, the calculation in his eyes growing more cutting. “But then again, an ego stroke from a woman of your caliber is something to be coveted. Any kind of stroke would be…most welcome.”
She gaped as he stopped barely a foot away, tried to step back. He stepped forward, maintaining the suffocating nearness.
She, too, had thought the tales she’d heard about him had been exaggerations. They were absolute under-statements. This close, she got a good look at what Amjad had become.
It was as if his magnificent body was a shell, housing an entity of overpowering intellect and annihilating disdain. He’d used to be a loving, outgoing, deeply passionate and committed man. The woman who’d tried to poison him might have failed to kill him, but she’d poisoned his soul and killed off everything that had made him the incredible force for good he’d once been.
Regret squeezed her heart.
Suddenly every hair on her body stood on end, in sheer shock.
His hand slid around her waist, tugged her flush against his hardness from breast to knee.
She froze, unable to even breathe.
At last, she choked out, “Amjad, please, don’t—”
He pressed her closer. “Don’t what, ya joharti?”
Hearing Shaheen’s endearment for her from anyone else would have startled her. Hearing it from Amjad, spoken with that insolent familiarity, seriously disturbed her.
He didn’t disgust her. It was impossible for him to do so; he was Shaheen’s flesh and blood. He was like her brother, even if he was behaving as anything but. She only felt so sad she wanted to weep. Then she got mad.