by Tara Pammi
The challenge it would be to his base instincts, the anticipation of it made his blood sing.
As if intent on torturing him, she straightened the dress and let it hang over a reclining chair. And only then did she turn toward him.
He had no idea what she saw in his face but she let out a long exhale. As if to brace herself. Her eyes full of a vulnerability that pierced him, she placed a hand on her belly, as if she could find support from the silk, and asked, “Do you like it? Remember the day you got so angry that I went with Zara and a couple of other women to that luxury mall? Wasim turned red and ran so fast when he saw Zara and me stop in front of the lingerie store. I told him he shouldn’t follow us so closely but he wouldn’t listen.”
“If I had known what you’d had in mind, I would have taken you myself. And your safety is never a thing to be taken lightly, Amira. Promise me you acknowledge that.”
“I do,” she said so earnestly that he knew he didn’t have to worry that she would take foolish risks. He kept forgetting what a levelheaded woman she was for her age. “I didn’t ask you because I wanted it to be a surprise. There are certain things that should remain secret between a husband and wife. Even Humera agrees.”
He scowled, knowing that she was once again testing the waters between them. Seeing how far she could push him before he pushed back. “In matters of lingerie, keep your secrets, Amira. But only there.”
“Only there,” she agreed, and then slowly she came to him.
Adir moved to the edge of the divan, until she was standing between his thighs, her breasts near his face.
It wasn’t going to work this way. Not in this state. He would hurt her if he didn’t find release first. And that was unacceptable.
And even as lust rode him hard, and the need for release clamored in his blood, Adir knew that she had sneaked under his skin. That something inside him was already changing, morphing and reforming to include this woman. That slowly but surely Amira herself was sinking into his blood.
And for a man who had not known love except in words written by a lonely woman years ago, for a man who had conquered the desert and the harsh challenges it presented, the prospect was utterly daunting.
And totally out of his control.
* * *
His skin was like hot velvet, rough but smooth at the same time. And the glide of it against her bare skin, the rough rasp of his thighs against her soft ones...they both groaned at that first skin-to-skin contact.
Her nipples, even through the flimsy silk, pebbled against his chest. And his erection...oh, God, it was fire and heat and steel pressing into her soft belly.
Sensations overwhelmed her, clamoring for her attention, and Amira closed her eyes, welcoming the onslaught. His fingers were callused, rough against her soft skin. The bruise he had given her at her neck pulsed, a perfect contrast of pain that made the pleasure coursing through her that much more powerful, that much sharper.
She sank her fingers into his hair, took a deep breath of that masculine scent. He felt like heaven. Like a safe haven. Like an exhilarating place to land.
“You’re like pure silk,” he said, puncturing the words with a harsh curse she didn’t even understand.
He gave her no warning. By word or the flicker of an eyelid.
She gasped as he grabbed the edges of the neckline and pulled until it tore with a loud rasp. Spine arching, she clutched his head as he took her nipple into his mouth.
Teeth and tongue and wet warmth, there was nothing he didn’t do to that aching bud.
Raw heat broke over her skin. His tongue licked at the needy tip, flicked at it again and again. When Amira pressed her fingers into his head, he laughed—a faint, wicked sound he buried in her skin before opening his mouth wide and closing it over her breast again.
This time, he did what she was urging him, what she was begging him to do. He suckled with deep, hard pulls. She jerked as wetness rushed over her sex, coating her thighs in a way that felt so wanton, so utterly wicked. Cupping one, he moved his mouth to the other breast, licking a wet path across and causing aching pulls in counter rhythm to his caress as he kissed her.
She rubbed her thighs shamelessly, the wetness between only intensifying the need for pressure.
Amira gasped and sobbed. Needing him inside her so desperately. “Please, Adir, inside me, now.”
“No. Not yet... Four months is too long, habiba. I’m sorry, Amira, I’m sorry.”
She had no idea what he was apologizing for and she didn’t care.
He would never hurt her, not willingly, she knew that now. And she would follow him anywhere under the desert sun.
“Whatever you will give, Adir, please hurry. I feel...empty without you inside me.”
He groaned, his movements becoming urgent, rough.
His hands moved from her shoulders to her waist and then further down below, to the hem of her negligee. A harsh growl erupted from his mouth, pinging over her nerves as his palms discovered her bare bottom.
“No panties?” he whispered against her wet nipple, followed by a catlike flick over the turgid tip.
“No...the saleswoman assured me it didn’t require...”
Her words misted away as he bunched the gown and pulled it up behind her, until her sex was bared to him. She longed for his fingers, his hardness there. She was vibrating with such need, she was ready to take him in hand and push him inside her.
But of course, the beast had other plans. He took her fingers and wrapped them around his hardness. “Stroke me,” he commanded with such dark desire that Amira forgot all about her own body’s demands. His forehead resting in the valley between her breasts, he seemed to fight his harsh breathing.
Such fervor, such need clamored in those amber eyes that she would have done anything he asked of her to satisfy that need. To be the one who pushed him to the edge. To be the one he shattered for.
“Show me how,” she begged. “I want to please you. Show me how to do it right, Adir.” Now the command was in her tone. She felt as if she would break if she wasn’t the one that brought him the release she could see him craving.
Why was he fighting this? Didn’t he know she was putty in his hands?
“If I do,” he breathed against her skin, with a self-deprecating smile, “if I put my hand over your soft one and make you grip me, stroke me the way I need it, I will come instantly.” She blushed at his blunt language, even as she boldly explored him with her fingers. “Four months is a long time for a man to be celibate. But if I move inside you, it will be too...short.”
“You haven’t been with anyone,” she said, feeling a surge of something in her chest she couldn’t even name.
“No.”
Just that. One word. No explanation. No concession.
Adir in his true form.
She licked her lips and with a groan, he took her mouth in a hard, swift kiss. “If you find...if you come in my hands,” she said, refusing to use euphemisms anymore with him, and was reward by his wicked smile, “how long before you will be able to do it again?”
This time, his raucous laughter, she was sure, could be heard all through the encampment. Tight grooves formed in his cheeks and his sweat-sleek chest shook against hers. “Selfish little thing, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “Just making sure you have a little...stamina left for me.” She did a put-upon, troubled sigh, fighting the utter joy that wanted to bubble up in laughter. “You know, marriage is all about compromises and a little give-and-take.”
When he kissed her again, it was soft, slow, almost reverent. As if he didn’t know what to do with her. The expression in his eyes took her breath away. He wasn’t a man given to words, she was realizing, but he felt something for her.
Perhaps just a little spark but it was there.
“It will be slow and deep and I can take my time insid
e you. I would reward you in return multiple times.”
“Now you’re speaking in my language.”
No sooner had she said the words than he wrapped his fingers over hers. She pumped her grip up and down as he showed her. Again and again, while the soft head rubbed and pushed against her belly. While one rough hand cupped one breast, and one cupped her buttock and he took unapologetically what he needed from her.
Just from her. Only her.
Amira wouldn’t have closed her eyes if her life had depended on it.
Those penetrating amber eyes closed, he thrust his hips up and forward in a counter rhythm while she worked her fist up and down, his breath shallow and fast, his skin gleaming with sweat, his neck and shoulder muscles corded so tight—he looked as if he was hewn from the rocks that lay over the gorge. It was a sight Amira would never forget.
His thrusts became faster, the angles and grooves of his face harsher, deeper and then he gave a guttural cry against her breast, before he was shuddering in her arms.
And his release coated her belly.
Amira stared in a sort of rapturous wonder. How could his release give her such satisfaction? Why did seeing him in that moment give him such a hint of vulnerability when he was truly anything but?
The intimacy of the moment, the way he held her as he broke apart... Amira felt as if she had been reformed in his passion.
In that moment, he was hers. Just a little. Only hers.
Not the sheikh of warring tribes. Not a corporate businessman. Not Queen Namani’s discarded son. Or Zufar’s resented half brother.
He was just her husband, the man she loved with all her heart.
She pushed sweat-streaked hair from his forehead and pressed a tender kiss to his temple. “Is this how it feels when you bring me to release?”
He looked up and that hint of vulnerability—she hadn’t imagined it—disappeared when he smiled that masculine, arrogantly devilish smile that melted her heart just a little.
If they had a boy, she hoped he had that smile of his father’s. That glimpse of rakishness that Adir wore beneath the mantle of duty and responsibility. That love of the harsh desert land and all its people.
“It feels like I’m on top of the world when you moan through your release, when you fall apart around my fingers. It feels like...” hands on her buttocks, he lifted her, leaving her no choice but to straddle his hips and then before she could blink, he was gliding into her on a smooth stroke, and Amira clung to his shoulders, the velvet heat of him inside sending a rough, guttural sound up through her throat “...I can conquer anything. Have I risen enough to satisfy my sheikha?”
“Oh...” No words came to her for he had impaled her so thoroughly. “It feels too much this way. Like you’re...”
He instantly frowned. “Does it hurt?”
When his hands moved to her hips to pull her off, she fought his grip and pushed down. “No, Adir, please don’t leave me.”
The slide of her body over his made them both groan together.
“I won’t.” Tenderly, he pushed the hair off her forehead now. His mouth when it met hers was soft, warm, a melding of more than just bodies. He kissed her as if she were precious to him, as if he couldn’t bear to part with her. As if his kisses could say things he couldn’t himself. “Relax, habiba. Listen to your body.”
She took a deep inhale and tried the up-and-down motion again. Another groan fell from her mouth, pleasure fluttering awake in her lower belly.
In knots and waves, it inched into her limbs, as if she were made of drugged honey.
“Now?” he asked.
She smiled and arched her spine. The movement sent her breasts rubbing against his chest and a hiss of male pleasure rent the air.
“Now it feels like heaven.”
He moved back on the divan until her knees were on either side of his hips, until he was embedded so deeply within her that Amira couldn’t breathe for the tight friction of him inside her walls.
She ran her hands all over him—the jutting tautness of his shoulders, his sweat-slicked back, the ropes of lean muscles across his chest, scraping her fingers over flat, brown nipples.
And he submitted to her touch, as if it were her due. And she loved him all the more for it.
“Now, shall I teach you how to touch yourself just as I taught you to touch me?”
Eyes wide, cheeks full of heat, she stared at him. “You want me to touch myself?”
A deliciously wicked smile split his mouth. “Just when I’m there to enjoy it, yes.”
She returned his wicked smile but with an added thoughtful smirk. “And you? Will you only...pleasure yourself when I’m around?”
He laughed and the sound was even more arousing than feeling him inside her. “I’m hoping I don’t have to since now you’re here to do it for me. And before you argue the same point, in this position—” he thrust up as though to remind her “—it would work better.”
When she nodded, he took her hand and brought it between their bodies. Heat broke out over every inch of her skin as he guided her fingers to the exact spot where she’d ached for him.
Her spine arched again as he flicked at that sensitive place with his finger. “Keep doing that when I thrust up.”
More than happy to be his pupil, Amira shed the last layer of her inhibitions. His honed torso leaning back, he thrust up into her tight heat while watching her fingers move over her clitoris with hooded eyes.
“Move, Amira, as you want to.”
That ache was already building in her lower body, deep waves radiating out when he thrust up and she rubbed herself.
Hand on his shoulder, Amira let herself go. Their bodies soon found a rhythm and, as if he knew her body and needs better than she did herself, he increased the pace.
Soon, Amira didn’t know if she was earthbound or flying. Her breasts bounced up and down as she undulated over him. When he cupped one and brought it to his mouth just as his body pounded up into her, she fragmented.
His name fell from her lips like a keening cry as bliss suffused her every breath, every limb and joy filled her heart.
He picked her up, while he was still inside her, and brought her to his bed. Hands raising her bottom, he glided in and out of her, in deep, short thrusts.
His own quick release followed soon after and again Amira witnessed the pleasure it wrought on his face, the way he held her when they were both sweat-slicked and the scent of sex permeated the air.
When he rubbed her lower lip with the pad of his thumb as if he couldn’t let her go just yet.
When he grabbed a towel from somewhere and gently wiped her between her legs as if he had done it a thousand times and would for thousands more nights to come.
When he pressed a gentle, soft kiss to her cheek and brought her closer to his body. When his palm, as always, settled on her belly and he asked if she was okay.
She was okay. More okay than she had ever been in her life.
Because, for the first time in her life, she felt like she was home. She was where she belonged.
CHAPTER NINE
TWO WEEKS INTO being married, Adir wondered why he had waited so long to take on a wife. Like Humera and Zara and Wasim—who had become Amira’s biggest champions—kept reminding him, it was Amira that made the institution so agreeable.
Apparently, there wasn’t a single man or woman in the camp that didn’t adore his wife.
Adir couldn’t quite find a fault with her, either—not that he’d been looking for one. In two weeks, their desire for each other had only grown and whatever he asked her to do—or whatever he desired to do to her—his wife jumped in with both feet.
The only niggles in his perfect marriage were their constant fights about her health and the one topic he had forbidden her from bringing up—Queen Namani and her other children.
> More than once, he had seen the struggle in her eyes—something she wanted to say when he mentioned a letter from his mother or his past. Since everything concerned with his past or his formative years seemed to lead to Queen Namani or the letters, he had forbidden her to ask questions about his past or even mention it.
Dismay filling her eyes, she had said, “We will never move forward with our life if we don’t face your past together.”
He didn’t agree with it. They had a perfect life together and talking about his dead mother or her other children wasn’t going to make it better.
When it came to Amira’s health, on the other hand, Adir knew he was being irrational. At least partly.
For every tenet he laid down about her resting during the hot days, her sleep, her food that she only picked at, his wife defied him. She called him a brute, a beast, her jailer, for after learning that she had fainted of heat stroke when she had been visiting Zara, he had forbidden her to leave their tent at all.
He had even broached the topic of sending her away to his residence in the city. But the stubborn woman refused to leave him.
“I plan to have at least three to four children, and what will you do? Send me away and confine me completely for the next decade? Live separately?” Eyes shining with unshed tears, arms locked tight around his waist, she had burrowed into him one evening.
Having never been the recipient of such frequent physical affection—it never struck him to touch her outside bed except when he kissed her—he had stiffened. But even more shocking had been her matter-of-fact statement about having three to four children. Stunned was an understatement of his own reaction.
He had unhooked her arms from around him, trying to wrap his brain around the fact. “Three to four children?”
“Yes. I hated being an only child. And I want a big family.” Then she had sobered, noticing his lack of reaction. Or maybe his shock. “Don’t you want more than this child?”
“I...haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“But you want to be a father, yes? We didn’t plan this child, but—”
“Of course, I want to be a father. But I would prefer to do the planning of our lives. Not be informed of your own plans.”