The Desert Lord's Baby

by Olivia Gates

  His teeth scraped together, his nostrils flaring. “So again I ask, what changed your mind?”

  “Everything sank in,” she said, coming to terms with her own feelings and decisions. “The depth of your feelings and commitment to Mennah. Then last night I realized you still want me, and not just as Mennah’s attachment, as you at first made it sound.”

  The ood trilling in the background launched into a haunting passage, as if scoring her words, underscoring the silence that expanded between them in their wake.

  Still standing there like another wonder from the hyper-reality of this place, a colossus carved by gods of virility, he said, “Do you remember the night you walked out on me?”

  “God, don’t…”

  He cut across her plea. “Do you remember what I said?”

  She fisted her hands on the lace cover trying to alleviate the stinging that felt like her nerves had turned into hot needles, all trying to burst out of her skin.

  “I remember what I said,” she moaned. “Do you know how many times I wanted to take it back? Every moment I was myself, and not the single, working mother, that’s how many times. Every time I imagined how I would explain my behavior then, how you trapped me when you wouldn’t let me walk away without explanations, that I considered pretending to take your offer, pretend that had been my objective, but couldn’t do that to you. Not after you gave me a glimpse into what being you means, what kind of segregation and alienation you live in, unable to trust anyone’s feelings and intentions toward you…”

  Something burst out of him, too furious and abrasive to be a laugh. “So you thought it better to let me think you were a promiscuous wretch than a mercenary bitch? You decided to stab my emotions as a man, my ego as a male, rather than consolidate my paranoia as a prince? Only you could think of something like that.”

  “At least I retained part of the truth,” she quavered. “That my desire was real and for you, not what you can provide.”

  His hands fisted. “While it lasted, you mean.”

  So he still wanted more…assurance? No. That implied emotional involvement, and none of this had been about that on his side.

  But…he’d said she’d “stabbed his emotions as a man.” Did that mean…?

  No. No. Don’t even go there. Don’t even think it.

  But the way he’d said it all…“You talk as if you bought my act, when the first thing you said was that you saw through it.”

  “You keep putting the weirdest things in my mouth. When did I ever say anything to that effect?”

  “You kept saying things like ‘save it,’ ‘more acts’ and commenting on my acting abilities.”

  “The act I was referring to was that of the unbridled lover who couldn’t get enough of me. Now you tell me that was the truth. The only truth. I believed you the first time, every word, every touch instantly and completely. This time, I’m in need of proof.”

  And she wanted to give it to him, wanted to give him everything in her. If he wanted it. It didn’t matter for how long.

  She held out her arms to him again, shaking with the enormity of her love, the jump she was taking, the depths she was exposing. “Make your demands, Farooq. I’ll meet them. Whatever they are.”

  He bared his teeth on a silent growl, his body tensing as if at the shock of a lash. Did her offer, the echo of his all those months ago, in words if not in meaning, hit him that hard? Because she was matching his material offers with the one thing she owned, could give, herself? Did he even want that much of her?

  He still wouldn’t move, his eyes becoming almost scary in their focus. “I asked if you remember what I said. Not what I said after your dropped your bomb. What I said when I came in. That I was almost afraid to touch you, that I thought it would take us to the edge of survival, after two days of deprivation.” She lurched under the power of memory, the potential of reality. He started to move then, in steps laden with the danger of ebbing control, of near-explosion fierceness. “Use that insight of yours and picture how I feel now, what it will be like, after sixteen months.”

  Her senses ricocheted within a body that felt hollow. Every breath, every tremor, electrocuted her. Every heartbeat felt like a wrecking ball inside her chest. He kept coming, cruel in his slowness, blatant in his intentions.

  “I don’t need to picture anything,” she gasped. “It’s been tearing at me all that time, it’s tearing me apart now. Please, Farooq, show me what the edge of survival feels like…”

  He gave a rumble that traveled through the mattress then through her, made her feel she was lying on a livewire. Still rumbling, he stopped above her, looking at her like a lion deciding which part of his prey he’d devour first. Then he started to undress. The sheer injustice overcame her enervation, sent her surging up to snatch the privilege for herself.

  He held out a warning finger. “Don’t touch me, Carmen. It is no exaggeration, what I just said.”

  The one thing that made her abide by his admonition was realizing he wasn’t undressing. He was just removing his ceremonial dagger and sword, his metal belts, like a warrior back from battle, relinquishing the evidence of one form of savagery, his eyes promising her another.

  Throwing everything to the end of the bed, he kneeled beside her, let his hands hover over her, like that night, mimicking in pantomime all he’d do to her, all the liberties he’d take. Then he bent over her, his lips tormenting a flight pattern of their own.

  And he told her. “I couldn’t touch you for real, couldn’t kiss you when we were alone. I had to remain distant, until I came to grips with the violence of my craving for you. But I can’t. I never lose control. Unless it’s you.”

  This was everything she could dream of, would risk everything for. Her Farooq back, confessing the depth of his desire.

  Disregarding his warning, she lunged for him, hands trembling on the fastening of his pantaloons, the thousand buttons keeping his flesh away from her greed.

  His growls detailed his enjoyment of her frenzy even as he ended it, grabbed her, flipped her on her stomach. Then he straddled her hips. She raised her head, met their images in the mirror headboard. He raised his eyes, meeting hers in the reflection. Instead of imparting a measure of detachment, the replicas moving in the coolness of glass sent her blood seething in her veins.

  She cried out, arched her hips up, seeking more contact with him. He pushed her down, one hand flat on her back, his hardness digging into her buttocks, before he moved her again until she was lying sideways to the mirror, for a full-body view. He lay on top of her, keeping her eyes captive, grinding into her, mimicking what she was longing for him to do without the chafing barriers. Then he reared up, slowly unclipped the veil from her hair.

  “I never liked red hair. But this…” He threaded his hands into it, raised the locks, let them fall. “This texture, this wave, this hue, that it’s on top of this head…” His fingers dug into her scalp, massaged, had her thrashing beneath him. He suddenly bunched her locks, pulled on them as if they were reins.

  She arched back, lips opening on the sharpness of stimulation, panting for his. He slammed into her buttocks, gave her a hand to kiss, to bite into, before he pushed her down again.

  “Do you know what seeing you in that outfit did to me?” He began to unzip her corset top. Then he stopped. She saw his face seize in the mirror. She twisted around to get the reality, saw his raptness focused on the henna patterns on her back, felt his renewed rumbling forking through her. And he hadn’t even seen their extent yet. Next moment the rumbling quaking her bones intensified as his fingers traced the spots where the patterns made up of his name clustered. He’d deciphered her homage.

  She was elated now that he had. She should be alarmed that she was tampering with the control of a being of such destructive potential, but she wasn’t. He’d never lose control. Not that way. Not her Farooq. But he was losing his distance, his separateness to her power over him, to the sight of his name emblazoned all over her body. That was one
of two things she wanted from life.

  He flipped her onto her back, gloriously rough, dragging her top down to her waist, spilling her breasts into the palms they’d been made to fill, kneading them with a careful savagery that had her bucking beneath him. Her hands flailed, trying to tear his top open, needing the crush of his chest. He grasped both her hands in one of his, the other holding his top at the neck and shredding down. He tore off his abaya, pushed his tattered top wider, exposing the magnificent sculpture of his torso. She keened as her salivary glands stung. She needed her lips and tongue on his flesh, her teeth in it.

  “There are more places I want my name on.” He slid down her body, the silk of his body hair brushing her every inch into a distress of arousal. “Here.” He gently bit each nipple in turn, had her crying out, before settling into a ruthless rhythm of suckling that had magma pouring from her core, until she was pummeling him for the release only the power of his possession would grant her.

  He caught her clawing hands, slammed them to the bed in one of his, slid down as he bunched her lehenga up and her thong down to her feet. “And here…” He let go of her hands, held her feet apart, alternated kisses between them, suckled her toes, forcing her to withstand the sight, the sensations before moving up. “And here…” He bit into her calves, kneading them with his teeth as he trailed up to her inner thigh. “And here…” Her body contorted under his onslaught.

  Suddenly he hissed like a geyser about to blow, his hands digging in her buttocks. He’d seen the henna patterns there.

  On an explosive expletive, he knocked her legs wide with his shoulders, lunged between them.

  She squirmed, trembled, tried to squeeze her legs closed. “You, please, I want you, you, inside me, now please now…”

  He looked up at her, eyes like twin infernos, sable hair cascaded over his leonine forehead. Then with his mouth set in cruel intent, he slid up her body, igniting every fuse along the way until he lodged his hardness at her entrance through his clothes, had her whimpering, “Yes, yes, please, yes.”

  In answer he only knocked her clamping legs from around his hips, came over her, straddled her midriff, loosened his pantaloons enough to show her his shaft.

  A clench of intimidation sank its talons into her gut at his girth and length, at his beauty and sleekness. She craved his invasion, not only for the ecstasy it forced from her flesh, but because when he occupied her, she was intimate with his power and maleness, the potency of his desire, with his essence. With him. Giving her pleasure without union now wasn’t a reward but a punishment.

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

  “Is this what you want most, Carmen?” Her nod was frantic, a tear slipping from one eye, trickling to her ear as she writhed beneath him, trying to free her hands, to get them on his flesh.

  “You told me you had your most intense orgasms with me inside you. Is that true, or were you catering to my ego?”

  She renewed her efforts to escape the prison of his body, have him where she needed him, her heart stampeding with futility. “True…it’s true, please, please…”

  He tightened his waistband again, widened his thighs, let her pull her arms out only to clamp her hands, raised them for her to look at. “You think you can wear my name like this…” He dismounted her, twisted her toward the mirror to show her his hand slipping between the cheeks of her hennaed buttocks. “And this, and go unpunished, Carmen? For this you don’t get what you crave most.”

  He pushed her onto her back, nudged her folds apart with deft fingers, before descending to replace them with his tongue.

  He licked a taste, breathed her in, let his appreciation growl out over her engorged flesh, sending her screeching and scratching. He groaned his pleasured pain. “This is for every time you wrote my name on your delectable flesh. I’ll torment you, like you tormented me every second of the past sixteen months.”

  Ignoring her protests, he took the lips of her core in a voracious kiss, tonguing her, thrusting light then hard, sweeping short then long, suckling, layering sensation until she was buried. He brought her to the edge, snatched her away, never pushing her over, too many times to count, no doubt the number of times his name marked her body.

  When her breath fractured, her pleas stifled, and she lay beneath him paralyzed with hyperstimulation, he talked into her, sending the shock of each vibration, each syllable throughout her system. “Next time it’s me who’ll write my name all over you. But right here…” He pinpointed the bud where all her nerves converged, took it in a sharp nip. “I’ll tattoo my name.”

  The discharge of all the pent-up stimulation was so explosive, she heaved in detonation after detonation until she felt her spine might snap.

  He had no mercy, pushed three fingers inside her, sharpening her pleasure, lapping up its flood until her voice broke. He didn’t stop even then, sucked every spasm and aftershock out of her, blasting her sensitized flesh with more growls. “And this is to get you ready for what you deserve for walking out on me.” Two fingers sawed inside her spasming channel while one beckoned at her internal trigger, his thumb echoing the action on its mirror image outside. She writhed under the renewed surge, the need for release a rising crest of incoherence. She thrust against his hand until his rumbled “Marrah Kaman”—one more time—hurled her convulsing and shrieking into another orgasm.

  He came up to loom over her, watching her trembling with what he’d done to her, watching his hand tracing the patterns of his name on her buttock. Mute, saturated with pleasure, hungrier for him than ever, she watched him, the emotions on his face coming too fast and thick for her to register, to decipher. To withstand.

  Melting with the barrage, with needing him to end his punishment, give her the punishing ride she was dying for, she wrenched her eyes away, down. He was jutting against his pantaloons, the crown of his shaft straining beyond the waistband, wide and thick and daunting, dark and glistening with craving, throbbing with control. The moment he freed her hands to strip off her armbands, she lunged to snatch his pants down.

  He caught her hands. “Even now you stand by your claims that you need me inside you for the most intense climax?”

  She bucked her hips at him, begging. “I’m still conscious am I not? Still hungry, hungrier…” She was stunned to find her voice hoarse not gone. “I crave everything you do to me, your every touch turns me inside out with pleasure, but when you’re inside me, it’s…it’s indescribable…”

  Lava simmered in his gaze, the rest of him freezing. She made use of his stillness, skimmed stinging hands over the silk skin and hair-covered steel of his pecs, his abs, following the pattern with her lips and tongue while her hands delved beneath his waistband, closed on his engorgement.

  He lay on his side, letting her worship him. He waited until she thought she’d fulfilled her hunger, was kissing the satin head, licking the precious flow of his arousal, let her get a full sample of his feel and taste and thickness as he thrust into the moist heat of her hunger, once, before he reared back, left her choking with chagrin and deprivation.

  “This is my feast, Carmen. You are.” He snatched a pile of pillows, arranged them, dropped her back on top of them, had her arched, prostrated for his domination with an urgency bordering on violence, kneeled between her spread thighs, took her buttocks in his hands, his fingers digging shards of pain and frenzy into her. “And this is just to take the edge off…”

  “Just do it…tear into me, tear me apart…please…”

  He did. He rammed into her. All his power and the accumulation of frustration and hunger behind the thrust. The head of his erection, nearly too wide for her, mashed against all the right places, abrading nerves into an agony of response, pushing receptors over the limit of stimuli they could take, the gush of sensation they could transmit. He’d forged halfway inside her when she screamed, arched up in a deep bow, going into a paroxysm as the world flickered out, d
iffused, only his beloved face in focus, clenched in pleasure, his eyes vehement with his greed for hers.

  And what she’d heard was true. Sex was better after her operation, her great loss. Blindingly, excruciatingly better. Orgasm raged through her, discharging in blow after blow of pleasure so sharp it was agony.

  She raved, begged. “Can’t…can’t…please…you…you…”

  He understood. Gave her what she needed. The sight of his face seizing, the feel of him succumbing to the ecstasy she gave him, the hard jets of his climax inside her. They hit her at her peak, had her thrashing, weeping, unable to endure the spike in pleasure. Everything blipped, faded…

  Heavy breathing and slow heartbeats echoed from the end of a long tunnel as the scent of sex and satisfaction flooded her lungs. Awareness trickled back into her body, which was a mess of tremors, so sated it was numb. She felt one thing, though. Farooq. Still inside her, even harder, larger. She opened lids weighing half a ton each, saw him swim in and out of focus, still kneeling between her legs, her hips on his thighs, one palm kneading her breasts, the other gliding over her shoulders, her arms, her belly.

  “So it does take orgasming around me to knock you out.”

  “Told you so…” Her head flopped to the side, her heart following at the sight they made, the image of erotic abandon, half out of their wedding fineries, his ruined, their hair tousled, her face shell-shocked, his taut, savage, her position the image of wantonness, her arms thrown over her head, arched back over the pillows he’d piled beneath her, her hips jutting, her legs opened over his hips, his shaft half-buried inside her, stretching her glistening entrance, her lips wrapped around him in the most intimate kiss. And he was watching her watch them.