by Tara Pammi
Hardly had she shaken her head before he resumed the plunder of his mouth on her other breast.
Again and again, he ministered to her breasts until the wet points were tender and sensitized, until a fever ran in her blood. Pain and pleasure seemed to coalesce and beat like one pulse all through her body.
When he stopped his caresses and moved his hands down her body, Amalia felt like her entire body was waiting for a breath, parched. Like she’d been waiting her entire life for this moment with this man. The pulse he had built to a keening pitch between her thighs dulled down. And she was desperate enough to beg. “Please, Zayn, I need—”
“Not yet, habibti.” Dry amusement sprinkled his words. “First, I shall make sure you are ready for me, yes?”
Amalia protested with a sob. He was already holding her up, her quivering legs of no use. A hand under her knee urged it up and she locked it around his hip. The graze of his hip bone, the rough musculature against her inner thigh, sent a moan hurtling through her, the press of his shaft against the core of her sending an ache through it.
She hid her face in his chest at the way he opened up the heart of her, heat flooding her cheeks. “Zayn, that’s...the bed...”
A wicked gleam in his eyes, he pressed a sizzling kiss to her damp mouth. “No, here,” he whispered, before his fingers found the wet heat of her.
Amalia groaned as he pushed one, then two fingers into her core, while his thumb pressed and stroked the spot that ached for his touch.
His jaw gritted so tight to resemble a marble cast, he looked down at her. Passion pinched his features, all the hard contours of his face even more pronounced now. “You’re swollen and wet for me, Amalia.” When he tweaked the bud with his fingers, Amalia jerked at the wave of pleasure that claimed her. “And so violently responsive. Shall I take you like this, latifa?”
Amalia knew she should say something but the sight of his leanly powerful body arrested her words. While she watched with widening eyes and whistling breath, he ripped off the cover on a condom and rolled it on.
Her mouth went dry. She went willingly when he took her in his arms again and his fingers plunged into her wet core as if they belonged there. The insistent pressure and strokes of his fingers sent wave after wave of such blinding pleasure that she clung to him to ride each.
She was so close, so desperate for that peak, she dug her teeth into his flesh and panted against his skin.
In the next breath, he was lifting her as if she was a petite, fragile thing, urging her to wrap her legs around his hips. The wall kissed her bare spine, while his muscles pressed into her front. His fingers left her just as Amalia hung on the edge of her climax and then he was entering her with one hard thrust...
Stinging pain rippled through her core and Amalia tried to contain her whimper against one rock-hard shoulder. And failed. Every inch of her went rigid against the waves of pain.
This time she understood the curse words that fell from his mouth.
His fingers gentled on her hips, his breathing like bellows around her. “Damn it, Amalia...why didn’t you tell me?” He sounded so utterly pained that she lifted her head and looked at him.
Such tender concern filled his gaze that the fingers of pain dulled by a deeper longing. “I should have, I know. But I did tell you that I haven’t had much life beyond my mother and Massi...” Her words drifted off as she saw his jaw tighten. “You thought I had been with Massi?”
“Yes. It was clear in his eyes that he wanted more, Amalia.”
“He did. We tried a couple of dates but I couldn’t... I just couldn’t see him as anything other than my boss. And maybe an older brother. So I told him that I didn’t want to ruin what we had.”
“It is clear from his gaze today that he still...” He stopped and carried her to the vast bed. He brought her to the edge of it and gently lowered her. He’d already pulled out of her and all she felt was an aching awareness, a void in her sex, just like the one in her chest.
God, she didn’t want the night to end yet, not like this.
Fingers tight against his biceps, she stayed him. Pressed her face to his chest and breathed in the musky scent of him. His skin was smooth and rough at the same time, a damp sheen clinging to it. “Don’t leave me, Zayn... I came to you tonight because I wanted this.”
He clasped her cheek gently, his eyes full of a warmth that set her heart racing. “Hurting you physically is bad enough, Amalia. I can’t justify—”
“But it is a pain I welcomed willingly,” she pleaded, beyond pride or shame now.
Gentle fingers dug into her hair, molding the shape of her head. She’d never seen the conflict mirrored in his eyes as she did now. Something expanded in her chest, as if this fight he was going through between what he was supposed to be and what he wanted was a personal victory of hers. As if she had smashed through to the complex man beneath. “You know where my life is headed. If you waited this long, it should have been with someone special. I just—”
“You’re special to me, Zayn.” Instantly, his gaze shuttered and Amalia reached up to touch his face. “No, please don’t...withdraw from me. I’m not asking for anything. I do feel...there is a connection between us, do you deny it?”
“It’s attraction, Amalia. Lust at its most primal.”
She swallowed away the hurt that pinched at his dismissal. “Well, you’re the first man I’ve lusted over quite like this. So...how about you make good on your promise, Sheikh?” She filled her tone with taunt, desperate to have him finish what he started, desperate to have that closeness with him again. “Shouldn’t I get some reward for the pain I just felt? Or are you in the habit of leaving your woman unsatisfied? I wonder if that tabloid—”
“You’re a stubborn, manipulative witch,” he mumbled while he climbed over her onto the bed. Amalia slid up the sheets, her breath stuttering in her throat again.
His golden skin tautly stretched over a gorgeously hard body, Zayn took her breath away. He rested alongside her, his hands palms down on her body, restlessly stroking her everywhere.
Amalia closed her eyes and arched into his touch when he strummed her breasts again. Caught between the cool silk of the sheets and the heat of his knowing touches, she drowned in sensations. This time she was a little more aware of her own body’s partiality and she gave in to the delirious pull at her sex.
Then she felt his mouth at her nipples, suckling and stroking, while her body climbed higher and higher. When his other hand rested on her mound again, she tensed, the reminder of that cleaving pain driving her reaction.
He kissed the upper curve of her breast, “Shh...habibti, just relax. You trust me, don’t you, Amalia?”
Amalia opened her eyes and fell deep into his molten gaze. Her lips sought his and she moaned at how familiarly exciting he already was to her. How every inch of her recognized and thrummed for him. “I do.”
“Then give yourself over, hmm?” His fingers delved into her folds again and resumed stroking her.
Amalia brought her knees up and held his shoulders as he increased the pressure. Faster and faster while his mouth tugged her nipple again. She was panting, flying, every inch of her being concentrated on the pulls of her sex. The hunger was so intense that she felt like weeping for release.
“You’re a firecracker. Just listen to your body, latifa, and demand what you want from me,” Zayn whispered in a barely recognizable husky tone. She heard the smile in his words instead of seeing it. “Like you always do.”
As if that was all her body needed, she rocked into his touch, raising her hips, her fingers desperately holding on to his hard body. “Faster, Zayn, now,” she demanded wantonly and had the pleasure of hearing his deep laughter. The soft graze of his teeth against the tautly aching nipple sent Amalia soaring over the edge.
Pleasure splintered and shattered her in
to a thousand flashes of light and even before the tremors subsided, he thrust into her in one smooth, deep stroke. The groan that fell from his mouth was drawn out, rubbing against her senses. Amplified the utter sense of completion she felt down to her bones.
Pain this time was more of a fading imprint. Utterly replete, Amalia opened her eyes as his hands held her shoulders and he settled so deeply into her that she didn’t know where she ended and he began.
She ran her hands all over his hard body. His muscles clenched under her touch, a fine sheen of sweat covering his smooth skin.
“You feel incredibly good, habibti. I won’t last long.”
She loved seeing the dark desire in his eyes, the unraveling self-control. In that moment he was hers, Amalia knew. The sated languor left her body as he flipped her in a blink.
Every nerve ending felt tautly stretched as he pulled his legs forward and they were facing each other—nose to nose, lips to lips, and hips to hips. “Now, let’s see if we can make you scream again,” he whispered, sucking the tender flesh at her neck.
Such greedy languor spread through her lower belly that Amalia instinctively rose from his grip and then pushed herself back on him.
This time it was he who growled, his flesh pleading with her to not leave him. “Ride me, Amalia. I’m yours,” he said, and it was all the encouragement she needed.
She gloried in grinding herself against him, again and again, up and down until a bone-deep pleasure spread its fingers through her sex again.
When he thrust up, a wave of such piercing pleasure splintered through her that she screamed. And then she was landing on her back again, his big body covering hers as he thrust sharper and faster, exploding her pleasure into a newer level. Amalia locked her ankles around his, urging him on shamelessly, the move as instinctual as breathing.
He took her mouth in a hard, punishing kiss as his body bucked above hers and he climaxed with a guttural growl. And his bellowing breath fell around her, and his sweat-kissed body folded over her almost crushing breath. Amalia wrapped her arms around his sinewy strength and held on.
She felt like she was reborn, renewed, part of which was the raw experience of being possessed by this arrogant man. But part of it was this amazement at herself, too, for taking a chance with him, for taking a risk with her heart.
As her breath softened and her body felt boneless, fear touched that euphoria, too. She kissed his damp shoulder, her fingers tightening around him.
Because sharing this intimacy, opening her body to him, would make it a thousand times harder when it was time to leave him. But if she was given a choice as to knowing this with Zayn and a pain-free life, she knew she would make this choice again and again.
CHAPTER TEN
“YOUR FIANCÉE IS both beautiful and smart, Your Highness.” Translation: “Did you know that she is one of those modern, independent women?”
“Your fiancée has some interesting opinions about our education reforms, Your Highness.” Which actually translated to “This woman of yours thinks far too much. Control her.”
“Your fiancée, Zayn, has some strange ideas about Khaleej. Tell her where her place is before she becomes a liability.” This glittering warning from his father while his gaze held Zayn’s in a question.
A man who didn’t mince words, his advice was, “She’s a PA, Zayn. You could still keep her on in whatever position you want, and marry a suitable woman.”
Zayn had walked away before he could give voice to the storm brewing within him, before he forgot that this man was his father, a man who always deserved Zayn’s respect and loyalty.
The thought of making Amalia his mistress while he married another, reducing their relationship to that dimension, filled him with bile. Why when he had always accepted it as part of his fate? Was a faceless woman in the future in the same role just more palatable than a woman with whom he had shared the deepest and truest parts of himself?
For that was her appeal. With Amalia, he need not be just the sheikh or just Zayn. There was no dichotomy inside himself. He could be both and neither and still be comfortable in his skin, still know that he could trust in her absolutely.
Know that she understood everything that drove him, that made him who he was.
That kind of intimacy where they learned of each other, where they realized that there was so much more to learn, was both terrifying and exciting.
And addictively immersive.
The warnings and innuendos landed on Zayn like a pelt of stones, jarring the dreamy, drugged haze he seemed to be existing in in the month since their return from Paris, stirring inside him a violent urge to pound his fists into the nearest wall.
But since he hadn’t given in to that urge when he had been thirteen and his father had had his secretary transferred because the man’s fourteen-year-old son, who had been Zayn’s first, and probably only, best friend, was being a disrupting, corruptive influence on the prince, he didn’t do it now.
He pressed a hand to the back of his head where a soft pounding was beginning and retreated to a table at the corner of the hall. The way he was feeling right now, he would probably bite the head off some poor staff member who didn’t deserve his wrath. And the ones who did, the one who spoke of Amalia as if she was somehow beneath them, he could not shower his displeasure.
Signaling a passing waiter for some coffee, Zayn leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. The fragrance of coffee that wafted toward his nostrils lightened the growing tightness he was beginning to recognize in his chest.
He picked up his cup and took a sip. Amalia had gone from complaining that the brew was too bitter and pouring coffee into the creamer than the other way, to now asking what she had to do to ensure he sent her a supply of coffee for the rest of her life when she left Khaleej.
Even as he had been beyond tempted to voice his darkest desire, he had known that it was also a reminder. A reminder that she wasn’t forgetting that this was only an arrangement between them, that she knew the status quo.
That she didn’t, and never would, expect more of him than he was willing to give. That she wouldn’t get emotional and clingy when it was time to leave.
She gave so willingly and wantonly of herself to him in the dark of the night but Amalia also prided herself on her self-respect. She wouldn’t venture where she wasn’t sure of her welcome, her stubborn will her shield in so many ways.
Look how they’d been in Sintar for a month and she refused to still visit her father. Zayn knew from his aide that Professor Hadid had called her numerous times. He had even come to the palace but she bluntly refused to see him. Put him off with some excuse.
“Now he worries about where all this will end and what damage I might do to his reputation,” she had said when Zayn had argued that Professor Hadid was obviously concerned.
Amalia’s tough attitude hid so much hurt. Confronting her father, he knew, would break her. A vulnerable, hurting Amalia, he also knew, could become his own kryptonite.
So he let it be, even as he knew she had to face her father sooner or later.
Looking out around the vast hall where Mirah’s fiancé’s family was mingling with his own relatives, he pulled in a deep breath. He needed to shake off this spiraling feeling of losing his control, of being caught in an eddy.
Everything was going according to his own plan, he reminded himself. The risk he had taken with Amalia had paid off. Even as they questioned his choice, no one had doubted his relationship with Amalia.
The palace was ringing with the groom’s family and the wedding guests enjoying the lavish three-day celebrations that preceded the wedding. Even after this breakfast there were ceremonial events he had to attend as the bride’s brother and the sheikh.
Mirah’s nikah to Farid was tomorrow night and that was all that mattered, at least, for now. Not he nor Ama
lia or their all too real-feeling relationship.
He didn’t know why the shock and taunts of his friends and guests, even his parents, was leaving such a bad taste in his mouth. It was not news to him what Amalia was or what kind of a reaction she would draw from people who called themselves his well-wishers.
All he wanted to point out was that she had been by his side constantly for six weeks now and all she’d done was carry herself out in public with grace and decorum that made her no less than any daughter of some distinguished royal house that were assembled at the wedding even now.
Even when she disagreed with people’s views or faced prejudice just because she was a woman and an outsider, she did it with logic and conviction, with respect, even when she was denied it.
He also hadn’t failed to notice that she had ruffled more than one conservative cabinet’s feathers, and didn’t limit herself to a vapid, social existence. Even in the pretense, she had already involved herself in more than a few social issues and charity boards.
It was whiplash, for his statesmen had never seen a woman get involved in so many things, never mind break so many unwritten rules.
He had just finished his coffee when he heard a wave of excitement at the entrance to the hall. Dressed in a pale cream long-sleeved dress made of the sheerest silk and lace and with thousands of dollars’ worth of beadwork, Mirah walked into the hall. And next to her, dressed in a light mint-green dress was his fiancée.
Sheer sleeves covered her long arms, while lace panels covered her chest and neck. Demure and stylish, and yet utterly sensuous, she took his breath away. She smiled at female members of the groom’s party while her topaz gaze searched the vast hall.
The moment it touched him, genuine pleasure touched her bow-like mouth. It knocked him like a cool breeze on a hot day, fracturing something inside him wide open. He had hardly processed his own reaction, caught the answering jolt in his chest, when his cousin appeared at his table.