The Last Prince of Dahaar

by Tara Pammi

  He liked it.

  Pulling herself up on an elbow, she ran her tongue slowly over the length of it, peppering it with kisses. “Turn around,” she said.

  And to her delight, he did. With his darkly hungry gaze trained away from her, she was bolder. Sliding to her knees, she kissed it all the way across his torso. Her nipples grazed him again and this time, they both groaned.

  “And again,” she whispered, and he lay on his chest.

  She bent forward to reach the other side, and her hand fluttered over his chest, down to his navel and farther below.

  Until her fingers grazed his erection. A hoarse grunt fell from his mouth, his hips thrusting upward into her hand. She palmed it, the rigid, pulsing length of it sending a rush of wetness to her core.

  And then, before she could blink, he was on top of her, deliciously heavy.

  His gaze collided with hers. Naked desire burned bright with dark shadows that always lingered but something else shimmered in his eyes, something that burrowed into her heart, wound itself around her. “You didn’t ask me permission to do that.”

  A glimmer of contentment, that was what it was.

  It was a gift, it burst through her like an explosion, a sight she gripped tight.

  He pressed a hard kiss to her mouth, and Zohra felt the tempo of his kiss change. His hands moved over her body, thorough and erotic but now, there was an urgency that shattered that iron-fisted control. When he settled between her thighs and probed her entrance with the head of his erection, every thought disappeared from her head. And Zohra was lost again.

  * * *

  Would it ever be enough?

  The unrelenting question pounded through Ayaan, mingling with the desire coursing through his blood, reverberating in every cell.

  It had to be, he threw an arrogant answer at himself.

  Because this was sex, after all.

  Zohra might be nothing like the women he had known, but his body was reveling in the pleasure, in the simple act of touching, of kissing.

  Ayaan ran his mouth over the pulse at Zohra’s neck, the taste of her tightening the need drumming through him. Her thighs automatically fell away, making a place for him, cradling his erection, the rasp of her quivering thighs against him unraveling the last thread of his control.

  She moved under him, a rasping sound from her throat. Her breasts rubbed against his chest and his arousal tightened into steel.

  He licked one taut nipple, and she arched like a bow, her hands sinking into his hair. He pulled it into his mouth and she screamed his name.

  It was a needy, throaty sound that ripped through him. “Please Ayaan...” she whispered at his ear, before flicking at his earlobe with her tongue. “I want to touch you, I need to...”

  Shaking his head, he ran a finger over the swollen flesh between her legs. She dug her teeth into his shoulder. He plunged a finger into her sex and she bit him, hard.

  Ya Allah, she was wet and ready for him. He wanted to pleasure her again, bring her to climax, suffuse himself with the taste and scent of her but the sight of her pink flesh, wet and ready for him, and his own hunger—selfish and relentless, rode him hard.

  Pushing her legs wide, he rubbed at the entrance with his penis. Sweat beaded on his forehead, every inch of his body throbbing for possession.

  “Spread your legs for me, Zohra,” he said, in a voice that was far from his own.

  When her boneless legs moved farther apart, he kept his hands on her hips and entered her in one hard thrust.

  Stars exploding in his eyes, she clenched him tightly. Heat poured through his muscles, pushing for friction, the walls of her sex stretching around his erection. He was about to pull out and ram back into her when the stillness of her body filtered through to his lust-soaked mind.

  He looked into her eyes, and saw the truth reflected there. Shock poured through him. “Of all the things to be lying about, Zohra?” he said, followed by a vicious curse he hadn’t ever uttered before.

  Regret punctured the pleasure, but only a little. His thighs quaked at having to stay still. He pulled back, inch by excruciating inch, his shoulders feeling like steel rods at the pressure he put on them to be slow, to be gentle, when she moved the tiniest inch beneath him.

  He bent down and nipped her lips, not hard but not gentle either. “Stay still, Zohra,” he said through gritted teeth, his skin sweaty, his hair drenched, and his body sliding out of its skin with the need to move.

  But of course his willful wife paid no heed. “It doesn’t hurt, Ayaan, not anymore. It just feels...” Her hands gripping his shoulders, a thoughtful look on her face, she wiggled her hips upward again. “Ahhh...it feels full and achy and so good...Please, please move...”

  Heat spiraled down his spine. With a curse that reverberated around them, he pushed back into her. Her throaty moan scraped along his skin, the experimental thrust of her hips blinding him to anything but sensation.

  Pleasure soaked into his skin, rammed through his nerves until there was nothing but the wet heat of Zohra, of his wife. Giving in to his body’s natural rhythm, he moved again. There was no finesse to his thrusts, no filter on the words that left his lips. Her thrusts met his in perfect rhythm, the sounds she made became needier, faster. He willed his body to wait for her pleasure by the skin of his teeth.

  On the next move, he rubbed the swollen flesh with his fingers and she fell apart like a thunderstorm. Her muscles contracting against the sensitive flesh of his arousal, pulling every inch of pleasure from him, he thrust again and orgasmed in an explosion of heat that touched every nerve, rocked through every inch of him.

  Pleasure receded, the first wave of need blunted for now, and questions pounded back into him. He reversed their positions, still joined intimately.

  Her arms instantly rose to cover her breasts. She looked down at their bodies still joined and a fierce blush claimed her cheeks.

  “You were a virgin.”

  Her gaze flew to his. “Yes.”

  He pulled her hands from her breasts, fresh need rippling through him at the sight of those pale pink nipples. She held herself stiff, and the savage that he was, it turned him on. “You said—”

  “Let go of my hands, Ayaan.”

  “No,” he said and pulled her up until she was astride him in his lap. His erection thickened, lengthened inside her.

  Her brown gaze flared wide. “Oh....you are—”

  “Yes, ya habibi. It’s a long way down from the edge.”

  The most masculine, arrogant, savage satisfaction gripped him now that the initial anger at her lie faded. He frowned, even as he relished the feral feeling.

  Fierce emotions—either passion or fury or even love, he had never been capable of them. And yet in that moment, he couldn’t stem the savagery of his emotions.

  Questions hurtled through him but he fought the urge. He would not bring another man’s name into this bed with her. Not tonight, not ever.

  He was the only man to have possessed her, the only one who had known her in the most intimate of ways.

  Her hands resting on his shoulders, she tried to wiggle out of his lap. The erotic friction of their joined bodies intensified a thousandfold.

  Their mingled groans, the scent of sex—it was an irresistible aphrodisiac.

  “You lied to me.”

  “I said and did whatever I thought I needed to, to get out of the wedding,” she said. “But Faisal never asked for what I would have offered. I used to tease him for being so bound to traditions and customs that were laid down ages ago. But I think I understand now. And I...”

  He clasped her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Finish your thought, Zohra. Because this is the last time I will tolerate his name on your lips, the thought of him on your mind.”

  She looked at him, un
blinking, the depth of emotion in it a reminder of what a force this woman was. “I am glad he never asked, Ayaan.”

  He closed his eyes and breathed through the cloud of need that had his hips leaning upward into her. She had been a virgin, he reminded himself with the utmost effort. He needed to be gentle, even if it was a little late, he needed to let her body get used to him. “What does it make me that I am glad that he didn’t take it, Zohra? That your body has known only me, that...”

  She lifted her hands, sunk them into her hair and tugged it back. It was such an unconsciously sensual movement that he lost that tenuous hold on himself. “Like I felt when you said that you don’t remember another woman’s body, when you said you never felt pleasure like this before?” He couldn’t help himself. He cupped her breasts and rubbed the tight nipples with the heel of his palm. “Whatever you think it makes you, I am one, too. So be kind to yourself,” she said, and arched into his touch with a sigh.

  He bent his head and licked one nipple. She jerked, moving up and down, and it was his turn to groan. “Your breasts...I am never going to have enough. And you go up in flames when I touch them.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, her spine so straight that he wondered if he would break her. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, the marks from the stubble of his jaw outlined on her neck and breasts. What in the name of God had she unleashed in him? She leaned her forehead against his and the trust in her action branded him. “I...it feels like I will combust...” She arched her body again, as if asking him for more, “...if you stop.”

  Just once more, he promised himself. He would taste her just once more and then stop. Let her body breathe, let her rest. He pulled the nipple into his mouth and suckled. And she sobbed, his name falling in a guttural request from her lips. He heard his name on her mouth, the whimper of pleasure she made, that shredded his composure.

  They were sounds he would never have enough of.

  Burying his mouth at her neck, he fought for control. With her hands locked around his nape, she pushed closer to him until her breasts dragged deliciously against his chest. And kissed him on the mouth.

  He gripped her hips when she moved, heat he had no strength to check built up inside him again. “You will be sore tomorrow, ya habibati.”

  Her tongue traced the seam of his lips, her eyes twinkling. His grip loosened on her, his body moving of its own mind. She sucked on his tongue next and he lost the fight.

  He thrust upward and she moved down. He pumped his hips faster, and she matched his rhythm. He cursed and she laughed. Leaving her to set the rhythm, he took her nipple in his mouth.

  And she shattered with a guttural sigh. His own climax followed, rippling through him, breaking him apart and putting him back together and changing him.

  Taking her with him, he fell back to the bed, and held her tight against him.

  His memory wasn’t that corrupted to think his body had once known this kind of pleasure, his mind not so broken to think what had occurred was normal, to believe that it was anything short of spectacular.

  Six years ago, he would have reveled in the discovery, taken it for granted as another of life’s gifts, shouted it out from the rooftops. The man he was today couldn’t stop the cold ripple of fear that churned in his gut, couldn’t shake the feeling that anything this good couldn’t last.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MEET ME AT the stables.

  Ayaan looked at the note a little girl had fluttered in his hand. Frowning, he looked up and realized he had missed half of what Imran, his security chief, had said.

  Motioning him to repeat, he walked toward the stables. And promptly stopped on the path when Imran was done. “So this information comes from the same source who provided us information last time on where the terrorist group will convene next?”

  Imran shook his head. “No.”

  Intelligence about a terrorist gathering in Dahaara the next month... It was the third time this information was coming his way. Information that had been accurate the first two times but was beginning to sound too good to be true. And this time, it was coming from a different source.

  Something niggled at Ayaan, even though he couldn’t exactly place it. “See if you can trace it back to the source,” he said, taking another step in the direction of the stables.

  “Are we not—”

  “We are not acting on this until we figure out if there is a connection,” he said, dismissing him and covering the distance to the stables.

  Imran had requested this meeting two days ago, and Ayaan, unable to focus on anything, had forgotten.

  Like a teenager riding the first waves of infatuation, his mind, and his body, refused to focus on anything but on the image of Zohra underneath him, her beautiful brown eyes bewitching with raw need, sparkling with trust, the tight heat of her body, the heady moans from her mouth.

  At some point past midnight, when he had exhausted them both, they had finally fallen sleep. Dreamless sleep, Ayaan had realized with a shock the next morning.

  It had been two days since, two days where she had occupied his every thought, during which, interestingly, she had avoided him just as he had, where he had had more than enough time to berate himself for what he had done, to find numerous reasons why he could not do it again.

  Even if his body, forever in a state of painful arousal, didn’t understand the fact.

  He made his way to the stables, curiosity for once trumping the distinct unease he felt anywhere near it.

  He stood inside, the echo of everything he had gone through in there rumbling through him. He understood the spine-tingling fear that had driven him to take Zohra, the need to keep her close, the need to lose himself in her body, but in the cold light of the day, the evidence of the instability of his mind skewered through him.

  The scent of her carried to him through the light breeze, his body thrumming to life as though a switch had been turned on. He turned around to face her and frowned. Dusk was still a few hours away yet she had wrapped a thin shawl over her torso with white leggings under it. Her hair was covered with a scarf of the same color, and she looked the very picture of vitality, of life, an embodiment of everything he was not.

  “Ayaan,” she said, as if she needed to force him to acknowledge her presence, as if the memory of how she tasted, how her body clenched him tight wasn’t etched into his very cells.

  “You have been avoiding me,” he said. Tugging the scarf from her neck, she dropped it to the floor. Sunlight glinted in her hair, turning it into strands of coppery gold. “Are you regretting what happened?”

  “No. And I’m not the one who’s doing the avoiding. I just didn’t hound you like I usually do.” She ventured farther in and tugged the huge door closed. Then her fingers pulled the shawl she had wrapped around her torso. Inch by inch, she unwound the fabric until it fell to the ground with a soft whisper.

  She wore a sleeveless top, in the sheerest see-through silk in gold. With the light from the high windows behind her, every inch of her body was outlined under the thin fabric. He swallowed, the shadow of her lacy bra, the indent of her navel instantly drowning him in images and sensations of how she had felt beneath him.

  Walking around the stables, she came to a halt near him. “I have ordered for it to be demolished.”

  He raised a brow even as he enjoyed the raw command in her tone.

  Sinking her hands under the top, she slowly peeled off her leggings. The sight of her long, bare, sun-kissed thighs set need coursing through him, rattling his self-control. “It serves no purpose other than to remind you of what you had to endure.”

  “It’s not the only thing that reminds me of everything I have gone through and everything I am not,” he said, studying her with a hunger that was becoming all too familiar. The sight of the thin strings of her panties dried up his throat. “And dem
olishing it won’t fix me, Zohra.”

  Shaking her head, she reached him, a resigned smile on her lips. “Maybe I don’t think you need fixing, Ayaan. There is one thing I wish to do here before it goes down, though.”

  She was upset and she was battling it with her fierce strength. He didn’t question why or how he knew. He just did. And in this mood, she was a force to be reckoned with.

  He covered the last step between them before he realized he was moving. Being near her and not touching her was akin to not breathing. Their gazes held, speaking to each other, assessing each other, and he immediately felt surrounded by her warmth.

  Warmth that had a different source from the desire that flew hotly in his veins. This time, he willingly lost the fight, surrendered his will to her.

  His fingers trembling, he touched her forehead. She exhaled on a whoosh. “Are you all right?” Burying his nose in her hair, he took a deep breath, until she was all he knew, all he felt, all he was. “Everywhere?”

  Her chin tilted up, she held his gaze even as pink scoured her cheekbones. “I am not going to break so easily.” Her words were a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down. And yet, he could be the one who could break her, who could crush that indomitable spirit.

  She ran her fingers over his jaw, and he closed his eyes. Her touch feathered over him, fanning the flames of desire that always simmered. It had taken him an incredible amount of control to not go looking for her in the past two days.

  The indescribable pleasure he had found with her was addictive, but he could still do without it. But the warmth of her smile, the quiet contentment he found near her, he was afraid they would be his downfall.

  The pads of her thumbs brushed over his forehead, his nose, his lips. When he would have stopped her, she pushed his hands away. “You will not deny me this.”

  “Giving orders, Princess?”