She glared at him mutinously, and then turned her head aside, refusing to say the words. Refusing to beg. Damn him! Her body might have betrayed her but her mind had no intention of doing the same!
But then his head dropped to her breast and his tongue lashed at her nipple, his mouth clamping down on a dusky peach aureole until she arched her back and whipped her head around. The look of triumph in his face was her undoing.
How could she give him what he wanted? How could she tell him that she needed him to keep kissing her most intimate flesh, to release the pleasure he’d stirred up inside of her?
She couldn’t.
For as much as she wanted him – needed him – to finish what he started, she understood the importance of the power in their relationship, and she would not accede it to him. Not yet.
“You need only say please, Chloe, and I will give you what you want.”
Every single nerve ending in her body was screeching at her to obey. To acquiesce. To give into the drugging need for release, for relief from this hounding, aching pain inside her.
But then what?
The expression give him an inch and he’ll take a mile had been coined for this man. She was no fool – trust didn’t come easily to Chloe at the best of times, but like this, with her own body being used against her? Not damned well likely.
“Oh, go to hell,” she snapped, rolling away from him and standing, uncaring for her nudity. She glared at him from the edge of the bed, and had the pleasure of seeing shock on his features. Good, she thought.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she spoke with icy disdain. “I’d like to take a shower. You can let yourself out.” She strode through the suite, not looking back, not slowing down, but as soon as she was in the privacy of the ensuite, she closed the door and leaned against it, sagging heavily as her mind replayed what he’d just been doing to her body. How he’d touched her, kissed her, how he’d made her feel.
A tremor ran through her and she almost weakened! For a maddening second, she thought about wrenching the door inwards and shouting at him to come back and please keep going. But pride and fierce determination alone held her where she was.
He would not break her – he would be the first man in her life who saw her for who she was and respected that woman. No matter what it took.
* * *
He was gone when she emerged only a short time later, but when she lay on the bed, she could smell him, she could feel him. The phantom of Raffa remained, and he tortured her in her dreams, so that she awoke tired and cranky.
Her mood didn’t improve when the day’s temperature sky-rocketed, making it impossible to head out of the palace and explore. Even if she’d wanted to, her six maids were doing their best to dog her every step, so she was never alone, never unwatched.
Her mood worsened.
By the evening, she was ready to snap.
Mid-way through a history of one of the eastern provinces of Ras El Kida, she’d re-read the same page at least four times before she gave up and dropped the book onto the bed in a huff.
At home in Seattle, she would have gone for a run, or she would have gone to see a movie on her own, buying a huge box of popcorn and a gallon of soda, curling up in the back row and losing herself completely in someone else’s life for a while.
She had no such getaway here.
Her charity work was her best distraction, but even that hadn’t filled the void for her today.
That evening, when a knock sounded on the door, she stood, preparing to greet Aysha and the tray she habitually brought to Chloe at this time.
Only Aysha wasn’t alone when he entered. Raffa was there, his expression impossible to read as he walked behind Aysha and forestalled the servant from serving their meals.
“That will do,” he clipped, nodding towards the door.
Aysha bowed low and departed, pulling the door closed behind herself, so they were alone once more.
“Does it ever occur to you to say ‘thank you’?” Chloe asked, hiding the torrent of emotions that he invoked behind a mask of cool indifference.
He eyed her thoughtfully but didn’t take the bait. “You wanted to get to know me,” he said instead, crossing to the table and holding a chair out for Chloe. She frowned but eased herself into it.
He was close, though, and as he pushed her chair nearer to the table, she inhaled, catching his masculine, uniquely ‘him’ aroma and her nerve endings quivered in response.
“So I thought we would have dinner together,” he concluded, taking the seat opposite, and watching her with undisguised interest.
He was trying to understand her, she realized. She’d surprised him, and a whole day later, he had no idea how to manage her. Good!
“Fine.” She reached for her napkin, laying it in her lap then fixing him with a cool gaze that didn’t falter, despite the knots forming in her stomach.
A frown passed his face. “I know everything about your brother,” he said, reaching for a bottle of wine and half-filling her glass before doing the same to his own. “But surprisingly little of the woman I married.”
“You’re one of his closest friends,” she admitted. “Apollo thinks highly of you.”
“And I of him.”
“You’re very similar.” Her tone was clipped, so it was impossible to know if she meant it as a compliment or not.
“In what ways?” He handed her a serving spoon, watching as she lifted it into some of the spiced rice and lay it carefully onto her plate. She added a little of the green mango chutney then a single piece of fish.
“Well, you’re both smart, driven, confident to a fault,” she remarked, sitting back in her chair.
“You’re all those things,” he responded, taking the serving spoon and easily tripling on his own plate what she’d served herself.
“Hardly!” She refuted, but clamped her lips together before she could make a self-deprecating comment on her own intelligence, or lack thereof.
“I think we’re different. Apollo and me,” he clarified. “More than we are alike.”
“Perhaps you can’t see it clearly because you’re too close to the subject matter.”
“I am your husband and he is your brother – do you claim to have the requisite distance to be objective?”
She frowned. “He’s my half-brother,” she corrected thoughtfully. “And you are…”
“Yes?” He waited for her to finish.
“Not my husband in the traditional sense.”
He arched a brow. “I was in the Hallam when we said our vows. I was also there when we signed the contract, and when we were bound together by the ancient threads of halisham. How are we not a traditional couple?”
Chloe was glad then that she didn’t easily blush. “You know what I mean.”
He lifted his wine glass and sipped it thoughtfully. “Why did you agree to this?”
“To marry you?” She fixed him with a cool stare that hid any emotion easily.
“Your father was traditional,” he answered his own question. “And my father’s dearest friend. But you were raised in America. By all reports --,”
She interrupted him. “You mean, according to Apollo?”
He dipped his head forward in silent concession. “You were raised by your mother. You are American. You are independently wealthy. I cannot see why you agreed to this.”
“Does it matter?”
He expelled a sigh. “You are the only person in my life who does not answer me when I ask a question.”
“And you don’t like it.”
His frown was just a flick of his lips. “I wouldn’t say that.”
Chloe laughed. “I would. You hate that I don’t fit into the box you think I ought to.”
“And what box is that?” He leaned forward, arresting her with the strength of his gaze. “Don’t tell me. You said last night. Submissive. Quiet…”
“Yes. You think I should do what you say, not have a mind of my own, a brain of my own.”
&nbs
p; “When have I ever given you that impression?” He asked with a softness that his political opponents would have known to fear.
“Do you even need to ask?” She demanded fiercely. “Last night you tried to make me beg for you, just to prove you could. What does that say, except that you’re outrageously egotistical?”
He stared at her for several beats before sipping his wine once more. “Or,” he placed the glass down. “What if I value our arguing. Like it, even. But want you to let me teach your body what pleasures it’s capable of?”
Her breath hitched in her throat, but she wasn’t going to be silenced by her inexperience. “And for that I have to be demeaned? Humiliated? Made to beg as though my right to pleasure is something only you can grant?”
He expelled a breath, frustration evident in his features. “I was wrong last night, and for that I apologise.”
“You apologise?”
He nodded. “Now, stand up.”
“Why?”
He pushed his chair back and stood to his full height, moving towards her and extending a hand. “Because you’re sexually frustrated, and that’s my fault.”
“Yes, it is your fault,” she stayed in her seat, so that he groaned and knelt before her.
“Because you just wanted to feel this,” he lifted his hand between her legs, finding her underwear and pushing it aside, so his thumb could brush against her most sensitive cluster of nerves. “You’re a twenty two year old virgin, and you’re my wife, and I want you to feel every pleasure you have ever imagined.”
And before she could answer, he slipped a finger between the apex of blonde curls between her thighs, his own breathing ragged when he felt her warm, moist core.
“Raffa,” she whimpered, turning her body more fully to grant him better access. “Raffa!”
And through the fabric of her dress, he lifted his hand and palmed her breast, cupping the weight of her in his large, strong hand, brushing his thumb and forefinger over her nipples, plucking them until they were hard and aroused.
“I don’t need you to beg for me because I want to demean you,” he said, kissing her roughly before dragging his lips down her throat and nipping her flesh at the base of her neck. “I need to hear you say you want this. I need to know this is okay.”
His confession did something to Chloe, infiltrating her dark spaces, spreading warmth over a coldness that was locked deep in her heart. There was true desperation in the words, something close to self-condemnation.
Chloe shifted a little, so she could see his face more clearly.
Hadn’t she sworn she’d be cold in his arms? Hadn’t she promised herself she wouldn’t respond to him?
What foolish, petty resolutions! He was a man, and she was a woman, and this fire that burned between them needed to be addressed, needed to be quenched – or flamed? She didn’t know! Only that she couldn’t lie to him about her body’s wants any longer.
“I want you to make love to me more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.”
His eyes sparkled with a primal heat, a searing sense of victory, and then he nodded.
“And so I shall, sheikha.”
Chapter Five
HE HAD KNOWN SHE was innocent when they’d married, and if he hadn’t, the way she’d responded to his touch would have told him the truth of her experience. But as he kissed her now, Chloe’s body responded to his in a way he’d never known.
She anticipated every move, her fingers lacing with his, her mouth seeking him, trailing warm kisses down his shoulders, his arms, to his chest, teasing him, tasting him, so that he was almost incoherent with desire.
He worshipped her body as she did his, and when she was feverish with longing, almost exploding with how much she needed him, he brought his arousal to her sweet womanhood and hitched his tip at her entrance.
“I will be gentle,” he promised, and he kissed her, softly, sweetly, as he nudged himself deeper inside of her, lifting her hips with a hand behind her buttocks, tasting her surprise as he stretched muscles that had never been used before.
She stilled when he moved deep enough to find the barrier of her innocence and he cursed inwardly, hating more than anything the necessity of paining her, of doing anything that wouldn’t please her.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, and curled her legs around his back, pulling him deeper, all the way in. He’d never known anything like it; she was so tight around his length and yet he fit perfectly.
“Don’t stop,” she said again.
He lifted up on his elbows, just high enough to see her face, to reassure him that she was okay.
“I want this.”
He nodded, and pushed deeper inside of her. Now that the barrier had been swept away, and the moment of discomfort passed, each stroke of his arousal ran against her most sensitive cluster of nerves, so that every breath brought her closer to something she’d never known, never felt.
She dug her fingernails into his shoulders then scored them down his back, moaning as he moved harder and faster, deeper and fuller, and then the build-up of pressure couldn’t be stemmed for a moment longer. She lifted up, so that she could kiss him, as her whole body seemed to spin apart from the seams, the centrifugal force of her pleasure threatening to take her into the heavens.
“Raffa,” she pleaded the word into his mouth, she didn’t know what she was asking, only that she needed this, more of this, all of this.
He understood, holding her close, letting her ride the waves of her orgasm before he moved again. She realized now that he had been being gentle before. Now, he thrust into her with a desperate, primal rhythm and as his arousal possessed her, his mouth ran over her breasts, sucking on her nipples until she was crying out at the pleasurable assault on her senses.
“Yes, yes, yes,” the word tumbled from her mouth over and over and she threw her head back as he hitched himself as deep as he could inside of her and she was tipping over the edge of the universe anew, losing all sense of who she was and what she wanted – she knew only that she was alive in his arms and that she was as far from cold and unaffected as she could be.
He watched her face scrunched in pleasure and thrust once more before finally losing himself to the same wave of pleasure, holding her to his chest as he spilled his seed into her body, moving his kisses to her mouth, speaking in the ancient dialects of his people, words she didn’t know, but innately understood.
A storm of passion had burst upon them, and when it was over, Chloe found she was floating on an island in the middle of a seemingly endless sea. Everything had changed yet nothing was different.
They’d done just what they said they would, but that didn’t alter the material facts of their marriage. They were a man and a woman who had married for convenience, not love, not even because they desired one another. That they did was a fortunate coincidence, but it had no bearing on anything important.
His body flexed inside of her, pushing all rational thoughts from her mind, allowing her to slip back into the moment of mind-blowing pleasure.
He peppered kisses along her brow, then to her décolletage, and the valley between her breasts, and then, when he reached her tummy, he pulled his body away from her, standing in his gloriously naked state, towering over her. His hair had come loose and tumbled over his shoulders, and again she saw him as a warrior king – he looked ancient, primal and powerful, and in that moment, he was all hers.
“Come with me.” He held a hand out to her, so it was the most natural thing in the world for Chloe to place her smaller one inside his and let him pull her gently to standing. He led her into the bathroom attached to her room, and reached into the enormous shower cubicle so he could start the water running.
“Here,” he murmured, gesturing for her to step inside. She did, working on autopilot.
He followed her in and she was immediately relieved and thankful that this intimacy wasn’t yet over. The water fell over her head and down her body, and she was so over-sensitive from his love-makin
g that she moaned in response, feeling every droplet as though it were his touch.
He placed some fragranced oil into the palm of his hand – an oil sourced from a native tree that produced an abundant supply of this antibacterial, exotically fragranced substance that was used all over the country in place of soaps and body washes – and ran his hands over her arms, then to her hips, her flat stomach, her rounded bottom. He touched her everywhere, washing her, worshipping her, paying special attention to the sensitive flesh between her legs and when she was clean he lifted the palm of her hand, placing some of the oil into it.
“Your turn,” he commanded, the words husky and thickened with desire.
She swallowed past the anxieties born of her inexperience and focused instead on what he was offering – the freedom to touch him. To explore him, as he had her. Tentatively at first, she lifted her palms to his chest and felt his hair-roughened flesh beneath her fingertips, her eyes showing her uncertainty as she watched him for a reaction and had the satisfaction of seeing his sharp intake of breath. She moved lower, her courage built, teasing her fingers over the coarse hair just below his naval, creeping slowly downwards, until her thumbs brushed the base of his arousal. And he was aroused, big and hard once more, so that she couldn’t help but stare at his masculinity.
But she wasn’t ready to touch him yet. Not there. With a small, impish smile, she moved behind him so she could run her hands over his back, finding the ridges of his spine, the muscles that ran beneath his shoulders, then all the way down his sides, over firm hips, to the buttocks that were impressive for their obvious strength. She touched him freely, curving her palms around him, smiling when she heard his ragged breathing. And with her body behind his, she snaked her hands to his front, clasping his erection in one hand while her other stroked his side.
He made a throaty sound of desire, hot and urgent, and with her hand running the length of him, he began to move, until he could take it no longer. He spun around, grabbing her by the hips and lifting her easily, planting her on his length so that she cried out at his total possession of her. It was perfection. Like this, he was so much deeper, and he no longer seemed to care that this was all new to her, and she was infinitely glad for that. She didn’t want to be treated with kid gloves by her husband. She wanted to feel all of this, all of him.
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