SHOCK BARRELING AT him with the might of a sandstorm, Adir struggled to hold himself still. She was Zufar’s betrothed... The future Queen of Khalia!
The realization drummed in tune with his heartbeat even as desire filled every inch of his body. “You’re shivering,” he whispered, moving his hands up and down her arms.
Thoughts came and went through his head like sand held in a palm. His fingers must have tightened over her shoulders for she let out a soft gasp.
Adir gentled his grip, but for reasons he couldn’t fathom, he didn’t want to let her go.
The bones at her shoulders jutted under his palms as he tried to soothe her. And himself.
Desire for her, he understood. She was beautiful, brave, smart, funny.
But this fierce possessiveness that coursed through his blood... It stemmed from something else.
That she was his half brother’s most precious possession perhaps? Now in his hands?
“I should walk away.” Her words were a whisper in the night—a plea, a demand on herself. Yet she didn’t move from the cradle of his arms. “From you. From this moment. It only tells me how much I cannot have. This...” she brought his arms up to her face, burying it in his palms. The soft buss of her kiss against his skin burned him “...only pains me. Only reminds me of how much I never had. And never will have.”
“Shh... I only want to hold you, Amira,” he said, even as his mind raced. “Whatever you need, it is here, now, with me.”
Turning, she burrowed into him. Her arms wrapped around his waist, her face hidden in his chest. The scent of her hair filled his own breath. He wrapped thick strands of her hair around his fingers, coiling and uncoiling, not unlike his own thoughts.
She was so damn innocent and trusting. Such a gift. A gift Zufar didn’t deserve. A gift Zufar didn’t even value, for why else would she crave a stranger’s company so much?
A gift that had unwittingly fallen into Adir’s hands.
He raised her chin until she was looking into his eyes. The transparent desire he saw there banished any doubts he might have had. Feral possessiveness filled him and he touched his mouth to hers in a soft press that sent lust punching through him.
She was so beautiful and young and soft.
So easy to seduce.
If anything inside of him revolted at the idea, Adir suppressed it with a ruthlessness learned through years of surviving the harshest desert conditions.
Shocked at first, she stilled underneath his kiss. But it was already there, the heat he had felt between them, a small spark waiting to be ignited.
Adir ran his hands over her back, soothing the tremors, learning her curves, all the while gently nibbling at her lips.
Honey and heat, she was the most perfect thing he had ever tasted. An urgency he had never known before filled his blood, pounding at him to push her against the wall behind them. To lock her body against his hungry one. To thrust his tongue into her mouth while he entered her heat in the same way...to make her his, here, in this moment, to stamp his...
No!
A small voice inside him whispered. Whatever his reasons for doing this, he wanted to make it good for her, too. And that meant he couldn’t let his libido run rampant.
“Adir?” she whispered, blinking owlishly. Making him smile. “Why did you stop?”
“I wanted to make it good for you.”
“It is good. It is so... I didn’t know a simple kiss could be so animalistic. So powerful.”
For an innocent, sheltered beauty, how could she be saying the one thing that fired his blood? He dug his teeth into her lower lip. And licked it when she moaned. “Between the right couple, a kiss can be a lot more.”
“So, it is this good for you, too?”
“You have quite the scientific mind, don’t you?”
She shrugged, studying him with those big eyes. “I wondered.”
He rubbed his nose against hers, a gesture of tenderness that shocked even him. It was only a prelude, he reminded himself. She had been his for the taking from the moment she had glanced up at him and sighed that feminine sigh.
What was wrong with blending into her fantasy a little? Giving her what she wanted? “You wondered what, Amira?”
“If it felt the same to you. I... I have never shared such a passionate kiss with any man.”
“Not even your fiancé?” The question slipped past his lips.
“No. The most he has ever done is hold my hand. At public ceremonies.” She blinked and he knew he would never forget that earnest expression in those wide eyes. The transparent desire. “Coming back to us... You’ve obviously been with a lot of women.”
He couldn’t remember a time he had enjoyed a conversation with a woman as much as he enjoyed having sex. But then, when had he had the inclination or time to have a proper relationship?
For him, women were for sex. To sate his body’s needs. And only when he was on his overseas visits because he could not disrespect any of his own tribes by taking a daughter or a sister or another’s wife as a lover.
Not when all the power rested in his hands.
“Why obviously? And are you asking?” he teased.
“No,” came her resounding answer. “I think it is tacky and I really don’t wish real life to interrupt this...dream. The only reason I brought it up is because it makes me curious if it feels just as powerful and passionate for a man who is sexually experienced and has had a variety of partners, in contrast to a woman who has lied to her own best friend when she told her that her fiancé had done more than kiss her because she feels too pathetic to admit that he barely even looks at her.”
This time, her admission, instead of giving that high again, made his chest contract in a strange sensation. No...chemistry was a strange thing, and he didn’t need to understand it. It was a tool tonight and he was using it. As he had always done—to carve his own path in life. To rise from orphan to sheikh of warring tribes.
To be the man who had done the impossible.
He brought her palm to his chest where his heart was thundering. Down his chest to the flat plane of his abdomen and farther down.
Eyes wide like a dark oasis on a moonlight, she gasped when her hand reached his groin. He covered her hand with his and let her feel the shape and hardness of him. It was a bad idea that made him grit his teeth when she explored him with that innate curiosity, her breath hitching in and out in the dark silence.
He leaned his forehead against hers, locking her wrist. “I have been like that from the moment I touched you. That kiss between us, Amira, is no common thing. It is a spark waiting to burn and I can’t breathe for wanting to set it alight.”
An incandescent joy lit up her face, and in that smile, he felt like a king.
Clasping her cheeks with his palms, he kissed her gently. He licked at the seam of her lips. Again and again. He sank his fingers into the thick mass of her hair and pulled her toward him until she was a perfect fit for him. He licked a damp trail from her neck to her jaw, dropping soft little butterfly kisses over her cheek, her nose, her eyelids, her temple. Everywhere but the sweet offering that was her mouth.
He did it again and again, until it felt like he had been waiting an eternity to taste her. Until every muscle in his body was coiled tightly, until the innocent rub of her belly against his erection was sensuous torture.
“I