He’d brought her here to seduce her. He’d struggled each moment to remind himself she was a means to an end. He’d fought to convince himself that no matter how much he craved her, and though he would marry her, there’d never be emotions involved.
But with each moment he could no longer connect the reality of the woman who delighted him, who roused every appreciative emotion he’d never thought he had, with the image of the unfeeling, amoral woman she was supposed to be. Then came today.
Memories bombarded him now that she was no longer in pain or danger. Of every heart-bursting second as she’d charged him, exchanging places with him. As he’d watched her convulse, felt her scream gurgle through the water, electrocuting him with fright. And then what followed, where only the blinding need to carry her to safety, to absorb her fear and agony, had existed.
And here she was, dismissing her action, refusing credit, making light of it. Then worse, painting him a nightmarish alternate reality when she could have slipped through his fingers never to be reached again. Then came the worst of all. Showing him that her only regret, in the moments when she’d thought she might die, was that she’d die without experiencing intimacy with him.
Before today, he’d started to think maybe he didn’t have to seduce her all the way, could finalize their marriage then leave it up to her whether they consummated it. He’d thought that might make his deception sting less when she found out about it, give them a chance to work out a viable relationship.
But she’d made him face the horror of the possibility of loss at any moment, and in their situation, of the extra desolation of losing without ever having lived the pleasure.
He could swear he heard the last of his control buckling.
Blind, out of his mind, he caught her to him, filled his hands with her, honey and life and unconditional surrender made flesh, made woman, all woman. And she was his for the taking. And he would take her. And take her.
“Ana ella ensan,” he groaned over and over in the sweetness she surrendered with such mind-destroying eagerness, to himself, to the fates that had placed her, a temptation he couldn’t resist, a test he was bound to fail, in his path. “Just human…”
He tore his lips away, sank down to her ample cleavage. She clamped his head to her flesh, stopping his movements, gasped, “If you’re going to stop…please, stop now.”
He shook off her feeble restraint gently, dragged his teeth along her honeyed swell, looked from that incredible vantage into her eyes, saw the distress bordering on hurt. It was real.
Everything about her was real.
And he groaned all that was real inside him, too. “I only stopped before, at the price of pieces of my sanity, because I feared that intimacy, if indulged too fast, would overwhelm us, that other pleasures would go undiscovered under its blinding effect. But I can’t bear that you felt such loss because of the restraint I imposed, thinking I was building up anticipation…”
She struggled up on one elbow, her other arm hooking around his neck, her face blazing with anxiety. “And it was glorious, Shehab, glorious. You gave me so much, on so many levels, every bit unprecedented and irreplaceable. Experiences I never thought to have. I just got greedy, thinking how much more it would be if…”
He took her hand off his neck, pushed her back gently until he had her flat on her back on the platform, loomed above her, his gaze greedy on her face and breasts, which shuddered with emotion. “And you were absolutely right. It will be beyond what either of us has ever dreamed possible. I’ll worship you, brand you, turn your body into an instrument of ecstasy, yours and mine. You’re mine to pleasure as I will, aren’t you?”
Her nod was frantic. “Yes, I’m yours…yours, Shehab.”
Yours. His. Mine. The concept seared through him, becoming mind-bending fact as he looked down on her, peach-flushed through the perfection of her tan, her pupils engulfing the emerald, crimson lips swollen with his passion, panting for more, beckoning him to come lose his mind, once and for all.
“Yes, Farah, you’re mine, and I’ll do everything to you, for you, with you…” He dragged down the straps of her swimsuit, exposing her an inch at a time to the rhythm of his words, drawing a whimper at each glide, replacing its cover with his lips, tongue and teeth, coating her velvet firmness in suckles and nibbles, knowing just where to skim and tantalize, where to linger and torment, where to draw harder and devour. Her moans became cries, then keens, then labored gasps.
The pressure in his loins, the accumulation of need was reaching critical levels. He feared it would be like a dam breaking the moment he thrust inside her. And he couldn’t let their first intimacy be anything less than perfect bliss. And it was no longer because he needed her in his total power. Now the only reality was that he craved her pleasure far more than he craved his, that his pleasure would stem from hers.
He took pity on her, on himself, slid the swimsuit all the way off her, lingering on a long groan as he slid one foot out after the other. Then he stood back, his heart thundering, looking down on her, laid out before him like an unending feast.
He’d seen almost all of her before, her breasts on their first night, the rest of her in one-piece swimsuits that left little to the imagination. Or so he’d thought. For there she was. Beyond his imagination. Ripe, strong, tailored to his every fastidious taste and beyond. His female. And she was dying for him as he was for her, quaking with the force of her need.
“Enti ar’oa memma kont atasawar…” He heard the awe in his voice, knew it was real. Everything he felt was real. More real than anything he’d ever felt before. “More incredible than I’ve imagined. And ya Ullah, ya Farah, how I’ve imagined…”
She held her arms out in demand, in supplication, and he yanked her to him, bending her over one arm, her breasts an erotic offering to sacrifice anything for. Pouring litanies of passion into her lips, all over her face, he kneaded and weighed one breast, seeking one erect, deep-peach nipple, pinching and rolling it before he moved down, captured the other bud of overpowering femininity and need in his mouth.
She screamed. With each pull, she screamed again, shuddered apart. His hands glided over her abdomen, closed over her trim mound, stilled. This. Her core. Where he’d merge them, where he’d invade her, where she’d capture him. And she was letting him have it, own it. He squeezed his eyes, her flesh.
Just as she cried out again, he slid two fingers between the velvet slickness of her exquisite folds, spreading them, getting drunk with the scent of her arousal, the evidence of her desire and dependence made nectar. She was ready for him.