“What happened between us doesn’t change a thing.”
“Not a thing, no. Everything.”
She tried to turn her face away. “No! Nothing has changed or will ever change. We have to leave, Fareed. Please, don’t make this hard. I have to—”
“I have to, too.” He latched his lips on the frantic pulse in her neck, suckled her until she felt her heart pouring its beats and love into him. “I have to take you again, Gwen. I have to pleasure you again and again.”
Then as she struggled to hold on to her sanity and resolve, he defeated her, practiced every spell of seduction on her viciously awakened body and starving heart.
She found herself naked, delirious with arousal and pleasure, straddling his powerful hips, her palms anchored on his chest as he dug his hands in her buttocks.
He held her by them, had her riding up and down his shaft, showing her the exact force and speed and angle to drive them both beyond insanity, egging her on.
“Ride me, Gwen, ride me.”
Lost, mad, she obeyed him, rising and falling in a fever, milking his potency with her inner muscles, mines of pleasure detonating in her every cell.
It built and built. She rode and rode, faster, harder, her hands bunching in his muscles, her eyes feverish on his, her mouth open on harsh inhalations vented in frenzied cries.
When it became too much, she wailed, “Fareed!”
“Aih ya galbi, take your pleasure all over me. Take it.” He crashed her down on him, forged to her womb.
She imploded around him for long, still moments, shaking uncontrollably as the tidal wave hovered. Then it crashed, splintered and reformed her around him, over and over.
He took over when she lost her rhythm, a convulsing mess of sensation, changed the angle of his thrusts, hitting a bundle of nerves that triggered a fiercer explosion. It wracked her, drained her to her last nerve ending.
Yet she needed more, him, joining her in ecstasy, begged for it.
This time when the world vanished and nothing but him remained, around her, inside her, she promised herself.
This would be the last time.
Or maybe another time when next they woke up. Or maybe just one more day. Yes, one more day wouldn’t hurt.
But after that, there would be no more. Never again…
Chapter Nine
Fareed gazed down on Gwen and thought this was what sunlight would be like made flesh, made woman.
Her hair gleamed and her skin glowed in the flickering light of a dozen oil lamps. He’d placed them around this bedroom with only her in mind. This bedroom that wasn’t his.
After all the time he’d fantasized about having her in his bed, he’d picked her up that first night, and his feet had taken him here. A guest suite that had never been used before. He’d wanted them to have a place all their own, a place he hadn’t been before, where all the memories would be of her, of them.
He leaned over her, his heart in a constant state of expansion. Her lips, slightly parted in sleep, were crimson and swollen from his possession. Just their sight scorched him with the memories of the past days. He bent and took them, unable to have enough. She moaned, opening for him, her tongue first accepting the caress of his own, then dueling with it, in that never-ending quest for tasting, taking, surrendering. Even in the depth of sleep, she couldn’t have enough either.
He’d lost track of how many times he’d possessed her, how many times she’d claimed him back.
He pulled back, filled his sight and senses and memory with her, beyond his fantasies, lush and vital and glittering in the dimness, naked and vulnerable and the most overwhelming power he’d ever known. Her hold over him was absolute.
His love for her was as infinite.
He groaned as emotions welled inside him, debilitating and empowering, even as his body hardened beyond agony. He needed to plunge into her depths again, mingle with her body and soul.
His hand glided over her, absorbing her softness and resilience, the pleasure that hummed inside her at his touch, the craving echoing his. He caressed her from breast to the concavity of her waist, over the swell of her hips and the curve of her thigh. His hand hooked beneath her knee, opening her over him.
He savored her every jerk betraying her enjoyment, her torment, even as she still dreamed. He bent and took more suckles of the breasts that had rewhetted his appetite for life. She moaned as she spread her thighs for him, cradled him in the only place he’d ever call home, where the fluid heat of her welcome was unraveling his sanity all over again.
Her eyes half opened, heavy with sleep and lust, endless, insatiable skies. “Come inside me, Fareed…now.”
He felt he now lived to hear her say this, to know how much she needed him, to join them in unbridled intimacy and abandon, to take every liberty and give every ecstasy.
He pressed into her, reveling in the music of her gasps, the intoxication of her undulations, the urgency of the hands that clamped his head to her engorged-with-need flesh, begging him to devour her. The scent of her arousal sent blood crashing in his head, thundering in his loins.
He raised his head to take her vocal confessions, poured his own. “Every moment with you, ya roh galbi is magic. I want everything with you, every contradiction. Right now, I want to be giving and tender and I want to be greedy and ferocious, all at once.”
She clung to him, wrapped her legs around him, her lips feverish over his face and shoulders and chest. “You almost wrecked my sanity with your last session of giving tenderness. Give me greedy and ferocious, please. Please, Fareed, please!”
He’d never known there was such pride, such pleasure, as that her desire could engender. Now her urgency hit a chord of blind lust inside him, reverberated it until it snapped.
He snatched her beneath him, rose above her, his senses ricocheting within a body that felt hollowed. Every breath electrocuted him. Every heartbeat felt like a wrecking ball inside his chest. He wanted to tear into her, pound her until there were no more barriers between their bodies. And she wanted him to do it, to plunder her, was shaking apart for his domination.
But he’d give her even better. He’d give it all to her.
He unlocked her convulsive limbs from around his body, ignored her cries of protest, swept her around on her stomach.
She whimpered as he held her down, captured her mound. His fingers delved between her soaking folds to her trigger. She climaxed with the first strokes, bucking and shuddering beneath him.
He showed her no mercy, fingers gliding, spreading the moistness from her core, made her shred her body and throat on pleasure.