bunching her skirt, pushing beneath her soaked panties, cupping her buttocks with strength and greed, lifting her, spreading her for his domination.
Falling into an abyss of mindlessness, she clung around him, delighting in his bulk and power as he filled the cradle of her thighs, the one thing left to hang on to in her world.
A storm raged through her, rising from the core his hardness thrust and thrust against. Moans spilled from her with his every wrenching kiss as he escalated the rhythm simulating possession into a fever. She opened wider for him, mouth and legs, to do whatever he wanted to her, to give her everything she needed.
“Haidar …”
The coil of tension in her core suddenly snapped. She cried out into his mouth as the pulse of pleasure tore through her. He had no mercy, his every grind against her bucking body continuing to feed it, unwind it, until she was a lax mass of stunned satisfaction in his arms.
He slowed then stopped his thrusts. Then, still hard and pressed against her quivering flesh, his lips relinquishing hers in one last clinging kiss, he raised his head, looked down at her with eyes raging with arousal, heavy with promise.
“I know what you can do to help me, ya naari. Let me pleasure you properly, repeatedly, for the rest of the night.”
“Come home with me, Roxanne.”
Haidar heard his voice, thick, ravenous. Agonized.
His body would implode if she said no now.
But she wouldn’t. Every fabulous inch of her voluptuousness was pliant against him with surrender, her eyes stunned with the explosiveness of this encounter, heavy with wanting more.
At least it had been explosive for her. It made him want to thump his chest that he’d made her come, so quickly, so powerfully, without even taking her. It was beyond gratifying to know he could still have her out of her mind with a touch. But his arousal was far past the red zone.
He could have so easily joined her. Her release had almost driven him over the brink. He’d held back with all he had. He would take his pleasure only inside her.
He’d waited too long to have it any other way.
“Say yes, Roxanne.” His fingers pressed into the delight of her flesh, his body roaring from the feel of her and the scent of her satisfaction.
Her breasts still shuddered, her chaotic breathing pressing them against his burning chest. Her full lips, red and swollen with the savagery of his hunger, trembled. Receding pleasure and resurging arousal weighed down her lids, ignited her eyes with an emerald fever.
She would say yes. And he’d spend the rest of the night possessing and pleasuring her in every corner of the house he’d bought just for—
Something tugged at the edge of his clouded awareness. A sound. The unhurried, powerful rhythm of footsteps …
She stiffened. Then she exploded, pushing him away as if she’d found herself wrapped around a slimy monster.
Unable to think, to move, he stood frozen as she struggled to pull down her skirt. Then, without looking back, she ran away.
“I am really curious, Haidar.”
Rashid.
He turned, his body clamped in a vise of agony.
Rashid was approaching from the direction of the ballroom this time, his progress slow, steady, his face impassive. Haidar answered his empty stare with a glare reflecting the storm that still raged inside him. Rashid would no doubt add to the havoc.
“Tell me, Haidar, how did you manage to reach any level of success, let alone your admittedly impressive one? Men who can’t keep it in their pants aren’t known for the discipline and acumen needed to attain, let alone maintain, success.”
Haidar gritted his teeth against the urge to blacken Rashid’s darker-than-sin eyes even more. “After payback already, Rashid?”
“Actually, I’m doing you a favor. A juvenile demonstration at the door of the kingdom’s foremost politico-economic consultant is one thing. Especially since reports confirm you stayed at her place only long enough to get your face slapped. And she made the rounds next day like a mother apologizing for her delinquent teenager’s antics. But to … sexually harass her in the middle of a public and vital function she organized, in a corridor, against a wall? I really had to break that up.”
“And you’re calling this a favor … how? Saving my image? Aren’t you supposed to be pulverizing it?”
The scorn in Rashid’s eyes could have frozen him, if he wasn’t seething. “I’m not using the handicap of your sexual adolescence to beat you, Haidar. Not when there is such an array of far more relevant vices to discredit you with.”
“Best of luck with that, Rashid. And just so we’re clear, with the way your … favor might have crippled me for life, I think I now hate you as much as you evidently hate me.”
“Then my work is done. For today.” Rashid gave him a mock bow, slowed down a fraction as he passed him. “And Haidar, this woman—she’s good.”
Blood shot in his head as he grabbed Rashid’s arm. “Don’t you ever dare—”
Rashid cut his rising fury short, serenely removing his hand. “She is very good. I watched her tonight, watched others as they responded to her, questioned them extensively afterward. She’s putting together what looks like Azmahar’s only chance for stability until our little pissing contest is concluded. Don’t sabotage her credibility and effectiveness.”
With that, he continued on his way, his abaya and that aura of inhumanity billowing around him like a malevolent force field.
He didn’t look back.
Haidar was getting used to everyone doing that.
But he had to concede that Rashid was right about one thing.
He was in danger of destroying everything he’d ever achieved. He’d been making uncharacteristic mistakes for the past two years. He’d managed to rectify each so far. But his inability to predict consequences had been coming faster since he’d returned here. Since he’d seen Roxanne again.
He’d come here thinking he’d fulfill his objectives. Nudge Roxanne toward the bed he had prepared for her, and perform a preliminary feasibility study of his candidacy.
But not only had he crashed headfirst into Rashid’s unexpected reappearance and uberhostility and disrupted the proceedings he’d intended to learn from, he’d ended up pouring out his bewilderment to Roxanne before losing control and nearly consuming her whole. Against a wall.
So, a roundup of the evening? Rashid had had the first and last word. Roxanne had eluded him again. He’d learned zip. And his mind and manhood had been dealt near-crippling blows.
Not waiting for the pain to subside, since it probably wouldn’t tonight, he exited
