words and the endearment were as potent as his most intimate caress. Oh, she knew he didn’t mean she really was his love, but Liyah’s heart squeezed, anyway. He could have used aashitii, an endearment appropriate for an extramarital lover, but much less tender.
Tonight Liyah could be his habibti.
Tension still thrumming through her and unable to process the unfamiliar and overwhelming reactions of her body, Liyah’s head rolled side to side on the pillow.
“Sayed.” That was all she could say. Over and over again.
Despite imbibing copious amounts of alcohol and his easy use of habibti, Liyah did not have the courage to call him sweetheart, or lover, in English or Arabic.
And he liked when she said his name. So she did it again and again, her vocabulary shrunken to that single word.
He surged up over her, his big body settling between her legs. Sayed kissed her again, stealing his name right from her lips.
His rigid sex rubbed against her where his fingers had been, sending little shocks along her nerve endings, drawing forth a new kind of passion from her.
It wasn’t just pleasure. It was the need to have him joined to her body in the most intimate way possible.
He broke the kiss, his breathing as heavy as hers. “We need a condom.”
“A condom?” she asked, her mind hazy with drink and passion.
“Yes.” He groaned. “You do not have one.” He cursed, his body filling with a different kind of tension. “Of course you do not. This is not your room. You would not carry such a thing with you in your work uniform.”
She was kind of impressed with how many thoughts he managed to string together. The gist of them finally penetrated her own muzzy focus. They needed a condom and he didn’t have one.
“Look in the drawer beside the bed.”
He stared down at her, his stillness almost scary. “Did Tahira request them?”
“No.” Liyah didn’t even try to stifle the alien need to comfort, reaching up with an appeasing touch. “She was your fiancée. It seemed an expedient item to provide.”
“Presumptuous.”
Liyah just looked at him.
He moved to get what they needed, never quite losing contact with her body. Moments later, he settled back into his intimate position between her legs after putting on a condom from the brand-new box she’d put there herself in anticipation of an engaged couple’s stay at the hotel.
His smile could have melted ice a lot thicker than that around Liyah’s heart. “Perhaps expedient is the right word.”
Her answering smile was as inevitable as what came next.
Sayed shifted so he pressed against the opening to her body. Everything inside Liyah stilled, her world shrunk down to this exact moment, this space, the breaths they shared between them. Nothing outside Sayed had a hope of registering.
Not with him on the brink of joining them in the most intimate way, an experience that if Liyah was honest with herself she’d never actually expected to have. With anyone, much less this prince.
“This is going to be hard and fast.” The words were guttural and low. “I am too excited.”
Despite their detour into the mundane, she was still floating on a cloud of bliss, pretty sure fast and hard would work for her. “It’s all right.”
She wanted―no, craved for―him to experience the same pleasure she had.
He shook his head. “You are too perfect, habibti.”
“Not per—” Her words choked off abruptly as he pressed for entry.
Even though he’d warned her he was going to go fast, he moved inside her body with measured deliberation.
Liyah stretched around him, feeling full and connected like she’d never been to another person. Then a sharp sting shot through her core, making her gasp.
He must have encountered the barrier to her body. Liyah didn’t feel like she was tearing, more like a stabbing pain.
He looked down at her. “It is good?”
She doubted he realized he’d asked the question in Arabic.
“Yes.” It was good, even if it hurt.
“You are so tight.”
She could only nod, gritting her teeth against the searing ache.
He drew back a little.
Despite the pain, she whimpered in protest at his withdrawal. “No.”
His own breathing labored, his jaw was clenched as tight as hers, his arms shaking. And she realized it was using all his control to hold back.
Unfamiliar emotion seeped past the barrier around Liyah’s heart.
“I’m not going anywhere, ya ghazal.” He laughed, the sound sexy and dark. “Believe it.”
Again, his endearment touched her more deeply than he probably meant it to, but Liyah’s mother used to call her a gazelle. She’d claimed Liyah had the gracefulness and beauty of the animal so often used in Arabic poetry.
Sayed’s addition of the possessive my only added to its impact, insuring this experience went far beyond the physical for Liyah.
He pressed forward again, the pain so sharp she couldn’t breathe. She bit back a cry, terrified he would stop. And was infinitely grateful she had when the pain transformed into a whole new level of pleasure.
“That is it,” he gritted out. “You have relaxed.”
“More than,” she managed to gasp out.
“You said you had not been on a sexual fast.”
She just shook her head.
“Say what you like, habibti, but no woman is this tight and tense upon initial penetration when she has been sexually active regularly.”
“I want you.”
“I have no doubts.” He thrust once, twice, three times.
Her body reacted with delight even as residual pain hung at the edges of pleasure.
“I admit I like knowing I am the first in a while.”
She swallowed, trying to agree, unable to get another word out as he continued his slow, sure thrusts.
“Tonight, you are absolutely mine,” he claimed a second time with an almost savage satisfaction.
And once again, she could only nod, the overwhelming ecstasy of the moment crashing over her.
For
