a dream state of pervasive bliss, sensations coalesced. She was lying on top of something hot and hard but so perfectly comfortable. And emanating steady, restrained booms.
A roughened caress swept down her back to cup her buttock. No dream had ever felt so bone-meltingly good, so mind-messingly arousing. She opened her eyes, met his.
Rashid. The best thing she’d ever woken up to.
Lying beneath her like a sleek black panther, it was evident he’d been long awake. And watching her.
Delight blossomed at the sight of him, spreading her lips, weighing down her lids, melting everything else. “I’d say good morning, but it would be the understatement of the millennium.”
His caresses continued, igniting every inch they smoothed. “A new adjective has to be coined to describe it, yes.”
Joy quivered in her heart. He thought the same in the cold light of day. He didn’t regret it.
But that look in his eyes… it was new. Nothing she understood…
“I have an adjective for last night, though. Life-changing.”
On that, too, they agreed. Though she was surprised he thought so. He wasn’t the one who’d been saved by the person he’d loved all his life then ended up begging her to take his virginity, which she did while teaching him what ecstasy was.
But she wasn’t about to look that gift miracle in the mouth.
She stretched languorously over his great body, delighting that he was big enough to sleep on, that he seemed to derive as much pleasure from being slept on.
Her voice came out a purr when she said, “And then some.”
“Aih. Neither of our lives will ever be the same again now that they will be forever entwined.”
She raised her head, stared at him. The way he’d said that. And that intent look. He couldn’t possibly mean…
In the next moment, he ended speculation. “Through marriage.”
“Marriage!”
Laylah’s incredulity echoed in the huge room as she scrambled up from Rashid’s embrace.
She gaped at him as he, too, rose to a sitting position, totally uncaring of his nakedness, or the fact that he was still gloriously aroused. Or maybe he always woke up in the morning like that…?
Focus, moron. Not the time to be drooling over his assets or reliving what he’d done to her with them when he’d just said… said…
“Marriage!”
The word rang out again before she could hold it back.
But who could blame her? Yesterday, she’d woken up never expecting to see Rashid again. Today she woke up in his bed, and he was already talking…
No! She wasn’t going to squeak it out again.
His hand reached out to smooth a long tress off her hot, damp cheek. “Of course. I took your innocence and I don’t—”
“Don’t.” His words hit her like a bucket of ice water in the face. Embarrassed at her nakedness all of a sudden, she groped for the covers she’d kicked to the bottom of the mattress a lifetime ago. “Just don’t even start on that.”
Having Rashid in her life at all was a miracle. Having Rashid as her husband was beyond imaginable. But she was damned if she’d let this progress to a bona fide offer based on that reason.
“You didn’t ‘take my innocence’, I gave it to you. And will you stop being so archaic and so—so… Azmaharian? Innocence, indeed. So now I’m, what, because you’ve ‘taken’ it—wicked?”
The eyes that had hardened and cooled with her every word suddenly softened, heated. “Indeed. But then, you were already that as an innocent. Now the mind boggles at what levels of devastation you’ll attain in your… newly forged wickedness.”
Heat splashed through her as she remembered in detail how he’d… forged said wickedness inside her…
Catching her swollen-from-his-passion-and-stinging-for-more lip in her teeth and letting the cover go, she leaned to rub her face against his chest. “Why don’t we find out?”
He caught her by the shoulders as her lips strayed over his flesh, held her off, his smile filling with indulgence. “We will. We have a lifetime to make extensive explorations of every iota of your potential for sensual mayhem.”
There he went again, talking about lifetimes. Nothing she wanted more than to have several of those entwined with him, but not if it was prodded by his outdated sense of honor.
She pulled back, this time wrapping the cover around her. “Listen, Rashid, I already told you in embarrassing detail how I had this hopeless passion for you. It turns out I didn’t have a clue what passion was all about, something you’ve rectified with enough clues to fill this place. If I thought I wanted you before, now I know, and just how fiercely and totally. If you want me with anything approaching that ferocity and totality, then there’s nothing more that I want than to be with you. Just not ‘through marriage.’“
And she realized the real meaning of yet another word. Ominous. That had to be what defined that scowl.
“You’re refusing to marry me?”
Her heartstrings shook at the darkness in his rumble. “I’m refusing to introduce the concept of ‘marriage’ at this point.”
And if displeasure could take form, it would wear just that face, and lash out with that solar-flare-level glare. “Marriage between us now is not a concept, it’s a necessity.”
“Oh, please, not the ‘innocence’ thing again. I wasn’t saving it for an eventual groom and you did not come and ‘take advantage’ of my ‘vulnerability’ and now you don’t have to offer yourself at the altar of honor and propriety!”
“You were saving it. If you don’t subscribe to our region’s values, why else are you—were you—still a virgin at this age?”
“Gah… at this age? Et tu, Brute?”
“Laylah!”
His warning growl was the essence of deliciousness. She grinned into his stern eyes. “I do subscribe to some regional values, but certainly not this one. So I’ll refer you to my previous confession for the answer to this question and every other you have now or might have in the future.”
“What confession?”
“Do you forget it every time I say it? That I wanted you all my life, of course. What other confession did I make?”
“I
