She was so beautiful and young and soft.
So easy to seduce.
If anything inside of him revolted at the idea, Adir suppressed it with a ruthlessness learned through years of surviving the harshest desert conditions.
Shocked at first, she stilled underneath his kiss. But it was already there, the heat he had felt between them, a small spark waiting to be ignited.
Adir ran his hands over her back, soothing the tremors, learning her curves, all the while gently nibbling at her lips.
Honey and heat, she was the most perfect thing he had ever tasted. An urgency he had never known before filled his blood, pounding at him to push her against the wall behind them. To lock her body against his hungry one. To thrust his tongue into her mouth while he entered her heat in the same way...to make her his, here, in this moment, to stamp his...
No!
A small voice inside him whispered. Whatever his reasons for doing this, he wanted to make it good for her, too. And that meant he couldn’t let his libido run rampant.
“Adir?” she whispered, blinking owlishly. Making him smile. “Why did you stop?”
“I wanted to make it good for you.”
“It is good. It is so... I didn’t know a simple kiss could be so animalistic. So powerful.”
For an innocent, sheltered beauty, how could she be saying the one thing that fired his blood? He dug his teeth into her lower lip. And licked it when she moaned. “Between the right couple, a kiss can be a lot more.”
“So, it is this good for you, too?”
“You have quite the scientific mind, don’t you?”
She shrugged, studying him with those big eyes. “I wondered.”
He rubbed his nose against hers, a gesture of tenderness that shocked even him. It was only a prelude, he reminded himself. She had been his for the taking from the moment she had glanced up at him and sighed that feminine sigh.
What was wrong with blending into her fantasy a little? Giving her what she wanted? “You wondered what, Amira?”
“If it felt the same to you. I... I have never shared such a passionate kiss with any man.”
“Not even your fiancé?” The question slipped past his lips.
“No. The most he has ever done is hold my hand. At public ceremonies.” She blinked and he knew he would never forget that earnest expression in those wide eyes. The transparent desire. “Coming back to us... You’ve obviously been with a lot of women.”
He couldn’t remember a time he had enjoyed a conversation with a woman as much as he enjoyed having sex. But then, when had he had the inclination or time to have a proper relationship?
For him, women were for sex. To sate his body’s needs. And only when he was on his overseas visits because he could not disrespect any of his own tribes by taking a daughter or a sister or another’s wife as a lover.
Not when all the power rested in his hands.
“Why obviously? And are you asking?” he teased.
“No,” came her resounding answer. “I think it is tacky and I really don’t wish real life to interrupt this...dream. The only reason I brought it up is because it makes me curious if it feels just as powerful and passionate for a man who is sexually experienced and has had a variety of partners, in contrast to a woman who has lied to her own best friend when she told her that her fiancé had done more than kiss her because she feels too pathetic to admit that he barely even looks at her.”
This time, her admission, instead of giving that high again, made his chest contract in a strange sensation. No...chemistry was a strange thing, and he didn’t need to understand it. It was a tool tonight and he was using it. As he had always done—to carve his own path in life. To rise from orphan to sheikh of warring tribes.
To be the man who had done the impossible.
He brought her palm to his chest where his heart was thundering. Down his chest to the flat plane of his abdomen and farther down.
Eyes wide like a dark oasis on a moonlight, she gasped when her hand reached his groin. He covered her hand with his and let her feel the shape and hardness of him. It was a bad idea that made him grit his teeth when she explored him with that innate curiosity, her breath hitching in and out in the dark silence.
He leaned his forehead against hers, locking her wrist. “I have been like that from the moment I touched you. That kiss between us, Amira, is no common thing. It is a spark waiting to burn and I can’t breathe for wanting to set it alight.”
An incandescent joy lit up her face, and in that smile, he felt like a king.
Clasping her cheeks with his palms, he kissed her gently. He licked at the seam of her lips. Again and again. He sank his fingers into the thick mass of her hair and pulled her toward him until she was a perfect fit for him. He licked a damp trail from her neck to her jaw, dropping soft little butterfly kisses over her cheek, her nose, her eyelids, her temple. Everywhere but the sweet offering that was her mouth.
He did it again and again, until it felt like he had been waiting an eternity to taste her. Until every muscle in his body was coiled tightly, until the innocent rub of her belly against his erection was sensuous torture.
“I could do this all night, habiba,” he whispered, his own contrary nature fighting the pull she had on his own control. This was a means to an end—a pleasurable means, though.
“I can’t,” she threw back at him, her eyes daring him.
Adir laughed and decided to give in.
She groaned into his mouth and he deepened the pressure, hungrier than he could ever remember being for the taste of a woman’s lips.
No, for this woman’s lips. This woman’s body, her innocence and the desire she expressed with such fierceness and generosity.
Her hands caught between their bodies while he pressed her against him. When he demanded entry into the sweet cavern of her mouth, she gave it, clinging to him with a deep moan. He licked the inner curve of her lower lip, using every ounce of skill he had at his disposal.
Her hands moved to his shoulders, her breasts pressing into his chest, her mouth so addictively hungry for more. It sealed the night.
He would give her what she desperately needed for one night. She would come with him willingly, he knew that—the fire between them, it was unlike anything he’d ever seen or felt.
“Come away with me, Amira. For one night. A few hours. Steal something for yourself from your own life, ya habibiti.”
Her swollen pink lips trembled, her eyes shining with desire along with something else. He didn’t have to ask, she was his for the taking—the pulse beating madly at her throat, the hunger in her gaze—and yet Adir wanted her to make the choice.
He would take what he
