With a wide smile she opened her eyes and her arms and tempted him into her embrace. “When did you return?”
“Perhaps forty minutes ago. Now you must awaken so we can eat.” Nevertheless, he leaned toward her and let her put her arms around him. Spending the entire day apart from her for the first time since their marriage had brought old pain to the surface—raw, jagged pain that mocked him for pretending he didn’t need her. The truth was that he needed her far more than she would ever need him.
“With Arin?”
“No.” He smoothed the tangled strands of her hair off her face. “Just me. Tomorrow we’ll dine with our people again.”
Not wishing to face the emotions she aroused, he started to leave. She held him tight. “Don’t go. I missed you.”
“Did you, Mina?” He couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice. He needed her, but would never again chance entrusting her with that knowledge.
“Yes. I kept looking for you all day.” Her eyes were soft, her body warm from sleep.
“Show me how much you missed me, Mina. Show me.” He clasped her to him possessively, the wounded beast inside him unsatisfied with less than complete surrender.
He stripped her so quickly that she gasped, but made no protest. He laid her down on the thick rug on the floor, inflamed by the sight of her creamy skin and fiery hair against the scarlet-and-gold material. She was like some pagan fantasy, a dream designed to drive men wild.
Wrapping his hand around her neck, he kissed her, claimed her. He tasted every corner of her mouth while his free hand roamed her body, then covered the soft mound of one breast, making her whimper. Finally breaking the kiss, he bent down to take a tightly beaded nipple into his mouth. He sucked. Hard.
She bucked under him and her hands clenched in his hair. “Please…please…”
The broken sounds urged him on. Nudging apart her legs with his knee, he settled in between them, opening her to him. One hand flat on the rug beside her, he raised his head and looked down at her as he moved his other hand to her stomach and inexorably lower. Sky-blue eyes bled into indigo and lush lips parted in a fractured breath as he found the small nub hidden in her curls.
Though he was careful not to hurt her, this woman of cream and fire, his strokes were firm. Mina clutched at his arms and he could feel pleasure exploding inside her. He stroked harder, leaving her only for the instant it took to lift her right leg and place it over his hip, giving him full access to her secret places.
Her moan when he touched her again wasn’t enough. He needed more. He needed Mina’s utter and total submission. He needed her to hold nothing back from him. Needed her to need him like he needed her. Needed her to love him so much she would never leave him again.
Reaching lower, he slipped a finger inside her. Her body jerked. Her skin dampened. Then he lowered his head and lightly, carefully, bit the underside of one plump breast. Around his finger, her muscles clenched in an intimate fist so tight he was drenched, surrounded. It was at that moment, as she shoved a fist in her mouth to muffle her cries, that he removed his hand, released himself from his pants and surged into her. Unable to control the spasms overtaking her, she held on to him, biting his shoulder to silence her gasps and moans.
He welcomed the sweet pain. Mina had fallen over the edge and he could feel it beckoning, but he wouldn’t surrender. Not yet. Gripping her hips, he thrust hard. Fast. Deep.
Branding her.
“You’re mine, Mina. Only mine.” The words were wrenched out of the part of him that raged to claim her for all time.
Only when she lost the battle to muffle her pleasure and her cry rode the night air did he allow himself to fall into the beckoning void.
It was at the final dinner with Arin that Jasmine learned about the relationship between the two men. While Tariq was deep in conversation, Arin answered her questions.
“Tariq spent time in each of the twelve tribes after he turned twelve. This was to teach him about his people.”
Jasmine thought that the experience must have been unutterably lonely. He would have been one of them but also, as their future leader, set apart. Her heart ached for the boy he’d been, but she could see the results of his training. Tariq mixed as effortlessly with these desert dwellers as he did with his people in the city.
“He came to Zeina at fifteen and we became friends.”
Arin’s words were simple, but she understood the depth of that friendship. Her husband didn’t bestow his trust lightly. And once that trust had been breached…
“And you’ve remained friends.” She swallowed her sudden apprehension and turned a bright smile on Arin.
The big man nodded. “He is my friend, but he is also my sheik. Make him just your husband, Jasmine, not your sheik.”
His advice echoed her thoughts of not so very long ago. She knew that Tariq needed freedom to lay aside the heavy burden of leadership, even if only for a few hours each day. It was easy to say but hard to put into practice, especially where her stubborn husband was concerned. Without warning, he could change, seeing in her the shadows of the past.
A memory of the bittersweet glory of their lovemaking yesterday flickered through her mind. The complex man she’d married, a man even more fascinating than the prince who’d been her first love, would give neither his trust nor his love into her keeping, unless she proved herself worthy. But she refused to quit trying to breach the walls around his heart. She could be just as stubborn as him.
That night, Jasmine sat cross-legged on their silken bedding and watched Tariq undress in the warm glow of the lanterns. He turned and motioned her over with a tilt of his aristocratic head. She rose and walked toward him. Without words being exchanged, she knew what he wanted. She began to help him remove his clothing. His back was golden heat under her light touch, his body beautiful to her.
“You’d make a perfect harem slave,” he commented, tongue in cheek.
She bit him on his back for that remark. “I don’t think this primitive desert atmosphere is good for you.”
He chuckled at her response. She drew back when he was dressed only in loose white pants. To her shock, he held her gaze and pulled them off in one smooth motion. She couldn’t move as he threw the last piece of his clothing aside and stalked to her. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen him naked, simply that he had never acted with such sexual aggressiveness. Even his furious loving last night hadn’t been this…blatant.
He was a sleek, muscled warrior, rippling with strength kept in check for his woman. She knew that Tariq would never physically hurt her, which only made his maleness more compelling. Lips parted with sensual longing, she raised her head to meet his green eyes, shadowed in the dim light from the lanterns.
“You’re overdressed for a harem slave,” he murmured, and tugged her nightshirt over her head, leaving her naked.
“What about women?” she managed to ask, though her throat felt dry with need and her thoughts were scattered like tangled skeins of thread.
“Hmm?” He nuzzled her neck. It was, she was beginning to realize,
