I’ll begin here. Your skin. It’s incredible, like every part of you. Lush, thick cream, free of paleness and fragility. It doesn’t flush with your emotions, no matter how strong, only becomes more vital, more vivid. It’s glowing now. Your eyes are gleaming like polished onyxes under spotlights, inundating me with an avalanche of expressions, each intoxicating in its clarity and beauty. And your lips. The way they mold to your every thought, the way they take the shape of your every emotion, the way they tremble to the frequency of each sensation … each tremor shudders through me until I am nothing but uncontainable hunger.”
She almost choked with stimulation. “I was right. You are made up of nothing but original bones and poetic cells.”
His lips twitched in a lethal mix of appreciation and predation as he touched the pad of his thumb to hers, stilling those tremors that so affected him. “It seems you didn’t hear my last words clearly.”
Her lips trembled even more as humor warred with anticipation and agitation. He rubbed his thumbs against them, his breathing becoming harsher.
She closed her eyes to savor the long-dreamed-about sensations. Her wildest imaginings hadn’t prepared her for reality. She moaned with the pleasure that corkscrewed through her, emanating from his breath, his nearness, his touch, to her every inch, her deepest reaches. Then her lips did what they’d been longing to do for most of her life—caressed the fragrant warmth and power pressed to them with a trembling kiss.
She heard his intake of breath. It sliced away more of the leashes of her inhibition. She opened her lips, grazed her teeth against his skin. Its texture, its scent, brought more moist heat surging from her core.
A fiercer inhalation expanded his chest until it pressed against her swelling breasts. She knew he could scent her arousal, felt the wildness it sent seething through him. It made her light-headed, the knowledge that she could do this to him, that he was doing this to her, that they had this to share.
Feeling bolder, she swept her tongue against his skin. Her knees did buckle at her first taste of him. He disentangled his other hand, caught her around the waist. She kept her eyes closed as she dove deeper into the sensations, her whole existence centering on his thumb against her tongue as he began to thrust it gently in and out of her mouth.
“This is extremely dangerous.” His bass hiss made her eyes snap open. His bore into them before moving to her lips with burning intent as he fed them his thumb, as they suckled it with increasing greed and abandon. She knew what he meant. He still elaborated. “That you want me as fiercely as I want you.”
She nodded, breath leaving her body under choppy pressure. She felt she was disintegrating with need for him.
He let go of her waist, grazed across her lower teeth as he slid his thumb lingeringly from between her lips, then dropped his forehead to hers, nuzzling her, inhaling her. “This is unparalleled. Agonizing but sublime.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Though she had no experience to back up her belief, she knew the protracted inflammation of their senses was far more satisfying than any frenzied mindless coupling would be.
He eased her away only to glide both arms around her back, to her dress’s zipper. He slid it down with torturous slowness, never letting go of her eyes as he went back up to unclasp her bra. She gasped as its constriction eased, and again at the spike of ferocity in his eyes as he monitored her reaction. He drew more gasps from her as he caressed her dress and bra loose, then in one silky sweep, freed her from their shackles.
Before she could snap her arms across her nakedness, he dragged her dress beyond her waist to her hips, dropping downward with it. He ended up on his knees before her.
Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. From unbearable stimulation. From the way he looked her up and down, as if he would truly gobble her up.
Then he pulled her to him, rumbling, “Now, I worship you.”
She would have keeled over him if his shoulders hadn’t stopped her forward pitch. He added to her imbalance, burying hot lips into her flesh. She whimpered at each press into her abdomen, every tongue thrust into her navel, each tooth drag across her breasts. Her moans sharpened as he gently clamped her nipples, until a cry rushed out at his first hard pull. “Shaheen … please.”
In answer, he bunched her skirt in his hands, his thumbs hooking into the top of her panties. Then, in one magical move, every shred of covering was shed off of her.
Standing in nothing but her shoes with her clothes pooled at her feet, she felt the world recede. Shaheen looked up, the worshipping he’d promised her setting the hard nobility of his face ablaze.
This was beyond unprecedented. Beyond unparalleled. She was with Shaheen. Standing before him naked. She was about to be his in the flesh, just as she was already his in every other way.
She watched as he raised each leg to kiss and fondle from calf to thigh, her consciousness flickering like a bulb about to short out. She heard his magnificent voice as he raggedly lavished far better than poetry on her, spontaneous wonder pouring out in whatever language expressed it best.
She moaned constantly, becoming a literal puddle of arousal by the time he rose. She would have collapsed at his feet if he hadn’t swept her up as he stood.
When she flopped in his arms like a ragdoll, he whispered into her ear, “Wrap yourself around me, my Gemma. Cling to me with all of your priceless flesh and desire.”
That injected power into her limp muscles. She wanted to. He wanted her to. She only ever wished to give him what he wanted.
She clasped her arms around his shoulders, her thighs around his hips. And it was indescribable. Feeling all of his heat and bulk and power and arousal encased within her limbs, being draped around all of that. She’d be forever empty and anchorless when she no longer had him to enfold, to hang on to like this.
But she had him now.
She rested her head against his shoulder as he strode across his penthouse with her clasped in his arms. Her eyes remained open, but she registered only impressions of his character, his taste and wealth imbuing the spaces, all the more impressive for being unpretentious. Then he crossed into a bedroom. His bedroom.
This was the last thing she’d expected would happen when she’d embarked upon her mission to see him one last time. That she’d end up in his bedroom. In his bed.
But she wanted to be here more than literally anything.
Her senses revved out of their stupor. This was where he slept, where he woke up, where he read and showered and shaved, where he dressed and undressed. Where he pleasured himself. And where she was convinced he’d never pleasured another.
This was his sanctum, when he lived in New York. And he was giving her the exclusive privilege of being here. It would be a one-time pass. She had to make all she could of it.
The huge, high-ceilinged room was lit with only a bedside lamp. Her gaze, avid to soak in more of his privacies and secrets, had just registered the slashes of bold décor, gradations of dark grays and greens with accents of hardwood the color of his eyes when her wandering ones came to a hiccupping halt.
He pressed her against the door as she’d vaguely hoped he would before, held her there with only his bulk bearing down on her.
She
