at me!” He twisted his hands into her hair, forcing her compliance. He lifted her chin, looking down into her face. “You are my wife. You cannot refuse what we both desire.”
She took a deep breath, then closed her eyes. Moonlight illuminated a trail of tears streaking down her pale skin.
“No,” she whispered, trembling in his hands. “I cannot deny what you say.”
He felt her surrender. Gloried in it. His calloused hand stroked her bare arm. Her skin felt soft, so soft beneath his fingertips. Just touching her face, as he breathed in her delicious scent, caused a sizzle like fire to spread through his veins. He felt her shudder beneath his touch.
Kareef was king of the land, but there was one thing that had always been beyond his control. One thing that had always been more powerful than his own strength.
His desire for her.
She made his blood boil with longing. Her memory had driven him half-mad with the unsatisfied desire of thirteen years.
And now…she was in his arms.
He looked down at Jasmine’s beautiful face with a shudder of longing. Holding her close, he cupped her chin. Lowering his head, he kissed her closed eyelids with a feather-light brush of his lips.
Then, with a hunger he could barely control, he slowly lowered his mouth toward hers. He paused, his lips inches from her own. Then he ruthlessly kissed her, searing her lips with his.
Jasmine gasped as he kissed her.
The hot dark pleasure of his embrace was beyond every fantasy of her endless lonely nights. As his lips crushed hers, she felt herself slide beneath the waves of her longing. Even as she knew it was wrong, she felt herself drowning in desire.
Kareef. Her husband. She could not resist him. She could not deny him. Body and soul, she felt herself pulled down, down, down into the consuming passion of his savage embrace.
His lips plundered hers with power and skill. As his tongue swept her mouth, entwining with hers, she sagged in his arms, shaking with explosive need. Her knees were weak, but every other part of her was taut and tense. Her nipples tightened painfully, her breasts aching and heavy. Nerve endings sizzled down her body, coiling low in her belly.
She was breathless, helpless with desire. He possessed her as no man ever had.
Then his kiss somehow changed. His lips gentled against hers, and she wasn’t just submitting to his power. She was kissing him back. His sensual mouth moved against hers in a languorous dance, and every part of her body beneath her thin dress felt on fire where he pressed against her. She was fragile against the hardness of his chest, and the muscles of his thighs strained against her own. He held her so tightly she no longer knew where she ended and he began, and she realized she’d wrapped her arms around his neck.
A soft cry came from deep inside her, a gasp for breath. Her head fell back, exposing her neck. He pressed small intense kisses along her throat, sending sparks up and down her body. He caressed her body, whispering words of tenderness in the ancient dialect of Qais before suckling the tender flesh of her earlobes. His hands moved against her bare arms, cupping the full breasts that strained toward him beneath the fabric.
How long had she desired this? How long had she told herself she would never feel this way again—that at twenty-nine she was too old, too used-up, too numb to ever feel such pleasure? How long had she told herself she should settle for being useful, for earning money, for trying to be a good daughter, a good sister, a good wife?
Hands in her hair, Kareef whispered ancient words of longing and tenderness against her skin. Around them, she was dimly aware of dappled moonlight through the dark waving silhouettes of palm trees, of the stars scattered across the violet night. They were entwined in each other.
Kareef. The only one who’d ever made her feel such explosive joy. The only one who’d made her feel the night was magic, and life as infinite as the stars above her.
Opening her eyes, she stared at him. She saw the new tiny crinkles at his eyes, the way his shoulders had broadened with muscle. He’d grown into his full strength, with a warrior’s posture and brutal power.
But his smile hadn’t changed. His voice hadn’t changed.
His kiss hadn’t changed.
As he lowered his mouth to hers, every inch of her skin sparked with awareness, as if there were a magnetic attraction between them. Pulling them together. Forcing them apart.
Everything else might have altered in their lives, but somehow in his embrace, time stood still. She was sixteen again. They were in love, in longing, full of faith for the future.
That feeling was the most dangerous thing of all.
She shuddered, and with all her strength, she pushed him away.
“I can’t,” she choked out. Above them, she could hear only the waving palm fronds, the sigh of the wind, the plaintive cries of night birds. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Kareef’s voice was barely more than a growl in the darkness. “I am the one to blame. I wanted you then.” Reaching down, he caressed her cheek and whispered, “I want you now.”
The timbre of his low voice, sharp and deep, caused a seismic shift inside her, breaking her apart in bits like the emeralds hacked from Qusani mines beneath the earth. Gleaming facets and chinks of her soul scattered beneath his touch.
She closed her eyes as she felt his rough fingertips against her cheek. She felt his thumb slide lightly across her sensitive lower lip. Her mouth parted, her body ached, from her nipples down her belly and lower still.
“I will make you a wife, Jasmine,” he whispered, stroking her cheek. “I will make you a mother.”
Her eyes flew open. He was looking down at her with intensity, his face so boyishly handsome it took her breath away. As teenagers, they’d had many innocent trysts in this very garden so long ago, in another life. But here in the warmth of the desert night, with the spice of the air sifting the salt from the sea, anything seemed possible.
“What do you mean?” she said in shock, searching his eyes.
“If Umar Hajjar is the man you want to marry,” he said, “I will not stop you. I will give you away at the wedding myself.”
A lump of pain rose in her throat. Oh. “You will?”
His sensual lips spread into a half smile, his eyes heavy with desire. “But not yet.”
She trembled.
From a distance she heard a servant calling for the king. She tried to pull her hand away. “I have to go.”
The cell phone in his hip pocket started to buzz. Even here in the forbidden garden, they were not completely alone. But he ignored it. As she tried to pull away, he tightened his hand on hers. “Come with me where no one can reach us. Come with me to the desert.”
She shook her head desperately. “I have no reason to go anywhere with you!”
He pulled her close against his chest, looking down at her. His face was inches
