She stripped, and so did he, and she stood as his mouth kissed her breasts till she could stand no more, and then they were side by side on the bed.
He tried to soften the mouth on her breasts but Layla pushed at his head in consent, for she had loathed how they had always had to hold back.
No more.
His mouth returned to hers and Layla was breathless—even more so as his hand slid between her thighs, stroking her clitoris as he swallowed the tiny shallow breaths that made Layla dizzy. And as his fingers slowly probed not even his kisses could temper the feel of him stretching her.
There would be no babies, Layla thought, for she could barely stand one finger…now two…
‘It’s okay,’ he said to her grimace, and he was right.
His mouth was gentle balm as intimately he explored her, and soon it turned divine. Layla felt as if there were a key in the very small of her back that Mikael wound ever tighter with each deep stroke inside. Over and over he stroked, till the key was so taut she thought it might snap, but there was no fear.
Mikael wanted to ensure she was oiled and ready.
‘Please…’ Layla said, because she could not be more ready.
She was pulling him on top of her, for she wanted to be crushed by him—she wanted Mikael in the most basic of ways that till this moment they had had to deny.
She made an involuntary biting noise as she felt the first stretch of him and Mikael halted, but then he remembered that was what she did when she was over-excited. He waited for a moan, a protest—for anything that might indicate he should take it more slowly as for the first time he filled her—but Layla was lost in her own pleasure.
Mikael gave her a moment to acclimatise to the burning inside her body and she didn’t know if her eyes were open or closed, for there were stars on either side.
‘I like,’ Layla said, and felt the soft shudder of his half-laugh. And then he started to move and she still liked.
He moved within her so slowly that she moaned in increasing want. She tasted salt on his neck and passion on his tongue and her hands pressed him in as her hips started to beg.
‘I don’t want to be a princess…’
It was a language of their own. She was not glass—and, though she loved that he treated her as such, in this moment there was no need to. There was just need.
He had accepted her password, Layla knew, because she felt this most guarded man unwind within her. He gave her himself and no longer held back, each thrust a shot of passion that drove her higher, wound her tighter, until that key was released and Layla’s mind spun as her body concurred with Mikael’s. Even her arms were trembling as he locked her into ecstasy and made her for ever his.
‘Now you cannot change your mind,’ Layla said as they came back to earth.
‘I was never going to,’ Mikael said, for he needed no get-out clause. He did not care about the small print of the contract they had entered into. ‘Did I hurt you?’ he asked, concerned he had not been gentle enough.
‘Hurt me?’ Her eyes widened. ‘That is not hurt. Those nights I thought I had lost you—that was hurt…’
‘You’ll never lose me, Layla,’ he said, and he meant it.
‘I think we have to do this more than once a week.’
Mikael stared at the sky and the very full moon and held in his laughter before speaking. ‘Once a week?’
‘Jamila said that once a week would suffice. Can we do it more than that?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘How much more?’
‘Much, much more.’
‘What if those herbs make the pill not work?’
He looked over to her. ‘I doubt that very much,’ Mikael said, ‘but what do you think would happen if it didn’t work?’