The Desert Lord's Baby (Throne of Judar 1)

He held out a warning finger. “Don’t touch me, Carmen. It is no exaggeration, what I just said.”

The one thing that made her abide by his admonition was realizing he wasn’t undressing. He was just removing his ceremonial dagger and sword, his metal belts, like a warrior back from battle, relinquishing the evidence of one form of savagery, his eyes promising her another.

Throwing everything to the end of the bed, he kneeled beside her, let his hands hover over her, like that night, mimicking in pantomime all he’d do to her, all the liberties he’d take. Then he bent over her, his lips tormenting a flight pattern of their own.

And he told her. “I couldn’t touch you for real, couldn’t kiss you when we were alone. I had to remain distant, until I came to grips with the violence of my craving for you. But I can’t. I never lose control. Unless it’s you.”

This was everything she could dream of, would risk everything for. Her Farooq back, confessing the depth of his desire.

Disregarding his warning, she lunged for him, hands trembling on the fastening of his pantaloons, the thousand buttons keeping his flesh away from her greed.

His growls detailed his enjoyment of her frenzy even as he ended it, grabbed her, flipped her on her stomach. Then he straddled her hips. She raised her head, met their images in the mirror headboard. He raised his eyes, meeting hers in the reflection. Instead of imparting a measure of detachment, the replicas moving in the coolness of glass sent her blood seething in her veins.

She cried out, arched her hips up, seeking more contact with him. He pushed her down, one hand flat on her back, his hardness digging into her buttocks, before he moved her again until she was lying sideways to the mirror, for a full-body view. He lay on top of her, keeping her eyes captive, grinding into her, mimicking what she was longing for him to do without the chafing barriers. Then he reared up, slowly unclipped the veil from her hair.

“I never liked red hair. But this…” He threaded his hands into it, raised the locks, let them fall. “This texture, this wave, this hue, that it’s on top of this head…” His fingers dug into her scalp, massaged, had her thrashing beneath him. He suddenly bunched her locks, pulled on them as if they were reins.

She arched back, lips opening on the sharpness of stimulation, panting for his. He slammed into her buttocks, gave her a hand to kiss, to bite into, before he pushed her down again.

“Do you know what seeing you in that outfit did to me?” He began to unzip her corset top. Then he stopped. She saw his face seize in the mirror. She twisted around to get the reality, saw his raptness focused on the henna patterns on her back, felt his renewed rumbling forking through her. And he hadn’t even seen their extent yet. Next moment the rumbling quaking her bones intensified as his fingers traced the spots where the patterns made up of his name clustered. He’d deciphered her homage.

She was elated now that he had. She should be alarmed that she was tampering with the control of a being of such destructive potential, but she wasn’t. He’d never lose control. Not that way. Not her Farooq. But he was losing his distance, his separateness to her power over him, to the sight of his name emblazoned all over her body. That was one of two things she wanted from life.

He flipped her onto her back, gloriously rough, dragging her top down to her waist, spilling her breasts into the palms they’d been made to fill, kneading them with a careful savagery that had her bucking beneath him. Her hands flailed, trying to tear his top open, needing the crush of his chest. He grasped both her hands in one of his, the other holding his top at the neck and shredding down. He tore off his abaya, pushed his tattered top wider, exposing the magnificent sculpture of his torso. She keened as her salivary glands stung. She needed her lips and tongue on his flesh, her teeth in it.

“There are more places I want my name on.” He slid down her body, the silk of his body hair brushing her every inch into a distress of arousal. “Here.” He gently bit each nipple in turn, had her crying out, before settling into a ruthless rhythm of suckling that had magma pouring from her core, until she was pummeling him for the release only the power of his possession would grant her.

He caught her clawing hands, slammed them to the bed in one of his, slid down as he bunched her lehenga up and her thong down to her feet. “And here…” He let go of her hands, held her feet apart, alternated kisses between them, suckled her toes, forcing her to withstand the sight, the sensations before moving up. “And here…” He bit into her calves, kneading them with his teeth as he trailed up to her inner thigh. “And here…” Her body contorted under his onslaught.

Suddenly he hissed like a geyser about to blow, his hands digging in her buttocks. He’d seen the henna patterns there.

On an explosive expletive, he knocked her legs wide with his shoulders, lunged between them.

She squirmed, trembled, tried to squeeze her legs closed. “You, please, I want you, you, inside me, now please now…”

He looked up at her, eyes like twin infernos, sable hair cascaded over his leonine forehead. Then with his mouth set in cruel intent, he slid up her body, igniting every fuse along the way until he lodged his hardness at her entrance through his clothes, had her whimpering, “Yes, yes, please, yes.”

In answer he only knocked her clamping legs from around his hips, came over her, straddled her midriff, loosened his pantaloons enough to show her his shaft.

A clench of intimidation sank its talons into her gut at his girth and length, at his beauty and sleekness. She craved his invasion, not only for the ecstasy it forced from her flesh, but because when he occupied her, she was intimate with his power and maleness, the potency of his desire, with his essence. With him. Giving her pleasure without union now wasn’t a reward but a punishment.

He held his shaft, doing what her hands, imprisoned by his thighs, burned to do, stroking himself inches from her lips.

“Is this what you want most, Carmen?” Her nod was frantic, a tear slipping from one eye, trickling to her ear as she writhed beneath him, trying to free her hands, to get them on his flesh.

“You told me you had your most intense orgasms with me inside you. Is that true, or were you catering to my ego?”

She renewed her efforts to escape the prison of his body, have him where she needed him, her heart stampeding with futility. “True…it’s true, please, please…”

He tightened his waistband again, widened his thighs, let her pull her arms out only to clamp her hands, raised them for her to look at. “You think you can wear my name like this…” He dismounted her, twisted her toward the mirror to show her his hand slipping between the cheeks of her hennaed buttocks. “And this, and go unpunished, Carmen? For this you don’t get what you crave most.”