He pumped his hips, pushing against her entrance. Though she was melting with readiness, it had always taken a measure of force for him to breach her. His eyes blazed with the need to forge inside her. Her frantic nod begged for the no-holds-barred invasion.
He lunged, was there, where she needed him, penetrating her in one forceful thrust.
The expansion of her tissues around his erection was so sudden, the fullness sharpened into pain that exploded into pleasure so fierce, darkness danced at the periphery of her vision.
She gasped, thrashed. His face clenched with something like agony as he stilled, started to withdraw. She clung to him as she would to a raft as she drowned.
“Eight years’ worth,” she sobbed. “Take it all now…now.”
“Aih, ya naari, take it all, give it back to me.” He refilled her, his tongue thrusting inside her mouth with the same ferocity.
His growls grew dark as he gave her what she’d been disintegrating for, in the exact force and pace. He invaded her, stretched her more with each plunge, forging deeper, the head of his shaft sliding against her internal flesh, setting off a string of discharges that buried her under layers of sensations.
It all felt maddeningly familiar, yet totally new, a buildup that seemed to originate from her every cell and radiate from his own at once, distilling desperation into a physical symptom.
Then everything compacted into one unendurable moment that detonated outward. She shattered.
She heaved so hard she almost lifted him in the air, her flesh pulsing around his so fiercely she couldn’t breathe, not for the first dozen clenches of excruciating pleasure.
“Aih, ya naari, pay for all my suffering with your pleasure.”
His rumble snapped something inside her, flooded air into her lungs. She screamed and screamed her ecstasy as he rode her, his hardness pistoning satisfaction into her.
“Roxanne…” He rose above her, muscles bulging, eyes tempestuous, supernatural in beauty. He threw his head back and roared her name as every muscle in his body locked, his erection lodging against her womb, jetting his own release in long, hard surges, setting off her deepest triggers in one more conflagration.
He fed her convulsions, pumping her to the last twitches of fulfillment until the world receded…
* * *
Roxanne stirred from the depths of bliss.
She opened her eyes and found herself staring at the breathtaking vista of the sea and the island outside Haidar’s balcony. Contentment expanded inside her, had her turning toward him.
He wasn’t there.
“Haidar?”
No answer. He must be in the shower. Or the kitchen. Or somewhere. Judging by the setting sun outside, she’d been knocked out for the last twelve hours. Or maybe even thirty-six.
But that was his fault. He’d taken the eight years’ worth almost literally, exacted vengeance by ecstasy until she’d lost count. And consciousness.
She got out of bed, waddled to the bathroom, wincing at the soreness from his repeated possession. She needed to soak if she hoped to be ready for more.
She came out of the bath tingling with rejuvenation and anticipation, went in search of him.
She found him nowhere.
She called him. His phone was turned off.
Where was he? What could have made him disappear?
No answer made sense. As hours passed, terrible explanations started to trickle in, expand, take over rationalizations. That he’d taken her up on her offer but had never intended to stay for an encore. That last night had meant only two things to him—vindication, closure.
Was that it? He’d gotten them and just…left?
Unable to accept that verdict, she waited, every sound in the expansive house almost uprooting her heart with hope. But he didn’t return.
Night had deepened to utter bleakness when she found herself walking to the pier, to the platform where she’d thought her life had started again.
She looked out to the island that was now an awe-striking shadow under the light of a nascent moon and blazing stars. She’d thought he’d take her there, to explore, to make love, to—
“I thought you’d be gone.”
She spun around, saw him approaching through the liquid pain filling her eyes. The conquering lover, the devil-may-care prince, the challenging adversary were all gone.
A frozen man had replaced them all.
His eyes regarded her without a spark of the life or lust that had always filled them. His voice was as lifeless. “But then I thought many things and they all turned out to be wrong. Now I can no longer fool myself into believing what I wish to believe.”
God, what did he mean?
He was telling her he couldn’t forgive or forget? Worse, that his injuries remained the same whether she’d meant to inflict them or not?
“So why did you stay? I thought we’d said everything.”
Was this his real revenge? Give her miles of hope to wrap around her neck, then push her off her skyscraper of foolish dreams?
But he had to realize this wasn’t just retribution. Whatever injury she’d caused him, he’d survived it. Thrived, even. Shattering her heart now wouldn’t only be for the second time. It would be for the last. There would be no surviving it.
“If you stayed thinking I’d back down, I won’t. I have to end this now, or there’ll be no surviving it.”
Had she spoken her thoughts out loud?
No. He just knew how much he was damaging her.
Not that she could blame him. He’d walked away, told her to go. She’d pursued him, planned and plotted her own destruction. She’d done this to herself, as she had in the past. No one had forced her to love him, give him more than he’d wanted. The first time she’d been too young, had had the delusion that she could love again, could come to life again with someone else. Now she’d grown up and out of her false hopes. Now she knew. She could only love, and live, if it was him, with him.
And he didn’t want her.
Trembling so hard she could barely summon enough coordination to walk, she stumbled back toward him, wishing he would disappear so she wouldn’t have to feel him this close one last time.
Then she was passing him, holding her breath so that his scent wouldn’t twist the dagger of longing inside her chest. The stretch of the pier into land was ahead of her. The path to escape. To the nothingness that dominated her future…
She came to a jolting halt.
He’d stopped her.
Before she could cry for him to just “sever the artery and let it bleed out,” as they said here, he took her by the shoulders.
She struggled to push his hands away. She couldn’t bear this.
His eyes smoldered down at her as if he was in the grips of a fever. “I can’t let you go, Roxanne. I thought I could, but I can’t. I will take anything for as long as you will give it. And if you prefer, I won’t bring up marriage again.”
Ten
Bring up marriage? Again?
Roxanne stared up at Haidar, nothing making sense anymore.
His fingers convulsed on her shoulders. “I was an arrogant bastard, making it sound like a fait accompli. I deserved that ‘shut up.’ I shouldn’t have gotten angry when you said it. I shouldn’t have made it an ultimatum, shouldn’t have said that it was marriage or nothing.”
Every word out of his mouth pushed vague things from the periphery of her mind and into focus. Hazy snippets she might have heard as she’d drifted in and out of oblivion. His voice, hers, the words themselves evaporating like a dream after waking.
He was saying that, during those unremembered fragments, he’d proposed to her? That she’d answered his proposal with…shut up?
“If you stayed to tell me I’m an idiot, but that I can stop being one and take what you’re willing to give me, I accept.”
“Haidar, I don’t—”
Suddenly he let her go, turned around to gaze into the star-blazing sky. “Your point-blank refusal reinforced once again that I’ve never been compatible with human relationships, a classic case of someone ‘only a mother can love.’ But it was trying to let you go that made me realize what I am guilty of.”
“Haidar, you don’t need—”
He swung back to her. “I do need to say this. In the past I compounded being jealous and suspicious with my uncompromising need to be in total control of myself, and to have every last heartbeat of you. I made it worse by being unable to share anything about myself, yet wanting you to know and accommodate my emotional needs the same way you did my physical ones. When you didn’t, dared give appreciation and ease and laughter to Jalal, I got so mad, felt so hurt, that the part of me that is like my mother took over. I demanded more from you physically and withdrew further emotionally, trying to make you come closer to compensate. I made you believe that my feelings where you were concerned were at best not healthy. Believing they were nonexistent was a simple step from that.”
She stepped closer, her mind churning. “You’re saying you think you deserved my distrust after all?”
“I never said I didn’t. I said I didn’t deserve all the blame. You were to blame, too, claiming to love me for what I was, when you didn’t know what that was. You didn’t recognize that I was reaching out to you in the only way I knew how, showing you with all the effort and trouble I took to be with you how vital you were to me. I did reach out to you outright that day, begged you to reassure me.”