She spluttered. “You’re not joking!” He shook his head. “Just…uh…how long has it been?”
Please, please, say, “Since I saw you.”
He only watched her as if he was trying to read her mind. When she felt she’d burst with anticipation, he shrugged. “How long do you think?”
She suddenly knew. “You—you mean you haven’t since…since…”
One eyebrow rose in wicked prodding. “Go on, you can say it.”
And she whispered what felt like the most painful three words of her life. “Since your w-wife?”
He made a sound of derision. “You’re chronologically right. But wrong about the ‘wife’ part. I didn’t have a wife. I had a disastrous political pact gone murderous. A booby trap. So I hope you’re not going all soap opera on me and thinking I haven’t had a woman since then because of a fatally wounded heart.”
While that made her want to whoop for joy, knowing that he hadn’t suffered the cruelty of someone he’d trusted with his heart, that made his abstinence even more…momentous.
For a man as overwhelmingly sexual to swear off women, on principle, was an even bigger hurdle for her to overcome than a specific connection gone terribly wrong.
On the other hand, knowing that he hadn’t been in love before was huge. Incredible. Unbelievable.
She shook her head dazedly. “Wow. Just…wow.”
He huffed, irony dripping from the sound, from his stare. “Seems I should have come clean from the start. Who knew that was all I needed to…discourage you? Finding out about my defunct sexual status brought you to your senses, didn’t it?”
She gaped at him. And gaped some more. Then she burst out laughing with elation so fierce that her insides ached.
She could almost see the thunderclouds her reaction generated above his head. Before lightning struck her, she rushed to explain her delirious bout. “It actually incinerated them right off.”
She slipped off the bed, feeling she was barely touching the floor as she slinked toward him. She’d always wanted it all, of him, with him. But not in her most far-fetched fantasies had she dared formulate anything that came close to this.
Who knew, indeed? That she’d be the one this…god would unleash all his desires on. It made her feel lucky beyond reason. It made her feel invincible, unstoppable, a goddess of feminine hunger and seduction.
She stopped before him, her gaze sweeping him from his perfect feet to his awesome head, as if with a leisurely lick. Her senses rioted, as if she’d already tasted each part of him, savored all his delights.
Then she finally, finally reached for him.
Her hands slipped around his steel-fleshed waist, spread low on his muscle-corded back, pulled him against her burning flesh.
At the long-coveted contact, she shuddered, looked up into his storming eyes and gasped, “Thanks for saving it up. I’ll now take all you’ve got.”
Seven
Amjad unlocked Maram’s hands from his flesh, pushed away from her embrace.
Before she could protest, he started circling her, like a predator trying to decide where he’d first sink his fangs into the prey begging him to take her down. His eyes burned around her, until she felt flames encompassing her down to her toes.
Then he stopped. Towered over her, from behind. She felt his body compressing the air at her back as he leaned, bringing his force and virility bearing down on her, until she moaned with needing it to be his full weight and greed.
Then his lips were at her ear. She wanted him to close the moist heat of his mouth on it, drive her further out of her mind. He only feathered it as he opened his lips, the phantom contact thundering through her in shockwaves of response.
She felt as if he’d turned into a huge magnet, had her pressing back against him without volition. He only let her get an impression of heat and hardness before he receded, left her with the pounding of her heart, of her core, shaking her. He leaned and let out a slow gust of scorching breath in her ear. It stormed through her, more devastating than the sandstorm.
“If you want all I got, you got it.”
Stimulation ripped through her, spilled from her lips on a sharp cry as she swung around.
Before she could drag him down for that kiss she’d been starving for, her tormentor’s hands on her shoulders aborted her surge.
“On one condition.”
The rumbled qualification corkscrewed through her with danger and dark promise. She panted for it all. “Anything.”
His hands tightened, his voice hitting its deepest recesses, his eyes almost scary in warning and intent. “Again with the carte blanche to conditions you haven’t heard.”
She squirmed, trying to break his ban on making him an unconditional offering of herself. “And again I say, anything for you.” When he didn’t relent, she stopped, exhaled. “State your condition. And hurry.”
Lethal appreciation of her imperative pleading spread on his lips. Hers stung, needing his beneath them. “Tell me exactly how you want…all I got.”
She shivered. “I already told you.”
“You told me a bunch of sentimental euphemisms. I want specifics.”
He wanted certainty. Hers before his.
She placed trembling hands on top of his, pledged it. “I want every inch of you. Against me, around me, inside me. I want every freedom with you, every intimacy. I want us to share whatever would drive us both beyond anything we knew about ourselves and our limits. I want your tenderness and impatience and ferocity. I want the full range and power of your moods and passion and possession. I will revel in it all, as I’ve reveled in every second I’ve ever spent with you.”
His hands clamped her shoulders tighter with each word. They finally clenched, as did his eyes, squeezing her flesh and insides in a vise that accelerated her melting.
The moment she thought he’d haul her against him, he pushed away. She gaped after him as he strode around the bed, put its width between them, leaned a knee on it.
Then, moving in deliberate slowness, as if to underline the seriousness of the action, he drew an imaginary line, bisecting the bed lengthwise, as if he was cutting through reality.
“Cross this line, and there will be no turning back. I give you all I got. And I take all you got. Make no mistake about that ‘all’ part. Every way I want it.”
Imaginings piled on so hard, so hot, they cut off coherence. It flickered back on a wavering whisper. “Trying to scare me?”
He planted both fists on the bed, leaned almost across his line, the vastness of his hunger deluging her. “If it’s working, then you’d better walk away now, before it’s too late.”