“Rania, I—”

She cuts me off by pressing her fingers to my lips. Her fingers trail down my chin, my throat, my chest, my stomach, halting at the fly of my BDU pants. I realize once again she’s trying to go about this how she thinks I expect it. It can’t go that way. This should be about her. I take her fingers in mine and move them away, place her palm on my cheek. Her brow wrinkles in confusion.

I want her to feel pleasure. To experience a moment of happiness that she hasn’t paid for through sacrifice. She opens her mouth to speak, and I cover her lips with mine, a quick, innocent kiss to quiet her. She whimpers in her throat when our lips meet. She moves to kiss me again and I lean away with a grin, shaking my head. Now her expression is openly baffled. I laugh, a silent shaking of my shoulders, and then move back in to kiss her. She moans softly and writhes closer to me.

I deepen the kiss, taste her tongue with mine, and feel the tightly closed bloom that is my hurt and broken heart open a little at the eagerness with which she returns my kiss. She’s discovering this for the first time, the upwelling joy of a kiss, the way your heart expands and swells at the touch of lips to lips, the strange tang of tongues tangling.

I begin to slowly explore her skin now. She’s lost in the kiss. She makes a noise in the back of her throat when my palm skims across her ass, cupping one firm globe and then arcing across to the other. Her hips press her ass back into my hand, a subtle, almost imperceptible motion, but enough of an encouragement. She likes my touch. I slip my hand up her back, underneath the shirt, circling her back, her shoulders, tracing her spine, and then back down to her ass. Her body is tensed, taut with nerves. We kiss languorously, and I make a circuit of her body, soothing and exciting her all at once. She grows used to my touch and her tension ebbs.

I break the kiss, cup her face with my hand, brushing her cheekbone with my thumb. I kiss her again, but this time I put all my nascent emotions into it, all my fear, my desire, my need, my…how much I care about her. That’s as far as I’ll let myself go, even in my own thoughts.

She felt it all in the kiss. When I pull away, her eyes are wet, her chin quivering.

“What are you doing to me, Hunter?” Her voice cracks, whispered Arabic that I barely hear, have to work to understand.

I only smile at her. My heart is beating furiously, anticipating what I’m about to do.

“Trust me?” I ask in Arabic.

She hesitates, searches my eyes with hers, then nods.

I push her gently so she’s lying on her back, and then I lift up on an elbow. It’s painful, but it doesn’t matter. I can take it. This is about her.

I kiss her, and when she relaxes and leans up to deepen the kiss, I rest my hand on her knee, hesitate, and then slide slowly upward along the impossibly silky skin of her thigh, inching nearer and nearer to her core.

She pulls away from the kiss, eyes probing me. Fear is rampant in her gaze. I’ve stopped, waiting for her to decide what she wants.

RANIA

This is a new kind of terror. It is fused with excitement, anticipation. His hand on my flesh is frightening, but glorious. He touches me so gently, so carefully. He waits until I am sure I want him to continue, and then, when he touches me in a new way, he opens my eyes to a new world of sensation.

I did not know my body or my soul could feel these things. My heart is at once afraid and ready. I feel it opening, like an unused muscle stretching.

Why will he not allow me to touch him? I thought that is what men like. That is what he expects, yes? Now I do not know. Every time I think he is going to have sex with me, he stops it. He does not let me touch him. We kiss, and I can sense he wants me. He looks at me. He likes the way my body looks. But he has not touched me sexually until now.

I have never, ever been touched this way. My clients…they grope me. They pay me to let them touch me. They do not ask permission. They are not gentle. They touch to possess my body.

Hunter, he is touching to make me feel something. He does nothing unless he is sure I allow him to.

I could not help myself from getting in bed with him. I was nearly asleep, but unable to fall over the edge. His arm was flung out to the side, as if inviting me to nestle into the hollow. I crawled across the square of silver moonlight and curled into his arm. Instinctively, his arm tightened around me, pulled me closer. For those brief, blessed moments, I felt safe. I knew he would protect me. He suffered pain and injury to protect me. He took a bullet for me. In his arms, I knew I was safe.

I fell asleep and knew nothing, no dreams, no memories. Only Hunter’s arms and his smell and his strength.

I woke up gradually. I knew from the coolness of the air and the silence that it was still night. I felt something rough yet gentle sliding along my back. Hunter, touching me. It was a comforting touch, not a sexual touch. As if he merely wanted to know what I felt like. I wondered sleepily if he wanted me closer the way I want to be ever nearer to him. I want his touch.

My fear is not that he will hurt me. I know by this point that he will not. My fear is that once I let him touch me, once I let him do what he wants, that he will not want me any longer. He will go away, and leave me alone again. He will expect me to be the whore for him, to be Sabah for him, rather than Rania.

I am afraid of how much I want him to keep touching me. It is a strange, unnaturally powerful desire. I do not want things. I have what I need to stay alive, and that is all. The only thing I have ever wanted is to not have to sell my body anymore.

Hunter cannot give me this. No one can. I will be a whore until I am too old and too ugly for men to want me, and then I will starve to death as I should have so many years ago.

I am frozen, unable to respond, unable to stop his exploring hands.

My leg is draped over his, casually intimate. I want to draw it back to myself, gather my feet beneath me and run into the night, away from this desire burning through my body and soul like fire consuming paper.

Soon, my will to resist will be ash in the wind.

Allah help me, he is caressing my leg now. Just above the knee, still innocent enough, but growing more daring and familiar with every centimeter his palm glides higher.

I have to fight myself to retain the lie of being asleep. Breathe in; breathe out; slow and steady, deep breaths. Perhaps I will be able to merely lie here and let him touch me. I do not have to return his affection. I can resist. My desire does not have to dictate my actions.

Oh, I am a fool to think thus. Now his hand is resting frightfully, tantalizingly close to my backside. The edge of his hand is brushing the underside of my left buttock, and Allah, Allah, I want him to move it higher. I want him to touch me intimately, sexually. I do. I must admit the truth to myself, if only to myself.




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