The covers lifted, and Issam slid his hand down her bare leg. His calloused hands were rough from all the weights he had lifted, and probably all the guns he had held, and the sensation made her laugh. “Like this?”
“No,” she teased. “That’s not nearly enough.”
“Oh.” He moved again, crawling between her legs, deeper into the bed. “Like this?”
“How are you going to—”
“I see. Like this.” He tugged her panties down and off and spread her legs. Issam made a low sound, as if he had been delivered a plate of priceless delicacies.
“Not quite,” Mackenzie said from underneath her arm.
He licked her, long and slow, and she arched back against the bed with a gasp.
“Like that,” she said. “Just like that.”
By the time he pulled away from Mackenzie, drawing a disappointed little whine from the back of her throat, she was sopping wet and he was rock hard.
He climbed back up out of the covers, giving Mackenzie a look at his sleep-warm naked body. It was very nearly dawn, and in the gray light she could see that he had bedhead. Even bedhead looked sexy on Issam.
He caught her wrists in his hands and pinned them above her head, nudged her legs apart with a knee, and thrust inside of her with total abandon. Something about the morning made him a little rough around the edges, but Mackenzie relished the force behind each roll of his hips. He wasn’t holding back. Neither was she. She let him sink into her and she let herself sink into the raw pleasure of being helpless, taken, alive.
Had it been pleasant to wake up in the dark, that phone shining in her face? No. But this—this was worth it.
Mackenzie hooked her legs around Issam’s waist, drawing him in closer. He let out a pleased little growl into her ear, and she felt his abs flex against her as he changed angles. Issam pounded into her so hard on the next thrust that it took her breath away. She tested his grip around her wrists, fighting a little, and relished the way he held on tighter.
It was all raw, and she felt like a live wire. Pleasure arced through her over and over, there in the dimness, Issam’s body blocking out everything else.
By the time they were finished with each other, the sheets and blankets were a tangled mess. Issam rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, a grin playing over his face. Mackenzie felt languid and satisfied and very nearly like she might fall back asleep.
Until Issam shifted and reached for his phone again.
The phone. Always the phone. She tried to shove down another spike of irritation. She had, after all, come twice while he ate her, and he hadn’t complained at her fingers tugging his hair. There had been no distance between them under the covers. None at all. It was only bodies and sweat and feeling.
When the phone came up, it was like a door slamming shut in her face.
Someone knocked on the door of Issam’s suite.
“Can you get that?” He asked without looking at her. Mackenzie frowned. No doubt he had missed it, since he was back to checking…whatever he was checking.
She pushed herself up from the nest of blankets, ready to give in to her annoyance, when she caught a glimpse of what was on his screen.
It was a social media app, yes.
But Issam was using it to look up Middle Eastern weddings—music, at the moment.
Her heart softened, and the irritation drained away.
Maybe he had finally realized that teamwork would be instrumental in getting this wedding planning out of the way. Maybe he had also realized that he needed her to navigate the land-dispute negotiations. He was, at the very least, invested in the wedding. Sometimes Mackenzie still had a flash of fear that Issam might change his mind and she’d be left at the mercy of the unforgiving imam, but no. Not if he was looking at things like that on his precious phone.
Mackenzie threw her legs over the side of the bed, testing her weight on her feet to see if they’d stopped shaking enough to walk. They had, but it was a near thing. She grabbed her robe from the bedpost and pulled it over her skin. On the way to the door she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror—tousled and pink from the lovemaking. She looked good. No wonder Issam wanted her by his side night and day. She blew a kiss to herself in the mirror.
Things were looking up. If this was how the day had started—albeit in the dark of the night—she was excited to see how it ended.
13
Mackenzie’s hopefulness waned as the hours went on. Issam made a point of feeding her delicious pieces of melon at breakfast, and then she had her first big break—she was invited to a meeting with the security and intelligence teams. That called for a skirt suit, and she chose her lucky one.
She felt instantly at home at the long table in the meeting room off Issam’s main office. Was there going to be some kind of presentation with all the information they’d gathered? She put her slim folder on the table in front of her and waited.