“It’s a side effect of being transfigured, being a first timer,” she mumbled against the velvet overlying steel of his skin and flesh.
“I was a first timer, too.” She frowned up at him. “I was as untried as you in what passion—towering, consuming, earth-shattering passion—was like. So the experience was just as transformative for me as it was for you.”
Joy overwhelmed her, had her burrowing deeper in his chest. “I’ll take your word for it.”
He chuckled, raised her face. “Now I want to take your word. That you won’t do what your sisters did.”
“What do you mean?”
“That you won’t ask for a million contradictory details. That you won’t do a thing to postpone our wedding.”
Eleven
“What do you mean wedding
?”
Aram’s smile widened as Kanza sprang up, sitting like the cat she reminded him of, switching from bone-deep relaxation to full-on alertness in a heartbeat. Everything inside him knotted and hardened again as his gaze roved down that body that had taught him the meaning of “almost died of pleasure.”
He reached an aching hand to cup that breast that filled it as if it was made to its measurement. “I mean our wedding.”
“Our…” Her face scrunched as if with pain. “Stop it right this second, okay? Just…don’t. Don’t, Aram.”
His heart contracted so hard it hurt. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t start with ‘doing the right thing.’”
He frowned. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
She rose to her knees to scowl down at him. “I mean you think you’ve seduced a ‘virgin,’ had unprotected sex with her a handful of times and probably put a kid inside her by now. Having long been infected with Zohaydan conservatism, you think it’s unquestionable that you have to marry me.”
He rose to his knees, too, towering over her, needing to overwhelm her and her faulty assumptions before this got any further. “If there is a kid in there, I’d want with every fiber of my being to be its father….”
“And that’s no reason to get married.”
He pressed on. “And to be the best friend, lover and husband of its mother for as long as I live…and if there’s really a beyond, I’d do anything to have dibs on that, too.”
The chagrined look in her eyes faltered. “Well, that only applies if there was actually a…kid. I assure you there is no possibility of one. It’s the wrong time completely. So don’t worry about that.”
He reached for her, pressing her slim but luscious form to his length. “Does this look like a worried man to you?”
She leaned back over his arm, her eyes wary. “This looks like a…high man to me.”
“I am. High on you, on the explosively passionate chain reaction we shared.” He ground his erection harder into her belly, sensed her ready surrender. “And it’s really bad news there isn’t a possibility of a kid in there right now. I really, really want to put one in there. Or two. Or more.”
Her eyes grew hooded. “What’s the rush all of a sudden, about all that life-changing stuff?”
“I don’t know.” He bent to suckle her earlobe, nip it, before traveling down her neck and lower. “Maybe it’s my biological clock. Turning forty does things to a man, y’know?”
She squirmed out of his arms, put a few inches’ distance between them. “Since you’ll live to a gorgeous, vital hundred, you’re not even at the midpoint yet, so chill.”
He slammed her back against him. “I don’t want to chill. I’ve been chilling in a deep freeze all my life. Now that I’ve found out what burning in searing passion is like, I’ll never want anything else but the scorching of your being. I love you, ya kanzi, I more than love you. I adore and worship you. Ana aashagek.”
She lurched so hard, she almost broke his hold.
“You—you do?”
He stared into her eyes, a skewer twisting in his gut at what filled them. God, that vulnerability!