“Tariq, please…” It was a moan.
He knelt down between her open thighs, pushing the soft folds of material out of his way, marveling that her skin was softer than the satin of her gown. He pressed a kiss to the hollow behind her knee, the curve of her thigh, the crease where her thigh ended and her lush round bottom began. He curled his fingers into the soft scrap of material that covered her sex, and pulled her panties down and out of his way, helping her step out of them before he tossed them aside. He could feel her tremble. He ran his hands up her legs, testing her flesh beneath his palms. He leaned in close and inhaled the musky scent of her arousal and, moving forward to lick into her softness, tasted the wet, honeyed heat of her sex.
Tariq heard her cry out his name, but he was too far gone to reply. He knew only that he had to be inside of her, joined with her. So deep it would not matter what he could or could not say. He stood, his hands rough and desperate on the fly of his trousers. He sighed as he released himself, hard and pulsing with need. Stepping closer, he guided himself with one hand while he gripped her hip with the other, and drove into her depths.
It was perfect. She was perfect.
Tariq pressed his mouth against her neck, her shoulder, as he began to move, driving them both slowly insane with each sure thrust. He felt her stiffen, heard her cry out, and then she shook apart beneath him, moaning again and again. He withdrew, flipping her over even while she continued to gasp through the aftershocks, and settled her on the edge of the bed.
Her face was flushed, her hair in a mad tangle over one shoulder. Still she smiled at him and opened her arms, her eyes reflecting the man she saw in him—the man he wanted to be, and could be, when she looked at him that way.
Tariq moved over her, and slid back inside of her, making them both groan. She braced her hands against his chest. Still clad in his coat and dress shirt, he set a fierce, uncompromising pace. She locked her ankles in the small of his back and arched her breasts toward his mouth. He tasted her flesh, like salt and a sweetness he knew was all Jessa. All his.
When he hurtled over the edge, he took her with him. She shook around him, sobbing out his name like a song.
When he could think again, Tariq stood, pulling her to her feet and helping her out of the gown. Sleepy-eyed and deliciously naked, she crawled back into the bed, and curled on her side to watch him as he pulled off his formal clothes and tossed them in the direction of the nearest chair.
She was his. She belonged to him, whether it made sense or not, whether she knew it or not. She had survived their past and still made love to him with her whole self, body and soul. She had seen him in both of his incarnations, the shameful past as well as the present, and wanted him anyway.
There was more to it than possessiveness, a wide swathe of darker, deeper emotion, but Tariq pushed that aside. The possessiveness he understood. He could not give her up. Not again. He could not lose her unrestrained passion, her unstudied abandon when he touched her. He could not lose her. He did not want to think about it any further than that. He did not need to. He knew it to be true with a deep, implacable certainty.
“I must return to Nur,” he said abruptly. He saw her tense almost imperceptibly and then drop her eyes to the mattress. “I have been putting it off these past weeks.”
“Of course,” she murmured, her voice even and yet distant, he thought. The hectic color faded from her cheeks as she stared at her hands. “We must all return to real life eventually. I understand.”
How could she understand, when he was not sure he did? But he could easily picture her in the royal palace, wearing silks and jewels that enhanced her quiet beauty, while he made love to her on low pillows or feasted on her lush body in some desert oasis. He could see her against the bright blue skies and the shifting white sands, her eyes mysterious like his people’s favorite spices, making him long to taste her over and over again. He saw her in his arms and immediately felt better. Safer, somehow, however illogical that seemed.
“I do not think you do,” he said slowly, climbing onto the bed, holding her gaze with his as he prowled toward her on his hands and knees. “I want you to come with me, Jessa. I insist upon it.”
“You insist…?” she breathed, but the color returned to her face, red and hot. Her eyes glowed.
He would never let her go again. Never.
“I am the king,” he said, and pulled her to him once more.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I WILL not hold you to what you said last night,” Jessa told him the following morning, not quite meeting his eyes as she sat down at the breakfast table. “About going with you to Nur.”