Traded to the Desert Sheikh

For a moment—or a year, a lifetime, more—they only stared at each other, stretched out to near breaking on the edge of all that impossible sensation.

“Last time, I hurt you.” His voice was gruff. Raw. Not apologetic in any way and yet it made a wet heat prick the back of Amaya’s eyes. She pressed her hand that little bit harder against his face.

“Only for a moment,” she whispered, as if he’d asked for her forgiveness. As if she was giving it.

And more, it was true. It had only been an instant of pain, easily forgotten and soon forgiven in the wild tumult that had followed. Even if she still didn’t understand how any of that had happened. One moment they’d been talking while officially betrothed; the next their mouths had been fused together as if there was no other possibility, and the moment after that her skirts had been pulled up to her waist and he’d been buried deep inside her.

Inside her.

Amaya had understood with a vivid shock that she had no control around him—over herself. She’d managed not to have sex for twenty-three years because she’d never felt that kind of connection with anyone, and then Kavian had come along and wrecked that in a day and a half. She’d been as shocked at herself for allowing it as she had been at what had actually happened.

He was inside her again now, and this time she was far less shocked. But no more in control of either one of them. He waited, still propped there on his elbows, an enigmatic curve to that hard mouth of his.

“Go on,” he murmured, as if he knew that she didn’t know what to do with herself and didn’t know how to do it anyway. Any of it. Last time had been like careening over the side of a cliff into a brilliant, cataclysmic explosion. This was no less vivid, no less overwhelming. But the explosion hovered out of reach. She thought perhaps that was his doing. His iron control. Because it certainly wasn’t hers. “Find out what feels good to you, azizty. I want to know.”

Dimly, Amaya thought that she should find this all deeply embarrassing. He seemed to read her far too well. He seemed to know too much.

He always has, a little voice whispered. He always will.

But Amaya ignored it, and took him at his word. She circled her hips, tentatively at first. Then, when Kavian growled in stark male approval, with more deliberation. It made a whole new fire sear its way through her as she tested out the deliriously hot sensation, the drag and the friction. She ran her hands along those delectable ridges in his torso, learning the flat, hard muscles and the carved perfection of his form, crossed here and there with scars that spoke to a life of action, lived hard. She tested the shape of his strong neck, teased his flat male nipples and licked the salt from his skin.

She pulled back, then surged forward, testing his length deep inside her, so hard in all her quivering, melting softness. Again and again and again. Until she shivered all over with a new crop of goose bumps, and looked to him, feeling something like helpless. Vibrant and electric, and still unsure.

“Allow me,” Kavian said then, his voice hoarse and dark, and rich with satisfaction.

And then he dropped down closer to her, slid his hands beneath her bottom and took over.

It was the difference between the light of a candle and the blaze of the desert sun.

He took her the way he’d kissed her—all-encompassing, almost furious, dark and sweet and necessary. And Amaya could do nothing but wrap her arms and legs around him, hold him as tightly as she possibly could and surrender to the glory of it.

He reached between them and pressed hard at the juncture of their bodies, right where she needed it most, and she thought she heard him laugh as she shattered all around him.

But then he followed after her, right over the side of the world, and the only thing Amaya heard him call out then was her name.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT SHOULD NOT have surprised Amaya that Kavian was a man of very definite opinions, all of which he had no trouble sharing with her as he saw fit. After all, he’d never pretended otherwise.

What Amaya should wear, and when, and with whom. How she should spend her time in the palace when he was not with her, and certainly what she should do when he was. What she should eat, how often she should take walks in the extensive, terraced gardens, how much coffee she should drink and so on. There was no detail too small to escape his attention. Not because he was so controlling, he’d told her, but because they were making her his queen. A role that would be dissected by the masses of his people and a thousand tabloids the world over, so they could not gloss over the details.