To Tame a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 1)

“Johara.”

He whispered her name, again and again, as he ran through the villa and grounds to await her at the gates.

In minutes, she pulled the car to a gentle stop, feet from him. He covered the remaining distance, holding her eyes through the windshield. He ended up leaning down to plant his palms flat on the hood of her father’s Mercedes, trying to bring the longing under control. Then he saw her mouth his name, the feelings echoing his trembling over her face. And he failed.

He rushed to her side, yanked her door open. Then she was in his arms, and he was in hers.

He took her from gravity as he wished to from everything that caused her worry. She surrendered herself to his haven, arms enveloping him from neck to back. He savored their connection, letting their eyes embrace, mate, love welling through him as he pressed her closer and closer. Then he took her lips.

She whimpered his name and he groaned hers between kisses so urgent they grew from barely letting their flesh connect, to sealing their lips in wrenching fusions.

They only broke apart when he placed her on his bed.

He loomed above her, looking down into her eyes, waiting for her to show him, to ask him.

She did, in every way. Her swollen lips joined her misty eyes in their demands, trembled on his name, begging for him.

He’d promised himself he’d talk to her first. But while he could have denied his own craving, he couldn’t deny hers.

He rose and her arms fell off his body. They thudded on the dark brown silk he’d draped his bed with for her, graceful arcs of surrender surrounding her head and fanned golden hair. Then she arched upward sinuously, in a wave of white-hot desire stroking him from thighs to chest.

He shuddered with the effort not to tear her out of her clothes and ram into her. His hands trembled when he forced gentleness into them as he stripped her out of her beige pantsuit, which could have been the most outrageous lingerie for its effect on him. He descended deeper into mindlessness as her twists and undulations helped him expose her lushness for his voracity.

“You have no idea, my Gemma…” He kissed and suckled his way from her feet, up her endless satin legs, turning her on her stomach to devour the firmness of her thighs and buttocks, to dig massaging fingers and mouth into the grace of her back and neck. “No idea, what I went through, when you disappeared. Worry almost destroyed my sanity. Then misery, when I thought you didn’t want me.”

“No.” Her cry tore through him as he ground himself against her back, finesse and restraint evaporating. Moans filled his head, high and deep, hers and his. Her flesh burned him with its own torment as she struggled beneath him, demanding he let her face him. He did, and she sank her fingers in his hair, tugged, her eyes urgent, adamant, solemn. “I’ve never wanted anything but you, Shaheen.”

“And I never knew what wanting was until you.” Her tears spilled at his declaration. He kissed them away, put her hands to his shirt. “Show me how much you want me, ya galbi.”

The hunger that spread over her face made him unable to bear the speed with which she exposed him. He ripped anything that couldn’t be undone fast enough, hoping she wouldn’t be alarmed at his savagery. Relief flooded him when it only inflamed her more.

But it wasn’t every dig of her fingers, nip of her teeth, pull of her lips, or even that she overcame her shyness and stroked and tasted his manhood that made him almost berserk. It was her words that singed him through to his soul and served as the ultimate aphrodisiac.

“I always thought you the most beautiful thing in the world, Shaheen,” she sobbed. “I want you all over me, inside me.”

“Give me your pleasure first, ya galbi.”

Before she could protest, he clamped one nipple between his lips, suckled her, nipped her, gorging on the feel and taste. Her cries of pleasure amplified in his inflamed brain as her body begged for his invasion. He glided the length of his nakedness against hers, reveling in how her satin firmness cushioned his rougher hardness. He pushed her legs apart with his knees, opened her folds with one hand. He stumbled to the brink just gliding his fingers along her molten heat, just smelling her arousal.

He drew harder on her nipple, giving her two fingers to suckle, while his other hand rubbed shaking circles over the knot of flesh where her nerves converged. She writhed, moaned, rippled beneath him, demanding more. He gave her more, two fingers pumping into her tight, flowing heat. After a few languorous thrusts, she bowed up on a stifled cry. Then she came apart.

“Aih, ya galbi, show me how much you want everything I do to you.” He feasted on the sight as she took her fill of pleasure, her inhibitions almost gone. Each grip and release of her inner flesh on his fingers transmitted to his arousal.

He still waited until she subsided, then stimulated her again. She pushed his hand away with a sharp cry of impatience, snared him with her legs, trying to get him to mount her.

He smiled his approval into her stormy eyes. “Aih, show me what you want of me, tell me how you want it.”

“I want you to take me, hard. Don’t you dare hold anything back this time. Give me all of you—” her fingers dug into his shoulders, wrenching him down on top of her with all the power of her fervor “—now!”

Before he complied, he reached for the bedside drawer. He was ready with protection this time. She stayed his hand, shook her head. Holding her heavy-with-need gaze, he read her message. She was telling him it was safe to take her. And he couldn’t draw another breath if he didn’t, if he didn’t give her all of him. He gripped her buttocks, tilted her, growled, “Khodini kolli…take all of me, ya joharti,” and plunged.

He hit her womb on that first thrust, obeying her need for his total invasion, secure she was ready, that any discomfort would only sharpen her pleasure. She engulfed him back with a piercing keen, consumed him in what felt like a velvet inferno.

He rested his forehead on hers, feeling like he was truly home, his hold on consciousness loosening.

Then she arched beneath him, until he felt she took him into her core, her streaming eyes making him feel she’d taken him into her heart. She was embedded in his.

With a pledge that he’d never let her go, he withdrew all the way then thrust back, fierce and full.

He rode every satin scream as hard as she’d demanded, his rumbling echoing her cries. Her tightness clamped harder around his length, pouring more red-hot pleasure over his flesh, until she convulsed beneath him.

Seeing her abandon, feeling the force of her pleasure, shattered him. He plummeted after her into the abyss of ecstasy, slid himself all the way inside her and released his essence.