To Touch a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 3)

She whispered her plea for it against his closed eyes. “Tell me, Amjad. Tell me you believe me.”

He didn’t tell her.

After a heart-hammering moment when she thought he would, he rose, sweeping her up in his arms. She clung to his neck, hope spurting inside her as he took her to the bedroom. But he only placed her on the nine-by-nine-foot mattress as if he was afraid her skin would peel. Then, without looking back at her, he strode out.

She heard him clanging around in the kitchen as distressingly delicious aromas wafted to her churning stomach.

Just as she almost joined him, he came in with a bed tray, placed it across her, instructing her to clean her plate. She just looked at him. He exhaled, went out, came back with his own tray, sat at the end of the bed and attacked his meal. She didn’t know how she got her throat to work through the chokehold of his brooding.

After clearing their dinner away, he prepared her a bath laced with another healing preparation. She thought she’d boil its water with her frustration as she sensed him pacing outside like a caged tiger. He called out every few minutes to make sure she was still awake. As if she’d ever sleep again.

She hadn’t. She lay in bed four hours later, obsessively listening for any movement outside, watching seconds accumulating on the bedside digital clock…

“Tell me, Maram.”

She jerked up, for a second feeling self-conscious. She’d long pushed the sheets away, was down to her bra and panties. There was no hiding in the cloak of darkness either. The room was suffused in the fiery light of the corridor’s oil lamps.

Every worry evaporated when she saw him at the room’s opening, half his juggernaut’s body cast in caresses of illumination, the other plunged into arcane shadow. He wore only his pants.

She’d only ever gotten glimpses of his body beneath clothes. A couple of buttons undone to afford her a stretch of polished bronze vitality. A rolled-up sleeve to tantalize her with the same in cabled sinew and muscles.

Nothing could have prepared her for his unbridled reality. And she literally didn’t know the half of it yet.

Besides a face that would make gods weep with envy, the ancient birthright encoded in its every line, his semi-exposed body made it seem that he’d stepped out of a Middle Eastern fable, an entity of infinite magic. His proportions were…poetic, combining strength with grace, size with agility, endless potential for destruction and protection. He was encased in the flawlessness of burnished coppery velvet adorned by perfect patterns of virile silk. Every bulge and slope of muscle sculpted his shoulders and chest and abdomen from distilled maleness.

Then came the impact of his stance.

He stood as if at the mouth of a cave where unknown but certain danger awaited, legs braced apart, face lowered, chest expanded, fists clenched at thighs bulging with tension.

Her lips and limbs tingled. Her hands and insides itched. Her eyes and mouth watered. Everything else melted.

And he’d asked her to tell him.

Tell him what? How far out of her mind she was for him? If she’d wait forever until he relented, let her in?

He made his question specific. “How are you not afraid?”

Of what? Loving? Him? Loving him?

Whatever the question, the answer was the same. “I’m so the opposite of afraid.”

“You did demonstrate how…idiotically fearless you are. In every sense of the word. But you should fear me.”

Her heart quivered to a standstill.

This was the moment she’d waited and worked for since she’d laid eyes on him. The full disclosure, the terms’ vetting and setting. The final negotiation. Before he surrendered. Before he let her give him herself. Let her have him.

She rose to her knees, trembling so hard that her teeth almost clattered. “I would fear anything and anyone but you.”

“How did you come by this certainty?”

His bass rasp shivered down each quailing nerve. She had to be very, very careful. The wild, wounded tiger was giving her one chance to reach out and pet him. If she got it right, he’d let her do more. He’d be hers for life. She knew it.

But if she didn’t get it right…

She would. At any price.

“Do you have—” she was going to say the rest of your life, but decided to change it to “—a few years? I’ll tell you, show you one way how I did, each day.”

“What if I told you I don’t deserve your trust?”

Her lips trembled on a smile at the ferocity of his last struggle. “Don’t bother. You have it. So if you think you don’t deserve it, how about doing all you can from now on so that you do?”

The wings of his eyebrows snapped lower, his lashes descending to hide those incandescent eyes that seemed to sear the air surrounding them with emerald fire.

It was seconds before he raised his gaze, leveled it on her as if he’d reached a decision. Then he moved. Even though he did with the imperceptible approach of a predator, her heart slammed against her ribs as if he’d already pounced.

Not that she was worried. All she wanted was to throw herself down, arrange herself in the most convenient pose for him to devour properly.

He stalked closer, menace radiating off him. “You should at least be…very worried that you’re going to unleash an unknown force that has been lying dormant.”

She blinked. “You…you mean you haven’t had a…woman in a long time?”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

Disappointment zigzagged through her. Seemed she’d hoped that he…hadn’t. Not since he’d seen her. Which was ridiculous. Though, not really. She hadn’t looked at another man since she’d seen him. But then, he hadn’t shared her conviction that they belonged together. But still… She bit down on the stupid ache.

He went on. “But that’s right, too. I haven’t. In a very long time. When news of that was added to the pre-pregnant state of my ex-monstress, rumors arose that I’d joined…another team.”

A laugh exploded out of her. “No way. Anyone within a square mile of you would know which team you play for. When you play.”

“When the ‘when’ became never, and no evidence to my…defection was unearthed, it was suggested that I’ve left our species’ mating realm behind altogether. Which I have.” Suddenly his grim lips twisted in mockery. “But I hear it’s like riding a bike.”

Everything inside her stopped. To take in the enormity of what he was confessing so offhandedly. She expected him to laugh and say, “Gotcha.” Or something. He didn’t, just resumed pouring the soul-baring intensity of his gaze over her.