To Touch a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 3)

Hunger spiraled from her gut as she flicked her tongue over him, almost passed out as the feel and flavor of his satin and steel eddied in her system. With a cry of urgency, she fell on him, took all she could of him.

He caressed her head and face as he let her feast on him. She was lost in sensation, in his groans of enjoyment when his hand twisted in her hair, stopped her.

At her protest, he said raggedly, “I may be all-capable, but let’s not test me beyond endurance. If you’re up for it, how about we begin your first lesson in on and on, and on?”

She threw herself among the cushions, opened her arms to him.

As he filled them with as much impatience, she moaned, “I heard it can be mystical, unifying.”

“Aih. I never believed that part before.”

“How about we test its accuracy?”

And for the rest of the day and night, they did. With one-hundred-percent positive results.

Maram had gone to heaven, didn’t even have to die beforehand.

Although she’d come close to it, as Amjad had said, from pleasure.

They’d made love everywhere, while cooking, eating, showering, bathing, playing music, even playing video games. Every touch and breath and word, every intimacy and surrender and abandon drove her deeper into addiction. Every sensation, sustained or explosive, left her feeling she’d never hunger again, yet expanded her capacity for more. And more he gave her.

Most amazing of all was the unity his exercise in control and the total rescinding of it to each other brought them.

She was draped over him, wallowing in contentment, savoring him, when something from outside their cocoon registered.

She raised an unsteady head. “Can you hear that?”

He stretched beneath her, making her a more comfortable bed of his body, nuzzled her neck like an affectionate lion. “Besides the bliss humming through our bodies, I can hear nothing.”

“Exactly.” Feeling loath to point it out, as if she’d make it real only when she did, she whispered, “The storm has died down.”

He blinked, as if coming out of a trance.

After a breath-bating silence, he said, “So it has.”

Suddenly she was scared.

The reason for their being here was no more. Would what they had raging between them subside, too?

As if in answer, he swept her around, bore down on her, intimacy and teasing spreading over his beloved face. “Good thing the desert finally deigned to end its tantrum. Now I can show you the rest of my ‘lair.’ Get ready to be devoured in every place I’ve fantasized about having you in.”

She looked into his eyes and knew.

Nothing had changed. Or ever would.

Delight burst out in a giggle as she gave him back his earlier promise. “At your service. Anytime. Literally. Guaranteed.”

Amjad looked at the end of his world as he knew it.

She was pirouetting before him in the rain. Everything he’d never thought existed. Tailored to his ruthlessly specific demands. Femininity and wit and generosity, intelligence and honesty and fearlessness. Hungering for him with her all.

As he did for her with his, and beyond.

He circled her, savoring her from every angle.

In one of his shirts, soaked and transparent, Maram looked like the goddess he’d told her she was. Lithe, graceful, vital. Indomitable, irrepressible, irresistible. Dancing in the deluge that had come to wash the sandstorm away, to reshape the desert and replenish the springs and wells, she was more than this.

She was…everything.

It had been five days since they started. Nine since he’d brought her here. He could no longer remember anything before that time, or that a world outside their seclusion existed. He wouldn’t let it exist, or anything intrude. He had to make sure what they shared was strong enough that nothing ever could.

She’d forgotten the outside world, too, hadn’t even mentioned going back. And he wasn’t bringing up the possibility.

For the past days, he’d been doing what he wished he could do indefinitely—taking her exploring and enjoying his hideaway where he felt most in harmony with himself and all of existence.

He’d thought he’d known this place as intimately as he did his body. She’d made him realize he hadn’t known the potential either held until he’d shared them with her, experienced them through their affinity, through her eyes and senses and wonder.

He’d come to depend on her opinion, her enthusiasm, her pleasure, on knowing he fulfilled her in so many ways, on opening himself for her to take of him what she would. She shook him to his core with the totality of her reciprocation, made him feel invincible.

She’d been right. They worked. Spectacularly. In every way.

Now she was rushing back to him, her strong, smooth limbs glistening as she splashed through the pool that had gathered in the slope of the dune. Her eyes were honey in the cloud-laden light, her smile delight and desire.

She grabbed him, climbed him, tasting and owning him all over, drinking the rain from his flesh, igniting his simmering hunger, boosting his expanded awareness, his very life.

He let her slide down his naked upper body, reveling as the movement peeled up the shirt she wore and her slick flesh glided over his.

He took her lips, murmured inside her, “Thank you.”

She kissed him back with that wholeheartedness that made him feel desired down to his last cell, made him believe he could fly, did fly, as long as he was with her, as long as she wanted him.

Aih, he realized he sounded trite and insipid and ludicrous. He’d wondered many times if his brothers had been infectious and he’d contracted the same malady that had felled them.

But he couldn’t bring himself to find what she made him feel abhorrent or laughable or pathetic. He only found it…miraculous.

She pulled back to smile her ardor at him. “You’re so very welcome. For what?”

He tightened his hold. “For not giving up on me.”

He tried not to shudder as the memory assailed him. When he’d thought she had. Discovering his ex-wife’s scheme to murder him slowly hadn’t been a fraction as brutal.

Her eyes became solemn even as her smile remained impish. “It wasn’t possible. I loved you too much. Or I knew I would love you if you let me close. Now that you have, I know I was wrong. I far more than love you. Ana aashagak.”

Everything inside him hit pause.

He hadn’t given what he felt for her a name. He didn’t want to give it one. A label would taint it with its limitations and specifics. He didn’t want to find himself, or what they shared, trapped in the mold that labels besieged people with.