She had no idea what time it was when she was wakened by an arm tugging her back into contact with a hot, damp, very masculine body. ‘Oh!’ she gasped, flinching.
‘I’m sorry...I didn’t intend to wake you,’ Zarif breathed.
‘Then you shouldn’t have put your arm round me...and you’re damp!’ Ella complained loudly before she could think better of it because he immediately whipped his arm off her and shifted away from her.
‘Fresh from the shower. I’m not used to sharing a bed,’ Zarif sighed. ‘I kept on bumping into you and I thought that if I held you close, it would be less unsettling.’
Ella felt oddly abandoned by his retreat and she shimmied backwards until their bodies had made contact again. ‘There, now you know where I am.’
Zarif’s core temperature was so much hotter than her own that her spine felt burned by the connection, or possibly the real problem was the overheated tingles of awareness that immediately coursed through her when she felt the hard thrust of his erection against her hip. She tensed, insanely aware of the swelling of her breasts and the melting liquid sensation in her pelvis.
‘Ignore it...it’s just the normal male reaction to being close to a beautiful woman,’ Zarif informed her deflatingly.
‘I do know that much about men!’ Ella shot back, her cheeks warm in the moonlight filtering through the drapes.
‘And of course, I’ve thought of little else all day but the sheer joy of being inside you, habibti,’ Zarif confessed in a roughened undertone. ‘That doesn’t help. Even the knowledge that you did not experience the same pleasure doesn’t cool my enthusiasm.’
‘But I did...at the end,’ Ella whispered back, cheeks hotter than ever.
‘If only you had told me beforehand that I would be the first,’ Zarif groaned into her hair, his arm closing round her to pull her even closer, long finger smoothing across her shoulder. ‘Had I known, I would have been much more patient and infinitely more careful to prepare you. It might still have hurt but probably not as much.’
‘I didn’t want you to know,’ Ella admitted.
‘But why not? It was a gift I never thought to have from you. You should’ve been proud of your innocence,’ he countered in a tone of rebuke. ‘But then I should never have just assumed that you had had other lovers.’
‘But wasn’t that part of your fantasy? That I would be an experienced partner?’ Ella prompted tight-mouthed.
‘There was no fantasy,’ Zarif protested heatedly. ‘I wanted you so much I didn’t care whether you had a past or not. I am not a narrow-minded man.’
‘I’m not sure I can believe you...’ Ella hesitated but then she had to ask, ‘Was it really sheer joy for you?’
‘It was amazing for me but the fact that it wasn’t for you only made me feel worse,’ he growled with grudging honesty.
‘It wasn’t only the end I enjoyed,’ Ella confided.
‘No?’ Zarif eased his hands below the hem of her camisole top and cupped her breasts, catching the swelling sensitive nipples between his fingers and tugging gently to send curls of molten lust travelling straight to her core. Her hips squirmed, a small explosion of air dragged from between her lips.
‘It was only that few s-seconds I didn’t enjoy,’ she stammered as he began to pull the camisole up and over her head, baring her breasts for his caresses.
‘Will you give me another chance to prove myself?’ Zarif murmured hungrily in her ear, pausing to nip at the tender slope of skin between her neck and her shoulder with his strong white teeth.
Jerking with a stifled gasp, Ella laughed. ‘Now would be a good time.’
Zarif tugged up her legs to extract her from her shorts. ‘If you had said no, go to sleep, I do believe I would have killed you,’ he confided with raw amusement. ‘I ache for you, habibti.’
Ella was aching too and there was an overflowing sensation inside her in the region of her chest, emotions rolling about in wild disarray and, although she couldn’t distinguish them, she knew she was on a high and vulnerable. It was just sex, only sex, she bargained wildly with herself; there was no need to make it more than it was and little point in punishing herself for meeting the terms of a bargain she had agreed to make. He flipped her round in his arms to kiss her before she could get any further with the sensible talking-to she was giving herself and that single kiss sent every rational thought flying into nothingness. Her hand came up and speared into his thick black hair to hold him to her and the flicker of his tongue inside her mouth filled her with wild hunger.
She twisted against him, squirming, needing, in a way she had never known before. The swollen petals of flesh between her quivering thighs throbbed and when he came over her, she was more than ready for the long hard glide of his sex into hers. Delicious ripples of response fluttered within her. As he rose over her she had a vision of him soaring above the flames during the sword dance and her heart thumped out a wild tattoo.
He shifted his hips, finding another angle, and thrust into her receptive flesh. Plunged into raw excitement, she sobbed with pleasure. Every skin cell was primed to want more as she arched up to him like a cat and locked her legs round his lean hips. Need exploded in her, voracious and impatient, driving her on as she rose to meet his every thrust, helplessly reaching for the climax and revelling in the great starburst of release when it swept over her, raining down a cascade of intense pleasure that relaxed every bone in her body.
‘You are delicious, habibti,’ Zarif husked into the coconut-scented depths of her hair as he eased her onto her side to release her from his weight and kissed her shoulder. ‘Utterly delicious.’
Ella roused herself from her slump, surprised that she was still in the circle of his arms. ‘You’re holding me.’
‘Yes...’ Zarif breathed without any expression at all.