The Sheikh Surgeon's Proposal

Hearing the last pillar in his mind give, he snatched at her lips with rough, moist kisses, nothing left in him but the corrosive need to bury himself inside her, fill her, dominate her, surrender to her, knowing that it was what she needed too.

He heaved himself up, tore off his abaya and pants. She fell on her back, held out her arms, her eyes streaming her plea for him.

He surged back to her, covered her, felt her beloved flesh cushioning his hardness. She opened her legs and, as he’d long dreamed, he guided them over his waist.

He fused their lips for feverish seconds before he reared up, his eyes seeking hers, his erection seeking her entrance.

Finding both hot and molten, he growled his surrender, sank into her in one forceful thrust.

Home. At last. At last.

It was on the second thrust that he realized why the first one had taken such force, found such resistance, why her beloved body had bowed up in such rigid shock. Why his ears were still ringing with her scream.

She was a virgin.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SHE HAD BEEN a virgin.

Malek lay on top of Janaan, buried in her depths, the realization pummeling him, paralyzing him.

He should have known. It had all been there. The evidence of her innocence. From the first moment.

The shyness and wariness that had so contrasted with her efficiency and resolve. The pain at his experimental invasion while he’d pleasured her. Her unnerved reaction, even in her total willingness to offer him all she had, to the rest of the intimacies he’d lavished on her. Fool that he was, he’d thought she hadn’t been tasted, when she hadn’t been touched at all.

He was her first. And he’d hurt her. She now lay beneath him, quivering, her impossible tightness throbbing around his invasion, her torn innocence a new gush of heat singeing his flesh, and—God help him—arousing him to madness.

Ashamed, suffocating, unable to look her in the eye, he moved, started to withdraw his body from hers. Her sob tore through him. Ya Ullah, he’d hurt her. Hurt her.

But she was clamping quaking legs over his hips, stopping him from exiting her body, pumping her hips up, impaling herself further on his hardness, forcing him back inside her.

“I’m hurting you.” He barely recognized the butchered protest that scratched the panting-filled silence as his.

“Yes—yes.” That made him heave up in horror. She only clung harder to him, arms and legs, her core clamping him like a hot fist. “It’s magnificent … you are. I dreamed—but could have never dreamed you’d feel this way inside me. Oh, Malek, Malek, your heat and power, the pain and pleasure. Habibi, brand me, finish me.”

How many times could she wreck his sanity before it disintegrated irrevocably?

Helpless to do anything but her bidding, he thrust back into her, gentle this time, slow. She thrashed her head against the bed, bucking her hips beneath his, engulfing more of his near-bursting erection into her heat. “Don’t hold back. Give it all to me. I’m yours, ya habibi, yours.”

He rose, cupped her hips in his hands, tilted her and thrust himself to the hilt inside her.

He withdrew all the way out, looked down on the awesome sight of his shaft resting at her entrance then sank slowly inside her until he didn’t see where he ended and she began.

He raised his eyes to hers, found her propped up on her elbows, watching, too, crimson lips swollen, open on frantic pants, eyes stunned, streaming, wild. He drew out, thrust again, and she collapsed back, crying out a hot gust of passion, opening wider for each thrust, an ecstatic amalgam of pain and pleasure slashing across her face, rippling through her body.

He kept his pace gentle, massaging her all over, bending to suckle her breasts, drain her lips, rain wonder all over her.

“See how beautiful you are? See how perfectly I fit inside you? See what you do to me? See what I’m doing to you?”

She writhed beneath him with every word, her hair blinding splashes of sunlight over the whiteness, her breathing becoming fevered snatches, her whole body straining at him, around him, making him pick up speed—though he managed to somehow not give in to his body’s uproar for more force—her answering confessions getting more uninhibited.

Her honeyed depths started to ripple around him. He quickened his thrusts until she screamed, bucked, froze, then convulsion after convulsion squeezed screams out of her, clamped her tight inferno around his erection in wrenching spasms.

The force, the very sight and sound and knowledge of her release broke his dam. He roared, let go, his body all but detonating in ecstasy, his seed jetting endlessly into her, until he felt his essence flowing into her, never to return.

Shaking with the aftershocks of his life’s most violent and profound release, he fought the need to come down on top of her, feel every inch of her along every inch of him. He’d tested her recuperating body enough.

He collapsed beside her, took her over him with extreme care, making sure he remained inside her.

She lay limp and cooling on top of him, the biggest part of his soul. He’d never known physical intimacy could be like this, channeling directly into his spirit, his reason. It had been a good thing he hadn’t been anywhere near accurate imagining how sublime making love to her would be. He would have definitely lost his mind during the past weeks.

He encompassed her velvet firmness in caresses, letting the memories and sensations replay in his mind and body, letting awe overtake him.

He was her first. And she’d needed him so much that, even through her pain, he’d managed to give her pleasure.

Not that it would have mattered to him if she’d been experienced. He’d fallen in love with her believing she was, not for a minute thinking it his business, or questioning it with her age and culture. Even when she’d talked about her lack of involvement with men, he’d assumed she’d meant in a serious way.

But now he knew, he was just about bursting with pride—and shame.

Just as she’d offered her life for his when she’d believed he’d offer her nothing at all in return, she’d offered her innocence when she still believed the same.

And he had to tell her now that he’d been insane to think it possible to let her go. For any reason. She would have all of him, for as long as he lived. He’d make it so. Somehow.

“Janaan, mashoogati,” he murmured into her hair as he pressed her into his body, satiation, gratitude, love and humility radiating from his very core. “I thought being with you the last weeks had been, and would remain, my life’s most incredible, unrepeatable experience. And then you gave me this. Now I know every minute with you, every time in your arms, in your body and passion, will be that all over again and then more. And no matter what happens, I’m never giving you up. I’m never letting you down. I’ll be the man to give you all you need and deserve. Forever.”