A Christmas Bride for the King

‘Oh...’

Her heart thumped hard as Salim took her to the bed and she lay down. He came down beside her, all bronzed skin and rippling muscles. He put a hand on her thighs, opening them, and then placed his hand on the beating heart of her body before stroking her damp folds with his finger. She had to bite back a moan, she was so acutely sensitised.

Salim pressed his mouth to hers, his tongue tasting her explicitly before he drew back and said, ‘Let it out... I want to hear you...’

As if to make her moan out loud, one finger became two and he thrust them in and out. The ache deep inside her grew tight and sharp. It was even sharper when his mouth encircled one breast and he drew her hard nipple in deep, suckling at the tingling flesh until she couldn’t hold back any longer and moaned a plea into his shoulder...

Charlotte couldn’t breathe. She was caught in a spiral of growing need. Blindly she searched for and found Salim’s hard flesh, wrapping a hand around him, stroking up and down in an instinctive rhythm. She revelled in the way his breath hissed between his teeth and his muscles went taut.

He moved over her, dominating her easily...but in a way that made her excitement increase.

She explored with more confidence now, her hand still caressing him as she kissed his shoulder and moved her mouth down, exploring a hard nipple and administering the same torture he’d inflicted on her.

Salim reached to the side of the bed for something and donned protection. She moved so that she was under him, and his body settled between her spread legs as if this was a dance they’d done many times before. If she could think more clearly it would been scary how right this felt...

In silent answer to the

question he hadn’t even asked, she just tilted her hips up towards him so that the blunt head of his erection was notched right against her body, a mere breath away from—

Aahhh...

She moaned as he slid in slowly, watching her face. She was surrounded by heat and sensation, but he was going too slowly, so she wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her heels into his muscular buttocks.

He huffed out a laugh and gave in to her body’s demands, thrusting so deep inside her that for a long moment she couldn’t breathe. And then he started to move, and her breath came back, and she was soaring, flying higher and higher, until everything went still inside her. It felt like a tiny death—and then she exploded back into life and crashed and burned...

Salim couldn’t hold back a guttural curse as the powerful inner muscles of Charlotte’s body drew him in so thoroughly that he couldn’t keep from falling over the edge behind her.

It had been fast and furious. He’d never felt less in control of his own body. They’d touched and ignited immediately. He’d never experienced anything like it before.

It seemed to take for ever for his heart to slow down again as he lay slumped over Charlotte’s body. Her legs had fallen to his sides and he could feel the aftershock ripples of her inner muscles along his length, keeping him hard.

He lifted his head and looked down. She opened her eyes slowly and something turned over in his chest. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were swollen. Damp strands of strawberry-golden hair were stuck to her cheek. He tucked it back.

She looked as shocked as he felt—as if they’d both got caught in a sudden earthquake.

And then he became aware of his weight on her and reluctantly moved off her, going into the bathroom to take care of the protection.

He looked at himself for a moment in the mirror and felt a sense of déjà-vu as he recalled when he’d looked at himself a few weeks ago, just before talking with his brother Zafir. He’d felt jaded then—weary. Hollow.

Now he felt none of those things.

He felt as if he was connected to something much bigger than himself. Something just out of sight, intangible but solid.

Destiny, whispered a voice.

Salim scowled at his reflection—it was not destiny. It was just post-great-sex endorphins. His life wasn’t changing—not for anything, and certainly not for great sex or because he’d found himself feeling more at home in Tabat than anywhere else he’d been in his life.

He heard a faint noise from the bedroom and went back to find Charlotte sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at him over her shoulder. Her naked back was delicate and pale, and just like that his body started coming back to life.

Her gaze dropped and widened as she took him in.

He strolled back to the bed and asked, with a bite that reflected his unwelcome post-coital thoughts, ‘Were you going somewhere?’

He got onto the bed and reached for her, pulling her back towards him until she went off-balance and landed on her back.

She looked up at him, a slight wariness on her face, as if she could sense his volatile mood. ‘I’m going back to my room.’

Salim smiled, and felt ruthless when he said, ‘Wrong answer.’