To Touch a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 3)

She screamed again, at the sensations, with frustration that they were coming so soon. She arched up as she felt her inner flesh rippling around him, everything compacting into a pinpoint of insanity. She felt him everywhere, invading her to her heart, wrapping around her last nerve ending.

And she splintered, ecstasy pulsing from the deepest point inside her, where he was buried, to radiate in one shockwave after another, squeezing her around him inside and out, her arms crushing him to her, satisfaction flooding her along with regret that it would end.

But it didn’t seem that it would. He rode her all through, his words pouring fuel on her conflagration. “Aih, etmatat’ee, ya Maram. Take your pleasure all over me, take it all. Take it.”

With each thrust, the world flickered, diffused, only his beloved face in focus, clenched in pleasure, his eyes vehement with his greed for hers.

She heard her own voice, sobbing her plea. “Habibi…you, too. Take your pleasure inside me…give it all to me…”

And he gave. The sight of his face seizing, the feel of him succumbing to the ecstasy she gave him, him, expanding and throbbing inside her with the powerful pulse of his climax. It had her thrashing, weeping, unable to endure the spike in pleasure.

Everything blurred, wavered, faded…

Heavy breathing and slow heartbeats echoed from the end of a long tunnel. The scent of satisfaction flooded her lungs. Awareness trickled back into a body so sated that it was numb. She felt one thing. Amjad. Still filling her, still hard.

She opened lids weighing a ton each, saw him swim in and out of focus, kneeling between her thighs, her hips pressed to his, one palm kneading her breasts, the other gliding over her shoulders, her arms, her belly, soothing, cherishing.

Everything he’d given her swamped her with amazement, with gratitude. Her most lavish fantasies of being with him hadn’t come close to reality. She felt transfigured, reborn.

She ran a trembling finger down the grooves of his muscles, down to the point where they were merged before looking up at him again, her face quivering on a smile of teasing and adoration. “Overachiever.”

“At your…service. Anytime. Literally. Guaranteed.”

His chuckle made her shudder all over him. He expanded until the fullness turned into an edge of dominance, a sharpness of sensation that was frightening and more glorious for it. The idea of him, melding with her, at her mercy as she was at his, filled volumes inside her, body and mind and soul.

But he was withdrawing. And she felt something. Or rather, didn’t feel it.

When she thought he’d reached completion…he hadn’t!

Eight

Maram struggled up on her elbows, gasped as it drove him deeper, had him almost breaching her womb.

His eyes flared as he instinctively flexed his hips, seeking to complete her domination, before he grimaced, continued withdrawing, left her body on a long groan. “I didn’t mean right now. I’m a beast, but not that much of one. You need to…recover.”

“You…haven’t,” she exclaimed.

His eyebrows shot up. “And here I thought this…” he looked down at his intact erection, his mouth twisting “…means I have.”

She shook her head. He knew what she was talking about, was glossing over it.

One of his eyebrows descended. “Seems you’re not all there. Don’t get me wrong, it was one of my most…ferocious fantasies to make you faint with pleasure, then be in a fugue for a considerable time afterward. I am chest-poundingly…smug I succeeded.”

Suddenly, she felt near tears. He had given her that much pleasure and more. But she hadn’t given him any. He didn’t even want to try again, was pretending it was for her sake that he didn’t.

And why would he try again? Once was enough for him to find out she didn’t fire his blood as he’d thought she would. And that she knew most men didn’t need anyone special to…enjoy themselves…made it worse.

She and her ex hadn’t been very compatible. After him, she’d had two brief liaisons with men who’d considered her a passing fancy, as she had them. All three men had had no problem finding satisfaction with her—it had been she who hadn’t found them worth sticking around for.

Now she knew how they’d felt when they’d realized they couldn’t please her. Only multiplied by a million, because Amjad was the only man she’d ever wanted to please, the one who’d brought her unimaginable pleasure.

Feeling exposed and inadequate, she scrambled for the pillow, ventured a look at him after she’d barricaded herself behind it.

He was rising to his knees, a frown spreading across his face. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Evidently.” She snatched a look at his undiminished arousal, the evidence that underlined her failure even as it made her insides spasm with needing him there again.

After a nerve-snapping moment, he rasped, “Are you sorry…already?”

She winced. “You would be, when after all this buildup, all these expectations, it all fizzled to nothing.”

“It did?”

She gestured shakily at his evidence it had, the…emptiness inside her incontrovertible proof. “You know it did.”

He lowered his gaze to the mattress, his eyebrows obliterating his eyes, his lower lips caught in his teeth.

He finally raked a hand through his hair, brushing it out of eyes that became bleak as he leveled them on her.

“This is one scenario I hadn’t considered. That you’d enjoy it, and it still wouldn’t matter…” He stopped, got off the bed.

He dragged his pants on spastically, having difficulty pulling up the zipper over his still-too-impressive manhood.

He stood bathed in the light of the morning-seeping shutters before he looked back at her, eyes heavy, face shuttered. “So all this was for one roll in the…sand? If that was all you wanted, you should have told me long ago. If I’d known it was a one-off, you wouldn’t have needed to go to these lengths to get me to…oblige you, and I wouldn’t be in this…”

He bit off some vicious self-imprecation, then strode out of the room, brow furrowed, jaw and hands clenched.

She lay staring at the point where he’d disappeared, her heart shriveling inside her. He…he’d looked so…so…hurt.

But…if he was, maybe she’d misunderstood. Maybe he had enjoyed being with her, but had held back, fearing he’d impregnate her? Or something?

As she replayed the scene, it seemed he’d misunderstood, too, thought she’d been talking about herself.