Winter Blockbuster 2012 (15 page)

Something flared and caught fire in his eyes. ‘I think you might be right.’

He dipped his head, curled one hand around her neck and drew her slowly closer, pausing mere millimetres away, forcing their breath to curl and mingle between them, a prelude to the dance to come.

Then even that scant separation was gone as he pressed his lips to hers.

One touch of her lips and he remembered—sweet and
spice; honey, cinnamon and chili; sweet and spice with heat. But there was so much more besides.

For this night she tasted of moonlight and promises, of soft desert nights and whispered secrets. She tasted of woman.

All woman
.

He groaned against her mouth, let his arms surround her, drawing her into his embrace. She came willingly, accepting his invitation, until her breasts were hard up against his chest, her slim body curving into his, supple and lithe, while he supped of her lush mouth. And when he felt her hands on his back, felt her nails raking his skin through his shirt, he wanted to lift his head and roar with victory, for the goddess would be his tonight.

Except there was no way he was leaving this kiss.

She was drowning. One touch of his lips and the air had evaporated in her lungs and it was sensation that now swamped her, sensation that rolled over her, wave after delicious wave. His lips on hers, his taste in her mouth, his arms around her and her body knowing just one thing.

Need.

It bloomed under the surprisingly gentle caress of his lips. It took root and spread a tangle of branches to every other place he touched. It built on itself, growing, becoming more powerful and insistent.

He held her face in his hands and kissed her eyes, her nose, her chin before returning to her waiting lips, seducing her with his hot mouth while her hands drank in his tight flesh.

And in the midst of it all she wondered, how could this be the same man who had kissed her in the library? The same man who had so cruelly punished her with his kiss and had demanded her presence in his suite so he could impregnate her with his seed?

Yet it must be the same man, for she recognised him by his taste and his essence and the far-reaching impact he had upon her body.

But in between the layers of passion and the onslaught of sensation, in between the breathless pleasure, a niggling kernel of doubt crept in: how could he be so different now and yet still be the same person?

‘Aisha,’ he said, breathing as heavily as she, resting his forehead on hers, his nose against hers. She almost forgot to care that he seemed different, because he was so warm now, so wonderful, and the way he said her name made her tremble with desire. This man, who was now her husband. That thought made her shudder anew.

‘You are a goddess,’ he said, his big hand scooping over her shoulder and down, inexorably down, to cup one achingly heavy breast. Breath jagged in her throat, her senses momentarily shorting before he brushed the pad of his thumb against her nipple and she gasped as her entire circuitry lit up with exquisite pleasure that made her inner thighs hum.

She mewled with pleasure. ‘I think,’ she uttered, breathless with desire, ‘maybe you must be the evil twin after all.’

And he growled out a laugh that worked its way into her bones and stroked her from the inside out. ‘Make love to me, Aisha,’ he said, before his lips found hers again. ‘Be my goddess tonight.’

To night?

Already?

But before she could protest and say it was too soon, he sucked her back into his kiss with his hot mouth and his dangerous tongue and drew her close against him, shocking her when she felt his rigid heat hard against her, frightening her with the realisation that she must take that part of him inside her body. And, even though her logical mind told her
that men and women the world over made love this way and had done for centuries, the unknown was equally as persuasive. Surely not all men were so large? How was she—the untested—supposed to accommodate him? There was no way he could not know she was a virgin. There was no way it would not hurt.

Yet something about that rigid column pressing against her belly, something wild and wanton that was written on the pulsing insistence of her own body, made her yearn to try.

‘Please,’ she cried between frantic breaths, not knowing let alone understanding what she was asking for as he dipped his head to her breast and suckled her nipple in his hot, hot mouth, sending spears of sensation shooting down to where her blood pulsed loud and urgent between her thighs.

‘Aisha,’ he said, his breathing as wild as hers as he reclaimed her mouth, her lips already tender from the rub of his whiskered cheeks. She wondered why she was hesitating and not already in his bed.

It wasn’t as if she had a choice. She was already married to this man. She was expected to bear his children and provide the country with heirs, and the officials would already be counting the days.

Why should she wait when the night was so perfect and her own need so insistent?

Why wait, when she already hungered to discover more?

His mouth wove magic on her throat, his hands turned her flesh molten and made her shudder with delight, and through it all she sensed the greater pleasures that were yet to be discovered, yet to come.

And still a crack opened in the midst of her longing, a flaw in the building intensity of feeling, a space in which to give rein to her doubts and fears.

For this was not how she had planned her first time to be.

Even though her breasts were heavy with want, and her body pressed itself closer to this man of its own wicked accord, this was not how she had imagined giving away her most private, guarded possession.

She had wanted to give it up with love, not merely in the heated flames of lust.

She had wanted to give it to a man she loved because she wanted to. Because she had made that choice.

And through that widening crack came the mantra, the words she’d rehearsed and practised and that had seemed so important to cling to.

‘I won’t sleep with you,’ she breathed. Yet she faltered over the words even as she spoke them out loud, struggling to comprehend what they meant and why they had suddenly seemed so very necessary to say, why they now seemed so strangely hollow.

‘But that is good news,’ he said, his mouth at her throat, his hands scooping down the curve of her back to press her even closer to him, ‘because I don’t want you asleep. When I make love to you, I want you very much awake. I want to see the lights in your eyes spark and shatter when you come.’

She gasped, her heart thudding like a drum in her chest at the pictures so vividly thrown up into her mind’s eye. And once again she felt herself drowning under the waves of desire, lust and all things sensual. Unable to breathe or think or make sense of where she was.

Able only to feel.

And the fear welled up inside that soon she would have no choice; that maybe it was already too late.

‘I’m afraid,’ she admitted. ‘It’s too soon.’

‘You want me,’ he said, his mouth once again on hers, coaxing her into complicity, convincing her that this was the best way. The only way. ‘It’s not too soon to know that.’

He might be right, but still she wavered, because she had seen her sister give in to passion and take what she wanted of a man, had seen her left with his child and nothing else.

She did not want that for herself. She did not want a fleeting affair that might rapidly turn from lust to resentment or worse. She did not want a marriage that could turn so quickly empty, and from where she could not simply walk away.

She wanted the real deal. She didn’t know how that was possible now, but that didn’t stop her from wanting it. She had held on to that dream for too long to give up on it completely.

‘It’s not that easy,’ she whispered against his stubbled jaw. ‘I can’t just—’

‘Of course you can,’ he soothed, his hot mouth stealing her words and making magic to convince her it would be the easiest thing in the world. ‘I am a man, you are a woman and we want each other. What else matters?’

His hand scooped down her back, squeezing her behind, his fingers so perilously close to her heated core. She knew she must tell him or she would be on her back before he found out. She did not want him to find out that way. She could not bear it.

‘Then maybe there is one more thing you should know,’ she said, looking uncertainly up at him, feeling herself colour even as she spoke the words, ‘because I have never done this before.’

The side of his mouth turned up, and the eyes that had so recently been molten with heat turned flat and hard. ‘If you’re still trying to get out of this, Princess, you should know I am not as gullible as my half-brother.’

CHAPTER TEN

H
E SAW
her flinch and caught the hurt in her eyes before she shoved herself away from him. He let her go, watched her putting distance between them as disbelief bloomed and grew large in his gut. A virgin? There was no way it could be true. ‘You can’t be serious. You’re how old? And your sister…’

She spun around. ‘Oh, of course! Because I’m twenty-four, and because my sister has two illegitimate children, then I must have slept with any number of men and somehow got lucky and escaped the same fate? How many men did you think, Zoltan? A dozen? One hundred? How many men did you think had broken down the gates and paved the way for your irresistible advances?’

‘Princess,’ he said. ‘
Aisha
, I never thought—’

‘Of course you did. You didn’t believe me before when I told you why Mustafa had not touched me. You thought it was some kind of joke. Well, the joke’s well and truly on you. And if I had my way, even though we are married already, the gods would surely curse you as I now do.’ Then she turned and strode away down the beach.

He watched her go, adding his own curses and feeling the effect of hers already. What a fool! He’d had her in the
palm of his hand, supple and willing, so close to exploding she was like unstable dynamite. If only he’d reacted to her confession by telling her he’d be gentle with her, or that he thought her all the more precious for it—as he would have, if he’d thought for a moment she was speaking the truth—then she would have been his.

And that
should
have been his reaction, given what she had told him earlier. But back then he’d heard her story and had seen in it only the chance to laugh at Mustafa’s stupidity. Because that was what he’d wanted to see.

He hadn’t considered her in any part of it.

But then, he had never considered
her.

He’d only seen what he had to do to satisfy the terms of an arrangement he’d had no part in making. He’d only wanted to grind his half-brother down to the nothing that he was in the process.

He was a fool, on so many counts. He’d been the stupid one.

As for Aisha? She was indeed a goddess.

A virgin goddess.

He watched her walk towards the camp as long as he could along the dark stretch of beach, watched until her flapping abaya was swallowed up by the night. Only then did he look up at the silvery moon and stars and feel the weight of his obligations sit heavily on his shoulders, feel the watchful eyes of the gods looking down on him, no doubt laughing at this sad and pitiful mortal who threw away destiny when it was handed to him on a platter.

And what to do? For she must be his wife in all senses of the word in time for the coronation if he was to become king, and there was one more night for that to happen.

That should be his most pressing imperative. But right
now he wondered, for right now he was faced with choices he’d never seen coming.

He could have the kingdom and a wife he lusted after but who might hate him for ever if he took her before she was ready. Or he could have a wife who wanted him but who might take her own sweet time falling into his bed, in which case the kingdom might well in the meantime fall into the hands of a man he hated more than anyone.

And, when his duty to his country had been his prime motivating force until now, why was that suddenly such a difficult choice?

He slept badly that night. But how could he not when he’d lain awake not ten feet away from her all night? He’d heard her toss and turn through the night, he’d heard her muffled, despairing sighs and pillow punches when it was clear sleep was evading her too despite the gentling sounds of the sea on the shore. He’d registered the exact moment her breath had steadied and calmed and then he’d listened to the sounds of her sleeping. And all the time he thought about the waste of night hours and what they could have been doing if only he hadn’t been such a damned fool.

When he rose early, he tried not to dwell too much on how good she looked asleep with her hair rippling over the pillow, or how easy it would be to climb into bed with her and finish this thing now. Except that she would truly hate him then, and somehow he didn’t want her to hate him any more. If she could like him, even just a little, it would make this whole thing so much easier.

But he took one look at the table under his palms waiting for him to resume his studies and baulked. He had a problem to contend with and there was no space in his head for study. Besides, there was still way too much tension in his body to
sit there quietly and take anything in, tension he needed to work off to give himself the headspace to think. He looked out at the ocean, inviting and calm, but swimming would involve going back to the tent to change. Besides, the thought of swimming made him think about her, looking lush and edible in that citrus-coloured swimsuit, and he needed to untangle his thoughts if he was to work out what he was to do, not scramble them completely.

And she was more than capable of scrambling his mind.

Already he was half-tempted by the thought of giving her as much time as she needed to fall into his bed. But that would mean leaving the door open for Mustafa, and how could he do that to Al-Jirad? How could he so callously evade his duty?

But, for a prize like her, it would be almost worth giving up the throne.

He shook his head, though he knew it would take more than that to clear it. He heard the nicker of horses and swung his head around.