Tonight she felt brave enough to do that. Lifting herself again, she let her mouth touch on the marked line of his scar, kissing it softly and delicately, letting her tongue trace its way towards the corner of his eye, tasting the salt of his skin and feeling the brush of those long black eyelashes as his eyes closed for a moment against her caress.
‘Aziza...’
His voice was rough and raw as if catching against something in his throat, so that hearing it she was already prepared for the way he reached for her, hard fingers clamping around her arms as he pulled her under the weight of his body. Pushing one strong knee between her thighs, he opened her up to him while the heat of his mouth captured her breast, moist tongue trailing up towards the pouting nipple and encircling it, making her writhe in hungry response.
‘Does this look like I need more seduction?’ he muttered, the words hot against her skin. He adjusted his position so that the thick, hard force of his body pushed at her welcoming core. ‘Or feel like it?’
He emphasised the words with a swift, powerful thrust, filling her completely and joining them as one.
‘This is all I need,’ he declared as he began to move, fierce and strong, and totally obliterating her ability to think any more.
‘You...’ Aziza managed. ‘You’re all I need.’
But then she had to break off on a moan of delight, abandoning herself to pleasure before, thankfully, she, or Nabil, could realise that she had meant the words in a very much deeper way.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHAT A DIFFERENCE a week could make. Aziza yawned widely, stretching luxuriously in the bed and feeling the tiny aches and tender spots that had resulted from long nights with Nabil.
Long, passionate nights, and even longer, sensuous days. Nabil had never actually described this trip to the mountain palace as their honeymoon, but the truth was that that was exactly what it had turned into. Because, after all, wasn’t that what a honeymoon was all about? About spending time with your new spouse without anything interrupting the private moments? About having the freedom to discover the sexual delight they had in each other and indulge in the pleasures of married love?
Not that love had anything to do with it, at least on Nabil’s part. The thought made Aziza flinch and start into a sitting position. The movement of stretching her arms wide had brought them into contact with the rest of the bed, forcing her to the awareness of the emptiness on either side of her.
Hadn’t it been this way all week? Every morning she had woken to find that Nabil had got out of the bed before she stirred, leaving her alone and letting the sheets where he had lain grow cool and empty without the warmth of his body there.
But this wasn’t like all the other times. It was still the middle of the night, the room in darkness. Outside the high windows the only light was the starlit sky, the faintest breeze stirring the delicate curtains the only sign of movement in the silent palace.
Where was he? And what had pulled him from his sleep tonight?
Slipping from the bed, Aziza pushed her feet into soft slippers and pulled a white silky robe on over her nakedness. Padding silently over the cool marble floors, she made her way out of the bedroom, through the royal suite and down the long, silent corridors.
The waft of a breeze from a door left slightly open alerted her to just where Nabil must be. There was a balcony there, smaller and higher than the one outside the banqueting hall of the city palace where she and Nabil had met that first night, but enough like it to have memories of that meeting swirling in her thoughts as she peered through the partially opened door.
‘Nab...’ she began, but what she saw froze the words on her tongue and had her pulling back slightly, out of sight.
Just as on that first evening, Nabil was leaning against the high wall of the balcony, staring out at the darkened valley below. He had only paused to pull on a pair of jeans, with nothing on his chest or his feet, and the moonshine brushed his powerful shoulders, the long line of his ribcage, with a wash of silver. His face was set and intent, his gaze fixed on some point away on the far horizon, and the dark shadow of his beard could not conceal the tight compression of his mouth, the tension in the muscles of his jaw and throat.
He looked disturbed and alone, so much like the way he had looked that first night. Then she had felt concern and sympathy for him, so much that she had made a move to break into his mental isolation. But tonight she didn’t dare to speak, to make any move or sound that would draw his attention to her. Tonight was not the time to break into whatever bleak dreams enclosed him.