Because this was what he was born to do, this was his reality. She ached to be a part of his reality.
She wanted to give him pleasure, she wanted to be the escape he sought, she wanted to be with him because for the first time in as far as she could remember, Zohra felt no struggle, no confusion, but the rightness of this.
“Ayaan...” she sighed, wondering why her heart always had to choose the hardest path, “I am here not because this is something I have been warned not to do, not because it pushes the boundaries, not because I want to lash out at someone. I want this, I need this, for me.”
She whispered his name again and again over his skin, the beat of his racing heart the only sound she could hear, his lean, hard body the only thing she could touch. She ran her hands all over his chest, loving the ripple and shift of the hard muscles at her lightest touch.
Another curse ripped from his mouth, another shudder racked his powerful body. With his hands in her hair, he tugged her up. His gaze lit with the blaze of a thousand suns, his desire, his demons, his struggle—everything was laid out for her to see.
He stole her breath in that moment and she had no idea how to hold on to it, how to stop from losing herself in him.
He groaned, the sound weighed down with so much regret. “I have asked for it but I have no contraception, Zohra. And I cannot take a risk—”
“I have been on the pill for a long time,” she said, a niggling concern rising to the surface.
His gaze glittered with something unsaid, and Zohra wondered if the perfection of the moment was already fractured. “Ayaan, I know what—”
“Shh...” he said, clasping her face in his hands. “You want me as I am, do you not, Zohra?” She nodded, her heart crawling into her throat, the tightrope she was walking between want and something far stronger blurring at the beauty of the man holding her, both inside and out. “And I want you just the way you are.”
He pulled her up until their mouths were inches apart. Anticipation coiled in her stomach, her muscles molten. His mouth was warm, soft against hers, his control a strung out live wire around them. His hands were on her hips, as he licked her lower lip.
Sharp coils of pleasure arrowed lower when he nipped it and licked it again. Demanding, owning, possessive, and this time without an ounce of control. He bit her, licked her and stroked her and did it again. And again. Until their breaths mingled, until their mouths fused, until the rasp of his skin was etched into hers.
Breathing was something he granted her every other moment, and Zohra let herself be taken over.
An erotic swipe of his tongue, a quick sweep of his palms down her body, a whisper of sinful promise at her ear in Arabic. Lost in a sea of sensation, Zohra sank her fingers into his hair and tugged. Pushed her body against his and ran her hands feverishly over his back. “Please, Ayaan...” Her voice broke on a needy sob.
His hands moved to her shoulder, over her arms, his gaze hungry and intense. “I have no memory of another woman’s body, Zohra, no memory of feeling this kind of hunger, this kind of need to possess.” He licked the pulse at her neck, his breath fanning the flames of her own desire higher. “Do you know how much I have wanted to taste your skin, ya habibati, how much I have thought about you like this, how I would stand outside your door and try to remember all the reasons I couldn’t come inside and take what I wanted?” He sucked the same spot and she melted into his body. “I threw you out of my bedroom but the scent of your skin remained.” He brought her hands to his erection and she jolted at the feel of it. The pull between her thighs intensified at the thought of that velvet hardness entering her, moving inside her. “I have been without relief for a month because I couldn’t bear to touch myself. Because what I wanted was your hands on me, your mouth on me.” Wetness pooled between her thighs at the shocking eroticism of his very thoughts. She palmed his arousal and he jerked out of her grasp, his fingers clamping hers in a tight grip. “No, Zohra.” His fingers traced the neckline of her gown, and her skin snapped into life. “You cannot touch me until my ears are echoing with the sound of your moans, until I have kissed every inch of you, until I have licked you between your thighs...”
Her breath balled up in her throat. His mouth moved along her neckline, trailing wet heat along her skin, kissing and tasting, winding her tighter and higher. The ache between her thighs flared stronger and hotter.
She was so lost in what his mouth did, how it hovered over the curve of her breast, how his very breath seeped into her skin that she had no idea when his fingers had tugged the hem of her gown upward and over her head in one smooth movement. A cool breeze greeted her skin, and instinctively, Zohra lifted her hands.