“How do you think? As the most suitable bride for him, of course.” Johara’s grin became triumphant. “Acting on my suggestion, I might add. And it turns out I was even more right than I knew. You and Aram are beyond perfect.”
So their meeting hadn’t been a coincidence.
But… “Why should Aram have considered your suggestion? It isn’t as if he was looking for a bride.”
Johara looked at her as if she asked the strangest things. “Because we showed him what a perfect all-around package you are for him—being you…and being Zohaydan. We told him if you married, you’d have each other, he’d have Zohayd back, I’d have my brother back, my parents their son and Shaheen his best friend.”
*
Kanza didn’t know how she’d functioned after Johara’s blithe revelations.
She didn’t remember how she’d walked out of the office or how she’d arrived home. Home. Hers and Aram’s. Up until two hours ago, she’d been secure, certain it was. Now…now…
“Kanzi.”
He was here. Usually she’d either run to greet him or she’d already be at the door waiting for him.
This time she remained frozen where she’d fallen on the bed, dreading his approach. For what if when he did, when she asked the inevitable questions, nothing would be the same again?
She felt him enter their bedroom, heard the rustle of his clothes as he took them off. He always came home starving for her, made love to her before anything else, both always gasping for assuagement that first time. Then they settled to a leisurely evening of being best friends and patient, inventive and very, very demanding lovers.
At least, that was what she’d believed.
If everything hadn’t started as she’d thought, if his motivations hadn’t been as pure as she’d believed them to be, how accurate was her perception of what they shared now?
The bed dipped under his weight, rolling her over to him. He completed the motion, coming half over her as soon as her eyes met his. He’d taken off his jacket and shirt, and he now loomed over her, sculpted by virility gods and unbending discipline and stamina, so hungry and impatient. And her heart almost splintered with doubt and insecurity.
Was it even possible this god among men could truly want her to that extent?
His lips devoured her sob of despair as he rid her of her clothes, sought her flesh and pleasure triggers, cupped the breasts and core that were swollen and aching with the need for him that not even impending heartbreak could diminish.
“Kanza…habibati…wahashteeni…kam wahashteeni.”
Her heart convulsed at hearing the ragged emotion in his voice as he called her his love, told her how much he’d missed her. When it had only been hours since he’d left her side.
He slid her pants off her legs, and they fell apart for him. He rose to free his erection, and as she felt it slap against her belly, hot and thick and heavy, everything inside her fell apart, needing his invasion, his affirmation.
Holding her head down to the mattress by a trembling grip in her hair, feeding her his tongue, rumbling his torment inside her, he bathed himself in her body’s begging for his, then plunged into her.
That familiar expansion of her tissues at his potency’s advance was as always at first unbearable. Then he withdrew and thrust back, giving her more of him, and it got better, then again and again until it was unbearable to have him withdraw, to have him stop. He didn’t stop, breaching her to her womb, over and over, until he was slamming inside her with the exact force and speed and depth that would…would…
Then she was shrieking, bucking beneath him with a sledgehammer of an orgasm, the force of it wrenching her around him for every spark of pleasure her body was capable of, wringing him of every drop of his seed and satisfaction.
Before he collapsed on top of her in the enervation of satiation, he as usual twisted around to his back, taking her sprawling on top of him.
Instead of slowing down, her heart hurtled faster until it was rattling her whole frame. It seemed it transmitted to Aram as he slid out of their merging, turned her carefully to her back and rose above her, his face gripped with worry.
“God, what is it, Kanza? Your heart is beating so hard.”
And it would stop if she didn’t ask. It might shrivel up if she did and got the answers she dreaded.
She had no choice. She had to know.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Johara and Shaheen nominated me as a bride for you?”
Thirteen
Kanza’s question fell on Aram like an ax.