“I want you to make love to me more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.”
His eyes sparkled with a primal heat, a searing sense of victory, and then he nodded.
“And so I shall, sheikha.”
CHAPTER FIVE
HE HAD KNOWN SHE was innocent when they’d married, and if he hadn’t, the way she’d responded to his touch would have told him the truth of her experience. But as he kissed her now, Chloe’s body responded to his in a way he’d never known.
She anticipated every move, her fingers lacing with his, her mouth seeking him, trailing warm kisses down his shoulders, his arms, to his chest, teasing him, tasting him, so that he was almost incoherent with desire.
He worshipped her body as she did his, and when she was feverish with longing, almost exploding with how much she needed him, he brought his arousal to her sweet womanhood and hitched his tip at her entrance.
“I will be gentle,” he promised, and he kissed her, softly, sweetly, as he nudged himself deeper inside of her, lifting her hips with a hand behind her buttocks, tasting her surprise as he stretched muscles that had never been used before.
She stilled when he moved deep enough to find the barrier of her innocence and he cursed inwardly, hating more than anything the necessity of paining her, of doing anything that wouldn’t please her.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, and curled her legs around his back, pulling him deeper, all the way in. He’d never known anything like it; she was so tight around his length and yet he fit perfectly.
“Don’t stop,” she said again.
He lifted up on his elbows, just high enough to see her face, to reassure him that she was okay.
“I want this.”
He nodded, and pushed deeper inside of her. Now that the barrier had been swept away, and the moment of discomfort passed, each stroke of his arousal ran against her most sensitive cluster of nerves, so that every breath brought her closer to something she’d neve
r known, never felt.
She dug her fingernails into his shoulders then scored them down his back, moaning as he moved harder and faster, deeper and fuller, and then the build-up of pressure couldn’t be stemmed for a moment longer. She lifted up, so that she could kiss him, as her whole body seemed to spin apart from the seams, the centrifugal force of her pleasure threatening to take her into the heavens.
“Raffa,” she pleaded the word into his mouth, she didn’t know what she was asking, only that she needed this, more of this, all of this.
He understood, holding her close, letting her ride the waves of her orgasm before he moved again. She realized now that he had been being gentle before. Now, he thrust into her with a desperate, primal rhythm and as his arousal possessed her, his mouth ran over her breasts, sucking on her nipples until she was crying out at the pleasurable assault on her senses.
“Yes, yes, yes,” the word tumbled from her mouth over and over and she threw her head back as he hitched himself as deep as he could inside of her and she was tipping over the edge of the universe anew, losing all sense of who she was and what she wanted – she knew only that she was alive in his arms and that she was as far from cold and unaffected as she could be.
He watched her face scrunched in pleasure and thrust once more before finally losing himself to the same wave of pleasure, holding her to his chest as he spilled his seed into her body, moving his kisses to her mouth, speaking in the ancient dialects of his people, words she didn’t know, but innately understood.
A storm of passion had burst upon them, and when it was over, Chloe found she was floating on an island in the middle of a seemingly endless sea. Everything had changed yet nothing was different.
They’d done just what they said they would, but that didn’t alter the material facts of their marriage. They were a man and a woman who had married for convenience, not love, not even because they desired one another. That they did was a fortunate coincidence, but it had no bearing on anything important.
His body flexed inside of her, pushing all rational thoughts from her mind, allowing her to slip back into the moment of mind-blowing pleasure.
He peppered kisses along her brow, then to her décolletage, and the valley between her breasts, and then, when he reached her tummy, he pulled his body away from her, standing in his gloriously naked state, towering over her. His hair had come loose and tumbled over his shoulders, and again she saw him as a warrior king – he looked ancient, primal and powerful, and in that moment, he was all hers.
“Come with me.” He held a hand out to her, so it was the most natural thing in the world for Chloe to place her smaller one inside his and let him pull her gently to standing. He led her into the bathroom attached to her room, and reached into the enormous shower cubicle so he could start the water running.
“Here,” he murmured, gesturing for her to step inside. She did, working on autopilot.
He followed her in and she was immediately relieved and thankful that this intimacy wasn’t yet over. The water fell over her head and down her body, and she was so over-sensitive from his love-making that she moaned in response, feeling every droplet as though it were his touch.
He placed some fragranced oil into the palm of his hand – an oil sourced from a native tree that produced an abundant supply of this antibacterial, exotically fragranced substance that was used all over the country in place of soaps and body washes – and ran his hands over her arms, then to her hips, her flat stomach, her rounded bottom. He touched her everywhere, washing her, worshipping her, paying special attention to the sensitive flesh between her legs and when she was clean he lifted the palm of her hand, placing some of the oil into it.
“Your turn,” he commanded, the words husky and thickened with desire.
She swallowed past the anxieties born of her inexperience and focused instead on what he was offering – the freedom to touch him. To explore him, as he had her. Tentatively at first, she lifted her palms to his chest and felt his hair-roughened flesh beneath her fingertips, her eyes showing her uncertainty as she watched him for a reaction and had the satisfaction of seeing his sharp intake of breath. She moved lower, her courage built, teasing her fingers over the coarse hair just below his naval, creeping slowly downwards, until her thumbs brushed the base of his arousal. And he was aroused, big and hard once more, so that she couldn’t help but stare at his masculinity.