‘Can you ever, ever forgive me for the way I have treated you?’
She sniffed. His shirt was sodden against her face. ‘I don’t want to forgive you,’ she whispered against his skin, afraid to pull her face away. Afraid to look at him. ‘I want to hate you.’
There was another achingly long pause and this time she was sure the thin wire connecting them would snap before he answered. ‘I don’t want to be hated.’
‘I can’t,’ she said, releasing another flood of tears. ‘I want to. I’ve tried, but I can’t. And I hate you for it.’
He laughed then, no more than a rumble in his chest, and she wanted to hit him for being able to find humour where there was none—until he said, ‘You do not know what a relief that is. I don’t think I have ever heard more wondrous words in my life.’ He lifted her chin between his fingers and she resisted at first, hating that he was seeing her like this, tear-streaked and swollen-eyed. But his persuasive fingers had their way, and she blinked up at him, saw his dark eyes upon her, the dark features of his face so—tortured.
‘I could never live with myself if you hated me, Aisha, even though I know I deserve it, even though I have made such a mess of this. Can you ever, even in some tiny way, forgive me?’
The tears welled anew. She sniffed. He leant down and kissed first one eye, and then the other. ‘I do not enjoy knowing that I make you cry.’
She pressed her lips together, her skin tingling where his lips had pressed. He leant down and kissed the end of her nose. And, in spite of herself, she jagged up her chin so her nose butted up harder against his lips, wanting the contact, needing more.
His hands grew suddenly warmer around her, scooping down lower and less soothing, more appreciative; the air around them was suddenly super-charged and electric and his dark eyes spoke of more than torture. For in their dark depths she saw heat and desire and the promise of pleasure like she’d never known before.
‘Aisha …’
And she knew before his head dipped that he intended to kiss her. She knew it and did not a thing to prevent it. Because it was what she wanted, this kiss with this man in this time.
His arms tightened around her as he drew her close. ‘Aisha,’ he whispered in the second before their lips connected.
It was like coming home. It was like every time she’d been away from home and returned to the palace in Jemeya and felt its welcome warmth and familiarity wrap around her. It was just like that. Only one thousand times better.
For his kiss didn’t just deliver familiarity. It offered a new dimension. It promised pleasures unbound.
And as she feasted on his hot mouth, and fed from the magic dance of his lips and tongue, all she knew was that she wanted all of those pleasures and she wanted them now. She could all but taste them.
She groaned into his mouth, her hands clutching at his shirt, fisting in the fine cotton as his hands cupped her behind and pulled her close, pulled her hard against the long, hot heat of him. And this time, she knew, she would not be left waiting and wondering. This time she would discover the pleasures she had waited for all these years.
It would not be so bad, she told herself; she would not be giving up on her dream, merely recognising life had changed the parameters. It did not mean it could not still work eventually. And meanwhile.
Meanwhile she could not breathe. Someone had sucked the oxygen out of existence and all that was keeping her going was the heated sweep of his hands on her body, the molten lure of his mouth and the rigid promise of his erection. Those things fed into her own need and stoked the fire beneath her until she was redhot and rabid with desire. Until she knew kissing was not enough.
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Please!’
He lifted his hot tongue from her throat. ‘What do you want, my princess?’
And her hunger and desire coalesced into one indisputable fact. ‘I want you, Zoltan. I want to feel you inside me.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SHE felt him lift his head from hers and look up to the sky. She heard his roar. She felt his triumph in hers. Because she knew she was right.
He carried her back to the camp as he had done that first night, in front of her on his stallion, but this time she was not wrapped in a cloak and bound to him. This time she clung to him herself, looking up at all the harsh angles and dark shadows of his face, wondering how she had never thought them beautiful before.
For he was. Darkly, supremely beautiful.
When they arrived back at the camp, he slid out of the saddle and reached up for her, taking her in his arms as if she were weightless and looking at her as if she were the only woman in the world.