“IT’S ME. DON’T SCREAM.”
His whisper, scented faintly of cloves and anise, caressed her cheek.
Belated shock went through her and she jerked her limbs into reacting. Unfortunately he was half on her bedroll, pinning her sheet and keeping her reflexive movements muted. She couldn’t even wriggle as he settled his weight half over her.
“Shh. Don’t make any noise. I just want to talk.”
Forcing herself to stillness, she tried to ignore the way her body blossomed against his, even with his thobe, a sheet and her nightgown between. Her breasts tingled, her thighs grew restless. Desire concentrated in her loins, anticipating his touch.
And her helplessness at her own reaction made tears burn her eyes. She turned her head away from him, dislodging his hand from her mouth.
His fingers curled under and he smoothed her cheek with his knuckle. “I know I was harsh to you,” he said tightly. “This thing between us—”
“Is nothing. I know,” she asserted, not wanting to hear him say it. “I’m weak, not stupid. I wasn’t trying to stake a claim on you. I wasn’t assuming we’re friends or anything else. We don’t even know each other.”
His touch stalled, then his breath clouded against her ear in a drained sigh. “I know you’re willing to put everything on the line for the life of a girl you barely know.” His touch caressed from below her ear, along her jaw and down. He opened his hand on her throat and aligned his thumb along the artery throbbing with needy anticipation. “Thank you for doing that. I couldn’t sleep, knowing you thought I was angry with you for it.”
She knew she ought to say something. Forgive him. Tell him to go. All she could think about, however, was how it would feel if he slid his hand down to her breast.
“That’s all I came for,” he said, lifting his hand off her as he started to roll away.
“Is it?” Weak, weak Fern. She closed her eyes against the clamor inside her, the yearning that was so self-destructive as to invite more of his dispassionate lovemaking.
His breath hissed in. He set his hand on her stomach. “You want me to stay?”
She shouldn’t. She knew that. But she slid her hand from under the sheet, covered his and lightly drew it up to her breast. “I know it’s bad,” she whispered achingly.
“I’m the one behaving badly, Fern.” He took up her hand and brought her fingers to his lips. “Your first lover should be someone who offers more than a week of stolen rendezvous in the dark. I’m very conscious that I’m taking advantage of you.”
She heard the confirmation that this was all they had and it cracked a wide fissure through her. Turning her hand in his, she traced the smooth shape of his lips, aching for better words to come out of them.
“Apparently I have a suitor if I want marriage,” she said, smiling sadly and glad he couldn’t see it. “At first I thought you were him, here to kidnap me into the desert.”
“That’s not funny.” His grip on her hand tightened and he leaned over her, lips questing for hers. “I wanted to knock his young ass into the dirt when he asked about you. I told you before that if I can’t have you, no one can.”
“But you can,” she told him, smoothing her fingers over the scuff of his growing beard and into his hair to explore the shape of his skull. A distant part of her already wept at the idea of losing him in a few short days, but his possessiveness healed the fracture in her chest with crooked, stinging stitches. Oh, how she wanted this. Him.
His hot mouth caressed the side of her face and she turned her mouth into his, unable to resist.
He muffled a groan and she felt his chest swell. She wondered if it meant he was feeling what she was: heart exploding into faster pounds, nerve endings snapping to life with a pulse of acute need.
She closed her fist to begin bunching his thobe behind his shoulders and he lifted to peel her sheet down. Then he reared back on his knees to shed his tunic. His sculpted form was barely visible in the dull purple light inside the tent, a vague silhouette that was undeniably masculine in its size. Powerful. Weakeningly beautiful.
Fern did something she never imagined herself able to do. She shimmied her nightgown up and over her head, tossing it away, then slid her own knickers off and kicked them to the floor as she opened her arms to him.
He fell on her and they kissed and clung like drowning victims. She knew it was bad to wrap her legs around him, but oh, it felt good to feel his aggressive sex rubbing against hers. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, telling her what he wanted to do to her, and she couldn’t help releasing a moan of encouragement.
“Shh, albi. We have to be quiet.” He nibbled down her neck, sending prickles of excitement through her chest, making her nipples stand taut and sensitive to the friction of his chest hair.
“I know, but it’s so hard,” she gasped, seeking with her hands for the shape of him. So hard.
He muffled a curse against her skin and slid lower, away from her reach as he captured her nipple in his mouth and teased her mercilessly.
“Zafir,” she protested, knee coming up in reaction to the jab of sensation his erotic suckling drove into her center.
He only skimmed his hand along her inner thigh, his teeth sinking in lightly around her nipple as his touch slid easily against her ready flesh. She arched in blinded reaction to his caress and he deepened his exploration, pressing a finger into her.
She threw her arm across her mouth to stifle her cry of joy, so aroused she could barely stand it.
He stoked her desire with tender ruthlessness, refusing to do more than let a few light touches of his thumb pad stroke her where she ached for pressure most. He switched to her other breast, making her want to beg as he continued to tease with those light thrusts of his finger and the not-quite-there caress.
“Zafir, please,” she finally pleaded, fisting her hand in his hair to make him stop.
He dragged her hand from the back of his head and bit the heel of her palm before he slid even lower and pressed her knees open. Then he gave her what she’d been anticipating, but with his tongue.
It was too much. She pushed her hand beneath her pillow and folded it across her face, releasing her sobs of ecstasy as orgasm took her. It was intense and scandalous and so powerful her eyes dampened with emotion while her body continued to tremor with aftershocks.
How could this be sinful? How?
When he rose over her and stole her pillow, she only thought, yes. Whatever he wanted, yes. If he pushed his length into her, she’d welcome him. Revel in his claiming of her.
He rolled her over and brought her hips up, then pinned his steely shaft between her slippery thighs, trapping her knees in place with his own on either side. Covering her the way every other species mated, he slid a hand to where they touched and pressed his shaft against flesh still tingling with postclimax sensitivity. He started to move.
She fisted her hands into her bedroll and held still for his lovemaking, wishing he was inside her. She wanted him to feel the same pleasure he’d given her and—
“Oh!” she gasped as the friction deepened and caused a sharp sensation to yank her back into arousal.
“Shh,” he urged, slowing his movements, caressing her hip and breast. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Don’t stop.” She grabbed her pillow and buried her moans into it, giving herself over to him and his needs and the excitement he was rekindling in her. She moved with him, finding the rhythm, wanting this to be the real thing, unable to believe she was almost there again, almost...
They found the crisis together, the sweetness of it so intense she forgot to breath, but maybe that was his arm locked around her rib cage. She kneeled in his fierce grip, loving the feel of his muscles twitching with contractions as she held in her scream of abandonment as her thighs quivered in ecstasy.
His heart continued to pound against her shoulder even after they’d collapsed onto their sides, spooned together. His breaths stirred her hair and he had one warm hand clasped possessively over her breast.
Fern blinked to focus in the dark, stunned by how wild that had been. Very lusty. Kind of dirty. Yet it made her feel so close to him. She resisted the urge to snuggle backward into him, but he stroked his hand down her front and tugged her tight against him, then kissed her shoulder before he relaxed with his nose in her hair.
She blinked her damp eyes, feeling cherished and safe.
“I want to see you. All of you,” he whispered.
“Why?” she asked, warming at the thought.
“Because I think your freckles would be pretty.”
“They’re not. I look like a speckled pony. That’s what my mother used to say. She didn’t like them. Should you stay?” she asked, partly to change the subject, partly because she wanted to prepare herself. This was really nice, but she had to remember it was temporary. “I don’t want to fall asleep.”
“Can you put your tablet on vibrate and set the alarm?”
As she reached through the dark to where she’d left it and clicked it on, he tilted the light to her chest.
“Don’t,” she murmured, lifting it away and tapping, showing him the time she set.
“That’s fine,” he agreed, gathering her into his naked length as she set it away again. “Why didn’t she like them?” He caressed down to her belly and back up to her breast.
“Probably because I got them from my father. Maybe just because they were a part of me. She didn’t like me much.”
His hand stalled on her hip. “Are you being serious?”
“I shouldn’t be, should I? I’ll stop.” She rolled into him and nuzzled her nose into the hair sprinkled against his breastbone, hands fondling between them. “Why are you still hard? I thought men, you know, relaxed after.”
He’d run a towel down her belly and thighs before pulling her to the mattress with him. They’d definitely found their pleasure together.
“I’d dearly love to know how to ‘relax’ around you, Fern. Being hard this much hurts.”
Don’t laugh, she thought, pretty sure that men didn’t have much of a sense of humor when it came to sexual frustration, but she was insanely flattered.
“I feel the same, like I’m some kind of sex addict, thinking about you all the time. Is it always like this?” she asked, stroking him with a light grip. “I’ve never felt so greedy about anything. Sometimes I might think, ‘oh, that man is handsome,’ or something like that, but I’ve never wanted to—” Take a man with my mouth.
She really wanted to do that. He was covering her hand, teaching her how he liked to be stroked. As she found the rhythm, she searched out his flat nipple with her mouth. It was a bold move, but that’s what he’d done to her and she’d loved it. Surely he would, too?
He cupped the back of her head, then tilted her up for his kiss. She let him have the lead for a while, but he was so steely and aroused. So intriguing. All she could think about was owning him the way he had taken possession of her.
“I want to do something,” she whispered as she pulled away and pressed his shoulder so he was flat on his back.
As she slid down his body, he went hard all over, like he was made of marble. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to. Tell me how to make it good.”
“It’s already good.”
She laughed. “I’m not there yet.”
“I know, but it’s still great,” he whispered, making her smile as she touched her lips to his hot, velvety shape.
* * *
Zafir had one foot in heaven, one in hell.
He counted the daylight hours until he could go to Fern, and cursed when the sun arrived, extinguishing another night with her. When he picked up the message relayed from base camp, his heart sank into the underworld.
He told Ra’id first, because it was expected that he would.
“I have to leave in the morning,” Zafir said, explaining the situation with demonstrators in his home city.
“I’ve been thinking of leaving myself,” Ra’id admitted. “Amineh wants to stay the full two weeks, and the girls would live here if I could arrange it, but I’m restless. There are things I should be looking after at home. We’ve had the meeting we needed. It’s time.”
Zafir nodded. They were both high-energy men, used to demanding days and schedules that took them around the world in a week. As children they’d been neighbors and acquaintances. At boarding school, they’d gravitated to each other, Ra’id for Zafir’s mastery of English and Zafir for Ra’id’s understanding and sharing of his Arab blood. As adults they were as close as brothers and never tired of each other’s company, but they also knew and respected the responsibilities each had. Idleness was not a natural state for either of them, so leaving made sense.
But Zafir wasn’t ready.
“You look genuinely worried. Is this demonstration worse than the others?” Ra’id asked.
“No,” Zafir said, consciously clearing his scowl, but unable to stop thinking about what he would be giving up. “It’s the same group that rabble-rouses every time I’m away. Things will settle the minute I’m in residence so I’ll go home and make that happen.” He wouldn’t ignore these small uprisings as his father had done, allowing them to escalate into riots and bloodshed.
“This man who keeps causing unrest. Abu Gadiel? I thought you were going to marry his daughter and quiet him for good?”
Zafir gave a tight smile at the running joke. “That suggestion is looking less outlandish and more practical every day.” His mouth twisted on the words. He was not quite ready to face what could be inevitable.
Ra’id snorted, then sobered as he saw the gravity in Zafir’s expression. “You’re really considering it.”
“She’s nineteen. Young, educated traditionally, but she’s continuing her schooling, planning to be a doctor.”
“So she’s smart, but perhaps not as interested in playing politics as she is in helping all people,” Ra’id suggested.
“Exactly.” Not a bad match at all.
“Pretty?”
Zafir cut him a does-it-matter? look.
Ra’id only shrugged. “It helps.”
“I never did give you that herd of goats for taking my ugly sister off my hands,” Zafir drawled, making Ra’id’s mouth twitch with humor. Ra’id had begun drooling over Amineh before they’d left third form. If he could have, he would have married her before she’d finished school. Their father had been gone by then and it had been up to Zafir to insist his sister pass her A levels before she could marry.
She had, and not only had she been able to marry, but she’d also married for love. Zafir knew she believed he’d come to love Tariq’s mother, but it was not an emotion he’d ever aspired to. It had been his father’s weakness. The driver of actions that had been his undoing.
Love, for him, was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Another arranged marriage for the sake of peace was his lot.
“You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist,” Ra’id said.
“Appreciated,” Zafir said, slapping his friend on the shoulder as he moved away. “I’ll let the children know.” It was an excuse to see Fern. They did their best to avoid each other during the day, which made him feel a heel, but what option did he have? He’d promised her he wouldn’t cost her her job.
“Promise them you’ll send Tariq to us for a few weeks. I’ll find a pocket in my schedule after my cousin’s wedding. It will soften the blow,” Ra’id said.
Fine for Tariq and the girls, but how would he soften the blow to himself?
* * *
Amineh was sitting in on Fern’s lesson today, lending her excellent art skills to sketches of “my favorite animal spotted in the oasis.” When Zafir arrived to say everyone would be leaving in the morning, her tiny class erupted into disorder. Amineh was most vocal of all.
“You know I can’t ignore these things,” Zafir told his sister testily.
Fern was afraid to look at him, certain she’d betray her distress. This was it. The end of her nights with strong arms around her, the scent of a man on her skin, his lips whispering praise and compliments into her soul. It wasn’t just the pleasure he gave her that she’d miss, but the illusion of closeness. She was sure he laughed with all the women in his bed, told them all they were pretty and tasted like honey and smelled like wildflowers, but this was her first experience with pillow talk and she loved it.
As he walked away, she couldn’t help a yearning look at his back, wishing life wasn’t so unfair—
He moved out of sight and her gaze came back to the group and Amineh’s alert, probing stare.
The burn of a hard flush swelled up from Fern’s throat, choking her and making her cheeks ache. She was such an idiot.
Somehow she managed to say, “Didn’t you tell me all your friends suffer the effect? He’s...” She lifted a helpless, hopeless palm. There weren’t words to describe how compelling he was or why she’d fallen under his spell. She just had.
Amineh’s shoulders fell and she smiled with amused sympathy. “They do. And you shouldn’t take it personally that he’s completely oblivious. Oh, Fern.”
Fern waved away the compassion, glad Amineh assumed her crush was platonic, not one fueled by midnight encounters of the most licentious kind. But the prospect of losing those trysts sat like a knife in her chest.
Fortunately the news they were leaving cast a pall over the whole camp. Her long face was one of many. The children were querulous, distracting the adults from Fern’s morose mood, and when Tariq invited her to join them for the final meal, she had a valid excuse to maintain her privacy and keep her misery from being noticed.
“I really do have a lot to gather up and pack. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll miss you,” he told her, making her want to hug him, which was odd for her. She had worked with children his age as part of her certification, had enjoyed them immensely, but being affectionate with students wasn’t encouraged and she wasn’t naturally effusive. Perhaps Zafir had unlocked something in her. She finally felt like she had warmth to offer.
“I’ll miss you, too. You’re a remarkable young man. But I’ll see you in a few months, when you visit your cousins.”
She wouldn’t see his father, but what she had with Zafir was already stolen property, not something she could keep.
She took her time memorizing every aspect of him when she held him that night. He seemed to be doing the same. They’d taken to drawing out their caresses these last few nights, letting the sensations build upon themselves, learning to hold each other at the height of passion so every sensation was played out to its greatest degree.
He sat with his back against pillows pushed up against her stack of packed bags and baskets. She kneeled on either side of his thighs, both of them naked and damp, trembling with arousal. Her mouth couldn’t stop feasting on his and his hands were firm and thorough, like he intended to imprint his touch on her skin forever.
Rising onto her knees under the urge of his hand on her bottom, she offered her breast for his loving attention. They had perfected silent communication, keeping talking to a minimum for fear of discovery, making love blind in the dark.
He tugged at her nipple, tender and bruised by the sweet, nightly torture of his insatiable appetite. It hurt and felt so good. She let her head fall back as she fought groaning aloud at the acute sensations. How would she survive without him? Without this? She’d never felt so free as she did when she was with him. He was magic and fantasy and perfection.
Folding her arms around his head, she kissed his hair and drank in his dark scent, her eyes burning with an emotion she feared was far deeper and more permanent than infatuation.
He pulled back and drew her down to kiss her hard, to stake his claim on her mouth in a fierce way that threw her heart into flight. She pressed herself to him and writhed in desperation, wanting to crawl inside him and stay with him forever.
Her movements slid her throbbing loins against his rampant erection, so firm and ready. She felt like her hands knew that part of him better than she knew her own body. She moved herself against him, wet and aching, aware that abandoning herself this way aroused him nearly to the breaking point.
The carnality of it thrilled her, made her yearn. Rubbing and sliding against him took her very close to drawing him into her. She slowed, savoring every millimeter of his shape against her sensitive core. Pressure threatened as she found his tip and slid away again. Oh that was wickedly tempting, making her entrance weep with desire, strumming her to unbelievably desperate levels.
Barely realizing what she was doing, she grew more deliberate with her movements, pressing harder, liking the piercing intensity and stretch against her aching center. She did it again, pressing for that hot thickness to sink deeper into her.
“Fern,” he gasped as he pulled back, his hands hard on her hips.
“I want it to be you, Zafir,” she sobbed in defeat, scraping her nails across his shoulders as she buried her mouth in his neck. Intense sexual hunger nearly shattered her into weeping. “I don’t want another man to be my first. I want it to be you.”
He was right there. Her body needed his so badly.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” His words were barely audible and he held himself in such tight control, he trembled.
“You won’t,” she assured him, rocking and catching him into her, feeling him press to the deepest point yet.
His breath rushed out and his arms slid to lock around her.
“Don’t stop me,” she begged.
“Gently,” he said, shaking hands moving up her back to her shoulders. “Go slow—” He bit off a curse as she sank down a little more.
It did hurt. A lot. But she was so aroused it happened easily and she was so happy to feel him filling her. So dazzled by the unique sensation of sitting on his lap this way, nose-to-nose, lips-to-lips, tender flesh burning as she accommodated his thickness, bodies locked in this ancient way.
She smiled as she kissed him and settled fully onto him, taking all of him, possessing him as much as he possessed her.
He ran his hands over her, nipping at her mouth with tender, inciting kisses as he whispered soft words in Arabic that sounded sweet and grateful and loving.
He played with her breasts, teased her nipples and made her react with a tight clasp around him. Intense excitement shot stars behind her eyelids. She wriggled with ecstasy, discovering the deliciousness grew the more she rocked.
“Careful. You’re driving me mad,” he said with a hard hand on her hip. “I’m so close I’m going to lose it if you keep doing that.”
She ignored him as she arched and writhed, moving with all the skill she’d learned from him. She gloried in grinding herself tight against him, then pulling away until she could feel the tension in his fingers as he urged her not to let his flesh leave hers. Her entire existence narrowed to the place where they joined, where her flesh was taut and sensitized and quivered in joy.
And every time she clasped herself tight on him, a deeper pleasure crept closer, like waves lapping at her, climbing, swelling, threatening to engulf her.
“I’m there, Zafir,” she breathed in his ear, feeling the tidal wave rising inside her. “Come with me. It’s so good. So good.” She sank onto him, clinging as the crisis arrived, expanding a white light through her that was pure elation. Exaltation.
Her body clenched around his shape, stunning her with the intensity of it, the tremendous heightening of their connection. He held her so tightly, she could barely breathe, but she needed his arms to hold her together as she shook and her abdomen contracted in ecstatic catches of bliss.
In the middle of it all, she fell, flying, plummeting and landing on her back on a bed of silken sheets. His big body covered hers and his hips moved in sharp, possessive thrusts, stinging her tight flesh, but escalating her orgasm into a new realm. He muffled her cries of joy with a hard kiss and bucked, filling her as his body convulsed in release.
She locked her knees at his waist, embracing him. Her ankles hooked in the small of his back, trying to keep him in her forever.
And when his weight settled fully onto her, she let her breath release with gratitude, utterly at peace. Happier than she’d ever been in her life.
In love, hopelessly and irrevocably in love, but that’s how a woman should feel with her first, right?
* * *
Zafir forced himself to gather his strength and roll away.
Leaving Fern was like stripping his body from his soul, but that part of him would be consigned to hell for this anyway.
It was as dark in her tent as it was every night that he stole in here, but he threw his arm over his eyes anyway, trying to block out reality.
He had meant to pull out.
He had never intended to fully possess her at all, but she’d tempted him beyond bearing, her desire for him the juiciest forbidden fruit to a man going mad with thirst.
And she’d been exquisite. Despite his best efforts to retain his sanity, he’d lost himself to the moment. To her erotic movements. Her heat and the pound of her heart against his own and the fire raging in his blood.
He didn’t even remember how she’d wound up under him, had only come back to real awareness of where he was and how wrong this was when the crisis had been peaked. The most all-encompassing satisfaction had filled him.
Until awareness had crept in with the slowing of his heart rate. Her tight, wet fit around him. Her soft sigh of repletion.
This should not have happened.
“Zafir—” she began in a whisper.
“Shh.” He came up on his elbow and touched her lips with his finger, listening.
Across the camp, he heard one of the girls sobbing and Amineh’s comforting voice going to her.
The small action of caressing Fern’s tender mouth and catching her scent rising warmly off her body made him stir with renewed excitement. He couldn’t trust himself if he stayed here. He’d have her again and now they weren’t the only ones awake in the camp.
“I have to go,” he whispered as he leaned close. “Before we’re caught.”
Her lips tightened under his touch in a flinch. “Okay.”
Her acceptance of his loving and leaving made him disgusted with himself. He wanted to ask about timing, but if he stayed any longer, he’d kiss her, fist his hand in her hair and make love to her all over again. Letting her go and rising from her bed was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he made himself do it. He left her without saying goodbye, because he was afraid he’d fail to do it at all if he didn’t do it fast and quiet.
Later that morning, he ensured his caravan was ready first. He hugged his sister and kissed his nieces and learned from their father that Jumanah had been crying in the night because she didn’t want to leave.
He could relate.
He wouldn’t let himself dwell on the silky hold of Fern’s body, though, or the clinging limbs that had clawed with passion for his.
“Goodbye, Miss Davenport,” he managed to say when Fern brought one of her bags to the camel keepers. He wanted to ask where she was in her cycle, but they weren’t alone.
She wore sunglasses and her mouth pouted sexily—from sadness? Or his insatiable kisses last night?
“Thank you, abu Tariq,” she said. Their use of more formal names reset their relationship to where it ought to be. Her pale face colored with a pretty shade of pink as she added, “For making it possible for me to visit such a remarkable place.” Her voice wavered and color came up in her cheeks like a thermometer in the sun.
His heart twisted. It had been extraordinary for him, too.
“Bissalama” was all he said. Have a safe journey. It made him feel small until she replied in her quiet voice.
“You, too. Always.”
He took a breath that he wished could knock the weight off his heart, nodded and moved to take the reins of his camel.