Olivia Gates Bestseller Collection 2012 (16 page)

“A
re you ready to be surprised?”

Phoebe kept her eyes closed as Leandro’s murmur flared through her.

She sank in the luxury of sensations he evoked, in the beauty of his presence. Lying face-down, she felt ever more boneless. “Keep talking.”

“What kind of answer is that?”

She felt the bed dip under his weight, like her world did at his approach, sighed. “The kind of answer your contradictory question deserves. Now just talk. If you run out of things to say, get the phone book. Not El Jamida’s, though. It’s too short.”

He said nothing. She moaned her impatience. Then gasped. His teeth sank gently into her left buttock. Her moan deepened as she pushed back at him, giving him a better bite. He rumbled something wordless then mounted her, all that glorious bulk and maleness.

She dug her knees into the mattress, thrust her hips up, inviting his invasion. She’d thought after three weeks of
marathon lovemaking, her in-heat state would level out. Instead, it was escalating. She had only to breathe to want him. She breathed all the time.

She wanted him to take her now, from the back, so she couldn’t see his face as it seized with the savage pleasure of possessing her except in her imagination, feeling nothing but the force and size of him dominating her, stretching her to that point where pleasure and pain became howling mindlessness.

Then she’d turn on her back and beg him to take her again. Like she had that first night.

That night she’d overcome her fear, had made the leap of faith that what they shared this time wouldn’t be consumed by the flames of passion. And she’d been right. Everything had blossomed instead, evolved. Beyond her misguided notions of perfection.

If the world ended tomorrow, she’d only feel thankful for having experienced so much with the one and only man she could ever love.

If only he would hurry up and let her experience more. She writhed her hips against him, opening herself over his clothed erection. He lunged, pinning her down, his teeth anchoring her by the neck, like a lion in a mating frenzy. He still said nothing.

She couldn’t bear it. “Talk. And take me, dammit.”

He started to shake. He was…he was…
laughing.

She struggled beneath him until he flopped on his back beside her, exposing her to his beauty as he surrendered to the throes of unbridled amusement. She twisted around, lunged over him, gulped his laughter into herself, reached for his hardness, stroked him until he was grunting and thrusting into her hand.

She purred against his lips, “Still feel like laughing?”

“If you mean the laughter that indicates happiness, I do. Like a hyena,
albi coraggiosa.
”

She giggled. “Your brave heart? We’ll never hear the end of my heroism, huh?” She bit his jaw, dipped her tongue in his dimple, pouted. “Not feeling heroic right now.”

“Feeling hot and bothered will do for now.” He surged up, turned her onto her back, ran hands and eyes heavy with appreciation and hunger over her, until he reached her core. Then he slipped two fingers between her folds. She mewled, threw her legs wider, thrust up for more. He gave her more, pumped her with his fingers, his thumb pressing and circling her nerve bundle, bringing her to the edge. Then he withdrew. She shrieked in frustration. He laughed again, licked his fingers, growling his enjoyment. “Now I know you’re ready to be surprised.”

“I could have told you
that.
”

“I asked. Nicely. You had to go ask me to keep talking. I’m a man of action.” He submitted to her playful thump in blatant pleasure, then in one move, wheeled over her, sprang to his feet, had her wrapped in her sheets and up in his arms.

She squirmed when she found him striding out of his quarters, which she’d been sharing with him since the fire. It was one thing for everyone to know she was sharing his bed, another for them to see him hauling her around half-naked. He soothed her as he forged through connecting chamber after columned arcade, passing by fountains and winding through corridors lit by torches. She should have known he wouldn’t embarrass her that way. The place was deserted.

“Is that the surprise?” She looked up from the comfort of his shoulder, trying to stem the pounding between her legs. “You sent the twelve hundred people populating the complex to buy you a soda? So we can make love any-and everywhere while they’re gone?”

“While that is a brilliant idea for another time, which part of
surprise
don’t you get?” He turned another corner, then started to ascend a spiraling stairwell lit with lanterns.

She gasped at the drapes hanging from its top down. A hundred-foot cascade of heavy damask in such vivid colors and intricate patterns they seemed to leap out in three dimensions against the stone wall.

She tried to wriggle down. She was no lightweight. Not that
he seemed at all exerted. When he pinched a buttock and told her to be still, she sighed. “Seriously, where did everyone go?”

“To buy me twelve hundred sodas, where else?” He kissed her lids closed. “And no peeking. Until I tell you to.”

She didn’t peek. It only sent the rest of her senses into hyperdrive. Scent, bypassing his smell to overload on the mixture of frankincense and musk, burning candles and night air laden with sea salt and jasmine and a hundred flowers and fruits. Hearing, skirting his heartbeats and breaths to lose itself among the sensuality of water sounds, trickling, lapping, the flow of music that seemed to originate inside her head, the trill of a lute, the hypnosis of languid percussive instruments.

Then touch took over. He slid the sheet off her body and it caressed every tight inch that begged for his ferociousness, slipped between her trembling legs, over her throbbing core. She arched into his assuagement, but he put her down and her feet sank in coolness…sand!

She panted, her toes dipping in the sensation as he urged her on. After two dozen steps, the medium beneath her soles suddenly became soft as down…grass. Then two dozen more steps and she was wading in warm water over the massaging smoothness of stones.

He was exercising his power of sensory overload on her. And she was too inflamed, too wide open. She couldn’t take it anymore.

She begged.
“Please…”

He scooped her up from behind, until she straddled his arousal. “Don’t say
please
again. Tonight is for you. Say please tomorrow, when things will be back for both of us.” He put her down, stepped away. “Open your eyes,
hebbi preziosa
.”

He might have let her go, but she felt his words hugging her again.
My precious love.
Another unique combination in his ongoing quest to tell her in how many ways and to what levels he loved everything about her, about them. Putting everything that filled her being into words. Words she’d been unable to rival. Her lion man was too inventive to keep up with.

Joy mushroomed inside her again as she opened her eyes.

She blinked, to make sure she wasn’t imagining the sight before her. Not that she’d ever imagined so much.

This had to be the harem. She saw a gigantic chamber, at least two hundred feet across, with a towering, complex system of domes for a ceiling, with openings of uniform sizes near the top of the opposing walls below which galleries supported on arched columns were reached by two spiraling wrought-iron staircases on opposite ends of the chamber.

And in between ceiling and ground—the latter divided into areas that seemed to represent earth, reflecting pools for seas, sand for deserts, and grass for meadows—there were a dozen levels made of marble steps, slopes and platforms that seemed to represent mountains and valleys. There were couches and chaise lounges in the same vivid colors as the drapes of the stairwell. There were sunken tubs and massage platforms. And through all the levels was a winding path where water ran like a miniature river. Incense burners hung from macramé holders, and everywhere there were candles. Thousands. Flickering in the circulating night breeze.

Everything engraved itself on the pages of her mind.

“You sure kept this place maintained,” she whispered.

“It looked nothing like this before I was done with it. This is all for you. But in case your feminism objects to the concept of what it used to be, this wasn’t where a king kept wives and concubines. This was for all royal womenfolk, children and female servants. It fell into disuse when women wanted their own domains, even if smaller and less opulent. Which turned out to be to my advantage.” He started running his hands over her back, fingers pressing into all her triggers. “Now I can do everything I want to do to you in every corner of this place that’s been designed to pamper a woman.”

“As opposed to a man?” She moaned, leaned into him. “Bet I can do everything to you here as easily.”

“Shush. Tonight I feast on you, savor you, drain you of every spark of pleasure your lethal weapon of a body is
capable of. I’ll play with you, torment you, madden you, make you beg, then stop your heart with more pleasure than you can stand.”

In response to his erotic threat, she twisted around, rubbed herself against him, purred low with aggressive surrender. “That’s nothing special, really. You do that every night. And day.”

“I’ll show you nothing special.” He took her wading into the pool that reflected the columned arches and the candles that crowded the walkway beneath them. They emerged to walk below those arches, their shadows dancing in the illumination coming from every direction.

At one arch he stopped. She squinted up. “Uh…Leandro, I think whoever hung that swing had no idea what you wanted it for.”

“I hung that swing. And I know exactly what I want it for.”

Then his large hands circled her thighs above her knees. She gasped as he raised her with unbelievable steadiness and strength until her hips hit the swing’s seat. She clutched the silken ropes, shimmied into place, looked down as he kneaded her thighs apart. And she got it. His head was level with her core.

His hands did everything, went everywhere but where she was combusting for their touch. He waited until she clamped her thighs around his neck, arched backward in the swing, open, abandoned, mindless, then gave her a sharp flick. With his tongue.

She cried out, the pleasure a slash through her system.

She tried to press her mound to his mouth, but he unlocked her thighs, kept only her heels around his neck. Then he pushed her away. She swung back the length of her legs before her hooked heels brought her hurtling back. To his waiting tongue. It found her opening, slipped inside her. Her cry was sharper, louder this time, the stab of pleasure too much, over too soon. Now she knew why he’d emptied the complex. With the way this place was open to the outside, her screams would be heard for a mile.

She receded from him on the swing’s next excursion, and
every time she came back, he did something worse to her. When she was begging him to finish her, he let her gather him tighter, making her swings shorter, her return to his torture faster, harder. Then he took over, held her hips and began rocking her back and forth on his plunging tongue, until she bucked, ground herself against his mouth, convulsed in furious rhythms, choking out his name, her eyes streaming with the force of her orgasm.

He lapped her to quivering satisfaction. Then he repeated the torture using his fingers alone, then again using a combination until she collapsed in a backward arch across the swing, her legs dangling on one side, her head and hair on the other. With a whirr, the swing descended, bringing their loins level.

He pulled her up, began a striptease that stopped maddeningly with his shirt. She tried to touch his ridged flesh but he caught her, produced satin ribbons from his back pocket and tied her hands to the ropes. She wouldn’t fall back now if she fainted. And she felt she was about to. He was drinking her, rubbing her inflamed nipples with his hair-roughened flesh, undulating against her. Keens spilled from her. Arousal roared inside her again at her helplessness to reciprocate the exquisite torture.

Then he painted her with honey and kneeled before her, licked it all off starting from her toes, working his way up until he burned out all her stimulation centers. When she couldn’t writhe anymore, cry out anymore, he tongued her to another climax.

And instead of being sated, all she wanted was him.

She struggled from her slump, croaked, “Leandro…if you really want this night to be for me, you’ll give me you…in every way.”

He looked deep in her eyes, his own emerald in the candlelight, supernatural in beauty and influence. Then he smiled and everything collapsed in a domino effect inside her. He undid her satin shackles, carried her to one of the sunken tubs, rinsed her off, then took her to a couch as deep as a double bed.

He stood between her legs, his erection level with her
mouth. His bass rumble shook her insides. “This is for you, remember. Use me for your pleasure. I’m yours.”

He was indeed hers. Her fate. “Too bad you’re going to enjoy it, too, huh?”

He smoothed his hands over her head, massaging her. “You may not believe me, but I enjoy your orgasms more than I do mine.”

“I believe you. Same here.
So
selfish in a roundabout way.”