Strangers in the Desert (8 page)

“So did I. But I didn’t date.” She sighed and told him the truth. “It didn’t feel right somehow. But I did let a man kiss me once.”

He looked as if he could bite a nail in two. A fresh wave of irritation flooded her.

“It’s not like I knew about you,” she said. “And it was only a kiss. I’ll bet you can’t say the same,” she added defiantly.

“I’ll bet I can,” he replied coolly. “I’ve kissed no one but you since the day we were married.”

Her mouth dropped open. “I don’t believe it.”

He set the coffee down. “Believe it, Isabella. I’ve had
a child to raise and a business to run—and then I had a throne to prepare for. There’s been no one but you.”

She blinked in surprise. “But you were getting married again!”

“Jasmine is an old friend.”

“I—I don’t know what to say.” She really didn’t. A man like him … celibate?

“There is nothing to say.” He stood abruptly. “Perhaps it’s time we called it a night, yes? It’s been a long journey and it’s getting late.”

She got to her feet, too. “What’s the point in getting angry with me? It’s not my fault.”

“Nothing is, is it?”

She clenched her fists at her side. “What do you want from me, Adan? I’m trying.”

“And I’m not?” he asked dangerously.

Isabella blew out a breath. “That’s not what I meant. I meant this is hard, for both of us, and there’s not a lot we can do about the past now.”

“I’m beginning to think this was a bad idea after all,” he said softly, his gaze dropping briefly to her lips before spearing her again.

“We just got here. You promised me two weeks.”

“Promises, as you very well know, are easily broken,” he said. And then he stalked into the house, leaving her lonely once more.

A
DAN
couldn’t believe he’d told her. He’d confessed to her that he’d had no lover since she’d gone away. It hadn’t been intentional. After she’d been declared dead, he’d grieved her loss. But he hadn’t been heartbroken because of it. He’d grieved because she was Rafiq’s mother, because he’d been fond of her.

He’d taken her presence in his life for granted, and he’d regretted that immensely. But that wasn’t what had stopped him from attending to the sexual part of his life after she was gone.

He’d always intended to take a mistress. Or another wife. It had just never happened. He truly had been busy, first with taking care of Rafiq and finding a decent nanny for him. Adan had fired three nannies before he’d finally begged Kalila to come raise his son.

After that, he’d been busy with his business interests and then with the aftermath of his cousin’s death and becoming the heir to the throne. There’d been no time in his life for casual affairs. He’d missed sex, missed women, but he’d had little time to worry about it.

Now that he’d brought Isabella out here, all he could think of was sex. He’d intended to stay busy and stay away from her as much as possible. But then she’d told
him in the car about her memory of their wedding night, and he’d realized the futility of that plan.

He wanted her. And as he’d sat with her tonight and listened to her sing, as Rafiq had fallen asleep on her lap, he’d realized that his intention was to take her to his bed at the end of the evening. He’d pushed everything from his mind but her.

Then she’d told him she’d kissed another man. Until then, he’d purposely avoided thinking about what she’d been up to for the past two years as a lounge singer.

Hearing it had made him crazy. It was ridiculous, because it was nothing really, and yet the knowledge of that kiss had sliced into him with the utter unfairness of it. He’d been celibate, and she’d been kissing another man.

It was nothing, and everything.

He’d wanted to pick her up and carry her to his room that very minute. He’d wanted to make her his. Irrevocably.

But it was wrong—wanting her was wrong—because in two weeks, when this was all over, he would wed Jasmine.

It was late when he shoved the covers aside and got out of bed. His body was heated and his brain wouldn’t settle down. He was restless, like a caged lion. He padded naked to the en suite bathroom, then pulled on a pair of shorts, not really certain what he intended to do other than leave the bedroom.

Outside the window, movement in the garden caught his eye. And then he realized what it was: Isabella walking the labyrinth by moonlight.

The path was dark, but the moon gave enough light to make out the pattern. Isabella moved slowly through
the labyrinth, wondering when illumination was supposed to happen. She walked closer to the inside, and then farther away again. Just when she thought she was almost there, another twist in the pattern took her to the outside of the circle.

She didn’t know why she was doing this. She lifted her head to look at the dark walls of the small palace. A light burned in an upper window, but that was all. The torches had been turned out hours ago, and the garden was dark and still.

She’d gone to bed and slept fitfully, her dreams filled with Adan and Rafiq—but mostly Adan. She’d dreamed of lying in bed with him, of telling him she loved him and of him stiffening beside her. Then she’d dreamed of waiting for him to come to her bed and falling asleep in tears when she realized he wasn’t coming after all.

The dreams had disturbed her. She’d wanted to know their meaning. It was silly to think that walking a dark path in the moonlight was going to teach her anything, but she’d been drawn out here by the idea that it would calm her.

She wasn’t feeling calm so much as frustrated, however.

“This is ridiculous,” she muttered as another turn took her away from the center. Then she stopped in the pathway. This wasn’t working. It would be better simply to go inside.

She turned to leave, intending to step over the knee-high hedges, but gasped at the sight of a man standing at the edge of the labyrinth, watching her.

Adan.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.

He stepped over the first hedge. “Neither could I.”

Then he stepped over another one. “You aren’t giving up, are you, Isabella?”

He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Dear God in heaven. His torso gleamed in the moonlight, all hard planes and ridges where muscle and bone melded to create something damn near to perfection.

Isabella swallowed. No, not
near
perfection. Definitely perfection. She’d seen enough muscled chests on the beaches of Maui for the past year to know perfection when she saw it.

“I’m not getting anywhere,” she said, her pulse beginning to throb in her throat. And elsewhere.

Her body was reacting, melting, aching. The surge of moisture between her legs didn’t shock her. Adan made her feel things that no man ever had. Hot, needy things. She wanted to roll with him in a bed, to feel his magnificent body inside hers, to see if the things she’d dreamed—remembered?—were as good as they were in her head.

“It takes patience,” he said, stepping over another hedge, and then another one.

“I’ve waited too long,” she said—and wondered exactly what she meant by that statement. He stepped over the last hedge, stopping in front of her. He was so near, his body radiating so much heat that she thought she might burn if she touched him.

“Sometimes waiting makes the culmination that much sweeter.” His deep voice was a vibration of sound through her body. She felt the words as much as she heard them. “Finish the path, Isabella.”

“Will you go with me?” Because it seemed it would be easier if someone was with her. Less frustrating.

Slowly, he shook his head. “You have to walk it alone. But I’ll be waiting in the center.”

And then, before she could stop him, he hopped the rest of the hedges into the middle. She wanted to do the same. She stood there, undecided for several moments. It was just a path, for heaven’s sake, and yet it intimidated her.

“Trust me,
habibti.
Walk the path,” he urged.

Isabella blew out a breath and started to trace her way through the path again. She didn’t want to finish. She wanted to
be
finished. Frustration built inside her like a snowball, gaining layers on each turn. The weight of it pushed outward until she felt she would split apart if she didn’t reach the middle. It urged her to just hop the hedges and join him.

No.

She was going to walk the damn thing at least once. She would not allow him to call her a quitter. She wasn’t a quitter, no matter what he might think. She didn’t know why she’d left her father’s house in the night, alone, but she would be damned if she’d let this man continue to believe it was because she had no staying power.

She’d be damned if she’d let
herself
think it was because she had no staying power. Because that was her secret fear, she acknowledged. That she was somehow flawed and that Adan had been right. That she’d left because she couldn’t handle the responsibility.

She circled toward the center again, then back outside, and then, just when she thought she was about to be directed to the outside yet again, the pathway spilled her into the grassy center. She stopped abruptly as a flood of emotion nearly overwhelmed her. And then the feelings of unworthiness, guilt and fear lifted off
her shoulders—as if she’d been carrying a load of rocks that had suddenly fallen away.

It was shocking. Because all she’d done was walk a circular, twisting path into a small clearing. It was nothing significant. Nothing earth-shaking or life-changing.

And yet she felt as if she’d succeeded somehow.

Adan held out his hand and she took it, let him pull her into the center of the clearing. He turned her until her back was to him. She could feel his body pressed close to hers, feel the heat and hardness of him. He was so solid, so overwhelming.

And he’d made love to no one but her in three years.

Isabella shivered. Why had she thought of that, out of everything she could possibly think of at this moment?

His lips touched her ear. “It’s surprising how it makes you feel, isn’t it?”

She could only nod.

His hands were on her shoulders, burning into her. Then one slipped down, curved around her midsection and pulled her tighter to his body. His arousal was unmistakable, pressing into the small of her back, and she closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath.

Suddenly, she knew why she was here. Why they were here together.

“Adan … I want.” She couldn’t finish the sentence. A lump rose in her throat.

“I know,” he replied. “It’s inevitable. It has been inevitable since the moment I found you again.”

She turned in his embrace then, tilting her head back to gaze up at him. His face was stark, as if he had been
fighting his feelings and could do so no longer. As if he’d surrendered to something bigger than himself.

And she knew what it was. Desire. Lust. Need. Complete and total, as she’d never felt before.

Except that wasn’t true, she realized. She had felt it before. For him. For Adan.

She ran her palms up his bare chest, glorying in the feel of hot naked skin, of the hard smooth planes of muscle and the shuddering tension coiled there.

He wrapped his arms around her body and pulled her in tight, his head lowering to claim her lips with his own.

Isabella sighed with the pure pleasure of his kiss. His tongue tangled with hers as if it had done so a thousand times. His hands came up to cup her face, and then he deepened the kiss. She responded immediately, instinctually, though she had no conscious knowledge of what to do.

Or did she?

She dropped one hand down his torso, slid her fingers along the waistband of his shorts. She was rewarded with a growl of pleasure. A rush of pure feminine power went to her head.

How many times had they kissed like this? How many times had she touched him exactly as she just had?

“We need to go inside,” he said, lifting his head. “I am not prepared.”

It took her a moment to figure out his meaning. “I’m on the pill,” she replied. And then she almost wished she hadn’t when he stiffened beneath her fingertips. “My cycles were irregular. The doctor said it would help regulate them.”

She thought he might walk away then and there, but he hesitated only a moment before bending to kiss her again. Then he caught the bottom of her tank top in his fingers and slid it upward. She hadn’t put on a bra to come out here, so when he reached the naked flesh of her breasts, he groaned before breaking the kiss and whipping the shirt over her head.

His broad hands wrapped around the soft mounds, his fingers tweaking her nipples gently. Isabella’s breath caught at the riot of sensations streaking through her. She clutched his forearms to steady herself.

“You are beautiful, Isabella. Just as I remembered,” he said. There was an edge to his voice, a sharp slice of—
something
—that called out to her and made her body flood with heat and moisture.

She was so ready for him. Ready for whatever he wanted from her.

“Adan,” she gasped as his head dropped and he took one pouting nipple in his mouth. Her head fell back as he suckled her, his lips and teeth and tongue knowing exactly what to do in order to make that excruciating connection between her breast and her aching core. Every pull of his mouth on her nipple created an answering spike of pleasure in the wet crease between her legs. She ached for him, for his possession, in ways she hadn’t ever dreamed were possible before now.

He stopped, and she cried out, reaching for him to keep him from stopping.

Adan laughed, a low, satisfied male sound that made her nerve endings prickle with heat. “Do not fear, Isabella. I’m nowhere near finished with you yet.”

He made quick work of the zipper on her jeans, sliding them from her body and turning to place them on the
ground with her top. Then he slipped out of his shorts and spread them out, as well.

Isabella’s breath caught at the sight of him naked in the moonlight. His body was magnificent, every line and shadow of him hard and perfectly formed. His erection jutted from his body proudly, and she found herself aching to touch him. To take him inside her and know what it felt like to make love with him.

She went into his arms without hesitation, and he lowered her to the grass, placing her on top of the clothing. Around them, the hedges shut them in from prying eyes. Over top of them, stars blazoned across the sky in the billions while the moon gently lit the curves and hollows of their bodies.

Adan kissed her again, and she put her arms around him, holding him close as he slipped a hand between her legs and found her wet center.

His groan made her heart leap with joy. And then she couldn’t think because his thumb slid over her clitoris. Again and again while her body tautened like a bow beneath his fingers.

When he stopped what he was doing, she murmured a protest, but he only laughed.

“It will get better, I promise,” he said, and then he was kissing his way down her neck, her collarbone. He took his time with her breasts, licking and sucking until she was panting his name—and then he swiped his tongue down the center of her belly, dipping into the hollow of her belly button before teasing her bikini line with kisses.

Isabella held her breath as he parted her soft folds. They were slick and swollen and so sensitive that she
trembled with the slightest caress of his breath across her skin.

And then his tongue dipped into her moistness and she arched off the ground in ecstasy.

“We’ve hardly begun,” he murmured against her flesh. He slid his tongue the length of her, broadside, and then teased her clitoris with soft swirls that didn’t quite do what she wanted.

But then he did do what she wanted, what she craved, as he licked and sucked and nibbled her until she flew apart much too quickly with a harsh cry. A single hot tear slipped down her cheek as she gasped with pleasure and surprise at the intensity of her release.