The Sheikh's Destiny (10 page)

The misguided man still thought the idea of his ravishing her could scare her away.

She decided to stoke all that ferocity higher. “You mean if at any point I say stop, you won’t?”

His eyes blazed in imperious confidence. “You will not want me to stop.”

She dragged his head down to hers, opened her lips over his scar, grazed it with her teeth. “Yet here I am still trying to convince you to start—”

She trailed off on a yelp. In another of those magical moves, he swept her up in his arms.

She snuggled against his muscled shoulder, soaking up the momentous feeling. He was striding across his domain, taking her to where she’d thought she’d spend the night alone then leave to never see him again. Could it be that everything she’d ever dreamed of was coming true instead? She would finally be with Rashid?

Her fingers dug into his arm, making him slow down. “I want
you
to be clear on something, Rashid.” He smoldered down at her, awaiting her conditions. “You will give me everything, too.”

After a protracted, unreadable glance, he gave a brief nod.

He accepted her terms, would abide by them.

Elation fizzed in her blood even as arousal thickened it.

And that was before he said, “Just remember, when I give you everything, it was you who asked for it.”

Promises, promises,
she almost said.

But teasing Rashid would come later. When he opened up to her more. Hopefully soon. And fully.

For now, she would take one miracle at a time.

Six

T
he miracle wasn’t unfolding as Laylah had anticipated.

It had played to her expectations till Rashid had lowered her onto his bed. Then it had diverged onto a totally unexpected path.

Instead of continuing his seduction, he’d risen to his feet. He now stood brooding down at her.

“Rashid,
arjook...
”

Was that her voice? That thick, covetous rasp?

But who could blame her? The man she’d fantasized about all her life was standing before her, proving her most extravagant fantasies of him modest.

Instead of answering her plea, he was turning away, tossing words over his shoulder. “You won’t appreciate me all over you sweaty like this.” Before she could cry out that she
loved
him sweaty like that, would want him all over her even slathered in mud, he dragged his blunt fingernails down his face, producing a scratching sound that deluged her in a fresh bout of tremors. “I’ve also grown some industrial strength sandpaper.”

Next second, he disappeared into the bathroom.

* * *

The moment he closed the bathroom door, Rashid bolted into the shower, turned it on cold and plunged beneath its freezing spray.

Gulping down air, he squeezed his eyes shut, leaned his flaming forehead against the cold tiles, willing the icy needles to pummel arousal’s hold on his senses.

What was he
doing?

This had progressed so fast. Too fast. Too far.

Even when he’d been doing everything in his power to sabotage his own plans, it had only accelerated them.

Now she was out there, the woman he’d meant to eventually have in his bed, begging him to take her, now, not later. When he hadn’t done a thing to seduce her, had done the opposite, trying to ward her away, giving her every reason to back off.

It would have been an ingenious strategy had he meant it, pulling away so she’d be the one to pursue him, but he’d genuinely tried everything he could to dissuade her.

Now that he’d failed, he couldn’t go through with it. For she
wasn’t
the woman he’d meant to seduce.
That
woman existed only in his preconceptions. The real Laylah was something he hadn’t known existed. A being pure of heart and magnanimous. And she wasn’t seeking him in response to a maddening challenge.

She truly wanted him. And had for all her life, she’d said.

He shouldn’t have let her touch him.

Her hands and lips on his disfigured flesh had...
Ya Ullah...

He’d never known there could be sensations like that. They’d bolted from his flesh to his psyche, tearing into him, detonating his barriers, his brakes. Nothing had mattered after that first touch but that she kept on touching him. As she had.

Then she’d told him she wanted it all with him. He had no idea how he’d stopped himself from dragging her to the ground right then and there and driving inside her, assuaging their mutual need.

But he couldn’t take what she was so fervently offering. Not after the past hours’ experiences and revelations. Not now that he knew she wasn’t who he’d thought she was.

He now owed her far better than that.

Yet how could he deny her, after he’d promised her himself?

He would give her one last chance to make sure. If being with him in ultimate intimacy was as necessary to her as it was to him, and not a reaction to tonight’s turmoil, he’d have to succumb.

* * *

Laylah stared at the bathroom door, worry preying on her.

When the door finally opened, it felt like it had been ten hours instead of just ten minutes. The scent of the musky soap she’d used earlier preceded Rashid. Bonded to his own scent, it smelled different, intoxicating. The flames that hadn’t dimmed in his absence roared higher.

What if her absence had doused his? What would she do?

But...what was she
doing,
asking him to do...
this?

Her fantasies had never taken her so far. They’d been so tentative that the most they’d dared contemplate was a kiss. Now...this.

Did she even have any idea what
this
would be like? What it would lead to? Or wouldn’t lead to? Was this how she wanted to have him? Because she’d thrown herself at him until he couldn’t resist anymore?

He came to stand over her again. Clean-shaven, head and skin still gleaming with wetness, his beauty twisted a spear of longing through her gut. She leaned limply against the wall, her legs tucked beneath her, hands folded over her heart, as if to stop it from beating its way out of her chest.

He finally murmured, “Your beauty is incomparable.” She gaped at him. “But this must have been the first thing you learned about yourself, princess.”

She’d learned no such thing. Not that she was about to debate it. If he thought so, even if it turned out he only needed glasses, she wouldn’t jar him from his illusion.

“I could see your potential from the time you were six. I knew your beauty would become so overpowering, men would fight over you and kings would fall at your feet. I was right. The list of the royals who have begged for your hand is as tall as you are.”

She cast a deprecating glance down her body. While not short, she was the shortest in her family at five foot six. “Not really tall, with a sum total of seven such ‘royals.’ And none was after my ‘overpowering beauty’ but rather my ‘overwhelming connections.’”

“If that was true, then the only explanation is that they’re not into women. What heterosexual male would not want you?”

“Uh...off the top of my head, I know of eighty-eight such males.”

He shook his head. “Your relatives don’t count.”

But she hadn’t counted as a desirable female to any man that she knew of. Whatever her personal assets, they’d always been nullified by her family’s. Men had either wanted her, or hadn’t wanted her, based on those. Not that she’d ever cared. Not when Rashid was the only man she’d ever wanted.

His gaze, sliding from the feet tucked beneath her to her face, felt like a full-body caress. “It almost...hurts to look at you.”

Her smile wavered. “I’m hoping that’s a compliment.”

“It’s the truth.” He was suddenly on his knees, facing her on the mattress. “You’re an impossibility. I don’t believe in perfection, but here you are, against everything I believe. And against anything I
can
believe, you say you want me.”

Her heart kicked so hard it brought her up on her knees, too, looking fervently up at him. “I
do
want you. I always have.”

The brooding look gripping his face deepened. “You said I defined perfection to you. So now I ask—how? What is it about me that you ever found perfect, let alone now?”

A drop of water streaked down his chest and caught in the groove of his scar, making her tongue ache to lick it off.

She dragged her gaze up to his. “It would be easier to count the things I don’t find perfect about you. Like how you were always so distant, as if in a world of your own. But then, that’s not an imperfection, just a frustration.” Giving in to the need, her fingertips swept a trembling path down his scar. “The thing is, you might not be perfect per se. But you are perfect to me.”

A large hand covered hers, pressed it to his six pack of steel. “I had time to reconsider in the shower.”

Oh, no! He’d say he’d lost his head under her temptation, reprimand her for being inappropriate again and end this. Then in the morning she’d leave and never find her way back to him again.

But she’d taken this as far as she could. Anything he decided now, she had to abide by.

She waited for his verdict, her teeth starting to chatter.

His eyebrows furrowed as he documented her reaction. “Whatever I said before, you must not think it’s too late to change your mind. You’re free to reconsider.”

The letdown felt like the two-floors’-worth fall from this mezzanine onto the stone ground below.

She gritted her teeth on a sob that almost escaped, forced steadiness in her voice. “If you want to take back everything you said,
you
feel free. You don’t have to let me down easy.”

His eyes narrowed. “You mean you still feel the same way?”

Her shoulders slumped. “It’s not important what I feel.”

“It’s all-important. But what you feel now could be PTS.”

“Post-traumatic stress? From the attack, you mean?”

“It’s common to need to reaffirm life through uncharacteristic, uninhibited acts after surviving a life-threatening experience.”

“And you’re an expert in that, right?” His gaze dropped, his whole face becoming inanimate. Beyond trying to analyze his reaction, she had to resolve this. “Since I detailed my lifelong crush on you, you know this isn’t spur of the moment on my part. If you want to give me a way out of looking like a pathetic fool by pretending it was the stress talking, go ahead, be chivalrous to the end.”

Without raising his eyes, he murmured, “The last thing I am is chivalrous.”

She sagged back on her heels. “Then it’s even worse. You succumbed to an ‘uncharacteristic and uninhibited act’ because
you’re
stressed and had a hormonal surge due to a woman throwing herself at you and pawing you all over. Now that the urge has subsided, you want to end this on a not-too-sour note.”

His eyes rose then, bored into hers again. “Does it look like my ‘hormonal surge’ has subsided?” His gaze lowered, dragging hers with it and...
Whoa.
His clean sweatpants showed that...nothing had subsided. Not in the least. “And women have thrown themselves at me and pawed me before, and none has caused even a hormonal blip.”

Her heart thundered. “You mean you still want...want...”

Desire surged in his voice and gaze again. “Everything. But I needed to be sure I wouldn’t be taking advantage of your vulnerability.”

So. Moment of truth. Setting him, and herself, straight. She wanted everything with him, whatever it led to.

She leaned into him, spread her hands over his formidable chest, moaning at feeling his vitality and power quiver beneath her touch. “If another man had saved me tonight, I would have made sure he got medical attention and promised to be there for him if he ever needed my help. But I wouldn’t have gone home with him, and I certainly wouldn’t be in his bed now. From the E.R. onward, everything I did was because it was you. Everything I feel is for you. All I want is
you.
”

He suddenly severed their contact by standing up.

At her choking disappointment, he said, “To do your unrepeatable offer of everything justice, I’ve revised my approach of gulping you down whole.”

Biting her lip on the yo-yoing agitation and excitement, she whispered, “So what will you do?”

He undid the drawstrings of his pants ever so slowly. “I’ll savor you within an inch of your sanity.”

She wanted to tell him she was already a few miles beyond sane. That when he let those pants drop, she might suffer a coronary. Then he did.

Finding black silk boxers beneath didn’t ward off the mini heart attack. The potency tenting it, those muscled thighs and legs encased in the perfect amount of black silk, and imagining what all that would soon be doing to her, was enough.

Then, muscles rippling, he knelt before her again. He skimmed his lips over her face and neck, inhaling her, groaning his delight at her scent. The conqueror she’d expected him to be had turned into a seducer bound on driving her out of her mind.

Tears stung her eyes as she tried to wind herself around him. “Don’t savor me, Rashid.
Arjook,
I can’t wait...”

He gently disentangled himself, groaned deep inside her mouth, “Don’t rush me,
ya ameerati.
Let me do all this beauty and generosity justice.”

It was only that she realized he was in as much torment as she was, that made her concede and suffer his pace.

His hands trembled as he released her from the few clothes she had on, which though loose had become suffocating. She writhed and moaned, caressing his head, drawing him closer, wishing there was hair for her hands to convulse in. At the first touch of those electrifying hands on her breasts, she scraped her fingernails across his scalp. He groaned in equal suffering, but wouldn’t hurry.

By the time he had her naked, she knew what erotic torment truly was. It was still worth it, just to see his face as he looked down at her.

She cried out at the savage hunger in his eyes. He closed them instantly, opened them again with it under control. Still afraid for her alleged fragile state of mind?