The Sultan's Virgin Bride: A story of lust, loyalty and passionate resentment. (12 page)

He moved forward further and further, until he met an unmistakable barrier. He kissed her as he took her innocence, and he whispered beautiful words in her ear, words in his native tongue that he hoped she somehow understood.

It was the smallest pain, followed by the greatest pleasure. Eleanor gripped his shoulders and held on for dear life, as she lost track of time and place. Her world glimmered; her being altered forever. She moaned louder and louder as her nerve endings began to quiver at fever pitch. “Please,” she screamed, not even sure what she was calling out for. He laughed gently, lifting a finger to his lips. Though he did not want to silence her, nor did he want the whole of the royal security corps arriving to see what was happening to their Emira.

As for his own self-control, it had never been tested so greatly. He watched his wife writhe and thrash beneath him, her beautiful face contorted with a strength of sensation that she could not have understood, and his control snapped. He had been gentle and slow, and now, he moved quickly, deeper and deeper inside of her, pounding against her with relentless intensity. As he moved, she arched her back, and pushed her knees towards the ceiling, her whole body was gleaned with sweat and shaking with desire. And all Aki could think was that his wife was his perfect match.

He ran his hands down her body, touching every inch of her, feeling her flesh bunch beneath his fingertips. Her nipples were taut and he couldn’t resist taking one into his mouth, lashing it with his tongue as he moved hard and fast inside of her. Her nails scratched down his back, and she hooked her ankles behind him. Did she realise she was shaking? Did she realise she was crying out again and again, begging him for something she needed so badly it was an actual force?

Her first orgasm was furiously intense. She clung to him and muffled her mouth against his shoulder as she stifled the scream that was on her lips. And before she had even come back down to earth, he moved with her again, demanding more of her, showing her that pleasure was not simply something that could be experienced and discarded. That it was a never-ending well that together, they could both drink from.

He ran his fingers along her arms and linked his hands with hers, pinning them out to either side of her head. He possessed her completely, moving over her, in her; his tongue warred with hers in perfect unison with his arousal, thrusting and pushing, demanding and taking. Their bodies were pressed together, slick with perspiration, tangled now in the sheets and the night air.

This time, when Eleanor’s body began to disintegrate into a vortex of sensation, Aki chased after her, freeing himself from the torment of holding back his own pleasure to please her. Together, they clung to one another as the eye in the storm hit, leaving them bereft and weakened.

Their breathing, rasped and in sync, was the only sound in the room. Slowly, it became quieter, more rhythmic. Aki eased himself away from his wife, positioning himself beside her, with a hand running over her hair. “Are you okay? Not hurt?”

She shook her head. “I’m fine.” Fine summed up how she felt in the same way that calling Niagara Falls ‘damp’ might. She rolled onto her side, so that she could face him. Sleeping with her husband had shaken free a chunk of the self-consciousness she’d been carrying around for weeks. “Well, at least we know now that something in our marriage works.”

Aki didn’t visibly react, but his stomach clenched uncomfortably. Is that how she saw their relationship? As a failure, but for sex? “It certainly does.”

Had she been hoping for a denial? An assertion that sex wasn’t the only thing they had? She lifted a hand and touched his cheek. “I’m sorry about all the trouble with Michelle.”

“It is not your fault. Why are you apologising?”

She frowned. “I’m sorry that you were inconvenienced.” She lowered her gaze thoughtfully. “You already hate my family.”

“No.” He glided his hand over the swell of her hip, to the sensitive skin just beside her breast. “I don’t. I don’t hate your family, Eleanor.”

She arched a brow sceptically. “You don’t need to lie, Aki.” In one fluid motion, she pushed up from the bed. Frustration tore through her pleasure. There was so much misunderstanding between them; and she was too afraid of his rejection to confront it head on. And so she hid. She pulled a voice of detachment around herself as though it were armour, and smiled dismissively. “I’m grateful that you were able to put that aside to help my sister. Thank you.”

The room was a decent size, and a door to the back was latched shut. She took a guess that it would conceal an en suite and was rewarded with the sight of a large shower cubicle when she opened it.

“Eleanor?” He hadn’t moved. She paused in the doorframe, hoping he couldn’t see the way her heart was racing behind her breast. “You do not need to thank me. It is my duty to help you.”

So much for a new beginning from having made love. She clicked the door shut and pushed the tap, so that a stream of hot water began to fall against the while tiles. It was scalding on her skin, but she didn’t lower the temperature. Perhaps it was a kind of masochism, but she needed to feel. Her body was singed, anyway. Her nerve endings permanently burned from the heat of what she’d just experienced.

She lathered her body with the sponge, pressing her head against the wall. They seemed pre-programmed to hurt one another. When she was around Aki, she found herself saying things that were designed to project an air of control that she simply didn’t feel. To appear noncommittal so that, if their marriage failed, he would have no way of comprehending how completely devastating she would find it.

Had she slept with him out of desperation? Had she hoped that the sex would be so fantastic for him that he’d take back all the things he’d said and tell her he loved her. Was that what she wanted? Oh, God. Did she love him?

She shook her head. She couldn’t. That would make no sense.

Love was not lust. And there was no doubting the fact she lusted for him.

She had loved Arnaud. Hadn’t she?

She thought of the man she’d once pledged to marry, and found it impossible to conjure his features perfectly to mind. His face was smudged, like a photo that had been subjected to a bad round of airbrushing. The emotions were smudged too. Even before she’d learned of his infidelity, he’d never inspired the same obsessive, soul-draining fascination that Aki evoked. Looking back on her life, Eleanor had a startling burst of clarity.

That first day she’d seen Aki, she’d felt something lock into place.

That was why she’d married him.

Destiny, fate, cultural recognition. Call it what she might, there had been a clear and fundamental compulsion to join her life to his. She’d put it down to desire, for that had been there too. But it had been so much more.

“Oh, no.” She shook her head slowly, contrasting the cool of the wet tiles to the heat on her back. “How could I be such an idiot?”

Standing silently in the door, Aki experienced an instant flash of anger. Not at Eleanor, and not even at himself. At the situation they found themselves in. “Do not regret what just happened.” He said authoritatively, surprised that he sounded so much like himself when he was flooded with guilt.

She swore uncharacteristically. “You scared me.”

“That was not my intention.” He walked towards the shower, his body spectacular in its state of undress. She couldn’t look at him. The realisation she’d just had felt like a noose about her neck.

The problem with loving a man like Aki was not knowing if he was capable of loving anyone more than he loved his role at leader. Though their bodies craved one another, she wasn’t sure his heart and mind were on the same page. And she wasn’t prepared to risk yet another rejection from the man she’d married. At best, she could hope to keep him from knowing exactly how she felt. For if he pitied her, she would die. At least she could be confident that he felt the same tug of desire for her that she did for him. That couldn’t be faked. Could it?

“Well, you did,” she said, forcing an edge of impatience into her voice. “I should have locked the door.”

His eyes flashed. “You do not lock me out of any room, Sheikha.”

“Oh? Is that right?”

“Damned right.” He opened the glass screen and stepped into the shower. “Or I will simply tear the door down.”

She pressed her back against the tiles.

“And you do not walk away from me before I dismiss you.”

He was angry, and she found it, on some level, thrilling. He reached out and grabbed her hips, pulling her towards his naked frame. Wet and slippery from the hot water, her body moulded to his beneath the stream of water.

“You wanted to have sex,” he said almost conversationally, though the hardness to his tone was still there. “And so we will.”

She frowned. “We just did.”

His lips lifted in one corner. “That was an enjoyable prelude to the night I have planned.”

“Aki…” She broke off what she’d been about to say, rendered incapable of speech by his sweet invasion of her body. He lifted her effortlessly, as though she weighed no more than a wisp, and wrapped her legs around his waist. He plunged himself into her at the same moment he pressed her back against the tiles.

She cried out, her face deluged by water, her body shaken by desire. “Aki,” she moaned, running her hands through his wet hair as he drove into her again and again, driving her higher against the tiles. She dropped her head forward and kissed his wet shoulder, running her tongue over the smooth, tanned skin. His fingers dug into her buttocks, and his mouth sought hers. He kissed her so that her head pressed into the tiles, and her body was flat on the cool surface, but inside, her blood ran like liquid lava.

He exploded inside of her at the same moment she felt her insides unravel. “If this is all that is good in our marriage, then it is still good enough for me.”

He might not be capable of love, but possessive, intense lust he did more perfectly than anyone she’d ever known. And if she had to, she would settle for that. It would just have to be enough.

* * *

Aki stared out at the never-ending, bejewelled skyline, as the noise of the jet thrummed beneath them.

He was thinking of a childhood parable. A story he’d been told about a little boy who grew up by the sea. Every morning, a bright orange butterfly came to his bedroom and rested on his windowsill. Over time, the boy had become so enamoured of the butterfly that one day, he trapped it beneath a glass jar. He kept it there, so that he could have the pleasure of looking at it and watching it always.

Only the butterfly died. Slowly, gradually, and in pain; having been betrayed by the person it had trusted and adored.

And the little boy had wanted the pleasure of watching the butterfly to the last, and so he had not released it, as he ought to have done.

Aki supposed it was a tale designed to educate children about respect and freedom. And for Aki, as a man in his thirties, it felt relevant in a way it never had before.

Eleanor was his orange butterfly. His beautiful, free-spirited gift, who had offered herself to him happily and without expectation. Who had danced beautifully for him, tempting and tantalising him until he trapped her with his body. Of their own accord, his eyes drifted to her sleeping figure, on the chair beside him.

Their short time in New York had taken its toll on her. She was tired, and emotional. Undoubtedly he had played his part in her worry and sadness. His fingers itched to reach out and touch her, so he gripped his coffee cup determinedly. She was his butterfly, and he had trapped her in his glass. He could not keep enjoying her. He had to find a way to set her free. To make her fly once more.

He was older, wiser and had the burden of being responsible for her.

He had to make the right decisions on her behalf.

Taking advantage of her, whilst in a state of grief, had been all kinds of wrong. His actions had been beneath him. He could not allow such a transgression to happen again. While she was his wife, she was not his equal in experience and maturity, and it was his duty to protect her. Not to take advantage of her innocence. He winced, and turned his attention back to the window. His self-control
was
admirable. Except where Eleanor was concerned. There, it was apparently non-existent.

* * *

“You have not spoken to me in days,” she said, finally having screwed up her courage to confront the wall of silence that was her husband. “Not since we got back from New York.”

He fixed her with a cool, contemplative stare. As though he was weighing up his options. With a small sound of impatience, he put his pen down and focussed on her. It brought him little pleasure, for she seemed even more edgy than normal. “What would you like to discuss?”

Uncertainty plagued her. “Nothing.” Everything. She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

He picked his pen up and glared at the papers on his desk as though they were unsolvable equations. “Then might I suggest you come back to me when you do know?”

She stomped her small foot, and crossed her arms. “Why are you being such a bastard?”

He didn’t look up. “I didn’t realise I am.”

“Hey.” Something inside of her snapped and she marched around to his side of the desk. Still, he didn’t look up. “Hey!” She said louder, reaching down and forcibly removing his pen from his fingers. It caught his attention and sparked his own temper. He stood and gripped her shoulders, pulling her to him.