To Tame a Sheikh / His Thirty-Day Fiancée

She should spare him the discomfort, should leave. She shouldn’t have come at all, shouldn’t have said yes, shouldn’t have gone to that party …

Something whirred, flashed. She blinked in surprise, her left eye riddled in blue spots.

He’d snapped a photo of her with his phone. Now he walked toward her, big and lithe, gloriously male and impossibly beautiful. But it was his expression that made her sway, sending her heart swinging in her chest like a pendulum.

The lightness of the trek here was gone, sizzling sensuality replacing it, setting his eyes deeper on fire and his charisma to a higher level.

He stopped a foot away, reached for the hands he seemed so enamored with. “You looked so … pensive. And if possible, even more breathtaking. This photo is the stuff of the immortal masterpieces the old masters would have begged to portray.” He took her hands to his lips, giving each finger a knuckle-by-knuckle introduction to the cosseting of his lips, his eyes empty of all but seriousness. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“No.” The denial shot out of her, its fierceness mortifying her as it rang around them. But she had to know. “A-are you?”

He huffed. “The only thoughts I’m having are where to begin worshipping you and how to stop from swallowing you whole.”

So that was why he was holding back. He feared being too aggressive. She was being insecure again.

But who could blame her? All through the years, her love for him had been emotional, spiritual, with slight sensual overtones. She’d never imagined he could actually want her, and when she’d fantasized that he did, even in the freedom of her own imagination, he’d done no more than hold and kiss her. Yet she couldn’t breathe with wanting all he was willing to give her, with needing to experience him to the fullest.

She swayed closer, her heartbeats merging like the wings of a hummingbird with the enormity of what she was feeling, what she was about to reveal. “B-begin anywhere, Shaheen. J-just begin. And don’t stop your self. I don’t want you to stop.”

His eyes flared with her every faltering word. When she fell into embarrassed, panting silence, he entwined her hands in his, brought them to her face, twisting their embrace around so the backs of his hands stroked up and down her flaming cheeks.

“Then I’ll begin here. Your skin. It’s incredible, like every part of you. Lush, thick cream, free of paleness and fragility. It doesn’t flush with your emotions, no matter how strong, only becomes more vital, more vivid. It’s glowing now. Your eyes are gleaming like polished onyxes under spotlights, inundating me with an avalanche of expressions, each intoxicating in its clarity and beauty. And your lips. The way they mold to your every thought, the way they take the shape of your every emotion, the way they tremble to the frequency of each sensation … each tremor shudders through me until I am nothing but uncontainable hunger.”

She almost choked with stimulation. “I was right. You are made up of nothing but original bones and poetic cells.”

His lips twitched in a lethal mix of appreciation and predation as he touched the pad of his thumb to hers, stilling those tremors that so affected him. “It seems you didn’t hear my last words clearly.”

Her lips trembled even more as humor warred with anticipation and agitation. He rubbed his thumbs against them, his breathing becoming harsher.

She closed her eyes to savor the long-dreamed-about sensations. Her wildest imaginings hadn’t prepared her for reality. She moaned with the pleasure that corkscrewed through her, emanating from his breath, his nearness, his touch, to her every inch, her deepest reaches. Then her lips did what they’d been longing to do for most of her life—caressed the fragrant warmth and power pressed to them with a trembling kiss.

She heard his intake of breath. It sliced away more of the leashes of her inhibition. She opened her lips, grazed her teeth against his skin. Its texture, its scent, brought more moist heat surging from her core.

A fiercer inhalation expanded his chest until it pressed against her swelling breasts. She knew he could scent her arousal, felt the wildness it sent seething through him. It made her light-headed, the knowledge that she could do this to him, that he was doing this to her, that they had this to share.

Feeling bolder, she swept her tongue against his skin. Her knees did buckle at her first taste of him. He disentangled his other hand, caught her around the waist. She kept her eyes closed as she dove deeper into the sensations, her whole existence centering on his thumb against her tongue as he began to thrust it gently in and out of her mouth.

“This is extremely dangerous.” His bass hiss made her eyes snap open. His bore into them before moving to her lips with burning intent as he fed them his thumb, as they suckled it with increasing greed and abandon. She knew what he meant. He still elaborated. “That you want me as fiercely as I want you.”

She nodded, breath leaving her body under choppy pressure. She felt she was disintegrating with need for him.

He let go of her waist, grazed across her lower teeth as he slid his thumb lingeringly from between her lips, then dropped his forehead to hers, nuzzling her, inhaling her. “This is unparalleled. Agonizing but sublime.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Though she had no experience to back up her belief, she knew the protracted inflammation of their senses was far more satisfying than any frenzied mindless coupling would be.

He eased her away only to glide both arms around her back, to her dress’s zipper. He slid it down with torturous slowness, never letting go of her eyes as he went back up to unclasp her bra. She gasped as its constriction eased, and again at the spike of ferocity in his eyes as he monitored her reaction. He drew more gasps from her as he caressed her dress and bra loose, then in one silky sweep, freed her from their shackles.

Before she could snap her arms across her nakedness, he dragged her dress beyond her waist to her hips, dropping downward with it. He ended up on his knees before her.

Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. From unbearable stimulation. From the way he looked her up and down, as if he would truly gobble her up.

Then he pulled her to him, rumbling, “Now, I worship you.”

She would have keeled over him if his shoulders hadn’t stopped her forward pitch. He added to her imbalance, burying hot lips into her flesh. She whimpered at each press into her abdomen, every tongue thrust into her navel, each tooth drag across her breasts. Her moans sharpened as he gently clamped her nipples, until a cry rushed out at his first hard pull. “Shaheen … please.”

In answer, he bunched her skirt in his hands, his thumbs hooking into the top of her panties. Then, in one magical move, every shred of covering was shed off of her.

Standing in nothing but her shoes with her clothes pooled at her feet, she felt the world recede. Shaheen looked up, the worshipping he’d promised her setting the hard nobility of his face ablaze.

This was beyond unprecedented. Beyond unparalleled. She was with Shaheen. Standing before him naked. She was about to be his in the flesh, just as she was already his in every other way.

She watched as he raised each leg to kiss and fondle from calf to thigh, her consciousness flickering like a bulb about to short out. She heard his magnificent voice as he raggedly lavished far better than poetry on her, spontaneous wonder pouring out in whatever language expressed it best.

She moaned constantly, becoming a literal puddle of arousal by the time he rose. She would have collapsed at his feet if he hadn’t swept her up as he stood.

When she flopped in his arms like a ragdoll, he whispered into her ear, “Wrap yourself around me, my Gemma. Cling to me with all of your priceless flesh and desire.”

That injected power into her limp muscles. She wanted to. He wanted her to. She only ever wished to give him what he wanted.

She clasped her arms around his shoulders, her thighs around his hips. And it was indescribable. Feeling all of his heat and bulk and power and arousal encased within her limbs, being draped around all of that. She’d be forever empty and anchorless when she no longer had him to enfold, to hang on to like this.

But she had him now.

She rested her head against his shoulder as he strode across his penthouse with her clasped in his arms. Her eyes remained open, but she registered only impressions of his character, his taste and wealth imbuing the spaces, all the more impressive for being unpretentious. Then he crossed into a bedroom. His bedroom.

This was the last thing she’d expected would happen when she’d embarked upon her mission to see him one last time. That she’d end up in his bedroom. In his bed.

But she wanted to be here more than literally anything.

Her senses revved out of their stupor. This was where he slept, where he woke up, where he read and showered and shaved, where he dressed and undressed. Where he pleasured himself. And where she was convinced he’d never pleasured another.

This was his sanctum, when he lived in New York. And he was giving her the exclusive privilege of being here. It would be a one-time pass. She had to make all she could of it.

The huge, high-ceilinged room was lit with only a bedside lamp. Her gaze, avid to soak in more of his privacies and secrets, had just registered the slashes of bold décor, gradations of dark grays and greens with accents of hardwood the color of his eyes when her wandering ones came to a hiccupping halt.

He pressed her against the door as she’d vaguely hoped he would before, held her there with only his bulk bearing down on her.

She shuddered at the sensory overload. The coolness of the polished wood against her back, the feel of him pressing against her, the heat and hardness of his erection against her intimate flesh with nothing but his clothes between them.

Until minutes ago she’d been too shy to inspect his arousal. Even now she couldn’t make the leap of imagining anything beyond this. Her mind almost shut down at the thought of having him inside her. And he hadn’t even kissed her on the lips yet….

He raised his head from razing his way down her throat. “And now, I pleasure you, ya galbi.”

Hearing him call her “my heart” tore a sob from her depths.

He frowned at the sound. “Gemma, if you want me to stop, I will. If you’re not totally sure …”

She dragged his head down to her, took the kiss she’d been starving for all of her life.

He stilled under her uncoordinated frenzy, let her smash her lips against his, imploring his reciprocation, his taking over, before he wrenched his lips away.

“What’s wrong, my Gemma?” He swept her around, took her to the bed, laid her down on it, where the lighting afforded him the best view of her. And he jerked up in dismay. “You’re crying!”

Her hands flailed over his shoulders, trying to drag him back to her. “I-I’m not … I just want you, too much. I can’t wait anymore. Please take me, Shaheen. T-take me now.”

The concern on his face dissipated, sheer ferocity slamming down in its place. “I want to take you. I want to invade you and ride you until you weep with pleasure this time. But I can’t. I have to ready you for me first or I’ll hurt you.”

“You won’t. I’m ready. Just … just …”

“Galbi, let me pace this. I need to make it perfect for you.”

“It will be perfect. Anything with you is perfect.”

He growled something as he dragged her onto his lap. “Don’t say one more word, Gemma. If you don’t want to have a raving lunatic all over you. I’ve never even imagined being out of control. But I am now.”

She sobbed a giggle. “If this is you out of control, I’d hate to see you in it. You’d probably kill me with frustration.”

This time it was his lips that stopped her words, in that kiss she’d imagined since she was old enough to know what kisses were. It turned out she’d never even come close to knowing.

This was a kiss. This tender ferociousness. This gentle devouring. Only this. Shaheen possessing her lips, each sweep and pull and thrust layering sensations, burying her in pleasure. His scent and taste and feel filling her, his hunger finishing her.

She undulated beneath him, until he subdued her, held her arms above her head as his other hand flowed down from her face to her shoulder, ending up cupping the aching heaviness of one breast. “You’re only allowed to moan for more, and cry out with pleasure. That will be enough to drive me out of my mind.”

“Let me see you,” she moaned.

“Not yet. And you’re already breaking the rules.”

“You said I could moan for more. I am, for more of you.”

“You’ll have all of me, every way you like. Just not now.”

“You’re being unfair,” she whimpered.

“It’s you who’s unfair. Nothing should be this magnificent.”

She tried to free her hands. She needed them on him, any part of him, without the barrier of clothes.

He growled deep in his chest, spread her back and continued owning her body with his sensual torment. But it was only when he slid her hips to the edge of the bed and kneeled before her again that she realized his intention. Her heart stuttered.

It was stupid to feel embarrassed at having his mouth and hands on her intimate flesh when she was begging for far more. But there it was. She tried to close her legs.

He insisted, caressed them apart. “Open yourself to me, let me feast on you. Let me prepare you.”

“I’m prepared,” she cried out. “Please!”

“I don’t want to hold back when I take you, and only a few climaxes will prepare you for my possession.”

“A few …?” She choked on incredulity.

What was he going to do to her?

Anything. She’d take anything and everything he did to her.

She opened herself to him and those long, perfect fingers caressed her feminine lips apart, slid through her molten need. She keened, lurched with jolts of sensation almost too much to bear. And that was before he dipped one finger in. Each slow inch felt like pure pleasure. It made her realize how empty she’d felt. How only having him inside her would fill the void.

She tried to drag him up to her with her legs. He only opened her fully and burned her to the core in his ragged hunger.

She malfunctioned completely as his magnificent head settled between her thighs and his lips and tongue scorched the heart of her femininity. The sight, the concept of what he was doing to her, giving her, was almost more incapacitating than the physical sensations.

Through the delirium, she watched him cosset her, strum her, drink her, revel in her essence, in her need and taste and pleasure. He seemed to know when she couldn’t take any more.

“Now, ya roh galbi, let me see and hear how much I pleasure you.” Then his tongue swept her flesh again.

Her body unraveled in a chain-reaction of convulsions, in soul-racking ecstasy, as she held his eyes all through, letting him see what he was doing to her.

She subsided, unable even to beg him to come to her, and he began again, varying his method, renewing her desperation, deepening her surrender.

She’d lost count of how many times he’d wrung her pleasure when at one point he kept her on the brink, came up to straddle her.

He painted her with caresses, kneaded her breasts, gently squeezed her nipples. “I’ve never seen or tasted anything so beautiful.”

Her hands shook on his belt, trying to undo it. “I want to see you—all of you. I want you, inside me, filling my body. Please, Shaheen, please now.”

He surged up to stand over the bed, over her, stripping off his clothes with barely leashed violence and absolute economy.

Though she was dying for him, the one opportunity she’d have to see his exposed glory took precedence. She swayed to her knees, gaping at his proportionate perfection, the rippling power encased in polished bronze and accentuated with dark silk.

With a cry she surged forward, her hands and lips seeking all she could reach of him, wanting them everywhere at once.

“Shaheen …” she moaned between kisses “… you’re more beautiful than I imagined … I want to worship each inch of you, too.”

He threaded his fingers through her hair. “Later, ya hayati, we’ll worship each other inch for inch. Now I take you. And you take me.”

“Yes.” She fell to her back, held out her arms.

He surged to her, covered her. She cried out, reveling in how her softness cushioned his hardness.

Perfect. No, sublime. Like he’d said.

She opened her legs, as she’d always opened everything she was to him. He guided them over his waist, his eyes seeking hers, solicitous and tempestuous, his erection seeking her entrance.

Finding both hot and molten, he growled his surrender at last, sank into her in one forceful thrust.

She’d been certain it wouldn’t hurt, that she was ready.

But she couldn’t have been ready for this. For him.

And it wasn’t only her untried body. She was sure experience wouldn’t have helped her withstand the first invasion of his girth and length.

It was on the second thrust that he seemed to realize. Why the first had taken such force, found such resistance, why her cry had been so sharp, why her body was so tense and trembling.

He froze. Shock rippled over his face. At last he choked out, “You’re a virgin?”

“It’s okay … I’m okay. Don’t stop … please, Shaheen, don’t stop.”

“B’Ellahi!” he rasped, tried to pull out of her.

She clamped her quaking legs over his hips, stopping him from exiting her body.

“Stop, Gemma!” he growled, resisting her. “I’m hurting you.”

“Yes.” This made him heave up, his eyes horrified. She only clung harder to him, arms and legs and core. “And the pain is nothing compared to how you feel inside me, is making it all the more … intense. I feel you … branding me. Please … you said you wouldn’t hold back.”

“This was before I knew you were …!” He shook his head, his disbelief and bewilderment rising. “Ya Ullah, I’m your first.”

“Are you … disappointed?”

“Disappointed? Try flabbergasted, overwhelmed. Ya Ullah.”

Mortification flooded her. Her limbs relinquished their hold on him. “I should have told you. It wasn’t a conscious decision not to … but you have no reason to believe that …” She swallowed the weeping jag that was building behind the barrier of her throat. “Let me up. I’ll go and you’ll never—”

He slid deeper into her, gentler, slower, his eyes heating again. “Does this feel like I’m sorry I’m your first? I already knew you were the biggest gift I’d ever received. But now you’ve bestowed this on me, and the gift is even bigger. I wish I could offer you something of the same magnitude.”

“You are giving me the biggest gift, too.” Tears were overtaking her. And that would spoil everything. Her lips trembled with what she hoped approximated teasing. “Figuratively and literally.” He inhaled sharply, grew even bigger inside her. Even through the burning, she thrust her hips upward, engulfing more of his erection. “So if you really want to give me a gift, don’t hold back. Give me all of you.”

“You do want a raving lunatic all over you, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, please.”

“You say, yes, please, and everything insides me snaps,” he growled as he rose, cupped her hips in his hands, tilted her and thrust himself to the hilt inside her. It was overwhelming, being stretched by him, being full of him, beyond her capacity.

He withdrew, and she cried out at the loss, urged him to sink back into her. He resisted her squirming pleas for a moment, his shaft resting at her entrance before he sank slowly back inside her.

She cried out a hot gust of passion, opening wider for him. He watched her, gauging her reactions, adjusting his movements to her every gasp and grimace, waiting for the pleasure to submerge the pain before he let her really have all of him, before he quickened his pace. All through, he kept her at fever pitch, caressing her all over, suckling her breasts, draining her lips, raining wonder over her.

Then he groaned into her lips, “Glorious, ya galbi, inside and out, literally and figuratively. Everything about you, with you.”

She keened as her depths started to ripple around him. As if he knew, he tilted her, angled his thrusts, and snapped the coil of tension inside her. Convulsion after convulsion squeezed shrieks out of her, clamped her tight around him, inside and out.

Only then did he let go, a moment she’d replay in her memory forever. The sight and feel of him as he surrendered inside her to the ecstasy that union with her brought him. She peaked again as he threw his head back on a roar of pleasure, as the heat of his release surged into her womb until she felt filled, never to be empty again.

Shaking with aftershocks, she whimpered as he moved, needing him to come down on top of her. He swept her around instead, took her over him, careful not to jar her, to remain inside her.

She lay on top of him, the biggest part of her soul, satiated in ways she couldn’t have imagined, in perfect peace for the first time in her life.

As he encompassed her in caresses and murmurs of appreciation, awe overtook her at everything that had happened tonight.

Then he made it infinitely better.

He shifted, brought her to her side facing him, kissed her deeply, leisurely, then whispered into her lips, “This was, hands down, the best thing that has ever happened to me. You are.”

She believed he meant it.

But he wasn’t free to mean it.

The knowledge expanded inside her soaring heart, a ton of dejection bringing it crashing to the ground of reality.

But she still had the rest of tonight with him.

Shaking off despondence, she focused on the miracle in progress, in her arms.

She suckled the tongue rubbing against hers, caressed the muscled back rippling beneath her fingers, smiled into his kiss. “Your feelings, sir, are a mere reflection of mine.”

He pulled back to look down at her, his own smile bliss and bedevilment at once as he pressed her buttocks closer, driving his intact arousal deeper into her. “Then it’s up to me to prove to you how authentic my feelings are.”

And for the rest of the night, he left her in no doubt.

Johara drank in the magnificent sight Shaheen made.

Sprawled on his back, the dark green cotton sheet twisted around one thigh and leaving the rest of him bare for her to devour, he had one muscled arm arced over his head, the other with its palm flat over his heart. He looked as if he were holding the kisses she’d planted there before she’d left his side, telling him she’d go to the bathroom and would be back in moments, in place.

Her heart constricted. Her vision blurred.

And she choked out her pledge. “I will always love you, ya habibi.”

He sighed in his sleep, his lips curving in contentment.

Even though she was across the room, she thought he said, “I love you, too, my Gemma.”

Tears poured thicker, as if they were flowing from her heart. She closed the door and walked away from his room and out of his penthouse. Out of his life.

She felt as if hers was over.

Four

The moment he opened his eyes, Shaheen knew something was wrong. Wonderfully wrong.

He was … serene.

He remained still, closed his eyes again, to savor the alien sensation of absolute contentment.

Yes. Alien. He’d never felt like this, even on his best days.

He’d always been aware of all he had to be thankful for, had never taken any of his privileges for granted. He’d accepted the prices he had to pay for them, had even considered the payments and the load they placed on his shoulders more privileges. He’d reveled in all the challenges and hardships that making use of those privileges had dictated.