Читать книгу Undone by the Sultan's Touch - CAITLIN CREWS - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

DESIRE ROCKETED THROUGH Khaled like a searing comet, sudden and fierce and stunning. It was an ambush. It burned him alive, nearly taking him out at the knees, nearly dropping him to the stones below.

He’d never felt anything like this. It was a bone-deep, all-encompassing madness. It changed everything. It made his heart slam against his chest, made his blood a sweet, unbearable fire in his veins, made him hard and desperate, greedy for more.

More of her lips, her scent, her softness. The wonder of her slender body pressed against him like a live wire. More of that humming awareness that tipped over into pounding, dizzying need. More of the shocked, excited noises she made in her throat, the lushness of her lips, the slick drag of her mouth over his.

Her kiss was a revelation and a curse, and he stopped thinking, stopped plotting. He forgot who he was, why he was doing this. He stopped playing his games, stopped teasing her, stopped worrying about strategy.

He felt primitive. Alive. Desperate. One hand rose to tangle in her hair, holding her head where he wanted it. The other slid to her hip and pulled her close, tighter.

And then he simply took her.

He feasted on her mouth, losing himself in the slide of her tongue against his, the perfection of that mouth of hers he hadn’t understood was so tempting, so blatantly erotic. She tasted like honey and made him long to taste her everywhere.

Made him long to simply lift her against him, part her delicate thighs and take her where they stood. The need in his blood was like a song, a velvet command.

The kiss was carnal and hot. Khaled felt like a glutton and a god, and she was his. His. Yielding to him and testing him, tasting him and arousing him in turn, and he couldn’t seem to get enough.

Never enough, something hissed inside him, dazed and deliriously intrigued. Never enough of this. Of her.

This was no lazy dance toward sensuality, as he’d intended. This was a great deal more than a taste. This was fire. Need. A dark, disastrous blaze of hunger that Khaled couldn’t control, and while he lost himself in the exquisite feel of her, the addictive taste, he didn’t care the way he knew he should.

The way some part of him imagined he would—but he shoved that aside.

He didn’t know when they moved, when he did, but he took her with him as he sat on one of the stone benches. He pulled her across his lap, her knees on either side of him, the soft heat of her pressed tight against the hardest part of him.

Cleo sighed, and the yearning in the sound only made him hungrier. Moonlight bathed her in silver, making shadows of her lovely eyes, but not hiding that heat. That need. The starkness of the shocking desire that he could no more deny in either of them than he could rise up and fly away.

He tugged her mouth back to his and it was the same hot punch. The same wildfire, pulling tight inside him, demanding he take her. Right now. Right here. Again and again, until the spell she cast was broken. Or until she cried out his name and her need in that voice of hers gone husky with passion. Or until this madness killed them both, and he didn’t think he’d mind the dying.

He used his mouth to follow the line of her jaw, then tasted the delicate skin she bared when she tipped her head back, allowing him access. He tasted her collarbone, then moved lower, until he reached the bodice of her dress.

Khaled didn’t hesitate. He’d always preferred larger breasts on his women and yet when he peeled the fabric away, the sight of hers, small and plump at once, delicate curves and taut nipples, almost undid him.

“Khaled,” she whispered, a broken sound, honeyed and rough, like gas thrown on open flame.

He slid his hand over her left breast, abrading the tight peak with his palm, watching her expressive face as her eyes drifted shut and she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth.

She was a wonder. She was his. He increased the pressure and her hips bucked against him, a rocking, rolling ecstasy that shot fire into every part of him and made her breath catch audibly. A rosy sort of flush stole over her, almost as if...

He couldn’t resist.

Khaled bent his head to her other breast and licked over her nipple, then pulled the proud crest into his mouth. Hard.

And Cleo broke apart in his arms, shuddering and sighing, flushed red and wild, and he understood that he was in deep trouble with this woman, after all.

* * *

When Cleo came back to herself, she felt weak and boneless—and ashamed, slumped as she was in Khaled’s arms. He’d shifted her, holding her in his arms rather than astride him, and she could sense the difference and the distance in him at once.

What must he think of her? That she was a wanton slut, to start. That she was so oversexed she came apart at a lick against the completely wrong part of her body. She shuddered, appalled at herself—and mourning this glorious dream he’d allowed her to live over the past two weeks that she’d no doubt tarnished with her horrendous lack of restraint.

And then, as swiftly, she was furious. Almost blindingly so.

“I’m sorry,” she bit out into the night, because she didn’t dare look at his face. “Is there a ‘no touching the sultan’ rule I didn’t know about? You should have said so.”

“Do not ever apologize for your responsiveness,” he said, his voice cool but dry, too, as if he was amused by her outburst. “Or for falling apart in my arms. These are gifts.”

Cleo struggled to sit up and he let her, but embarrassment pumped through her as she pulled away from him, making her feel obvious and strange. She could still feel the magic of his touch spinning around inside her, making her skin too tight and her head fuzzy, but she concentrated on straightening her dress as if, once she was appropriately covered, it would erase the whole thing. Make everything right and wonderful again.

Make her something other than humiliated.

But her body had other ideas. Her nipples were like white-hot lights, blasting her with leftover sensation, and between her legs, she ached. She ached.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she said. Stiff and cold.

He shifted on the stone bench beside her and the moon high above them made him gleam like poured metal, as though he was a statue of himself. All of that power, that corded strength, and she’d finally felt it beneath her hands. Her palms itched with the memory, the imprint. She thought of his demanding mouth on hers and something within her melted and then ran hot.

“How many lovers have you had?” he asked, and she jolted as if he’d doused her with ice water.

“What?” But she thought only of Brian, who she’d rather die than claim as a lover. Especially now.

“How many?”

“I don’t want to answer that,” she said, slowly but distinctly. “Or think it’s any of your business. Why would you ask?”

Khaled only looked at her, for such a long time that she began to feel too aware of the cool air against her still-flushed skin again. So long that she crossed her arms over her chest and told herself the cold she felt came from the temperature of the night air, not from him.

And then, as her temper ebbed, she found herself answering him anyway.

“There’s no answer I can give to that question that will make this moment anything but awkward. More awkward, I mean,” she said, and his lips twitched, the way they did when she made him laugh.

“Luckily, awkwardness has yet to claim a single death, as far as I know.”

“How many lovers have you had?” she asked instead of answering him.

“I’ve had my share,” he replied, that strange intensity in his cool gaze. “But I’m afraid I cannot accept that answer from you, Cleo.”

“That sounds suspiciously like a nasty double standard,” she said, striving for a light tone. And failing.

He shrugged in that way of his that reminded her how powerful he was. “It is. But I have never claimed to be particularly liberated and I still wish to know.”

He said it as if knowing such personal details about her life were his right. And there was something about that air of authority, that tone of command in his cool voice, that made her long to do as he asked. Despite the huge part of her that didn’t want to do it.

“One,” Cleo said, grudgingly. “We met in college. We were supposed to get married.” She scowled at him. “We didn’t.”

“When?”

Cleo told herself she only imagined that tightness in his voice, that stillness in the way he sat there, watching her. Waiting for her answer.

She didn’t want to say another word. But it seemed that her mouth obeyed him all on its own.

“Six months ago.”

His dark eyes were hooded then, impossible to read. He reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear, and she had to fight off the urge to lean into his touch.

“Ah,” he said. “You wanted more than him.”

She was furious again, and she wasn’t sure why. “That, and I walked in on him with his girlfriend two weeks before our wedding.”

His brows rose in surprise and she was so furious it was dizzying. And ashamed. And something about that particular toxic combination made her pulse clatter through her, jittery and wild.

“In case you’re wondering why, don’t.” She wanted to get this over with, she realized suddenly. Make him pity her so she could stop pretending there was any other end to this magical interlude in her life. “He was quite clear that I’m frigid.”

Khaled’s expression shifted into something sad and dangerous at once, and he reached over and traced his fingertips down her cheek, slowly. She didn’t know why she imagined it was some kind of apology. Then he took her chin in his hand, holding her immobile before him.

“You are many things,” he said softly. Starkly. “But you are not, as we have demonstrated, even remotely frigid.”

She should pull away, she knew. She should do something—but the air between them was so taut, so tense, and she couldn’t read him. His gaze was too dark, his mouth too cruel, and she was dressed in clothes he’d given her, her body still trembling and tingling from his mouth, and the truth was that she didn’t want to pull away from him.

Cleo wanted him. And yet Brian loomed between them, soft and deceitful and ruinous.

“They told me to marry him anyway,” she told Khaled fiercely, as if it were a weapon. “That I was naive and silly to expect fidelity. That such romantic notions were unrealistic. The stuff of fantasy.”

“Don’t worry.” It occurred to her that his tone of voice was lethal, but he was still holding her chin and the heat of that felt like a drug, making her feel heavy and weightless at once. Trapped with no desire whatsoever to set herself free. “I prize that particular fantasy above all others. And I am the ruler here. If I deem something realistic, that’s what it is.”

Her mind was a riot of shoulds, and she heeded none of them. There was something harsh in his face, his gaze, something too close to broken, when he’d said similar things in the past with a laugh.

“But do you mean your fidelity or mine?” she whispered. “They’re not the same thing and some men, I’ve discovered, apply their double standards there more than anywhere else.”

Khaled muttered something that sounded like a curse but which she imagined was a little prayer instead. He let her go.

She wished he was touching her again immediately. She was a lunatic. But she could feel the imprint of his fingers on her chin as if he’d stamped her with his heat. And she throbbed everywhere else.

“You will be the death of me, little mouse,” he told her, so low and quiet she thought for a minute she’d heard him wrong.

“I’m not a mouse.” Something kicked in her. “The next time someone cheats on me, I’m drawing blood. Just so you know.”

For a moment he looked almost proud, as if he approved of her bloodthirstiness, but then another shadow claimed his face, and she couldn’t read him. Khaled stood then, and she felt as though the world was spinning all around him. He looked troubled, tortured. Like the stranger her heart no longer considered him.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, her voice too rough. Too many emotions racking her within.

“Nothing at all,” he said, and she knew, somehow, that he lied. “Come.”

He offered her his arm and she rose to take it, incapable of defying him in that moment though there was that part of her that thought she should. That wanted her to fight, damn it—though she didn’t know what for. He led her back into the palace, then down the polished, gleaming halls toward her suite, and it took him a long time to look at her again.

Cleo felt the lack of his attention like a kind of grief. Harsh and heavy.

“This is ridiculous,” she said when they reached her door, her voice a prickle. A tight scratch against the heaviness between them. “You shouldn’t have asked the question if you didn’t want to hear the answer.”

“The only answer I really needed was the way you came under my tongue,” he said, but there was a distance in the way he said it. Something granite and unyielding beneath those words. “The rest was merely curiosity.”

Cleo faced him then, her back to her door, and tried to read his dark, fierce face.

“Then you really shouldn’t look so sad, should you?”

He laughed then, abruptly, and it wasn’t the laughter she’d heard from him at other times that had warmed her deep within. This was hollow. Dark. This hurt both of them, she thought, and she didn’t know why.

“Sadness is for men with choices,” he told her, very distinctly, as if it was critical she understand this. Him. “I have only duty. It governs everything I do. It always has and it always will.” His voice lowered. Roughened. “Remember that, Cleo. If nothing else.”

“That sounds remarkably dire.” And then, not knowing how she managed it, when he looked so grim and she simply hurt, she grinned at him. “It was only a kiss, Khaled. I think we’ll survive.”

He let out another one of those laughs that cut at her, even deeper this time.

“You don’t know your own doom when it stares you in the face.” He shook his head, and she didn’t understand why he sounded so agonized. “How can I protect you when you won’t protect yourself?”

Cleo didn’t know what madness moved in her then, but she reached over and slid her hand against his lean jaw, as though that might comfort him. As though she could soothe him.

As though he was hers.

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, though she didn’t even know what was wrong. “I promise.”

Khaled froze, his gray eyes like a thunder that rolled in her, too, a warning she knew she should heed, but that same electricity leaped between them again, searing her straight through as though it was brand-new.

He muttered something beneath his breath, and then he leaned in close and took her mouth with all the passion and ruthless command he’d shown in the courtyard, and she was lost.