Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: December 2017 Books 1 - 4 - Эбби Грин, Линн Грэхем - Страница 17

CHAPTER EIGHT

AZRAEL’S MOUTH ENGULFED Molly’s and all the reasons why she shouldn’t allow that, including the prepared speech about why intimacy was a very bad idea, simply melted out of her mind as though they had never existed.

He was incredibly good at kissing, she thought vaguely, or maybe it was because she was utterly desperate to be kissed. She didn’t know which and she didn’t know if it even mattered because Azrael’s mouth on hers was pure sensual intoxication. She trailed off his kaffiyah to get her hands into his luxuriant black hair and he was very much on board with that approach because he shed his cloak and began to unbutton his tunic while pressing her back against the pillows to savour her lips and let his tongue dance and curl with hers. Sensation awakened there first where with every moist sweep of his tongue her body ratcheted up in tension a little more. Her spine strained to ease the tingling of her nipples and the swelling of her breasts while heat gathered at her feminine core.

Azrael ran the zip down on the dress and then it got complicated because, when he tried to ease the sleeves down to free her arms, the fabric merely stretched and then sprang back into position. With a strangled laugh of amusement, Molly pushed him back and sat up to wrench the clinging dress down over her arms and let it drop to her waist.

‘That was a challenge,’ Azrael acknowledged, dark golden eyes alive with the same amusement. ‘I’m not making a very polished impression here, am I?’

Molly’s hands framed his lean dark face and that smile tore the breath from her lungs and melted her somewhere deep down inside. ‘You don’t need to be...polished with me,’ she muttered truthfully.

He gazed down at her as she pushed his black hair back from his cheekbones, his captured attention sliding down over her reddened mouth to the smooth, freckled slope of her full, round breasts encased in blue and white polka dots, and his broad chest swelled as he dragged in a sustaining breath, enthralled by the vision she made.

‘I love your breasts,’ he said thickly, sliding his hands beneath her to release the clasp with a dexterity that he was secretly very pleased with.

And then there she was, all creamy glorious perfection, bountiful and soft and firm at the same time. He rubbed a straining pink nipple, his breath laboured as though he had run up a hill as he kneaded and cupped the plump mounds.

‘You’re truly beautiful,’ he told her huskily.

And for the first time in her life, Molly felt as though she was. Of course it certainly helped to have Azrael looking down at her with a kind of wondering pleasure, as if she were a goddess rather than an ordinary woman. The heat coiled between her thighs ramped up another notch, her nipples tightening into distended buds. He captured one between his lips, laved it with his tongue, let his teeth graze the straining peak and a soundless moan of pleasure escaped her and her spine arched.

‘Take your tunic off,’ she whispered shakily.

He leant back from her and yanked it over his head, too impatient to bother with the remaining buttons, and she had a perfect view of his even more perfect torso. He was all hard, sleek muscle from his wide brown shoulders down to the defined V that ran from his narrow waist down into his pelvis. Muscles from his biceps to his chest to his flat, tight stomach rippled with his every move. In a sudden movement, impatient with the constrictions of his clothing, Azrael sprang off the bed and dropped the tunic before skimming off the loose linen trousers and briefs he wore below.

And there he all was, sooner than she had expected to see him, and her breath caught in her throat at her first glimpse of his arousal. He bent over her, dragging off the stretchy dress, flipping off her shoes, reaching for the band of her knickers.

‘No, you’re going too fast for me,’ Molly warned him, her face tomato red. ‘Slow down. I haven’t done this before...remember?’

‘You can’t fault me for enthusiasm, aziz,’ Azrael said playfully. ‘But I will slow down.’

‘Thank you,’ she said unevenly, taking the opportunity to push back the bedding and slide beneath the concealing cover of the sheet. ‘I’m sorry I’m a bit shy...but I don’t think you have a shy bone in your body.’

‘Never thought about it,’ Azrael admitted. ‘I would’ve been punished for being timid or impolite or not doing what it was my obligation to do—’

‘Punished?’ Taken aback, Molly leant over him to stare down at him. ‘Who would’ve punished you?’

‘Firuz was a very strict stepfather. I was beaten a lot,’ Azrael confided with the calm of someone who appeared to accept that such a childcare approach was perfectly normal.

‘But that’s dreadful,’ Molly exclaimed in horror.

‘I survived. I can survive any mistreatment,’ Azrael countered with pride. ‘I was brought up to be tough.’

‘Would you treat your own children—?’

‘No, of course not!’ Azrael studied her with incredulity. ‘Firuz is a tyrant in his own household. I withstood his punishments for my mother’s sake. She would’ve suffered if I had defied him or rebelled. My children will never be beaten,’ he swore vehemently.

Molly’s eyes stung and she pressed a helpless kiss to a bare brown shoulder. ‘You had the most horrendous childhood.’

‘It is the past,’ Azrael reminded her gently. ‘I do not look back.’

‘I suppose that’s one way of dealing with it,’ Molly mumbled.

‘It is my duty to be strong,’ Azrael pointed out, glittering dark eyes roaming over her troubled face. ‘Why does that upset you?’

‘Oh, no reason,’ Molly hastened to assure him chokily.

A seeking hand smoothed up over a curved hip and settled on a lush pink-tipped breast. ‘You have too much heart, aziz,’ he intoned huskily, sliding half over her to plunge his mouth hungrily down on hers.

And serious thought along with that conversation vanished then, lost in the rising tide of her physical responses. He sucked the tips of her breasts, contrived to dispose of her last garment without her noticing and smoothed a skilled hand up to the junction of her thighs where she throbbed and pulsed with a fierce craving for more that she barely understood. Azrael shifted down over her, lithe as a jaguar, his skin pure bronze against the white sheet, and his black hair brushed her thigh.

She had never wanted and had never felt anything like the delicious physical torment that followed. Her fingertips raked the sheet and then plunged into his thick hair. She cried out, teeth gritting, spine arching as the sweet agonising sensations grew in intensity until her lower body was taut with the hot, churning tightness of inner need and hunger. Her body writhed convulsively as she soared to her peak, unleashed waves of pleasure roaring through her in a glorious shot of relief and delight.

‘Tell me if I hurt you,’ Azrael told her hoarsely, rising over her, pushing her thighs back when she was already weak and boneless with satiation.

She felt the push as his bold shaft entered her, eyes widening at the unfamiliar sensation. Her body was primed for him and he groaned with unashamed pleasure over her and the glittering golden satisfaction in his stunning eyes excited her more. His lean hips shifted fluidly between her thighs as he thrust deeper and a sudden sharp little pain made her bite back a cry of discomfort. She hadn’t expected her first taste of intimacy to be an entirely pain-free process and she was determined not to spoil it for either of them as he stretched her with his powerful girth.

Azrael growled with uninhibited pleasure, luxuriating in the tight wet welcome of her body. Raging impatient need roared through his long, powerful body but he needed to make it the best it could be for her. Rigid with control, he raised himself to glide in and out of her, filling her up with slowly building speed and intensity.

Molly’s head fell back, her eyes shutting as she fought to contain the wild sensations eddying out from the heated ache and tightness in her pelvis. She could feel the hunger climbing again, rising sharply as he ground down on her and then sank harder and deeper, all grace, all power and impossibly erotic. She panted for breath, flying high on the surge of excitement he had incited, the feverish pound of his possession uniting with her racing heartbeat and suddenly she was there again on the heights, her body out of control as her world exploded into white-hot ecstasy. His magnificent body shuddered as he too reached the same completion.

Afterwards, cradled in Azrael’s arms, Molly felt as though she was floating in the most sublime contentment she had ever known.

‘That was amazing... I want to keep you,’ Azrael husked without the smallest warning.

‘What?’ she mumbled uncertainly.

‘I don’t want to reconsider our marriage in a few months’ time... I want to keep you,’ Azrael reiterated calmly as though that were the simplest sentiment in the world to express.

I want to keep you. Very much as if she were a pet or a piece of property, Molly interpreted in astonishment. ‘We didn’t discuss anything like that,’ she reminded him hesitantly.

‘There is nothing to discuss,’ Azrael declared, sitting up, so devastatingly handsome in that instant that he literally stole the breath from her straining lungs. ‘We both got so carried away we didn’t even think of using protection.’

Her eyes flew even wider and she too sat up, clutching at the sheet. ‘Protection?’ she repeated blankly.

‘I forgot,’ he told her truthfully. ‘I’m sorry—’

‘It wasn’t safe. A few weeks ago it would’ve been,’ Molly told him worriedly. ‘But I missed some pills after Tahir took me because I didn’t have them with me here. I was planning to start taking them again at the end of the month.’

‘You could be pregnant now, aziz,’ Azrael declared quietly. ‘I was out of my mind with excitement. I did not have control and neither did you but if you do conceive—’

‘But I don’t want to be pregnant!’ Molly protested, marvelling that within minutes of feeling closer to him than she had ever felt to any living being, she could then be blindsided by the reality that he thought and functioned on an entirely different plane. ‘It’s too soon. I’m not ready for motherhood yet.’

Azrael was starting to frown as he slid fluidly off the bed. ‘Why the fuss? You’re my wife! What could be more natural than to have my child?’

Molly looked heavenward. ‘It doesn’t work that way in the West. Having children is something a man and a woman discuss and decide on together.’

Azrael had tensed, dark eyes flaring with gold lights. ‘If choosing not to have my child is that important to you, you should have considered the risk for yourself. I forgot but so did you.’

Molly gritted her teeth at a truth she was not in the mood to hear at that moment. Unhappily she wasn’t accustomed to having to consider risks in the pregnancy stakes because he was her first lover. Azrael was affronted, as if even the chance to have his child was a wonderful opportunity that no normal woman would wish to evade. Offence was stamped into the grim lines of his lean dark face and the aggressive angle of his stubbled jawline.

Azrael was very much taken aback by Molly’s attitude to the risk they had run together. Only as he registered that he had forgotten to use a condom had it occurred to him that he would very much like to have a child with Molly. After all, the only surviving member of his family was his kid brother and his heart warmed at the prospect of having a proper family in the future with children he could call his own.

Ironically he had imagined how warm and loving Molly would be with a child. His own mother had been too distant and reserved to act like the loving, caring mother he had longed to have as a little boy. His instantaneous, idealistic vision of building a happy family with Molly had shattered beneath a withering rejection, which he saw as unfeeling. After all, if she did conceive would she then reject his child or think less of that child because she had not planned its birth? Or were her reservations more basic? Was it simply his child she did not want?

‘In future I will be very careful to utilise protection,’ he declared coolly. ‘I will leave it to you to decide whether we will ever reach this magical day where we will sit down and discuss what comes naturally to half the world!’

Molly compressed her lips in silence. Djalia was not the most forward-thinking place. Having a wife was clearly fundamentally linked in Azrael’s brain with having a family and he had taken it for granted that she would feel the same way. That she did not immediately wish to embrace motherhood was clearly unwelcome news to him.

‘And now I must leave until we meet at the wedding tomorrow,’ Azrael informed her and even his Mr Grumpy expression couldn’t hide his relief at the prospect of escaping her unnatural attitude to conception. ‘Your attendants will be arriving soon to prepare you as a bride.’

I’m falling in love with him, Molly registered in sudden dismay because she could see right through him just then and she could see that Azrael was both offended and deeply hurt. Her reluctance to conceive was being viewed as a rejection. It bothered her so much to see that in him that she was horribly tempted to put her arms round him to offer comfort. Unfortunately, that would be the wrong thing to do because Azrael had to learn that while it was apparently fine for him to make unilateral decisions for Djalia he could not expect the same freedom and authority within his marriage. I want to keep you. Spontaneous laughter bubbled up in her throat and she had to struggle to hold it back because he would definitely misinterpret that reaction.

She was tempted to tell him that she was not totally averse to the idea of becoming a mother but that would lead her down conversational roads she was not yet ready to travel with him. If she did choose to have a child, however, she wanted to plan the event, not find herself railroaded into it by an accidental conception. Furthermore, before she could even consider confidently embracing motherhood she needed to know that their marriage had a genuine future.

Unhappily, when she had agreed to stay married to Azrael on the basis that he would cover her grandfather’s bills at the care home, they hadn’t talked about so many things that they should have talked about. Although Molly always liked to know where she stood, she had never had that clarity with Azrael. They hadn’t discussed sex, money, contraception, divorce or indeed any of the many complications waiting, it seemed, to trip them up and set them at odds. And now, evidently such discussions had strayed into such personal private territory that a frank exchange of views was liable to hurt or offend. What had happened to the man who had confided that he felt trapped and resentful once he’d learned that his false announcement that they were married had bound them in marriage by local law?

I want to keep you. What was she supposed to say to that? What did she want to say to that? Molly thought it was far too soon to be making life-changing decisions and was more distrustful of the growing strength of her attachment to Azrael than ever. He was much more volatile than he seemed behind that cool, controlled façade of his, she acknowledged. Did he have feelings for her? Or did it all come down to amazing sex for him? Was he that basic? Or was she too suspicious and cynical?