She went limp in his arms once more, surrendered to his coddling as the interior’s coolness robbed her of what was left of her volition. He was right. She was exhausted. It had been over thirty hours since they’d met. It felt like thirty chaotic days. Weeks. Within ten of those hours, she’d made a decision that would change her life, change her, forever.
As he swept her through his mansion, she barely took in the gigantic hall in the subdued lighting of a circular bronze chandelier that was strung up by dozens of feet of chains from the soaring ceiling to hang just a few feet above head level. All she registered acres of sand-colored marble floors and a massive fountain in the center of it all. As they passed it, the sound of water made her bones melt faster.
He climbed up one side of the twenty-foot-wide marble stairs that bifurcated to the upper floor, entered a corridor as wide as her condo back home. Still holding her securely in one arm, he opened an arched oak door, entered an expansive bedroom. His?
Her powers of observation were dwindling. She got only impressions of mirrorlike floors, soaring ceilings, whitewashed walls, ten-foot terrace windows draped in semi-opaque brick-colored curtains that turned the ambiance inside the room into that of a warm, intimate dream.
The one thing she saw every detail of was the bed. Huge, spread in crisp white sheets and an Arabian-design earth-tone bedspread. He swept away the covers and lowered her onto it.
She clung to him, cried out when he came down on top of her, his weight, his heat, his leashed power pressing down on her with just the exact measures of domination and consideration to let her feel his hunger, to make her feel cherished.
She wound herself around him, and he groaned, sank deeper onto her, flooded her with his taste and feel.
After the surreal madness of those minutes in the gardens, she’d shied away from visualizing what would really happen between them. She had nothing to draw on in the realm of intimacy but one crushing disappointment. She couldn’t predict anything, had even been afraid to. She’d been scared that reality would only suffer in comparison with fantasy.
She should have known. He was magic. Better than anything her meager imagination could conjure. He was her mate. The one she’d believed existed before life had crushed hope out of her. He was the only one. And she wanted him. All of him. Now. Now.
He wrenched himself from her arms, making her feel he’d taken her skin with him. “Slow…I said we’ll go slow.”
“But I don’t need slow. I never needed…but I need you…”
“La, ya ghawyeti.” He caught her seeking hands, kissed them, crossed them over her heart. “No, my temptress. You’re overwrought, and this isn’t how I want you to feel during our first time. It has to be glorious, memorable. So we’ll take our time. As I said we would. I keep my promises, always.” He swept the covers over her, tucked her in. He walked to the windows, drew blackout curtains beneath the drapes, plunging the room into almost pitch-darkness. He came back to her, bent and pressed his lips to her mouth with such tenderness, tears welled in her eyes. “Now sleep, ya hayati. And dream of me.”
Six
Dreams had never been like this.
Dreams had been drab and nonsensical, forgotten even as they blipped their disjointed patterns over the gray landscape of unconsciousness. The ones momentous enough for her to follow, that left a mark on her memory once oblivion lifted, had been filled with replays of loss, of frustrations that would forever echo unresolved.
Now her dreams were vibrant and full of splashes of emotion and gusts of excitement. Blinding in clarity, transporting in delight, open fields of possibility and impossibility, where she flew, soared, right alongside her knight of the desert.
Now they were taking a new turn, for the tangible.
Pleasure rained all over her from warm, gentle caresses, spiced with the scent of maleness, accentuated by the rumbles of cosseting. She filled her arms with the dream, held on. It expanded, pulled back on a lazy purr. “It’s incredible to have you devour me in your sleep, ya gummari, but I’d rather have you do it awake.”
Panicking, she reached out to catch it, and in her alarm, opened her eyes. And something far better than any dream filled her vision, blocked out the world. Shehab.
She moaned his name. The most wonderful thing she’d ever heard or had on her lips. “Shehab…”
The smile he gave her, the indulgence he poured over her made her feel as if she’d melt into the bed beneath her.
He tickled her nose with a lock of her hair. “Are you awake this time, or are we having another sleep-talking session?”
“I love it when you tease…oh.” She stormed up to her feet, jumped over him and onto the floor. He too shot to his feet, alarm starting to form on his lips. She squealed, “Bathroom.”
He laughingly if urgently pointed at a door at the far end of the expansive room. She hurtled there.
After dealing with the emergency, she was thankful for the chance to freshen up. She’d never woken up with another person, wasn’t having any interaction with him-the epitome of mouth-watering freshness-before she was squeaky clean.
She was so acutely aware of his presence outside she barely took in the opulence of the all-marble-and-gold-fixtures bathroom as she tried to fix her appearance. Her self-consciousness at being all sleep-swollen and wrinkled increased when she came out to find him, a being out of oriental fables in an outfit made for the desert and sharing its hues and textures, propped up in her bed with his endless legs crossed at the ankles. The one thing that reassured her was that he was looking at her as if she was a hot gourmet meal and he was starving.
She approached him, feeling intensely gauche, her heart stumbling over a thousand insecurities. And incredulity.
God, she was really here. Halfway across the world. On his island. And he was waiting for her to join him in bed, an inexorable magnet when she was a helpless pin. Could this really be happening? She, Farah Beaumont, the ultimate misfit, understood and appreciated, hungered for by this man she hadn’t dared to dream existed?
She faltered, looked around dazedly. He’d opened the blackout curtains and light was seeping through the drapes, giving the room that dreamscape quality. How many hours had she slept? Not many, since sunset was around 7:00 p.m., and she’d gone to sleep as soon as he’d left the room, around 1:00 p.m…
One of his hands patted the space beside him, ending her confusion. She jumped there, curled into him like a cat.
“Now that was an emergency,” he drawled, amusement staining his magnificent baritone.