“You don’t need to concern yourself—”
“Don’t say that. You don’t have to protect me from...the worst.”
“As your husband, that is one of the job requirements, habeebti,” he added archly. “Whether they be old, distrustful council members or your mother or even yourself that I have to protect you from.”
She bit her lip, hating the insecurity that balled up in her throat. Normally, she would have closed herself off completely, barred any way she could hearing what some traditional, rooted-in-the-past old men thought of her. Not venturing where she wasn’t needed, that had been her motto and her shield all her life.
Her parents didn’t want her to tag along on a year-long assignment one year?
She’d made plans the next year before they could even reject her.
If she didn’t give anything, there was no possibility of getting hurt.
But for the sake of her child, and for the sake of this man who had cared that she was upset, who had, while shouldering the burden of his volatile nation, still spared time to realize she must be feeling alone...
For him, she would face her fears.
She would not only face them, but she would never give him reason to be ashamed of her, she decided with a fierceness that was new to her.
“Why did they all show up in such force? To express their disapproval of me?”
“The Dahab approve of you and arrived to honor you. And the rest of the tribes follow where they lead.” He shook his head, as if signaling to end the matter. “But I’ve had enough politics today to last me a lifetime, Lauren. I don’t wish to discuss it anymore.”
Commanding and absolute, his voice sent a shiver up her spine. It felt like dismissal. But something lingered in his face too, something that set a twisty feeling in her gut and she decided to let the matter drop. For now. “Okay.”
Before she could turn around, one of his hands snaked up and caught around her nape, tugging her closer. The rasp of his hard chest against hers sent fire blasting into every nerve ending. Her lashes fell down and she dug her fingers into his shoulders. But even after his midnight swim, his skin was still hot.
“You’re very submissive all of a sudden. Why?”
“Not submissive. Understanding,” she corrected him, “and slowly learning to choose which battles to fight.”
He pushed out a breath and his body seemed to tense up even more. “You’re sure you’ve had enough rest?” he muttered against her temple. “I’ll be gentle, I promise.” Low and deep, his words shot straight through to the core of her, leaving her writhing in her own skin.
“I fell asleep the moment—” The words barely left her before his mouth crashed down on hers.
She wanted to say she didn’t need him to be gentle. She wanted to say that whatever it was that was burning inside him, she could see it. She wanted to say that she’d, always, want all of him—the tenderness and the passion, but also the harsher, tougher aspects of him.
The part that regretted a brother’s death even though he’d made his life hell.
The part that hated the father just as much as the part that still, somehow, loved and grieved for him. Deeply.
The part that had been stunned that she’d come looking for him all the way to Behraat.
Even the part that had made him walk away from her as much as the part that admitted that what they’d shared hadn’t been cheap.
All the parts that made him Zafir.
All of him. Always, she realized with a shiver.
But he didn’t give her a chance to say any of that, and she was perversely glad because it was easier to surrender to the pleasure between them than face what she knew would change her entire life.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HOT AND SLICK and expertly teasing, his wicked mouth was all she’d dreamed about in the past few weeks. The taste of him was erotic, the drag of his mouth righting her world, chasing away the silly anxiety, rocking through her with the force of an earthquake.
She wound her arms around his shoulders, hanging on as he drove her mindless with his desperate caresses.
The light in the room was only a soft glow yet she felt as if there was an explosion of color, sensation and dizzying excitement around her. Attar of roses and some wild fragrance from the desert and the scent of Zafir’s masculinity, it was a cocktail she got drunk on.
Silk that had been soft when she had worn it this morning now rasped roughly against her knotting nipples. The lace of panties rubbed against her wet folds.
She knew him, her body screamed with a roar of delight.
She knew this mouth, knew those deep strokes of his tongue, knew the bite of teeth that grazed her lip, not so gently, knew the hoarse grunt that fell from him when she tangled her tongue with his. Knew the hunger and passion he kept buried beneath his isolation, knew the heart of him.