She wore a sleeveless top, in the sheerest see-through silk in gold. With the light from the high windows behind her, every inch of her body was outlined under the thin fabric. He swallowed, the shadow of her lacy bra, the indent of her navel instantly drowning him in images and sensations of how she had felt beneath him.
Walking around the stables, she came to a halt near him. “I have ordered for it to be demolished.”
He raised a brow even as he enjoyed the raw command in her tone.
Sinking her hands under the top, she slowly peeled off her leggings. The sight of her long, bare, sun-kissed thighs set need coursing through him, rattling his self-control. “It serves no purpose other than to remind you of what you had to endure.”
“It’s not the only thing that reminds me of everything I have gone through and everything I am not,” he said, studying her with a hunger that was becoming all too familiar. The sight of the thin strings of her panties dried up his throat. “And demolishing it won’t fix me, Zohra.”
Shaking her head, she reached him, a resigned smile on her lips. “Maybe I don’t think you need fixing, Ayaan. There is one thing I wish to do here before it goes down, though.”
She was upset and she was battling it with her fierce strength. He didn’t question why or how he knew. He just did. And in this mood, she was a force to be reckoned with.
He covered the last step between them before he realized he was moving. Being near her and not touching her was akin to not breathing. Their gazes held, speaking to each other, assessing each other, and he immediately felt surrounded by her warmth.
Warmth that had a different source from the desire that flew hotly in his veins. This time, he willingly lost the fight, surrendered his will to her.
His fingers trembling, he touched her forehead. She exhaled on a whoosh. “Are you all right?” Burying his nose in her hair, he took a deep breath, until she was all he knew, all he felt, all he was. “Everywhere?”
Her chin tilted up, she held his gaze even as pink scoured her cheekbones. “I am not going to break so easily.” Her words were a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down. And yet, he could be the one who could break her, who could crush that indomitable spirit.
She ran her fingers over his jaw, and he closed his eyes. Her touch feathered over him, fanning the flames of desire that always simmered. It had taken him an incredible amount of control to not go looking for her in the past two days.
The indescribable pleasure he had found with her was addictive, but he could still do without it. But the warmth of her smile, the quiet contentment he found near her, he was afraid they would be his downfall.
The pads of her thumbs brushed over his forehead, his nose, his lips. When he would have stopped her, she pushed his hands away. “You will not deny me this.”
“Giving orders, Princess?”
Her hands moved lower, lingered over his neck. “No, simply exercising my rights as your wife.”
She kissed his cheek, tugged at his earlobe with her teeth, scraped them over the pulse in his neck. Her nimble fingers began unbuttoning his cotton shirt. Need gripped his belly, his arousal instantaneous, powerful and relentless.
She pushed him against the wall and he let her, enjoying the daring in her gaze, more than content to see how far she would go.
Pushing his shirt off his shoulders, she kissed his pectoral. “You are like steel covered in velvet. My fingers itch to touch you, to scrape you, to mark you as you did me.”
His breath balled up in his throat. “Do it,” he said, wondering how easily she enslaved him.
She raked a fingernail over one nipple and he fisted his hands at his sides.
Her hands clasping his on either side, she bent and scraped her teeth over the other nipple. A hiss of breath left him as his skin felt too hot, too tight to hold him. Her pink tongue darting out, she licked him, and his erection twitched.
Like a cat licking up cream, she rained soft, wet kisses over his chest, his abdomen, around his navel. His muscles knotted so tight that it almost hurt, but he resisted the urge to sink his hands in her hair.
She licked a path next to the line of hair disappearing into his jeans, and he bucked off the wall. He closed his eyes, fighting for control. Instead the image of her mouth around his arousal burned in his brain. He felt her fingers undo the button, tug the zipper down.
Heat billowed in his blood, curled in his muscles, threatening to shove him out of his own skin.
He uncurled his fingers and plunged them into her hair. “Stop, Zohra,” he said, uncaring that his tone was begging for something even as he spoke the words that said the opposite.
She sank to her knees at his feet, full of fluid grace. She looked up, her eyelids droopy with lust. “Remember how you gave me a gift, Ayaan?”