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In a quick movement, his other arm laced her waist and pulled her to him as their chests clashed. His lips plundered hers as he kept his hand on her breast, caressing it daringly. His tongue looted her mouth ruthlessly.
Lucinda’s already failing reasoning fled, as only the heat of their bodies together overwhelmed her senses. Her palms found his muscled chest and slid up to his strong neck, to entangle his hair, making their bodies lock together in molten passion.
He deepened his kiss at the same time his thumb and forefinger started a slow agonising torture of the nipple, driving her to voracious pleasure. She opened more for him and he devoured her avidly.
Her tongue entwined with his, her throat sighed with the pleasure it gave her, trying to come closer to him. He groaned with her hips moving on him. Their entire bodies touched, the bulk of him printed on her belly. A gnawing hunger in her core, so intense it hurt.
He lifted his head just enough to look in her now opening pepper-mint eyes. “I’ll kill any man who comes near you!” He muttered hotly. His blood had turned to lava in his veins and all he wanted was to grab the neckline of her tunic and yank it, tearing the fine silk. But a feeble shred of rationality remaining in him predicted she’d be scared. So, he sultrily lifted her tunic, revealing her full breasts, crowned with dusky, appetising nipples. He stared mesmerised at her beauty, unable to stop himself from doing what he had fantasised about multiple times.
She gasped at her exposed breasts and his mouth came down on them hungry. An avalanche of heat sieged her. Her head fell back with a moan and she pressed his head on it, wanting his mouth to caress her forever. And he did. Repeatedly.
Lucinda vaguely registered the cushions touch her back, her hair everywhere, and now her torso lay bared at his mercy. He feasted on her. Each hand full of one of her breasts and his lips taking turns caressing the dusky-peaked mounds. She was going to die, she was sure of that. This, or the fire in her skin would burn her to ashes.
The sun faded through the lattice work on the window and Tariq didn’t stand a chance of stopping savouring her jasmine scented skin. At boiling point. Passion. Heat. Urge. He needed her. Now. He needed her so much, he might perish.
The ache in her core so acute she opened her legs to ferret out a semblance of relief. But all she succeeded was to extricate a groan from Tariq as she inadvertently nestled him in her. He kissed her savagely again and she followed, arching to find more of him.
His head lifted and cognac eyes plunged in her pepper-mint darkened ones, surrounded by her dried-dates hair. The overflowing response to him abraded his restraint. His hand crept down her belly and she startled when his fingers found her ready, heated core inside the pantaloons. She should repel him, indignant, but long fingers started tantalising circling movements and she melted, moaning, her head falling back almost in delirium.
Without even noticing it, she rotated her hips against his hand, trying to hold on to something eluding her. And she continued the chase. Sensations intensified, her parted lips sighed, her closed eyes enjoyed. He circled his hand terribly more and she exploded in a multi-coloured prism, crying out her vertigo.
Tariq hadn’t taken his attention from her a single second. Even in the dim twilight he drank on her drowning in pleasure. It consumed all his strength not to take her there and then. His flesh so hard, it wept in readiness. He didn’t know what he’d do with it. Well, he did but…
After a while, Lucinda emerged from her haze flushed and spent. She raised her eyes to him. “Tariq,” she breathed, “more.”
“For heaven’s sake, Lucinda!” Desperation in his tone. “You test me to maddening levels!”
But her curious hands already sneaked inside his loose pantaloons, finding his hard, sticky shaft. "Lucinda…” He pleaded when she closed her hand around him and moved to measure him. Her touch so delicious, he didn’t have the strength to make her interrupt her track.
“Tariq!” Her caress merciless as he reached the verge of perdition. “It’s too big!”
Painfully, he mustered a raspy murmur. “I assure you you’d enjoy it exceedingly were it in the right place.” He moaned again when she dared to stroke him further. “Don’t stop. Ever!” His head fell on the curve of her neck in pure delight.
Who wanted to stop? Not her, for certain. His texture like warm steel and silk in her fingers and she wished it could quench the hunger which renewed in her core. Her exploration continued to breaking point. He grunted as he undulated in her hand and then he was spilling his warm content. He pressed his hips on her, wanting so much more than that. Panting, he held her close to him.
Tariq and Lucinda sat on cushions in a hall at the villagers’ gathering in their honour. Tariq was a popular merchant in that route, respected for his honesty and fairness. The women in these villages dreamed of catching his attention one day.
Leaving the lodging had been one of the most tearing difficult thing for Tariq. If he was to follow his desires, he’d have locked that damn door and thrown away the blasted key, never to find it again. But in the end, they washed in the remaining bath water Lucinda had used and came to the whitewashed hall.
An array of deliciously prepared dishes lined the rug in the centre on large decorated copper round plates. On a corner, a group of musicians played the oud, a type of guitar, the tabla, a percussion instrument and the zukrah, a flute.
The group of women, veiled, sat separately and, with them, Lucinda. She’d decided to dress the richly embroidered tunic set and stood out among the group. She absorbed the scene around her and marvelled. Not even in her wildest reveries had she imagined she’d be in the middle of such a tableau somewhere in Tunisia. The experience came baffling. The air wafted the smell of spices and so many different ingredients of the food. The foreign music rhythm, involving, the torches on the walls coloured the walls in fiery shades. Tariq sat with the men. Even if they dressed their complete white garb, he stood out for his tallness and attractiveness. She couldn’t help noticing the other women in her group slipped glances at him surreptitiously. The fact made her strangely disquiet.
If she allowed her mind to wander to their moments in the lodging, her body would go aflame. The way he made her…implode in unprecedented pleasure. His kisses, the feel of him glued to her, his manly scent. She didn’t have the faintest idea of how she’d resist him in the future. Now that she knew what he could do to her, with her. Her insides hungered for more already.
After eating, the women stood up to dance. They pulled Lucinda with them, even if she tried to gesture she didn’t dance that style of music. Had never listened to it, to tell the truth. But they pushed her to the front, near the musicians. The other women started dancing and she was at a loss what to do, utterly self-conscious. After a few minutes, she decided it didn’t do to stand there motionless while every woman danced. She studied them, mimicking their moves.
English bodies learned to grow rigid and ram-rod straight. The dance came sinuous, fluid, flexible, but Lucinda managed to follow. As she twirled about, she caught Tariq’s darkened eyes. He ogled fixedly at her. Even better. She applied even bigger effort to do it more sensuously. She got in the mood and danced in sheer joy. Another twirl and he’d disappeared. Bewildered, she didn’t know what to think or where he might have gone.
Tariq must leave, or he’d have ravished her there and then. She didn’t dance perfectly, of course, being it her first time. She danced it well enough to tempt the hell out of him. How was he supposed to keep her untouched when he burned down for her? He raked his both hands in his obsidian hair. And no choice but to sleep in the lodge, moreover, to protect her from other men, who took noti
ce of her, if their appreciating looks were anything to go by at dinner. He cursed the day he drew the feeble plan to kidnap Adriana for atonement. Because he ended up with the most infuriating, desirable and off-limits woman on earth.
The hour much advanced when he finally came to the lodging. The men sat talking and drinking tea. Those women had retired earlier as the custom. An oil lamp still burned when he came in and Lucinda lay tucked in the blankets as the cool night air came in by the latticed window. Her frame still, too still for sleep. It held a tense quality incompatible with relaxed slumber.
He lay down on his side with his back to her. Sleepless, counting the minutes for dawn. Then he’d be able to go about preparing to leave. When the first light came at last, he got up from the damn bed. He hadn’t slept a wink. He’d done a herculean effort to keep motionless and not to give in to doing everything his sleepless mind and hard flesh demanded. With her. His mood in shambles, sexual frustration kept him irritable to the point of being nasty even to a grain of sand.
The moment Tariq had gone, Lucinda got to doze for a while. She’d lain awake the whole night, her insides in flames for him. First, she didn’t find sleep in the expectation of what’d happen when he came to the lodge. When he did, his nearness proved too much for her peace of mind. It was all she could do not to turn to him and give in to the things she imagined doing to him. By the time she sat on her camel, she was unfit for the day ahead.
