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And he would always remember this. Here. Now. When she was half in love with him already. When she was lost in him and greedy for his touch. When she didn’t have the slightest idea what their future would look like.
It surprised him how very deep and powerful that pleasure ran, so atavistic, so rudimentary, it was almost indistinguishable from need. From the kind of hunger that he couldn’t indulge—the kind that would wreck not only the both of them, but all his carefully crafted plans besides.
He needed her to teeter on the edge, he reminded himself sternly. Not to fall.
“You aren’t listening to me,” she said then, rolling her eyes in a deeply disrespectful manner that should have offended him, yet didn’t. “That’s considered rude in both our cultures, I think you’ll find.”
You will break her heart, Nasser had warned him. But then, Khaled had never claimed to be a good man. Only a determined one.
And, oh, such a selfish one.
“Have you become so brave, then?” he asked into the silvery moonlight, lazy and flirtatious, ignoring the darkness beneath that he didn’t care to acknowledge. “That you would dare to scold a sultan?”
He reached over and took her hands in his, and that heat in him deepened, caught fire. He hadn’t expected to want her, particularly not with that jagged edge too much like raw need, but Khaled told himself that he could control it.
Because he had to control it. Because he was not his father.
“I dare,” she said, but her voice was little more than a shimmer in the dark, and he smiled.
“Come here,” he said, and tugged her to him.
She came easily, as he’d expected. Her breath came short and hard, as though she was running flat-out, and the moon made her eyes gleam, wide and filled with longing—and it wasn’t in him to resist her.
He didn’t try.
“Kiss me,” he said, a silken order against the night. “If you are so daring.”
He could feel her tremble against him, and he liked it. She tilted her head back, and he liked the fire in her golden gaze, and the hunger that very nearly matched his. He wanted to taste her, suddenly, as if he’d never wanted anything else.
As if he wasn’t as in control as he wanted to believe he was.
Cleo shifted up onto her toes, bracing herself against his chest, and he liked that too much to worry about control. She was feminine, elegant and sweet in the dresses she wore for him, her hair a tempting fall all around her simply because he liked it. She smelled like jasmine, sweet and soft and his. His.
First he would taste her. Then he’d control this—her—the way he knew he should have done all along.
Cleo shifted closer. He held her there, waiting, drawing it out, until he didn’t know which one of them was more needy. Just one taste, he told himself.
He let her lean into him, against him, pressing into his chest. And that dark, stalking thing inside him roared, predatory and hungry—
And then Cleo went up on her toes, put her sweet mouth to his, and everything simply exploded.
CHAPTER THREE
DESIRE ROCKETED THROUGH Khaled like a searing comet, sudden and fierce and stunning. It was an ambush. It burned him alive, nearly taking him out at the knees, nearly dropping him to the stones below.
He’d never felt anything like this. It was a bone-deep, all-encompassing madness. It changed everything. It made his heart slam against his chest, made his blood a sweet, unbearable fire in his veins, made him hard and desperate, greedy for more.
More of her lips, her scent, her softness. The wonder of her slender body pressed against him like a live wire. More of that humming awareness that tipped over into pounding, dizzying need. More of the shocked, excited noises she made in her throat, the lushness of her lips, the slick drag of her mouth over his.
Her kiss was a revelation and a curse, and he stopped thinking, stopped plotting. He forgot who he was, why he was doing this. He stopped playing his games, stopped teasing her, stopped worrying about strategy.
He felt primitive. Alive. Desperate. One hand rose to tangle in her hair, holding her head where he wanted it. The other slid to her hip and pulled her close, tighter.
And then he simply took her.
He feasted on her mouth, losing himself in the slide of her tongue against his, the perfection of that mouth of hers he hadn’t understood was so tempting, so blatantly erotic. She tasted like honey and made him long to taste her everywhere.
Made him long to simply lift her against him, part her delicate thighs and take her where they stood. The need in his blood was like a song, a velvet command.
