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He was so hard against her, so big and beautiful, like a red-hot monolith. His shoulders were a wonder of lean, smooth muscle and then his hard thigh moved between her legs, until she was melting against him, her whole body shivering as if he could throw her straight over that cliff into bliss again. That easily.
She had no doubt he could, and it scared her—but she channeled it all into that delirious slide of lips and tongues, the rude and delicious rocking of his hard thigh directly against the aching heart of her need, the unmistakable sounds of his mastery and her own thrilling capitulation.
Nothing mattered but this. Nothing mattered but him.
The fire raged higher. Khaled simply stroked her, his tongue and his thigh in stunning, overwhelming concert, and she was already shuddering, so close, so close—
“Enough,” he grated out, as if it hurt him.
He released her and stepped back, and she nearly sank to the ground, unable to process the tornado of sensation swirling in her, much less the fact that he’d stopped. He reached over and held her upright, that big hand of his wrapped tightly around one arm while his dark gaze burned into her.
Cleo could only stare at him, her breath coming too fast, her whole body in revolt, all that drugging, delicious passion still at a fever pitch inside her. She felt drugged. Altered and exposed, and the way he looked at her didn’t help.
“I will not take you up against the wall like some common whore,” he bit out, and it occurred to her to wonder if he wasn’t swept away in the same storm of insane lust that she was, despite the hectic glitter in his gaze. He scowled at her. “I am the Sultan of Jhurat, not a drunken sailor on his first shore leave in years.”
She didn’t know which felt like more of a slap, but the red flush that swallowed her whole then wasn’t passion any longer. It was shame. And then temper, like a vicious kick to her gut.
“You told me to kiss you out in the courtyard and just now you kissed me,” she threw at him, embarrassed and frustrated and utterly lost in this, whatever it was. “You can’t do that and then turn around and call me the whore unless you’re willing to call yourself the same!”
He blinked as if no one had ever shouted at him before. Perhaps no one had. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re doing this, not me,” she told him, confusion and temper swamping her. “Gowns and jewels and all the rest of this. What happened in the courtyard. What happened right now. Fidelity and sworn duty and I don’t even know what this is.”
Khaled’s other hand moved, and he frowned as if he didn’t have control over it as he dragged his thumb over her faintly swollen lips. His own mouth was a straight line, and his gaze had gone dark and brooding, the gray of long Februaries and winters without end, and still beautiful. Always so beautiful.
“I know what this is,” he said, but if she’d thought he would expand on that, she was disappointed when he only shook his head as if to clear it and then looked away.
“I leave in three days.” The spike of temper had drained away and now Cleo felt exhausted and too tired, with a dangerous prick of heat at the back of her eyes that warned her she might cry at any moment. She couldn’t allow that. “I don’t know what you want, Khaled.”
A trace of that elusive humor on his hard face. “I think you do.”
“Only not in the hall like a drunken sailor,” she snapped, her chin rising with her temper. “And only after you decide whether or not I’ve slept with too many people.”
He looked amazed at her temerity and entirely too forbidding, but she didn’t care. Or back down.
“Put your claws away,” he ordered her. “I didn’t hurt you.”
He was wrong about that, but she didn’t want to enlighten him if he couldn’t see it himself. If it wasn’t obvious.
If there was any possibility at all that she could survive the rest of this with her dignity intact.
“Khaled.” His name in her mouth seemed to surprise them both, urgent and rough. “There’s no need to drag this out. You asked me to stay. If you want me to go, say so.”
He shook his head then, his mouth in a grimmer line, his gaze dark and serious, and she didn’t know why it made her ache like this. Why it hurt so much when he’d promised her nothing. He’d only treated her like that fantasy version of herself—the elegant, beautiful, beloved Cleo Churchill she’d never dared dream she could become, because she knew better.
Because Brian had taught her better, hadn’t he?
