The Desert Lord's Bride / Wed by Deception: The Desert Lord's Bride. Emilie Rose

Why not, when she believed the same about him? This had to be what he’d said it was. Magic. And she wouldn’t think how or why. She’d just wallow in it.

      Somewhere in her hazy mind she realized the music had ended, another piece had started and they were no longer dancing. He was leading her down the wide marble steps to the gardens. And she was following him, still laughing, ready for anything. She felt like someone coming out of stasis and now rushing toward the first moments of life.

      He took her behind obscuring trees, pressed her against a smooth trunk, then took her face in both hands. In a rogue moonbeam slashing among the foliage, his face and obsidian gaze were supernatural in beauty, in impact. She felt penetrated, the notion of spontaneous combustion no longer such an impossibility anymore.

      Just as she thought she’d crumble to his feet in ashes she cried out, “Shehab…”

      He swallowed his name, growled hers inside her. “Farah…”

      And it was like opening a floodgate. She’d thought nothing could be better than his feel and scent. His taste was. She wanted to drown in it. She was drowning. In kisses that gave her glimpses of the ferocity she needed from him. His hands joined in her torment, gliding all over her, never pausing long enough to appease, until she writhed against him, whimpering, begging, not really knowing what she was begging for, “Shehab…please…”

      His lips clamped down on hers then, moist, branding, his tongue thrusting deep, singeing her with pleasure, breaching her with need, draining her of moans and reason.

      She took it all, not knowing what to do to pleasure him in turn. It was just so…so…everything. Pressure built, in her eyes, chest, loins. Her hands convulsed on his arms until he relented, lowered her zipper, pushed her gown and purse strap from her shoulders, setting her swollen breasts free.

      She keened. With relief, with the spike in arousal. He had her exposed, vulnerable. Maddened. “Please…”

      Her hands pressed her breasts together to mitigate their aching as everything inside her surged, gushed, needing anything…anything he would do to her. His fingers and tongue and teeth exploiting her every secret, his body all over hers, his manhood filling the void between her thighs, thrusting her to oblivion…

      Oh, God. What was she thinking?

      She wanted him to do all that to her? There? Then?

       What was wrong with her?

      Then revelation came. Nothing was wrong with her.

      Something…everything…was finally right.

      This was all wrong.

      He was supposed to be the one performing the seduction.

      He was always the one in control, easily taking what was on offer or leaving it, his libido never in the driver’s seat.

      No woman had ever had him a breath away from insanity.

      But as his eyes glazed over kiss-swollen lips and glistening eyes, over the perfection of full breasts pressed together in a mind-blowing offering, he couldn’t remember how this had started, or why he shouldn’t take what his body was bellowing for, come what may.

      He’d been wrong about her. This unpredictable enchantress was nothing like the hardened vixen he’d expected.

      And she was infinitely more dangerous for it.

      And it didn’t matter to him. Nothing did. Not her crimes or that she was another man’s mistress, who, an hour after meeting him, was begging him to do anything and everything to her. It only inflamed him more, the force of her equal hunger…

      No. No. He couldn’t give her what she wanted that easily.

      If he did, he’d be a one-night stand to her. A steady supply of those had to be how she filled her insatiable sexual needs. Although she’d been discreet, no doubt fearing her lover’s wrath. His reports on her hadn’t included any known liaisons.

      But she was pressing into him, all that glorious passion and flesh. He could smell her arousal, feel it vibrating in his loins, hear it thundering in his cells. Surely this much hunger wouldn’t be satisfied with one frenzied mating. He could take her now and it would only start her addiction, as he’d planned…

      No. He couldn’t risk it. He had to stop. Even if he wasn’t sure his potency would survive the blow.

      “Farah, wait.” She didn’t heed him, her lips at his pulse wringing coherence from his body. He tried again, his voice a gruff groan he didn’t recognize. “We have to stop…”

      And again her reaction was nothing he could have predicted. It was as if he’d shot her. She jackknifed away, stumbling as she fumbled to pull up her gown and purse, emotions slashing across her face. Shock, frustration, embarrassment. It was the distress that disturbed him. A distress she must surely be feigning.

      Before he could say anything she rasped, “You have someone in there…or somewhere, don’t you? I should have asked…” She stopped, her mortified gaze hardening into a glare. “Wait a minute. I’m less to blame here than you.” She struck his hands off. “What kind of a bastard remembers his commitment to another woman just before…What kind of promiscuous jerk starts a—a situation like this when-when…”

      Kettle calling the pot black, anyone? But then, now wasn’t the time to let her know that he knew she was a two-timer herself.

      He clamped her shoulders, wouldn’t let her shake him off. “You wait a minute. I have no one waiting for me in there, or anywhere.”

      Her lower lip trembled. “Really?”

      He barely stopped himself from catching that lip, making a feast of it. “Farah, I’m saying this once. I don’t have, and have never had, any kind of commitment to any woman.”

      “Which probably doesn’t say much about you.”

      Her scoffed volley was so unexpected it wrung a surprised laugh from him. “It says I’m free to start a ‘situation like this.’” She mumbled something. He frowned. “What did you say?”

      She shrugged, her color deepening. “Nothing.”

      “Farah.”

      “Listen, I should just shut up, preferably forever, and get the hell out of here. Do me a favor and forget you ever saw me.”

      “Alf la’nah—a thousand damnations—tell me what you said.”

      She grumbled some more. Then she sighed. “I said ‘Of course you’re free to start a situation like this. And to end it. And to hell with your partner, anyway.’ Satisfied now?”

      He laughed again. “Enti majnoonah, weh ajeebah…crazy and incredible.” He crowded her against the tree, snatched up her skirt, nudged her thighs apart as he lifted her, brought her down over an erection huge and hard enough for her to straddle. “Does it feel like I want to end this? Anywhere but inside you?”

      She gasped as his hardness dug into her core through his taub and her sodden panties. Her hands clutched at some branches to hold on to, her legs going around his hips. “Then—then why…?”

      He cupped her buttocks, rasped, “Why did I stop? Why aren’t we already in the throes of the first orgasm of many?”

      His words jolted through her, sent her back arching and her hips grinding down on his erection. Moonlight exploded into fireworks. He would climax, would make her climax if he’d only thrust at her, like this, through their clothes… No. Stop.

      He disentangled her legs from around his hips, gritted his teeth against the combined force of their frustration, took himself out of range of her scent and hunger.

      He stared out into the gardens, still blind. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is too fast.” He inhaled, struggled