Chapter Nine #2
‘Here,’ he whispered, distracted by the droplet’s ongoing path.
‘Mmm?’ Hana replied, her gaze unfocused by desire.
He traced the line of her sternum with his thumb.
‘Can I kiss you here?’
Hana’s lips curved up in the softest of smiles.
‘Yes.’
Her head fell back as he pulled her against him, bending to press his mouth against the flat plane between her breasts.
He wanted to do more than kiss her, but he hadn’t asked her yet.
And now that this was happening, he wouldn’t rush this for her.
Even if it nearly killed him. The need in him was building to the point of pain, but his needs didn’t matter. Only hers.
‘Here?’ he asked again, pushing back the material of the wet robe to reveal the gentle curve of her breast.
‘Yes,’ she gasped, her breaths quickening.
He closed his lips around taut nipples, and she arched upward, pressing herself into his mouth, and he couldn’t hold back the growl of his own pleasure as she did so. He could live here in this space between her soft moans and gasped breaths.
He finally released his claim on her breast when her body began to restlessly shift against his own as her desire for him became as unbearable as his for her.
She needed release, but wasn’t quite sure how to ask him for such a thing.
He could read it in her body’s frustration, hear it in the urgency of her cries.
But how could one ask for something that they had never known?
He didn’t think that she could, but he desperately wanted to show her, if she’d let him.
‘Can I touch you?’ he asked, unsurprised by the tremor of need shaking his own voice. Touching her would bring him as much pleasure as it would her. He needed, wanted, her release as much as she did.
Oh yes, yes please.
‘Hana?’
She didn’t realise she hadn’t said the words out loud.
‘Yes,’ she begged, not even recognising her own voice. Her heart was pounding so powerfully in her chest she thought she’d never recover.
His arm, a steel band around her waist, held her to him as the other smoothed down her side and around her hip, drawing her leg up and hooking it around his.
She gasped as she felt the hard length of him at her core and want pushed out fear, need eclipsing all rational thought.
She wanted his hands everywhere, his mouth, that wickedly clever mouth that made her dizzy from just his—
Her thoughts cut off as his fingers found the juncture of her thighs.
He growled at the same time as her shocked inhale as he pushed aside the wet silk of the robe to find her naked.
If she’d thought the heat in his gaze burned before, now it was a blaze.
He took her mouth in a kiss that felt as if he didn’t know whether to punish her or devour her, and Hana was shocked to find she wanted both.
His hand covered her, the warmth of his palm settling the skittish nerves that had found her again.
Pulling back from the searing kiss, his gaze searched hers as though looking for traces of concern or worry.
She clung to his broad shoulders, worried he would turn away. ‘Please. Please don’t stop.’
He nodded, as if more to himself than her, and pressed the heel of his hand slightly harder against her, and unable to help herself, she pressed back, shifting and restless.
And she thought she’d known pleasure then.
The constant, the warmth. But then he pressed her leg aside a little and his fingers found her and…
Oh.
She let him and the water hold her as she began a climb to an invisible height. This thumb stroked and his fingers teased, tested, filled, and all the while it was incredible, she also knew it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t everything. And suddenly, ravenous, she wanted it all.
‘Malik.’
His name was on her tongue and in her soul, because she didn’t know the words, didn’t have the questions to ask for what she wanted.
Because all she wanted was him. Something built inside her, even as she felt the absence of him.
And she didn’t want it like that. She didn’t want to be alone in this.
‘Malik,’ she said again.
‘What can I do, habibti?’ he asked, open, willing, wanting.
She bit her lip, the words piling up on her tongue, but not knowing why she couldn’t say it.
‘I… I want…’
She shook her head and trembled as his fingers danced across the thousands of delicate nerves all lit up by the pleasure he brought her.
‘You.’ The word fell from her lips on a sob.
‘I want you. I want to feel you,’ she said.
I want to know you, she thought, shocked by suddenly how vulnerable she felt.
Her breath was quivering in her lungs, not from desire this time but a sweep of fear, as if she were afraid she’d lose him, lose this, because whatever this was had suddenly become the most precious thing to her.
She prised her eyes open, forcing herself to look at him, to accept whatever response he could give her. And in his gaze she saw her desire reflected back at her.
‘Are you sure?’ Malik asked.
‘Absolutely,’ she replied truthfully.
He nodded. ‘Then I shall need to leave you for a moment to get contraception.’
Hana blushed furiously, embarrassed for being so, well, embarrassed to talk about such things with her husband. It overwhelmed any thought about why they would need to use it.
‘I am on contraception,’ she confessed hesitantly. ‘I needed it to help regulate my cycle,’ she said, her gaze downwards.
Malik lifted her chin with his finger, requiring her to meet his gaze.
‘I am glad you found something to help with that,’ he said simply as relief that he had been so understanding washed away the hint of shame.
‘You still want this?’ he asked again.
Hana nodded.
‘You can change your mind at any time. Tell me to stop and I will,’ he insisted.
‘Do you not want this?’ Hana asked hesitantly.
He let out a little laugh, but his eyes were serious. ‘Yes, I want this very much.’
And she felt it then. His truth. He did, and it eased some of the phantom hurt she felt in her chest. And with a new found confidence, she reached up to claim him with her mouth.
Her lips shaping his, teasing his mouth open, opening for him too.
He let her have her way, let her explore his body with her hands and her mouth and her tongue.
And had she not had a sense that time was running out, she would have been content to rediscover and learn the contours of his body, but something in her needed him.
As if he understood her needs better than she did, he lifted her up against him, her legs wrapping around his waist, and he walked them from the salty warmth of the bath and over towards the chaise in the sun-drenched internal courtyard.
Lush, green foliage was drenched in sunlight from a central shaft that reached up through the desert palace all the way to the sky.
The enclosed space was draped in swathes of the purest cotton, screening the area from the rest of the baths, but she only had eyes for him.
Malik came to sit on the chaise, arranging her in his lap, the rich dark look in his eyes promising her more, promising her what she wanted. His arm swept around her back and pulled her hard against him as he took control of the kiss.
His mouth devoured her, worshipped her, honoured her, as she pressed herself against him, her tender, swollen breasts only finding succour from his hard chest, the aching between her legs only finding pleasure from where his clever fingers quickly found her core.
His mouth left hers, only to latch on to her taut nipples, his tongue teasing and worrying them until she cried out her need.
He picked her up gently in his arms and laid her back down on the chaise, making space for himself between her legs.
Slowly, he undid the wet tie around her waist and gently eased the wet silk from her body.
She bit her lip as she watched him take her in, his eyes covering every inch of her as if he’d been starved of the sight of her.
‘You are truly beautiful, Hana,’ he said, when his gaze returned to her face.
‘So are you,’ she whispered, and his eyes smiled.
‘I don’t think that anyone has called me beautiful,’ he replied wryly.
‘Then they weren’t seeing you,’ she said, refusing to dismiss her appreciation of him.
His hand left her cheek and trailed to her breast, further down over the curve of her stomach and abdomen, to the cross-hatch of curls between her legs. The wetness he found there didn’t shame her or him, and her body arched instinctively as he once again found her core.
He met her eyes and she knew she didn’t have to ask again. He knew what she wanted.
Malik’s heart thundered in his chest, curses falling into his mind and out of them just as praises took up residence. She was so wet for him, so ready. And he knew that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the part of him that didn’t feel ready for her.
But this? This he could give her.