Page 36 of The Desert King's Kidnapped Virgin
And now they were wrapped around each other on this bed that had loomed so large in her imagination since the day she’d arrived in this fortress of stone, a monument against the sand.
How many times had she dreamed about the things they might do here? How many nights had she lain in her bed in the harem, pretending her own hands belonged to him instead? Now she wasn’t pretending. Now it was finally happening.
And it put all her dreams to shame.
Cyrus was made of that same perfect bronze, everywhere. And as he held himself above her, the harsh lines of his face did not soften, precisely, but there was something about the intense way he gazed down at her that made her feel as if she did the softening for him.
Especially when his mouth was a stark line that carved out a hollow space within her, a cavern of fire and longing.
She was not at all surprised at the way she ached for him even now, with that melting heat everywhere. That ache was inside her, an overwhelming wildness that felt not unlike the desert outside. Shifting, voracious. An expanse with no end. Beautiful and terrible and all-consuming.
But then, he was the same.
Cyrus took her wrists in his hand, hauling her arms up over her head so that her breasts jutted up against him.
She had spent too long his harem, perhaps. Because she liked the way her breasts performed for him. For that look on his harshly beautiful face. For the way his dark eyes gleamed as he looked down upon her, freeing her quickly from the silk that barely contained the bounty that was his.
Only his.
The way her nipples were bold and needy and jutted toward him pleased her. Just as dancing for him had pleased her.
Because kissing this man had not broken any spells. If anything, kissing him had cast new ones, spinning her out and into the endless enchantment of need and desire, so she felt lost somewhere in the magic.
But the kind of lost that felt a whole lot like finding herself at last.
Especially when Cyrus made a low, deep noise of purely male approval at the sight of her breasts unbound for him.
He bent, one hand flat on the mattress beside her and the other stretched high to hold her hands where he wanted them, and he took one nipple deep into his mouth.
And as far as Hope could tell, tossed her straight into that molten flame.
Especially when Cyrus settled in as if he planned to be there some while.
Then he set himself to the task of driving her mad.
First he used his tongue and the suction of his devilish mouth. Then he used the edge of his teeth. As she arched against him, desperate to give him more—and more still—he slid his hands down to span her ribs so he might hold her up to him like an offering.
His mouth was a glorious delirium, and then he would use one hand to make the sensation that much more intense. That much better.
Over and over again, and all Hope could do was surrender.
To the crash of lightning, one strike after the next. To the wild storm of passion that taught her things about herself she hadn’t known before. Like the way everything was connected. That there was a straight line from each breast down into her core, and he knew precisely how to play it to make her moan.
He knew exactly how to make her little more than his instrument. How to play her body expertly until she was sobbing and shaking.
And then, even better, hurtled straight off the side of the cliff he’d made and broke apart entirely in midair.
For a while, then—perhaps an eternity—she drifted off somewhere. Into the starry night itself.
But she floated her way back down to earth, and she found that Cyrus had gone to the trouble of removing his clothes and was even now dispensing with what remained of hers.
And when he slid back into place beside her, the feel of his naked skin against hers was sweet and hot and so perfect she thought she might cry.
Everything inside her was humming and yielding, like she was made of honey, and she wanted nothing more than to sink into it. Tobecomeit.
Meanwhile, everything about Cyrus seemed heavy and taut and almost too hot, and that felt like more evidence that all of this wasright.
That despite the distraction of harem dances and her daily calls to a surprisingly not distraught Mignon,thiswas the point. That it didn’t matter how she’d gotten here or what had come before. That she could have conducted a thousand not-quite dates with appalling men, and none of them mattered at all, because her whole life had been leading to this.
