The Inherited Bride (12 page)

He inhaled deeply, trying to clear his head. But he only succeeded in filling himself with her essence. “You must not touch me like that,” he said roughly. “Ever.”

“Adham, I … I want you so much,” she choked. “I want you so much I hurt with it.”

He closed his eyes, tried to block out the vision of perfect temptation that she created, with her black hair loose and wild, her full lips reddened with arousal, her cheeks flushed.

A tear slipped down her cheek and he was powerless to stay where he was—powerless to deny the need to comfort her. He drew her to him, wrapped his arms around her, inhaling her scent—uniquely Isabella, and more affecting than any form of torture he’d yet been subjected to.

He slid his hand over the silky black curls, giving himself permission to touch her, if only for a moment. For
just one moment he would forget. Forget that this burning ache was forbidden, that she was meant for someone else.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, her moist lips brushing his neck. He closed his eyes, tried to fight against the rising tide of desire that was threatening to overtake him.

“Adham.” She lifted her head, her blue eyes intent on his. She leaned in and pressed her lips lightly to his—only for a moment, her movements shy, her inexperience evident.

He held himself still, kept his fists clenched. Because if he allowed himself any sort of free rein he would tunnel his fingers through her hair and devour her mouth, as he had longed to do since the first moment he’d seen her.

She pulled back, the hurt in her eyes almost too much for him to bear. “Don’t you want me? I thought. I thought you did.”

He ground his teeth tightly together, trying to fight the urge to pull her to him, to take what she was offering. Everything she was offering and more. His heart was pounding, sweat beading on his forehead. He swallowed thickly, the motion almost painful to his hypersensitive body. Everything in him ached for her. And he couldn’t take her.
He couldn’t.

She was looking at him, those expressive blue eyes trained on him, wanting answers he shouldn’t give.

“I do want you,” he bit out, the words torn from him. “But wanting is not the same as taking.”

His pulse pounded. His muscles ached. It was taking every ounce of his strength, every bit of his physical and mental willpower, to keep himself from leaning in and tasting her lips. But his control was slipping, the pain of
resistance so acute he wasn’t certain if he could hold on any longer.

She looked down. “You said … you said I’m an independent woman who makes her own decisions. I’ve decided that I want you.”

Sweet, innocent Isabella, with the words of a temptress rolling off her lips, but without any of the practiced ease he was used to hearing from a woman, undid him completely. The fire that had been burning hot in his stomach exploded into an inferno, igniting his veins, taking over everything.

Life asked too much of him. He had never resented it before. Had never longed to escape his duty until this very moment. But faced with Isabella—beautiful, hungry for him, and with a need that also burned in him like a flame—he wished that he could be a different man.

Then she moved her hands. Her soft palms slid up his chest, over the place where his heart raged inside him. She kissed his jaw. He closed his eyes, everything, every thought, deserting him. There was nothing but this. Nothing but her. Nothing but the need to make her his, wholly and completely, in the most primitive way possible. His body shook with the force of his need, his mind blank of everything. Everything except for her.

Isabella gasped as Adham tightened his hold on her, pulling her onto his lap, bringing her into contact with the hardened length of his erection—the evidence she needed to know that he desired her as she desired him.

Excitement, fear and need slammed into her. Her entire body was shaking with it. Then he leaned in, taking her mouth with a ferocity she hadn’t expected, his lips firm, insistent, his tongue hot as it slid between her lips. She moaned, all the fear deserting her. This was
Adham.
The man she desired above all else.

She could have lived her entire life without having her picture taken in front of the Eiffel Tower. She would have been fine if she’d never been to a cinema. But this … she could not have lived never knowing what it was to make love with Adham.

She pushed his shirt from his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. The sight of him in the flickering lantern light was enough to push her arousal to unbearable heights. She moved her hands over his shoulders, across his back, loving the play of muscles beneath her fingertips, the smoothness of his skin, the heat that radiated from him.

And then she was on her back, his movement so quick and practiced that she hardly realized what was happening until she was flat out, looking at the swags of canvas and the spangled light from the punched-tin lanterns that were lit overhead.

He kissed her jaw, her neck, her collarbone, and she arched into him, running her fingers through his thick dark hair, holding him to her so that he would never stop giving her body attention with that amazing mouth.

His hands were quick at the belt of her robe, loosening the knot and parting the edges slowly, revealing most of her body, barely concealed in the filmy peach negligee. She wasn’t embarrassed for him to see her, for her body to be bare to him. She was thrilled beyond words. So excited to have him touching her, to be touching him. She wanted him so much. Beyond reason, beyond anything rational or sane or right. If she could just have him—just once. If he could be the man to show her what it really meant for a man and a woman to be joined. It wouldn’t be a lifetime, but maybe … maybe it could be enough.

“I thought of you in this,” he said, his voice rough, strained. “And I thought of you out of it.” The way he
looked at her, the tone of his voice, spoke of how much he desired her. The fact that his need seemed to match hers awed her completely.

He pushed the robe from her shoulders, then slid one of the tiny straps down. His eyes, so dark they were coal-black in the dim light, roamed over her, his breath harsh, fast and shallow.

He put his hand on her breast and moved his thumb over her nipple. It tightened for him, caused exquisite pleasure to shoot through her veins, made the dull ache at the apex of her thighs increase until it was a hollow pain.

She hooked her leg over his calf, pulled him against her, rubbed herself against the thick ridge of his arousal, evident through his jeans, in an attempt to assuage her need.

He tugged the top of the negligee down all the way, revealing her breasts, revealing her nipples, tight with need for him. He groaned and lowered his head, pressed his face to the valley between her breasts, inhaled deeply, slowly. Something about it seemed reverent, as though he were memorizing the moment, her scent,
her.
It made fresh tears spring to her eyes.

Then he rasped his tongue over one tightened bud before sucking it gently into his mouth. His body shuddered and hers matched him, shaking beneath the sensual assault. She dug her fingernails into his back, almost unable to handle the intensity of the pleasure that was rioting through her system.

He turned his attention to her other breast, nipping, licking, sucking until she was trembling beneath him, her body poised on the brink of something monumental, the tension in her belly so tight it had to unravel or she feared she might break.

“Adham,” she said, her voice shaky. “Please.”

It was all he needed. He stripped his jeans off, kicking them to the side, then pushed her negligee up and pulled the sheer matching panties down in one swift motion.

He touched her, sliding his finger through her slick folds, slipping it inside her. She let her legs fall apart, opened to him, trying to ease some of the tightness she felt. He added a second finger, slowly, gently stretching her, preparing her for him.

Then he moved, replacing his fingers with the blunt head of his erection, pressing his mouth against hers as he eased into her tight body. She gripped his shoulders, digging her nails into his back as she held back a cry of pain. He was big—bigger than she’d expected—and she hadn’t realized that it would hurt.

It made her even gladder that it was Adham. How could she trust this moment to anyone else?

She wrapped her legs around his, making more room between her thighs, helping some of the discomfort abate. And then the pain was gone, and waves of pleasure were slowly returning as her body adjusted to his, expanded to accommodate him. It seemed as though she were made for him, and he for her—as though he fit her perfectly, as though they would never be separate again.

And when he began to move inside her the star shapes cast by the lantern light seemed to rain down on her, brilliant flashes of light swirling around her. She felt that tension rising in her again—so tight she could barely move, think or breathe. Then she shattered, as Adham did, her muscles contracting around him as he spilled himself inside her, his muscles quivering, a harsh groan escaping his lips, mingling with her cry of completion.

They lay together, joined still, their breath, harsh and
uneven, the only sound other than the rain that was still pounding against the canvas.

Adham rolled to one side, his arm over his face, his body tense. She reached out and touched his forearm and he flinched, moved away from her. “Get dressed, Bella.”

She sat up, tugged her negligee and robe back into place, her heart thundering, her hands shaking. She ached between her thighs, both from pleasure and pain.

“Adham …”

“We are leaving.” He stood, taking his jeans from the floor and tugging them on, his movements quick and precise, his face flat, his jaw clenched tight.

She didn’t have to ask why. All she had to do was look at her left hand, at the diamond that rested there. The ring that had been given to her by Hassan—by the man he was sworn to protect. She felt sick.

You said I was an independent woman.

Her own selfishness was staggering. She had asked him, pleaded with him to ignore everything that was important to him. But the consequences of this, no matter what they were for her, would be so much worse for Adham.

She loved Adham. She knew that now—understood what had been growing in her from the first moment she’d seen him. Her love for him had made the price worth it to her. But she knew, looking at him now, that it had not been worth it for him. She had been a part of causing him to violate the very core of who he was. There was no love in that. What she had done had been an act of selfishness. And she didn’t know if he could ever forgive her for it. She didn’t know if she could forgive herself.

A
DHAM
ignored the pounding rain that was battering the windshield of the military helicopter he was maneuvering through the night sky. Staying at
Adalia
with her was not an option. He had already proven he could not trust himself with her, and he would not prolong a test of his strength that he was destined to fail.

The betrayal that he had committed burned in him—along with an intense, churning arousal that refused to be satisfied.

Half of him was crippled by shame, while the other half was replaying those heady moments of being inside Isabella over and over again. Reliving the tightness of her body, the unquestionable evidence that he was the only man to have joined himself to her, the rush of his orgasm as he’d spilled inside her. It had been heaven. And for that small glimpse of it he had earned himself the hottest spot in hell.

He had shamed himself, betrayed his only family. All for his own pleasure. There was no redeeming his actions.

Yes, Isabella had tempted him, enticed him, but he had acted of his own free will. He alone was responsible for what had transpired between them. His weakness had been the cause.

And now it could not be undone. Her innocence was lost. Innocence he was certain his brother was entitled to per the contract he had signed. Innocence that any traditional Umarahn man would expect of his bride on their wedding night.

Adham had never touched a virgin. And now he had not only taken a woman’s virginity, when he hadn’t the ability or the intention of offering her marriage, but he had taken the virginity of his brother’s woman. His brother’s future bride. A greater sin to have added to his already lengthy list he could not think of.

“I won’t tell him it was you.” Isabella’s soft, choked voice brought him out of his thoughts. “I’ll let him think it was some boy when I was at boarding school—or a man I met at a ball or something. I won’t ever tell him that you were the one I was … with … the first time. Because he’ll know, won’t he?”

She sounded sick. As sick as he felt at the thought of his brother, of any man, putting his hands on her, joining his body to hers. Everything elemental in him rejected the idea. His body was convinced that Isabella was his, even if his mind knew it was not possible. Even if Hassan’s ring hadn’t rested on her finger it would be an impossibility.

He was not the man for a woman who saw beauty, excitement in everything. What could he offer her but darkness? His memories of watching his parents die before his eyes? He had seen how painful just hearing him speak of it had been for her. And now her bright world view would forever be tainted with a black spot. Because of
him.

“Yes. He will know. There was no mistaking it.”

She lowered her head, her cheeks turning a deep rose
visible thanks to the bright lights on the dash. “Oh. Was it … did you find it … distasteful?”

Lust and regret swamped him in equal measure, his body burning with both. “There is no good answer to that question, Isabella.”

“Maybe not.”

He maneuvered the helicopter through the night sky, bringing it in for a smooth landing despite the raging storm.

Isabella finally loosened her grip on the handle above the door, her heart still pounding hard—from nerves and from her proximity with Adham.

He had acted totally unaffected by the weather, and by her—which was much more than she’d been able to manage on both counts. Her entire being still ached with need for Adham. Sex with him had been like a sudden immersion into a new world. She had been so innocent, so much more out of touch with the reality of lovemaking than she’d imagined herself to be. And now she felt as if a veil had been torn from her eyes—as though she could see things clearly, feel things more fully than she ever had before. Unfortunately that included the intense pain that invaded her chest whenever she thought of the reality she now found herself in.