LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

her skin.

      He produced a towel from somewhere and dried her off, carefully and thoroughly, and before he was done she was restless and needy all over again, moving from foot to foot when he crouched down before her—

      And he knew it, she realized, when he glanced up at her, his eyes glittering darkly and that lush mouth of his in a crooked curve.

      Her breath left her in a rush.

      Rihad wrapped his hands around her hips and lifted her, then tipped her back so she sprawled out on the high bed before him. Then he folded up her knees and held her there with those too-strong hands of his, all of her aching lower body open to him. He looked at her for a smoldering moment, then leaned down and licked his way deep into her heat.

      Sterling made a sound that could only be described as a scream.

      And he took his damned time, all over again. He tasted every contour, every fold. He took her femininity as relentlessly and totally as he’d taken her mouth, and she was burning up for him so quickly, so deliriously, that she had the wild thought that she might not survive it.

      He laughed against the core of her and it went through her like lightning, and then once more, he threw her off the side of the planet into that sweet, hot oblivion.

      This time, when she came back to him he’d crawled up over her on the bed. He lined up that hard, proud length with her most sensitive flesh and, when she gasped out his name, pushed in deep.

      It was different this time. Darker, hotter.

      Harder.

      She felt the wave snap back, then swell, and she tossed her head against the bed, as afraid of what was coming as she was desperate for it.

      “Beg me,” he ordered her harshly against her ear as he held himself over her, and it was like its own caress, rough and wild.

      And she didn’t think. She didn’t argue.

      She obeyed. She begged.

      And it made it that much better.

      Hotter. Sweeter.

      Rihad pistoned in and out of her, making her a creature she’d never imagined she could be. She tore at him. She scratched him. She pleaded with him and he laughed, and that made her plead all the more. She writhed and she held on, she met each hard thrust as if she’d been made for this. For him. As if she’d waited all this time, as if it hadn’t been an accident, because she’d been meant for him all along.

      She wanted it to last forever. She thought she might die if it did.

      And this time, when she fell apart, he shouted out her name like a hoarse prayer and came with her.

      She didn’t know how long she slept, or if it was even sleep—maybe she’d simply passed out from the enormity of what had happened? What she’d finally done? But when she woke again, she was tucked up next to him and he was playing with her hair, sliding the slippery strands through those clever fingers of his, that enigmatic expression still on his darkly gorgeous face.

      That face of his she felt was stamped inside her, somehow, like a brand.

      Sterling felt made new. As if he’d taken her apart and put her back together, and she would never be quite the same. She felt deeply and irrevocably changed. Altered, as if she might not recognize herself in the mirror the next time she looked.

      She felt as if he’d taught her how to fly.

      And she couldn’t tell him that. He couldn’t know. It was a slippery slope—

      “Sterling.”

      She jolted back to him, to that curious light in his eyes and that little curve to his deliciously full mouth.

      “Rihad,” she said, and she wondered if his name would always sound like that to her now. Like a poem.

      “I want to ask you a question.”

      “Anything.” She meant it. Especially if they could keep doing this. Just a few hundred more times, she thought, and that might take the edge off.

      He shifted closer to her, propped himself up on one elbow and smiled into her eyes.

      “Tell me one thing,” he said, in that voice of his, so low and now intimately connected to something deep inside of her, as if he could simply flip a switch and she would long for him. She did. His dark gold eyes gleamed. “How is it possible that you were a virgin?”

      Sterling went very, very still. He reached over and pulled a long strand of her hair between his fingers again, and this time, he tugged. Gently enough, but it seared through her anyway.

      “That’s ridiculous,” she said, though her voice sounded faint—or maybe she couldn’t hear it very well, over the clatter of her heart against her ribs. Because what else could she say? “Who’s ever heard of a virgin my age?”

      His gaze held hers, steady and direct. “I didn’t ask you whether or not you were a virgin, Sterling. I know you were.” His lips curved into something tender if not quite a smile, and it pulled at her. “Hail Sterling, full of grace.”

      “It’s true,” she whispered, because the thought hadn’t occurred to her, really. Not fully formed anyway. “I accidentally performed a virgin birth.”

      “I asked you how.”

      “The usual way.” She blinked when his eyebrow arched. “By which I mean IVF, of course. I did tell you that your brother was gay.”

      “Yes, thank you.” His voice was as dry as the desert all around them. “I gathered that, as I saw no heavenly host hanging about the pool just now. How were you a virgin in the first place, Sterling? You’re not a nun, virgin birth aside.”

      She had to clear her throat, because she couldn’t get up and run. He would catch her in an instant and she’d end up answering anyway, just with a greater display of his superior strength to be awed by when she did. She had absolutely no doubt.

      “Well,” she said after what felt to her like a very long while, though he didn’t seem to move a muscle throughout it, “it wasn’t a plan. It just happened.”

      “How does such a thing just happen?” His gaze moved over her, and some heretofore unknown romantic part of her thrilled to that expression on his harshly beautiful face then, as if it really was tenderness. And oh, how she wanted it to be. “You were a beautiful girl on her own when you went to New York. A cautionary tale, really.”

      She opened her mouth to tell him another lie, but she couldn’t, somehow. It was as if everything really had changed, whether she liked it or not. It wasn’t only the sex. It was the baby. The way he’d saved her from herself when she’d been out of her mind on hormones and guilt. It was that he hadn’t hit her—had seemed astonished she’d thought he would. It was his gentleness now. It was the way he’d taken over her body so completely and yet still left her wanting more.

      Who was she kidding? It was him.

      And Sterling didn’t want to think about what that meant. She thought she knew—and that was truly insane. But she couldn’t lie to him, either. And there were different levels of the truth.

      “My foster parents were the nicest people,” she told him, smiling slightly as if that might make these things easier to talk about. As if anything could. “That’s what everybody always said, in case we weren’t grateful enough. They were kind. Giving. They took in kids like me who’d been otherwise completely abandoned. They had their own kids. They were active and responsible members of the community. Everyone adored them.” She couldn’t look away from him, though she wanted to. “And why wouldn’t they? My foster parents never left any marks. Sometimes they just hit us and other times they liked to play elaborate games, using us as targets. They practiced their aim with cigarettes, cans. Sometimes forks and knives. But there were never any bruises anyone could see.” She saw that dark thing move in his gaze and smiled again, deeper and harsher. “They always told us we were

Скачать книгу