LITMIR.BIZ

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      “You cannot be this disgusting boy’s friend. I forbid it.”

      She laughed, finding the telling easier than she’d expected it to be. “Too late. And he’s no longer a boy. He’s an adult man, married with two children and working in the diplomatic corps.”

      “I will see about that.”

      “You will do no such thing. Darren hurt me, but he didn’t abandon me, not like you did. The boy who told me about the bet? Darren disowned their friendship.”

      “He was quite the tarnished knight,” Asad said with heavy sarcasm.

      “He apologized. We moved forward.”

      “I too apologized.”

      “And I’m lying here in your bed. What more do you want, Asad?”

CHAPTER NINE

      THE question took Asad by surprise. Surely she knew exactly what he needed from her. “Your forgiveness.”

      She stared up at him in silence for several long seconds, her captivating blue eyes weighing him in a way he rarely encountered and then said, “I forgive you.”

      Could it truly be that easy? “You don’t mean that.”

      “Would I be here if I didn’t?” she asked, again referring to her place in his bed, their naked bodies pressed together, her gorgeous red tresses spread over his sheets.

      “You forgive too easily.”

      “Not really.”

      “Yes.” And why he should chide her about that when he was benefitting, he did not know.

      “Are you saying you want me to go back to ignoring you?”

      “No.” He wanted her to trust him and somehow he knew her forgiveness did not come packaged with that commodity. “I want you to take me into your body.”

      It wasn’t all he wanted, but since he wasn’t sure what exactly that did entail, he didn’t try to enlighten her.

      Her answer was to shift under him, opening herself to him, but there was a part of herself she held back, a shadow in her eyes that had never been there in the past. Probably inevitable considering their history, but Asad did not have to like it.

      Her trust was no longer on offer. And only now did he realize it had been a gift he’d taken every bit of as much for granted as that stupid high school boy had done. But Asad had been old enough to know better.

      He would make up for it and he would regain that part of their friendship that he had found so comforting, but had been too blind to see the importance of, six years ago.

      If she could forgive the little prick who had taken her virginity, call him friend and mean it, she could learn to give true forgiveness to Asad.

      Asad reached for a condom. It was time to join their bodies in a way she could not hide from, could not pretend did not matter. Not his Iris.

      He had brought her to the pinnacle of pleasure twice already because he knew he would not last long. Asad had only known his own hand for sexual release since well before Badra’s death. It was not enough, especially now that he had Iris in touching distance again.

      The idea of taking another lover, one that might betray him, or even worse, his daughter, had been anathema to him. Nawar’s needs had to come first. Leaving her in order to enjoy liaisons to slake his physical hungers had not appealed to Asad.

      He guided his head to Iris’s soft opening, pressing forward into the heated honey depths he could never forget, no matter how hard he tried. Her body encased him in pure pleasure and he had the undeniable sensation of coming home.

      This was where he belonged. For now, anyway.

      Iris gasped as his body claimed hers and he kissed the sound right from her lips.

      The baffling sense of coming home was so strong, once he was seated fully, he could not move. Despite the need clamoring in his body for release, he remained still, savoring the sensations that came from amazing sex.

      “I will not abandon you again,” he promised with the full force of his Bedouin honor. “I will be your best and truest friend.”

      “Possessive.”

      “I am.”

      “You always were.”

      He could not deny it.

      Her voice was strained when she asked, “Are you going to move, Asad?”

      “You wish for me to do so?” he taunted.

      The clenching of her inner body was his only answer, but her eyes demanded he listen.

      So he did, making love to her with less finesse than need. And instead of being bothered by his loss of control, he reveled in it. This was what had been missing for so long in his sex life.

      Primitive, ungovernable passion.

      In this, Asad’s Bedouin heritage ruled, not the urbanity Badra had demanded.

      His pleasure built like a volcano inside him, his balls burning with the need to erupt. He gritted his teeth, holding off the explosion as he did his best to bring his aziz to climax one more time.

      Their mouths joined in a primal echo of what their bodies were doing, sweat slickening the skin between them as he thrust into her.

      He felt her climax like it was his own and pleasure boiled up out of his cock with all the power of Mt. Vesuvius.

      He shouted his triumph even as she continued to convulse around him.

      He broke the kiss, still buried deep inside her. “You are mine.”

      “Your possessive side is showing again,” she gasped out, not sounding like it bothered her in the least.

      “I am a sheikh. What do you expect?”

      She smiled up at him, her eyes filled with sleepy satiation. “Nothing but what you are. I promise, Asad.”

      He nodded, knowing her further assurances that she understood the parameters of their relationship fully this time around should please him. But a tiny, primitive part of him did not like it and he was not at all certain why. However, the knowledge that she had no hidden agenda and was not trying to get anything out of him with her capitulation into his bed did something in the region of his heart he would have thought impossible.

      It moved him when he had been certain his diamond-hard heart could not be moved.

      Carefully withdrawing from her body, he rolled to the side and disposed of the condom. Then he pulled her close so she was completely wrapped in him. Despite the niggle of worry at his response to their lovemaking, for the first time in more years than he cared to count, Asad fell asleep feeling replete.

      He woke hours later to Iris trying to leave his bed. She’d pushed his arm off her and was trying to scoot away from him without making a sound.

      He slipped his hand back over her stomach, tightening his hold on her. “Where are you going?”

      “Back to my room.”

      “No, az—” He broke off before saying the word she’d denied him. “Little flower, you belong here.”

      “I don’t, Asad.”

      “You do.” And he set about proving it to her, claiming her with his body and words until she was sobbing her pleasure out in his arms.

      Afterward, they slept again, but he woke her in the early hours of the morning.

      She blinked up at him with question. “Time for me to go back to my bed?”

      No, damn it. If

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