beautiful, Arya," he said, between licks of her breasts. "So sensitive. You have such passion. I never knew."
"And you're amazing," she told him, between pants. By some miracle, she managed to hold back her desire to tell him she loved him.
"I want you so much." He looked up at her, his tousled, finally out of place hair hanging over one dark eye. "I cannot wait any more. I am going to take you now."
Yes, she wanted to say. Yes, take me. Make me yours forever. I want you, and I want to belong to you. But if she said any of that, he would likely kick her out of his bed and ban her from the palace for life. Or at least until she was married off. So she kissed him instead, and fumbled with the zipper of his trousers. She won her battle with them as he pulled her dress off, revealing bare flesh no man had ever seen.
He produced a condom from somewhere and rolled it down his impressive erection—though she had little to compare it to except what she'd felt through Jimmie deLuca's jeans and a website or two she'd peeped at. She wanted to tell him not to bother... Stupid as it was, she knew by instinct that she'd have his baby or no one's.
But that was out of the question. So she grabbed what she could of him, digging her nails into his sides, his back, and the muscles of his butt. His cock stroked against her sex, driving her toward the maddening edge of pleasure again.
"Arya," he said. "I am sorry. But I must—"
He pushed inside her. She felt a short burst of pain, which she welcomed, though it made her gasp for air.
He stilled, balancing above her on his elbows. He spoke with caressing words. "I believe it will fade."
The pain, he meant. She nodded. But it was only the pain of passing from one thing to another. Of becoming something new. "I know."
Tonight's pain would pass. It was the pain of tomorrow morning, when they parted, that would last. She put that thought aside and leaned up to kiss him. Their tongues tangled, mimicking the connection of their bodies. As he stayed still inside her, her body seemed to stretch and mold itself to him. She was tight all around him, but her body held him close, and the invasion didn't seem foreign to her. It felt right and good, like he had always been a part of her.
Then she felt... Like she wanted something more. Like simply holding him wasn't enough. As if of their own free will, her legs wrapped around his hips, drawing him farther inside. Her ankles crossed at the small of his back.
A shudder shook Javad's body. He seemed to struggle inside himself. She caressed his neck. "Did I do something wrong? Let me take off the shoes." She began to draw way from him.
"Leave them," he ordered, his voice a gritty baritone she'd never heard from him before.
She'd seen him check out women's feet when other men looked at their chests. Did he have a thing for shoes? Experimentally, she ran one heel lightly up his spine.
Her reward was watching his Adam's Apple bob painfully in his throat. She nearly laughed with feminine power. She knew something about His Highness Javad Shirin that no one else did. She would cling to the intimacy of it for the rest of her life.
Her triumph only lasted a moment. Until he grabbed one of her ankles and put it over his shoulder, making it very clear who was in charge in this bed. All her blood fled to her face. He planted a kiss on the inside of her knee. He was so deep into her... She felt so open and exposed... And incredibly sexy.
He pulled out of her and thrust back in with all the force of his body. Her throat went dry with the pleasure of it, of Javad so far inside, touching places no one had ever touched. His crotch touched her clit as he pushed in deep, claiming her.
"Lovely," came his throaty whisper.
She swallowed her response and concentrated on the stirring of her body. Oh, the friction of his chest hair on the back of her thigh. The scent of his arousal, of their mutual desire, was so incredibly earthy and sexy.
His grinding built an