The Last Prince of Dahaar

CHAPTER TEN


ZOHRA WOKE SLOWLY, her eyes adjusting to the soft light of the unfamiliar tent. Her limbs felt too heavy to move, as if they were filled with molten honey. Blinking, she pushed her hair out of her eyes and realized it was still damp from the bath Ayaan had ordered for her.

Solar-powered lamps illuminated a tent that was just as luxurious as hers but much larger. Frowning, she moved to get off the high bed and gasped, feeling an echo of pain in her shoulder. She rubbed it just as Ayaan materialized on the side of the bed.

His hair was damp, and he wore nothing but sweatpants. With a sprinkling of chest hair, the lean muscles of his torso beckoned her touch. She fisted her fingers in the sheets.

Just the sight of him in touching distance, in the same bed, weaved an intimacy that tugged at her. His words as he threw her on his bed came pounding back and a tingle swept down her body.

She remembered the maids coming in and pouring hot water into the claw-foot tub. And undressing her and giving her a massage despite Zohra’s objections.

The prince’s orders, one of them had whispered with a smile.

“Please tell me I did not faint,” she said, inwardly cursing herself. She wanted to add nothing more to the burden of guilt he already carried.

“I think you like falling asleep in bathtubs, ya habibati,” he whispered and she breathed in relief.

He sat in front of her, his face close to hers. And Zohra had to remind herself to keep breathing. His fingers found the sore spot on her shoulder. “Here?”

She nodded, the rough texture of his tone a velvet caress. His fingers moved with long, lingering strokes, reducing her body to a mass of sensation. The tang of his skin burrowed into her blood. More than physical hunger uncoiling inside.

She touched his chest, felt the shift of hard muscles under her seeking fingers, pulled herself forward until she was surrounded by the fortress of his lean body. With a sigh, she wrapped her hands around him, everything in her bracing for his rejection.

Instead, his arms came around her and he held her tight. Her throat locked down, and Zohra squeezed her eyes shut. It lasted only an infinitesimal moment but his embrace encompassed everything he was.

His fingers crawled up her nape, into her hair. She felt the press of his mouth at her temple, the whoosh of his breath over her skin. Swallowing her moan, she hid her face in his shoulder.

“You smell divine, latifa.”

She had no control over the next thing she did. She opened her mouth and licked his skin. Warmth billowed in her lower belly and pooled between her legs. He tasted of sweat and salt, like a hunger she had never known before.

A tremor racked his lean frame, the race of his heart a loud boom in her ears. “I want to be inside you so much that it is a physical ache...” The naked want in his tone rolled over her skin. She tilted forward and laced her fingers at his nape. “But, Ya Allah, Zohra, after everything you have seen, you still want this?” He buried his head in the crook of her shoulder. His mouth was hot and wet against her skin, branding her, his touch possessive, even as he struggled with himself, with honor that was his very blood. “Because if I touch you, I have no will left anymore to stop.”

Her stomach dived even at the thought that he might leave.

The image of him with his head in his hands, his features wreathed in pure anguish—it should have sent her running. Instead, for the first time, she felt the weight of the duty he shouldered with pride and grace, understood the honor he found in giving it his all, the struggle he took on every day without a complaint.

Because this was what he was born to do, this was his reality. She ached to be a part of his reality.

She wanted to give him pleasure, she wanted to be the escape he sought, she wanted to be with him because for the first time in as far as she could remember, Zohra felt no struggle, no confusion, but the rightness of this.

“Ayaan...” she sighed, wondering why her heart always had to choose the hardest path, “I am here not because this is something I have been warned not to do, not because it pushes the boundaries, not because I want to lash out at someone. I want this, I need this, for me.”

She whispered his name again and again over his skin, the beat of his racing heart the only sound she could hear, his lean, hard body the only thing she could touch. She ran her hands all over his chest, loving the ripple and shift of the hard muscles at her lightest touch.

Another curse ripped from his mouth, another shudder racked his powerful body. With his hands in her hair, he tugged her up. His gaze lit with the blaze of a thousand suns, his desire, his demons, his struggle—everything was laid out for her to see.

He stole her breath in that moment and she had no idea how to hold on to it, how to stop from losing herself in him.

He groaned, the sound weighed down with so much regret. “I have asked for it but I have no contraception, Zohra. And I cannot take a risk—”

“I have been on the pill for a long time,” she said, a niggling concern rising to the surface.

His gaze glittered with something unsaid, and Zohra wondered if the perfection of the moment was already fractured. “Ayaan, I know what—”

“Shh...” he said, clasping her face in his hands. “You want me as I am, do you not, Zohra?” She nodded, her heart crawling into her throat, the tightrope she was walking between want and something far stronger blurring at the beauty of the man holding her, both inside and out. “And I want you just the way you are.”


He pulled her up until their mouths were inches apart. Anticipation coiled in her stomach, her muscles molten. His mouth was warm, soft against hers, his control a strung out live wire around them. His hands were on her hips, as he licked her lower lip.

Sharp coils of pleasure arrowed lower when he nipped it and licked it again. Demanding, owning, possessive, and this time without an ounce of control. He bit her, licked her and stroked her and did it again. And again. Until their breaths mingled, until their mouths fused, until the rasp of his skin was etched into hers.

Breathing was something he granted her every other moment, and Zohra let herself be taken over.

An erotic swipe of his tongue, a quick sweep of his palms down her body, a whisper of sinful promise at her ear in Arabic. Lost in a sea of sensation, Zohra sank her fingers into his hair and tugged. Pushed her body against his and ran her hands feverishly over his back. “Please, Ayaan...” Her voice broke on a needy sob.

His hands moved to her shoulder, over her arms, his gaze hungry and intense. “I have no memory of another woman’s body, Zohra, no memory of feeling this kind of hunger, this kind of need to possess.” He licked the pulse at her neck, his breath fanning the flames of her own desire higher. “Do you know how much I have wanted to taste your skin, ya habibati, how much I have thought about you like this, how I would stand outside your door and try to remember all the reasons I couldn’t come inside and take what I wanted?” He sucked the same spot and she melted into his body. “I threw you out of my bedroom but the scent of your skin remained.” He brought her hands to his erection and she jolted at the feel of it. The pull between her thighs intensified at the thought of that velvet hardness entering her, moving inside her. “I have been without relief for a month because I couldn’t bear to touch myself. Because what I wanted was your hands on me, your mouth on me.” Wetness pooled between her thighs at the shocking eroticism of his very thoughts. She palmed his arousal and he jerked out of her grasp, his fingers clamping hers in a tight grip. “No, Zohra.” His fingers traced the neckline of her gown, and her skin snapped into life. “You cannot touch me until my ears are echoing with the sound of your moans, until I have kissed every inch of you, until I have licked you between your thighs...”

Her breath balled up in her throat. His mouth moved along her neckline, trailing wet heat along her skin, kissing and tasting, winding her tighter and higher. The ache between her thighs flared stronger and hotter.

She was so lost in what his mouth did, how it hovered over the curve of her breast, how his very breath seeped into her skin that she had no idea when his fingers had tugged the hem of her gown upward and over her head in one smooth movement. A cool breeze greeted her skin, and instinctively, Zohra lifted her hands.

But his gaze remained lower and she followed it. Molten heat spread across every cell, every inch of her. Her panties were of the sheerest cream-colored silk, cut so deep that they barely covered her mound. And they had tiny white stones at the hem that caught the light of the lanterns hanging from the top and glittered.

“I...” Zohra swallowed as he ran a knuckle over the hemline, a fierce rush of wetness drenching her. “My stylist packed my bags,” she finished lamely. He laid his palm, big and warm, fingers down, against her mound and Zohra jerked, and arched into his touch. The bundle of nerves at her sex cried for more. His mouth against her temple, he applied the tiniest of pressure with his fingers. And she sobbed, dug her teeth into his shoulder.

“I told them to ready you for me.” He swiped his tongue along the seam of her ear. And she shivered. “Also, remind to me thank your stylist.”

The roguishness in his tone was just as arousing as his fingers, and Zohra pushed into his touch.

His hands clasping hers, he bared her torso to his sight.

His eyes, darkened like a desert sky at dusk, roved over her breasts. Her nipples tightened into aching buds.

She squeezed her eyes shut. The sound of his breath, harsh and uneven, pinged over her nerves and she felt a hot rush of satisfaction. “My imagination could not do you justice, Zohra. Do you know how many times I have imagined this?”

She felt his fingers on the curve of her breast and moaned, the relentless dull, ache between her thighs turning into a sharp pull. Felt his abrasive fingers cup the weight of her breasts and jerked. Felt the tip of his fingers circle the tight, painful bud and shivered. Felt the wet heat of his mouth at the valley between, heard him draw in a deep breath, almost reverent. And she shook all over, her legs folding under her. But of course he held her up.

His hair-roughened arms wrapped around her waist, keeping her exactly where he wanted her. Her breasts turned heavy and aching, her throat dried, her breath stilted, but he didn’t touch the tautened tips, didn’t give her what she wanted, teasing, taunting, until a sob crawled up her throat.

She clutched his hand, ready to push herself into his touch. But he gripped her wrist. His breath fanned over her mouth just before he laved her lips again. “Open your eyes, Zohra.”

She looked down and saw the blunt square tips of his dark fingers tweak one aching nipple. Jerking at the pleasure that arrowed right to her core, she moaned. “Look at what I am doing to you,” he said in a roughened voice that was pure eroticism.

The sight was so compelling that Zohra couldn’t close her eyes even if he asked her to.

He pinched the nipple, and her knees came off the bed. His arm around her waist locked her in place as he bent and sucked the nipple into his mouth.

His name was a cry on her lips that reverberated around the tent, probably in the desert itself. Sinking her hands into his thick hair, she held him in place—a shameless request, a raw command, all rolled into one.

And he suckled deeper, longer, until all she could feel, could see, could hear was the raw strokes of his tongue over the hard tip. Pleasure drenched every cell, every thought on him, every inch of skin quivering with need.

He pushed her back onto the bed with his weight and Zohra folded, as if her limbs were nothing but sensation. He kissed her navel and downward, and she came off the bed. With a silky, golden-hued scarf, he gently tied her wrists before she could understand his intent. With a kiss on her mouth, he put some pillows under her head. “So that you can see what I am doing to you,” he whispered.

Heat unlike anything she had known scoured through her as he trailed wet, hot kisses over the hem of her thong. Then he pressed his mouth against her mound, drew a shuddering breath in. The sheer fabric was no barrier to the sensations that grew within her.

And then he was tugging them off her unresisting legs, spreading them wide, and leaning over her. “Look at me, Zohra,” he said, in a voice so heavy with desire, so laden with pleasure that it echoed through her.

Zohra met his gaze and forgot to breathe. She fought against the ties at her wrists, the need to touch him, the need to return the pleasure a dark craving inside her. His fingers were featherlight on her inner thighs, his gaze lust-soaked, primitive, that of a conquering warrior.

And then she felt his breath on the most sensitive part of her and he swiped at the throbbing flesh of her *oris with his tongue.

Zohra bucked off the bed, shaking, the pleasure that spread through her so acute, so addictive that her hips moved on their own. She cried aloud when he took another long, leisurely lick. A kiss came next, the image of his lush mouth against that quivering bundle shockingly intimate in her mind. He did it again and again and tight coils of sensation gripped her lower belly.

She made sounds—sometimes a sob, sometimes a moan, sometimes his name, begging, whimpering, her head thrashing against the bed, her throat dry. Spiraling need pulled at her, pushed her out of her skin, building when he was there, fragmenting in the infinitesimal moments his touch retreated.

And then he sucked at her core.

Her orgasm rocked through her with the force of a sandstorm. She gasped for breath, the sound spilling from her mouth was erotic to her own ears. Waves of pleasure—acute, breath-robbing—drenched her inside and out. And yet he didn’t stop. His hands locking her hips, he continued stroking her with his tongue until he wrung every ounce of pleasure from her body, until she was nothing but a mass of quivering sensations.

The aftershocks of her climax still tumbling through her body, she fell back against the bed. A shiver climbed up from the base of her spine and this time it arose from something inside her, something that wouldn’t settle down, something that asked questions she couldn’t answer. Keeping her tied hands above her, she moved to her side, a strange shyness coming over her.

His face a dark shadow in front of hers, Ayaan pushed the damp hair from her forehead and kissed her temple. His palm moved over the curve of her hip, over her shaking legs, over her back. The way he cocooned her soothed something inside her that shouldn’t have needed soothing. “Zohra?”

Her name on his tongue nestling deep into her, Zohra heard the unasked question and gave an answering nod.

Unwilling to look into the strange feeling, she pushed her bound wrists toward him.

He shook his head, pure masculine arrogance brimming in the golden brown depths. “I have never seen anything so erotic as you coming.” His fingers traced the curve of her butt, drew maddening lines up and down her spine. “I think I might get addicted to it.”


When he touched his mouth to hers, she moved her head, although not before the taste of him seeped into her lips. “I think the entire encampment heard me, Ayaan,” she said, her lust-soaked body catching up to the niggling warning from her mind. “Is it—”

“Nowhere near enough, ya habibati,” he said, grasping her question without being asked. Pushing her back into the bed, his body settled on top of hers. The hair on his legs rasped against her, the angular contours of his hips an intimate caress. He felt heavenly on top of her, the heavy weight of him a pleasure that rendered her mute.

“Ayaan?”

His face buried in her nape, he smiled. “Hmm...?”

“I...” the words she wanted to say rose to her lips and fell away. Fear was a tight knot in her throat. This moment with every inch of him flush against her, the ever-present shadows in his eyes at least held back for now, she didn’t want to fracture its fragility, she didn’t want to risk another’s name entering it.

She arched as he sucked at her neck, and then licked it. “I want something from you.”

His grip on her hips tightened an infinitesimal bit. “Tonight, anything you want, ya habibati.”

“I have dreamed of touching your scar, of kissing it, of tracing it with my tongue.”

She felt the rush of his exhale between her breasts. In the next second, her wrists were unbound. And he fell back against the bed.

She took in the sight of him, her breathing, raspy, shallow.

His hair falling onto his forehead, his arms resting above his head, the contours of his chest narrowing to his waist, the hard, tight abdomen, lean hips covered by the sweatpants, olive-colored skin gleaming with a sheen of sweat—it was an intimate sight she hugged to herself, a sensual feast that would forever be etched onto her mind.

Staying on her side, she ran tentative fingers over the winding scar, felt the puckered tissue. Tears rose in her throat and she swallowed them down. No, there was no place for sorrow in this moment either. “How did you get it?” she breathed the question into his skin, hiding her face.

The tangy scent of him held her in place, the gentle stroke of his fingers in her hair rooting her to that moment.

“They bound me with a metal rope that had several knots in it.”

A matter-of-fact reply.

She caught the sound of horror before it left her mouth. Sliding close, which rubbed her breasts against his side, she pressed her lips to the scar. His hands tightened in her hair, his abdomen bunched so tight that it took her a moment to understand.

He liked it.

Pulling herself up on an elbow, she ran her tongue slowly over the length of it, peppering it with kisses. “Turn around,” she said.

And to her delight, he did. With his darkly hungry gaze trained away from her, she was bolder. Sliding to her knees, she kissed it all the way across his torso. Her nipples grazed him again and this time, they both groaned.

“And again,” she whispered, and he lay on his chest.

She bent forward to reach the other side, and her hand fluttered over his chest, down to his navel and farther below.

Until her fingers grazed his erection. A hoarse grunt fell from his mouth, his hips thrusting upward into her hand. She palmed it, the rigid, pulsing length of it sending a rush of wetness to her core.

And then, before she could blink, he was on top of her, deliciously heavy.

His gaze collided with hers. Naked desire burned bright with dark shadows that always lingered but something else shimmered in his eyes, something that burrowed into her heart, wound itself around her. “You didn’t ask me permission to do that.”

A glimmer of contentment, that was what it was.

It was a gift, it burst through her like an explosion, a sight she gripped tight.

He pressed a hard kiss to her mouth, and Zohra felt the tempo of his kiss change. His hands moved over her body, thorough and erotic but now, there was an urgency that shattered that iron-fisted control. When he settled between her thighs and probed her entrance with the head of his erection, every thought disappeared from her head. And Zohra was lost again.

* * *

Would it ever be enough?

The unrelenting question pounded through Ayaan, mingling with the desire coursing through his blood, reverberating in every cell.

It had to be, he threw an arrogant answer at himself.

Because this was sex, after all.

Zohra might be nothing like the women he had known, but his body was reveling in the pleasure, in the simple act of touching, of kissing.

Ayaan ran his mouth over the pulse at Zohra’s neck, the taste of her tightening the need drumming through him. Her thighs automatically fell away, making a place for him, cradling his erection, the rasp of her quivering thighs against him unraveling the last thread of his control.

She moved under him, a rasping sound from her throat. Her breasts rubbed against his chest and his arousal tightened into steel.

He licked one taut nipple, and she arched like a bow, her hands sinking into his hair. He pulled it into his mouth and she screamed his name.

It was a needy, throaty sound that ripped through him. “Please Ayaan...” she whispered at his ear, before flicking at his earlobe with her tongue. “I want to touch you, I need to...”

Shaking his head, he ran a finger over the swollen flesh between her legs. She dug her teeth into his shoulder. He plunged a finger into her sex and she bit him, hard.

Ya Allah, she was wet and ready for him. He wanted to pleasure her again, bring her to climax, suffuse himself with the taste and scent of her but the sight of her pink flesh, wet and ready for him, and his own hunger—selfish and relentless, rode him hard.

Pushing her legs wide, he rubbed at the entrance with his penis. Sweat beaded on his forehead, every inch of his body throbbing for possession.

“Spread your legs for me, Zohra,” he said, in a voice that was far from his own.

When her boneless legs moved farther apart, he kept his hands on her hips and entered her in one hard thrust.

Stars exploding in his eyes, she clenched him tightly. Heat poured through his muscles, pushing for friction, the walls of her sex stretching around his erection. He was about to pull out and ram back into her when the stillness of her body filtered through to his lust-soaked mind.

He looked into her eyes, and saw the truth reflected there. Shock poured through him. “Of all the things to be lying about, Zohra?” he said, followed by a vicious curse he hadn’t ever uttered before.

Regret punctured the pleasure, but only a little. His thighs quaked at having to stay still. He pulled back, inch by excruciating inch, his shoulders feeling like steel rods at the pressure he put on them to be slow, to be gentle, when she moved the tiniest inch beneath him.

He bent down and nipped her lips, not hard but not gentle either. “Stay still, Zohra,” he said through gritted teeth, his skin sweaty, his hair drenched, and his body sliding out of its skin with the need to move.

But of course his willful wife paid no heed. “It doesn’t hurt, Ayaan, not anymore. It just feels...” Her hands gripping his shoulders, a thoughtful look on her face, she wiggled her hips upward again. “Ahhh...it feels full and achy and so good...Please, please move...”

Heat spiraled down his spine. With a curse that reverberated around them, he pushed back into her. Her throaty moan scraped along his skin, the experimental thrust of her hips blinding him to anything but sensation.

Pleasure soaked into his skin, rammed through his nerves until there was nothing but the wet heat of Zohra, of his wife. Giving in to his body’s natural rhythm, he moved again. There was no finesse to his thrusts, no filter on the words that left his lips. Her thrusts met his in perfect rhythm, the sounds she made became needier, faster. He willed his body to wait for her pleasure by the skin of his teeth.

On the next move, he rubbed the swollen flesh with his fingers and she fell apart like a thunderstorm. Her muscles contracting against the sensitive flesh of his arousal, pulling every inch of pleasure from him, he thrust again and orgasmed in an explosion of heat that touched every nerve, rocked through every inch of him.

Pleasure receded, the first wave of need blunted for now, and questions pounded back into him. He reversed their positions, still joined intimately.

Her arms instantly rose to cover her breasts. She looked down at their bodies still joined and a fierce blush claimed her cheeks.

“You were a virgin.”

Her gaze flew to his. “Yes.”

He pulled her hands from her breasts, fresh need rippling through him at the sight of those pale pink nipples. She held herself stiff, and the savage that he was, it turned him on. “You said—”

“Let go of my hands, Ayaan.”

“No,” he said and pulled her up until she was astride him in his lap. His erection thickened, lengthened inside her.

Her brown gaze flared wide. “Oh....you are—”

“Yes, ya habibi. It’s a long way down from the edge.”

The most masculine, arrogant, savage satisfaction gripped him now that the initial anger at her lie faded. He frowned, even as he relished the feral feeling.

Fierce emotions—either passion or fury or even love, he had never been capable of them. And yet in that moment, he couldn’t stem the savagery of his emotions.

Questions hurtled through him but he fought the urge. He would not bring another man’s name into this bed with her. Not tonight, not ever.


He was the only man to have possessed her, the only one who had known her in the most intimate of ways.

Her hands resting on his shoulders, she tried to wiggle out of his lap. The erotic friction of their joined bodies intensified a thousandfold.

Their mingled groans, the scent of sex—it was an irresistible aphrodisiac.

“You lied to me.”

“I said and did whatever I thought I needed to, to get out of the wedding,” she said. “But Faisal never asked for what I would have offered. I used to tease him for being so bound to traditions and customs that were laid down ages ago. But I think I understand now. And I...”

He clasped her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Finish your thought, Zohra. Because this is the last time I will tolerate his name on your lips, the thought of him on your mind.”

She looked at him, unblinking, the depth of emotion in it a reminder of what a force this woman was. “I am glad he never asked, Ayaan.”

He closed his eyes and breathed through the cloud of need that had his hips leaning upward into her. She had been a virgin, he reminded himself with the utmost effort. He needed to be gentle, even if it was a little late, he needed to let her body get used to him. “What does it make me that I am glad that he didn’t take it, Zohra? That your body has known only me, that...”

She lifted her hands, sunk them into her hair and tugged it back. It was such an unconsciously sensual movement that he lost that tenuous hold on himself. “Like I felt when you said that you don’t remember another woman’s body, when you said you never felt pleasure like this before?” He couldn’t help himself. He cupped her breasts and rubbed the tight nipples with the heel of his palm. “Whatever you think it makes you, I am one, too. So be kind to yourself,” she said, and arched into his touch with a sigh.

He bent his head and licked one nipple. She jerked, moving up and down, and it was his turn to groan. “Your breasts...I am never going to have enough. And you go up in flames when I touch them.”

“Yes,” she whispered, her spine so straight that he wondered if he would break her. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, the marks from the stubble of his jaw outlined on her neck and breasts. What in the name of God had she unleashed in him? She leaned her forehead against his and the trust in her action branded him. “I...it feels like I will combust...” She arched her body again, as if asking him for more, “...if you stop.”

Just once more, he promised himself. He would taste her just once more and then stop. Let her body breathe, let her rest. He pulled the nipple into his mouth and suckled. And she sobbed, his name falling in a guttural request from her lips. He heard his name on her mouth, the whimper of pleasure she made, that shredded his composure.

They were sounds he would never have enough of.

Burying his mouth at her neck, he fought for control. With her hands locked around his nape, she pushed closer to him until her breasts dragged deliciously against his chest. And kissed him on the mouth.

He gripped her hips when she moved, heat he had no strength to check built up inside him again. “You will be sore tomorrow, ya habibati.”

Her tongue traced the seam of his lips, her eyes twinkling. His grip loosened on her, his body moving of its own mind. She sucked on his tongue next and he lost the fight.

He thrust upward and she moved down. He pumped his hips faster, and she matched his rhythm. He cursed and she laughed. Leaving her to set the rhythm, he took her nipple in his mouth.

And she shattered with a guttural sigh. His own climax followed, rippling through him, breaking him apart and putting him back together and changing him.

Taking her with him, he fell back to the bed, and held her tight against him.

His memory wasn’t that corrupted to think his body had once known this kind of pleasure, his mind not so broken to think what had occurred was normal, to believe that it was anything short of spectacular.

Six years ago, he would have reveled in the discovery, taken it for granted as another of life’s gifts, shouted it out from the rooftops. The man he was today couldn’t stop the cold ripple of fear that churned in his gut, couldn’t shake the feeling that anything this good couldn’t last.