He took them off and lowered his face to hers.
A curl brushed over her forehead. His lips were soft like a butterfly’s wing on her closed eyelids, and the tender, unfamiliar sensation drew a gasp of pleasure from her. He kissed her on the mouth, twining his tongue with hers, licking, tasting, teasing. Faintly, she was aware that her hips were moving, pushing up as if seeking the weight of his. Instead, Elias stretched out alongside her. He put a hand on her breast, but she was very aware of the hard, hot part of him that was pressed against her thigh. He plucked at her nipple, the one she had pierced, and lanced a stab of erotic pleasure low into her belly.
Her small cry made him smile.
He nipped the tightening bud with his teeth, and she arched against his mouth, shamelessly clasping the back of his head to hold him in place. He suckled, patiently, relentlessly, until she felt the sinewy caress of his tongue inside her. She heard herself say please. He picked up the vial; oil poured into his palm, then his slick hand glided between her thighs. For a beat, he went motionless, as if he wanted to savor the feel of her liquid heat against his fingers. Please. He stroked, light and quick. “You liked this the last time,” he said, and her body contracted as it remembered the last time, the swelling pleasure, the need. Her breathing fractured. Oil melted into the downy insides of her thighs. Heat flashed, chased by chills.
She gripped his arm and stared up at his tense face. “I think I’m . . . I’m . . .”
“Spending?” he said gently. “Yes, that would be very nice.” His fingers penetrated her, slipping easily in and out. She was riveted to the one tense point under the pad of his thumb, to the enticing friction that was winding the tension tighter and tighter. She needed it to snap, or else she might die. She grabbed his wrist. Faster. He obliged, his smile raw and dark. Ecstasy surged, sudden and powerful like a riptide, pulling her right into her own black center. There was nothing. Then only pulsing bliss, exploding outward, flinging her to the edge of a galaxy. She had barely emerged, dazed and still twitching in the sheets, when Elias ran his oiled-up hand over himself. The hot muscled length of his body settled on top of hers, then there was pressure between her legs. He gazed down on her with a hard look in his eyes.
“Are you certain?”
“I’m certain, yes.”
Her body was sated; the void in her heart still craved to be filled. She raised her knees slightly, making a cradle for him between her thighs.
Elias’s expression changed when he entered her. It was a look of surprise, as if an unexpected emotion had seized him when he felt her around him, as though he had forgotten whatever plan he might have had. Her own grip on the situation was slipping rapidly; a place inside her she had never consciously felt before opened and yielded to accommodate him. Another person was in her most intimate space. Her panting turned a little frantic. Abruptly, Elias went still over her.
She clasped his hips. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t move, his hazy eyes searching her face. “Are you fine?”
“I am.”
“All right.”
He lowered his head when his hips met hers, as if needing a pause. She gazed up at her lover, senses stretched and flooding with the salty smell of aroused skin, the heavy fullness inside her, the brush of soft chest hair against her breasts. They were doing this. He moved. Shallow thrusts, so careful. He wasn’t fucking her, that whispered word no woman should know, printed only in magazines no decent person would read. The golden curve of his shoulder gleamed from his efforts to not do that, he was reining himself in. The intrusion of forbidden words made her slippery again, and her fingers danced over his back in gentle encouragement. Creaking mattress, guttural sighs. His chain touched her chin, then her nose when he pulled back. With a muttered curse, Elias pushed himself up on one arm and ripped the chain off, causing her to gasp with surprise.
He stroked her face with both hands. “It was annoying you, my darling.”
“I’m—” His next thrust had brought a wave of warm pleasure, and whatever she had meant to say turned into a husky moan. It was all the encouragement he had needed. The reins dropped. His head fell back, the tendons in his neck strained like harp strings. He was engaged in an age-old rhythm, hunting down his own release, and she cried out with him because he was finding such pleasure inside her.
He felt heavy on her after and had his head ducked against her neck. His breath drifted over the damp skin of her throat.
“I thought it would take longer,” she said out loud.
He gave a strangled grunt. When he looked at her, the afterglow of ecstasy was still bright on his face. “Because you underestimate yourself,” he said. “Severely.”
He parted from her with some reluctance. When he rolled back to face her, she was on her side, too, one hand tucked under her cheek, her other arm covering her breasts. Their gazes found each other and held. The silence filling the space was new, teetering and fragile like something freshly hatched. She had spent her life studying languages and now all the words she knew seemed too crude, too small, to embody what was passing between them.
Elias curved his hand around her shoulder, the warmth of his touch a welcome shock on her cooling skin.
“Ahlan,” he said. Welcome.
“Hullo,” she replied, a hesitant smile in her voice.
She knew his face well, his strong brows, the prominent nose, the nicely curved shape of his lips. Now there was more, a new rendering she suspected only she could see. Now he looks like he’s mine. A small shiver raised the hair on her arms. She glanced down the relaxed length of his body. How comfortable he appeared in his skin wherever he went, in whichever situation. He wasn’t the same color everywhere; he was pale where his trousers would cover him. She traced the demarcation line across his slim hip with a fingertip.
“Who are you really, Mr. Khoury?” she asked. “Someone else entirely? A farmer, perhaps, or a fisherman.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners. “I’m often in the sea when I work in Beirut.”
“You enjoy swimming?”
“I swim, yes, but usually we just jump off the rocks or the cliffs.”
“That sounds rather dangerous.”
“Not at all.” He said it too casually for her to believe him. “But for a moment, you fly.”
She understood the risks people took for that sensation. Her sated body still felt weightless enough to levitate. Just like that, he had taught her the difference between light and empty.
She eyed the angry red mark the chain had left on the side of his neck. “You broke your chain.”
He pursed his lips. “We broke your spectacles, too.”
“We did?” She made to raise her head.