Craving Beauty

  Whimpering, she let his fingers slide through her curls and into the delicate folds between her legs. So unbearably soft that she made him feel incredibly male, she shuddered as he stroked her sensitive flesh in search of heat. When he found it, he gently pushed a single finger inside her, just enough to tantalize, to tempt. She cried out, her slender frame racked by tremors. His own body went taut with desperation.

  "Yes, you're wet." Voice beyond rough, he removed his hand and her body tried to follow. Chuckling hoarsely, he drew back and turned her in his arms, letting the water wash over her. "Wet all over."

  Eyes almost blind with desire met his. "You must finish," she ordered.

  "In a while." He had no idea how he was remaining in control. Perhaps it was the fact that despite her natural sultriness, she was an innocent and didn't know how to push him to the edge.

  Then she made a sound of utter frustration and her hands clasped his erection. "Now!"

  Pleasure splintered through his body as her hands held him with expertise that belied her claim of virginity. Experience he could accept, lies he despised. Growling, he thrust a hand through her hair, scattering the pins to the floor and sending that black-and-gold waterfall cascading down her back. "Who else have you held in your hands?"

  She scowled at him. "No one!" Then to his shock, she leaned forward and bit his lower lip, a sharp little snap that rocked him. "You have made me crazy as I warned."

  It was the edgy remark that calmed the hunter. Perhaps he had pushed her to take this bold step. Hira, he was beginning to learn, was a very strong woman. A woman who went after what she wanted. A woman who acknowledged her mistakes and called on him to explain his own actions.

  Reaching down between their bodies, he removed her hands, though she didn't go quietly. Moving them up above her head, he pinned them against the glass with one hand. She tried to escape, her eyes wild as she watched him soap up his free hand. Dropping the soap to the floor, he began to lather her breasts.

  Her body shuddered. "Marc..."

  "That's it, baby, say my name." He moved enough that the spray washed away the soap on her breasts. Then he leaned down and took her nipple into his mouth.

  She bucked and screamed. "Marc! Please! Please!"

  He wanted to give in to her, his body aching for release, but he knew the importance of seducing her properly. Once he had her, he'd want to taste her passion again and again, and she had to want him just as much. He released her hands and lifted her by the hips. She wrapped her legs around him, clasping him to her and opening herself to his penetration.

  "Not yet, cher." When she parted her lips to protest, he kissed her.

  Because her mouth was already open, it began as a much more carnal kiss than the one they'd shared outside. But despite that, he didn't ravage her. Instead, he teased her with short strokes and licks of his tongue that barely ventured beyond her lips. Her hands clenched in his hair. For a few moments she didn't respond, then her tongue shyly stroked his lower lip. He couldn't stop his body surging into her.

  He was inside her before he could breathe, lodged just barely in her heat.

  She tried to push forward and impale herself. He clasped her hips and kept her still, though sweat was pouring down his face, mixing with the shower spray. "Kiss me, cher. Kiss me like you want me deep inside you, touching you in a place no one else has ever breached." It was a sensual demand that pushed at her innocence but he needed her with him all the way, needed her to feel the same raging fire that was scorching him. His hunger would be satisfied with nothing less than her utter and complete participation, followed by her absolute, unflinching surrender.

  She gasped, tawny eyes almost swallowed by dark pupils. Then she leaned just a tiny bit forward, held his face in her hands and kissed him. It was the tenderness of her hold that rocked him. Before he could find his feet, she was obeying his order, kissing him with such passion that he felt her desire all the way to his toes, a sizzling heat that made every nerve ending he had fire in rapid sequence.

  Her tongue stroked his, shy but determined. "Husband..."

  The single trembling word shattered his control. Entwining his fingers with hers, he pressed their joined hands to the glass wall and slid another inch into her. Her whole body shook, but she didn't break eye contact.

  "Ready?"

  "Yes." Sensual determination was stamped in her features, her lips lush and just barely parted.

  He rocked against her, giving her time to get used to this absolute intimacy. She shuddered, and the tight sheath of her body gave way. "More?" he whispered, releasing her hands to stroke his over her buttocks while his body held hers pinned to the wall.

  It didn't surprise him that she understood. Her breasts heaving against his chest, she swallowed. "I'm sure, husband...Marc, I want you." No prevarication, no hesitation, just the truth of her desire.

  He read that truth in her exotic gaze. Though her pupils were hugely dilated, she was still with him, riding passion's currents. She was, he realized, his perfect match in this arena. Fire rippled through him, urging him to surge forward and brand her with his possession.

  Gritting his teeth against temptation, he held her wriggling hips still and nudged another tiny bit into her. Despite her open hunger, she was a novice at this--it was his task as her husband to prepare her, soothe her...and then storm her. Another tiny nudge.

  He did the same again and again, moving slowly deeper until he hit the feminine barrier he'd known was waiting for him. Some wholly primitive part of him growled in approval. She was his. For always. It was right that he was the one to initiate her into this. The only one. Fighting the grip of the primitive within, he took her lips in a voracious kiss and nudged again, this time with more force. That fine barrier stretched and then broke. Hira's fingers dug into his shoulders but she didn't pull away.

  Instead she returned his kiss with fierceness that destroyed him. Sure of his welcome, he pushed fully into her almost-shocking heat. The pleasure was indescribable. Lips locked with hers, he moved one hand to her bottom, squeezing and caressing as his other hand moved up to her breast. He could feel her fighting the multiple sensations, trying to control her senses.

  "Let go, baby. Let go for me." His husky demand was whispered into her mouth, almost drowned out by the water.

  But she'd heard. When he rolled her nipple in his fingers, her body jerked and then she cried out against his lips. Her surrender was apparent in the way she clung to him as ripples of pleasure tore through her body. In the deepest, most feminine part of her, she clenched around him again and again, an intimate caress that brought him to the edge of insanity. He clung to that edge with every ounce of strength he possessed, determined to hold her safe through her first ride into the firestorm of pleasure.

  Almost sobbing with the fury of her ecstasy, her legs locked tight around his hips, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against him, as if she wanted to crawl into his body.

  It was the final straw.

  He started moving faster, speeding his rhythm in a way designed to stroke her already sensitive inner tissues into shuddering abandon. He felt her shock as her body began to react again, felt her mouth open on the skin of his neck as she kissed him there, touched him, stroked her fingers into his wet hair. But she didn't back away.

  Her lush body accepted the pleasure he lavished on her. It was all he'd wanted, but she gave him more. With her lips and her hands and the way she held him to her, she not only accepted but actively participated, telling him without words that his pleasure mattered to her. It was his last thought before the spiraling void he'd been circling sucked him in.

  He took her over the edge with him, took her on another incandescent ride into a realm where pleasure was the only currency. His and hers.

  Five

  Hira wasn't sure she was functioning properly. Moving her head with care lest it fall off, she looked beside her to the hunter sharing the bed. Yes, she'd once thought him a civilized man, but that
had been a complete delusion. He was about as civilized as a mountain lion. His taking of her--and it had been a taking in the most basic sense--had been domineering, controlling and very, very sexual.

  This very uncivilized man thought he owned her even relaxed in sleep. She was pinned down with one heavy arm thrown across her waist and a muscular thigh across her lower legs; now that she'd given herself to him, he wouldn't allow her to back away from their sexual joining.

  But was it making love?

  No, she thought with a little pang of loss. It hadn't been making love. He desired her but he didn't love her. And as for her? She didn't know what to make of her own emotions. She'd been so sure she'd loved Romaz, and yet she'd never felt this desire to mate with him that she did for her American husband.

  From the first moment she'd seen Marc, her feelings had spun as wildly out of control as a desert storm. Turning, she raised one hand and brushed his dark hair off his face, unable to stop the tender caress of her fingertips across his strong jaw.

  He fascinated her, this hunter with his scars and his eyes full of shadows. She'd never seen a more magnificent man, and she came from a culture far more primitive in its beliefs about men and women than her new home. Zulheil's history had made its men toughened, somewhat wild creatures who had to be coaxed to trust a gentle feminine hand.

  Had she misjudged her husband and dealt with him in the worst possible way? If he were like the men of her homeland, then he would have to be treated with the same wary tenderness, for wild creatures didn't trust so easily as their civilized brethren. She'd thought him an American millionaire but that was merely a mask. He was far more like Zulheil's desert chieftains, who sometimes took women for the simple reason that they wanted them.

  Eyes the shade of aged silver were suddenly looking into hers. "How long have you been awake?" he demanded.

  "Hours and hours," she lied. Like those chieftains, he must never be given all he wanted, or he'd become a total dictator.

  His lips curved in that slow sexy smile that never failed to weaken her virtue, and he rolled over to lie on top of her, his arousal nudging at her. Shocked, she felt her eyes widen. "Already?"

  "The first two times were mere entrees, baby. I'm working toward the main course." He pushed into her.

  Gently. Oh, so gently.

  Surprised by the tenderness she could feel in the care he took with her well-loved body, she was undone. To her further shock, she accepted him easily, without pain or discomfort, feeling only sweet, hot hunger. He was slow this time around, moving with languorous ease that gave her much pleasure. As passion built, she rode the tide with him, clutching the sheets and letting him kiss and suck her breasts as he would, giving herself to her hunter.

  Marc watched Hira move sinuously beneath him and could barely believe she'd been a virgin only hours before. He'd been merciless, not letting her recover from that first joining before taking her again, stroking her to incoherent passion as morning turned to afternoon, his appetite for her and her pleasure out of control. But she'd been with him every step, a sensual, gorgeous creature whose body reacted to his touch like dynamite to fire. He'd never had his hands full of fire before. It was an education.

  Though he would never tell her, she'd spoiled him for other women. They damn well were going to stay married forever because he had no intention of going without, now that he knew what was possible. In bed she was his perfect mate, honest and giving with just a whisper of wildness. He wanted to coax more of that wildness from her, in the bedroom and out.

  Her breath hissed out from between her lips as he touched her deep in her heat, his engorged flesh stretching her swollen tissues. Slowing the tempo of his hips, he stroked and kissed and caressed, giving her the tenderness he'd denied her earlier. "Was I too rough, cher?"

  Exotic eyes of lightest brown met his. "Did I complain?"

  He grinned. "You said I made you crazy."

  She reached up and cupped his face in her hands. Obligingly he moved close enough for her to kiss him. "Yes. I am insane and that is your punishment."

  Chuckling, he inserted a hand between their bodies and caressed her where she was most sensitive. She moved against him, surprising him with her acceptance of the intimacy. To his delight her curious honesty apparently translated into open sensuality in bed. He gave her what she wanted and she returned the favor, locking her long legs around his hips and holding him to her.

  Watching her eyes go almost golden as she reached her climax, Marc wondered why this day felt more momentous than their wedding ceremony.

  *

  After that incredibly pleasurable day with her husband, Hira decided to truly fight for their marriage. She had taken vows. Though they hadn't been made with full freedom of choice, they had been made. She had many faults, but she wasn't a promise breaker.

  Her husband didn't love her, she thought as she walked along a stream that ran near the house. But neither did he treat her with the lack of courtesy that her father always showed her mother. It wasn't much, but it was better than the life she'd expected on her wedding night.

  For the past three weeks, ever since she'd admitted her desire for him, he'd been warm and indulgent. Whenever he could delegate work, he'd been teaching her about his Louisiana. Wide-eyed, she'd visited a voodoo practitioner's temple, gorged herself at a backwoods crawfish restaurant and ridden through the gator-infested bayou country that Marc loved so much.

  It was a lush land, full of surprises and hidden glory that easily enchanted. Attempting to appreciate this vivid, green country was not the hardest thing in her life. Especially when she saw it through her husband's eyes.

  But there was one thing that gave her pause. Every Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon, Marc disappeared. When she'd asked, he'd said that it had to do with some important business. But while he'd been out last week, his secretary had called looking for him, unable to get through to his mobile phone.

  Hira had given the woman a plausible excuse, but she couldn't help wondering where her husband went when he left her each sunny Sunday, and what he did that made him arrive home so very late every Wednesday.

  Though it was a painful thing, she accepted that despite the risk she'd taken in giving herself to him, he might have another lover. Romaz hadn't been satisfied with her--why should she be enough for this far more magnificent man? Clenching her fists, she took a deep breath of the wet air. Everything in this land was wet. Even her eyes.

  Rubbing her tears off her face with the backs of her hands, she decided that she wouldn't suffer in silence. She wasn't going to spend the rest of her life ignoring her husband's infidelities the way her mother did. Perhaps it had allowed Amira Dazirah to live with some semblance of happiness, but it would never suit her daughter.

  Walking out of the woods surrounding their extensive compound, she strode to the house and made her way to the master bedroom. The sound of the shower in the en suite bathroom only gave her a little peace. She knew she shouldn't spy on her husband's affairs but she couldn't bear to simply ask him, couldn't bear to tear open her soul that way. If he told her face-to-face that he had a lover, she wouldn't be able to hide her pain.

  She felt ashamed spying, but she would rather feel that than the crushing humiliation that would surely come if she went into a confrontation with no knowledge whatsoever. She needed some shield against Marc, some way to protect herself. As he'd shown her last night, when his hands touched her body, she became his in a way that defied her own mind and soul.

  Ears perked to catch the slightest sound, she reached into Marc's jacket pockets and pulled out everything in them. The wallet and keys went straight back in. She started going through the handful of receipts in one pocket. No matter that this was wrong, she had to know, for the idea of her husband finding succor in some other woman's arms was unbearable.

  "Gas," she muttered, scanning the receipts. "Groceries. Clothing...from a boys store? Electronic equipment. Flowers." That was all there was. Brow furrowed, she put t
he receipts away just as the shower shut off.

  Giving a soft gasp, she whirled out of the master bedroom and padded quickly into her own. Though she hadn't spent a night there since she'd lain with Marc, it was still her room, full of feminine things and her favorite books, a place of retreat when her hunter of a husband became too dominating or overwhelming. However, she'd rarely been pushed to use it in the past weeks.

  She'd found herself drifting into the relaxed living room to sit with Marc, without ever consciously planning such a domestic scene. He never asked her to be with him, but if she was away from him for more than an hour, he came looking. Until now she'd thought that implied growing care for her, and her heart had bloomed. But what if it had been nothing more than a proprietary search for the woman he considered his property?

  *

  The instant Marc walked out of the bathroom, he knew that someone had been in the bedroom. Barely a second later he knew it had been his wife. Her elusive scent tantalized his nostrils and threatened to arouse him when he had no intention of being made a slave to desire.

  As he dressed, he thought over her distant behavior of the past week. He'd wondered if she was trying out her fledgling sensual wings, seeing if she could control him by withholding her full self from their intimacy. If she was, he'd shown her last night that she was a novice in that game.

  He frowned. Had he been too demanding of her? He hadn't let her hold back an inch, asking more and more and still more, not letting her sleep until she'd begged him for rest. Even then a part of him had raged to keep taking her, stamping his mark on her, forcing her to remove the distance he'd glimpsed on her face even in the darkness.

  He swore under his breath. Despite her sensual nature, she really was an innocent in that particular arena. His gut twisted at the thought that he might've scared her with his intensity, even though she'd ridden every wave with him.

  *

  Hira sat in her room, unable to stop thinking about what she'd found. The groceries, clothing and computer equipment hadn't come to this house. Neither had the flowers, and that hurt most of all. Her husband had never given her flowers, never so much as a tiny trinket to show her that he felt some affection for her. That wasn't to say he was a stingy husband. No, in some ways he was far too generous.