“Fitting too,” he finally said in a quiet voice. “It means handsome. Though I think in this case, I’d use beautiful instead.”
Warmth bloomed in her belly. Warmth and something else…a tingling that started in her chest, moved up to encircle her breasts and made them ache, then spread slowly down to settle like a heavy weight between her legs.
Need—a need she’d never experienced before—rushed through her body, calling to her in a way that left her breathless. She wanted to run her hand over his hard jaw, to brush her thumb across his lips. To know what he felt like—just once. Was afraid of what he’d do if she tried. “Th-thank you. For what you did.”
“I’d have killed him if I could.”
She should be scared—that cold look she recognized from the ring was back in his eyes—but she wasn’t. After everything she’d seen these last few days, she knew he wasn’t the monster the highborns made him out to be. He wasn’t even close. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because then I’d be thrown in isolation, or worse. And I wouldn’t be able to protect you. The same way you protected me last night.”
Oh…
That warmth shifted to something hot and insistent. She pressed her knees together to stop the ache building to explosive levels between her thighs. And this time, when the urge to touch him hit, she lifted her hand without thinking. The blanket fell to her waist, but she didn’t stop it. The need to feel his skin beneath her hands was too strong.
He tensed when her fingertips brushed his jaw. Realizing what she’d done, she pulled her hand back. “I’m sorry. His blood…you had a smudge.”
His hand captured hers before she could lower it, but there was no pain in his grip. Only a tingling she felt all the way to her core. “Don’t…stop. I…like your hands.”
Her pulse picked up speed. Was he saying…?
His eyes darkened, and as she watched desire bring a flush to his skin, her heart pounded hard. He placed her hand against his cheek again. Tingling sensations rushed through her flesh. And when his gaze dropped to her breast, visible with the blanket open at her waist, her nipples tightened until another wicked shot of heat arced all through her pelvis.
“I’d like to help you, Kavin,” he said in a gruff voice. “To thank you for helping me.”
He was asking permission. Never, not in a million years, had she imagined this was how it would happen.
Her entire body tightened at the erotic implication of his words. At what she imagined him doing to “thank” her. At what he would ask of her when that “thanking” was done. But there was no fear. No revulsion. Only…excitement. An excitement that told her this was right.
“Yes,” she whispered.
His eyes grew even darker. Beneath her, the muscles in his legs tightened as his arms closed around her back.
She wasn’t going to die. As he lifted her from the bed and carried her toward the pool she’d just been in, that realization settled in. Followed by the chilling reality that when this was over, she’d be sent back Zayd. And the sahad who’d saved her in more ways than one would forever be a memory.
Chapter Eight
Nasir wasn’t sure what he was doing. Certainly not anything he’d planned. But seeing that guard attacking the female…Kavin…it had unleashed something inside him. Something he thought had died long ago.
Heat pulsed through his groin as he lowered her to her feet. She clutched the blanket around her while he tugged off his sandals, then reached for a towel from the edge of the bath. Holding it up to shield her body, he waited while she dropped the blanket at her feet, then tucked the towel around her breasts.
Her eyes were wide and curious while he moved down into the warm water, still wearing his pants, and held a hand out for her.
She hesitated, then finally relaxed when she realized he wasn’t insisting she lose the towel. Slowly, she stepped down into the bath, the cloth hitting high against her legs, drawing his attention to the toned, creamy flesh of her thighs. Making him hard with just a look.
If ever there was a time when a female was more vulnerable, he couldn’t imagine it. Her fear was long gone. Her gratitude for what he’d done so palpable, he sensed right now she’d let him do anything to her that he wanted. But he didn’t want to be like her highborn. Didn’t want her to look upon him as she had that guard. What he wanted—for reasons even he didn’t understand at the moment—was to see her tempting lips turn up in a smile. To learn more about who she was and where she’d come from. To—for a moment—find a peace he’d been lacking for way too long.
She lowered herself into the water and sat on the seat that ran around the inside of the bath. Her gaze strayed to the bandage on his side. “What about your wound?”
“It’ll be fine.” He clenched his teeth as he eased down into the water, ignoring the burn in his side, then reached for a washcloth from the edge of the bath. After wetting the corner, he swiped the dirt and blood from her face. Blood, he was thankful to see, that wasn’t hers. “I think that guard will think twice about touching you again.”
“Thanks to you.”
His gaze skipped from her cheek to her eyes. Soft, hypnotic eyes, as green as the foam that rolled along the shores of his homeland. Reaching for her hand, he held her fingers up so she could see the bloody nails where she’d clawed at the guard’s eyes. “No, Kavin, thanks to you. If you want, I can show you just where to strike to protect yourself from another attack.”
“You can?”
One corner of his mouth curled at her surprised expression. “If you know where weakness lies, you can take down anyone, even someone twice your size.”
“I think…I’d like that. Yes,” she said more confidently. “I would.”
A shadow passed over her eyes, one that made him wonder if she was thinking about the highborns who’d enslaved her. Or of the djinn who would touch her and use her for their own perverse pleasure once she was finally free of the dungeons.
He tamped down the anger that thought conjured as he washed her hand, gently rubbing soap over her nails, removing any sign of that guard’s touch, then moved to her arms. In the silence between them, he was aware of every breath she took, of the way she watched him, of the scent of her skin—lavender and honey—so intoxicating he was amazed he hadn’t noticed it before.
“Where did you get that?”
“What?”
“This necklace.” She leaned forward and ran her fingertips over the fire opal at the base of his throat. And as if she’d touched him, warmth spread beneath the gemstone and into his chest, then lower, flooding his belly and groin.
He sucked in a surprised breath and looked down. She was studying the gem, not him, continuously rubbing her fingers over the opal as if it alone held her focus. But the contact made his entire body twitch and tingle with the need to feel her hands on his bare skin. And suddenly, he wanted her attention off the opal and directed only on him.
“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered.
“I’m bound to it.” Was that his voice? It didn’t sound like him. It was deep, gravelly, aroused. He cleared his throat, tried to kill the lust now simmering hot inside. Couldn’t.
“How?”
Holy Allah, this close, when she tipped those eyes up, he realized just how mesmerizing they really were. Like miniature swirling galaxies, alive with light and life. A light he’d gone so long without.
“I was captured by a sorceress who bound me to the opal.”
“A sorceress?”
He nodded, not entirely sure why he was telling her the truth, needing to share it for unknown reasons at the same time. “One who commands an army of Ghuls.”
“Zoraida?” she asked in surprise.
“You know of her?”
Eyes wide with wonder darted back to the opal. But she didn’t touch it again. And his pulse beat hard, waiting. Wanting…
“I’ve heard stories. About her power over those in the Wastelands.”
“Where are you from?”
“The
Northern Rim. My parents were…are”—she corrected—“farmers. They live in a small village. As children, we were taught to be on the lookout for Zoraida or any from her army.”
“And you’ve never seen her?”
“No. The only outsiders we ever encountered were…”
Her words trailed off, and a bleak look filled her soft eyes as she focused on the waterline at his bare chest.
Highborns. She didn’t need to say the word for him to understand. “How did you end up in Jahannam?”
She sighed, a heavy sound he felt in the bottom of his own chest. “Zayd—the highborn who brought me to you that first day—came through our village. I was selling vegetables in town with my younger sister. As soon as I recognized him for what he was, I knew we needed to leave. My sister and I rushed home. But he was already waiting.”
Of course he would have been. Nasir had noticed the way the highborn had eyed her in his cell. A predatory look of ownership. The prick had seen Kavin for what she was—beautiful, young, and innocent—and pounced.
“My powers weren’t very strong then,” she went on. “I’d only just learned to teleport, wasn’t very good at it, and my younger sister had yet to come into her gifts. If I’d been thinking, I’d have taken her somewhere else, but I was afraid. And I thought we’d be safe at home.”
“What happened then?”
Kavin continued to study his chest. “My parents spoke with him in hushed whispers. He kept looking at my sister, and I was afraid he was there for her. She was only a child. And then my father announced that I would be leaving with Zayd.”
A trick. The highborn had pretended to be interested in the child to get Kavin’s parents to offer her instead. The entire thing singed a new path of anger through Nasir’s stomach. That a parent could so easily give up one of his own… That the highborns in this land had the right to take anything they wanted…even a person…
“My mother told me I had to go willingly. That if I didn’t, they’d take my sister too. And she assured me I’d be safe. So I went. Even looked at it like it was an exciting adventure. Zayd was…pleasant, at the start. And the city was so different from what I’d known. But then...then he brought me here.” She sighed again and lifted her arm from the water, looking around the barren room. “To all of this. I don’t even know if they miss me.”
Pain radiated from her body as she lowered her hand into the water. A pain that rivaled his own. She’d been enslaved just as he had been. But in her case, it had been done by those who were supposed to protect and love her. Something that was a thousand times worse than what he’d been through.
“Zoraida captured my older brother, Tariq,” he said before he could stop himself. Before he even thought to try. “As heir to the Marid throne, we were frantic to find him.”
“Heir? Then that means you’re—”
“Was. Here, I’m nothing more than a slave. No different from you.”
Her gaze searched his, soft, so full of emotion, the hard, protective barrier he’d built around himself slowly started to crumble. “Do the highborns know? About your lineage?”
“I don’t think so. If they do, they’ve never said. But then, Zoraida banished me here out of anger, so I’m not sure how much she communicated to them.”
“How?” she whispered.
“Tariq had been missing for more than five years. We didn’t know if he was alive or dead. When we got word her army was ravaging the Wastelands, I went in the hope I could learn something about his status. I did, all right. Too much.”
To keep the anger at bay, he went back to cleaning her arms, and noticed, as they’d talked, that her towel had loosened until the wet cloth was barely covering her breasts. His pulse picked up speed, and that arousal he’d felt before came back swift and strong. “She’d bound Tariq to a fire opal, just like this one, and was sending him to the human realm to corrupt the souls of mortal women. For all the shit her army is doing, Zoraida needs those souls to fuel her immortality. She’d sentenced him as a pleasure slave.”
“Like me,” Kavin said softly.
He didn’t want to think about that. Didn’t want to think about Kavin being subjected to the same things Tariq had been. Forcing the unwanted images aside, he rubbed the cloth down her arm, swiping away blood and grime, bringing back the pink hue of her skin that was so damn alluring. “She knew my brother and I would search for Tariq. He was refusing to do her bidding any longer, so she set a trap.”
“For you?”
“And our younger brother, Ashur. The bond between brothers in our tribe is strong. She threatened our lives if Tariq didn’t do what she wanted. And with all three heirs to the Kingdom of Gannah under her control? She knew it wouldn’t be long until her army was strong enough to challenge our tribe once and for all.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Her sympathy touched him in a way her gentleness hadn’t before. He brushed his fingers up her arm, ran the washcloth across her collarbone, and his stomach tightened all over again at the way she drew in a breath and seemed to lift into his touch.
“I don’t know what happened to Tariq,” he said, trying hard not to look at the towel, now just barely covering her nipples. Hard, pert nipples, the tips of which he could see through the wet cloth whether he tried to or not. The tips of which he suddenly wanted to draw into his mouth again and again. “Something happened between them—I’m not sure what—but she became enraged and banished me to the pits in retaliation. I don’t know what happened to Tariq or Ashur.”
She leaned forward to run her fingers over the opal once more. A touch that this time sent ripples all through his groin and vibrations straight into his cock. “And this?”
He swallowed hard. Allah, but he wanted this female. He didn’t even care that she was Ghul and he was Marid and that they were trapped together in this cell. He wanted to lose himself inside her and forget about sorceresses and wars and the arena that had become his one and only solace. “It means I’m still bound to her.”
“So if you were to ever get free of these pits—”
“She could call me back at any moment.”
Her eyes lifted to his. Eyes he wondered if he could see forever in if he looked hard enough.
“It seems we’re both trapped in a prison,” she said softly, “even outside these walls.”
“It seems we are.”
Her gaze slid back to the opal, but this close, all he could see and feel and smell was her. Her chest rose and fell with her shallow breaths, and when water rippled near the tips of her breasts—her bare breasts—he realized the towel had slipped to her waist, and that she hadn’t stopped it.
“What would you do if you only had a few days left, Nasir?”
Spend them with you. The thought came out of nowhere, slammed into him, and stole his breath. Beneath the water, his dick tightened to painful levels. “I would make them matter.”
Dark lashes fluttered against her creamy skin as she looked up. “I would too.”
A thousand words hovered between them. Questions and answers he didn’t want to voice. But only one thing registered. Only one thing mattered.
He eased forward until his chest brushed the tips of her bare, enticing breasts. Lust, white-hot and overwhelming, arced between them, encouraged him. She didn’t ease away. Instead, her hands landed gently on his biceps, and her fingernails dug into his skin in such a deliciously wicked way, blood pounded in his cock.
“If I had only a few days left,” he whispered, “I would want to spend them pleasuring you.”
Approval flared hot in her gaze, and her nails dug in deeper to pull him even closer. So close her legs opened and her thighs brushed the outsides of his.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I would want that too.”
They weren’t talking in hypotheticals anymore. And knowing she—maybe even he—likely did only have a few days left, he intended to give her exactly what they both wanted.
He closed his arms around her, drawing her
tight to his chest, then lowered his mouth to within an inch of hers. “Let me pleasure you, Kavin.”
Chapter Nine
She smelled like vanilla and honey.
Nasir wasn’t sure if it was her perfume or shampoo or what, but he loved the scent. And the soft, supple feel of her bare breasts pressing against his chest.
He waited, wanting…needing…her approval before this went any further. And when she whispered the word yes and lifted her mouth to his, victory ricocheted through him.
His mouth lowered to hers. Warmth and life tingled beneath his lips. Her fingers slid into his hair, then she tipped her head. And when he licked at the seam of her mouth, she opened without hesitation. Let him in. Gave him his first taste of something rich and exotic and hypnotizing.
Someone moaned. He wasn’t sure if it was her or him, but he didn’t care. All he could focus on was the slick wetness of her mouth, the way her tongue languidly stroked his, the way her breasts tickled his chest.
“Kavin…” He lifted one hand to cup her face, to tip her head the other way so he could kiss her more deeply. So he could taste another inch of her.
She scooted closer, more fully onto his lap, until the heat of her bare sex rested against his fly. The towel fell from her body to float in the water behind her. And everywhere, her heat consumed him. Entranced him. Overwhelmed him.
His lips slid from her mouth to her jaw, then trailed hot kisses across to her ear. She sifted her other hand into his hair, groaned, and tipped her head, offering more. Offering anything he wanted. And the way she rocked against his lap, rubbing against his throbbing cock, nearly did him in.
He wanted to hear her pleasure, wanted to feel it himself. He lowered his head, cupped her right breast, then lifted it toward his mouth. She answered by easing back just enough, then moaned all over again as his tongue brushed her wet, tight nipple.
“Nasir…” Her fingers tightened in his hair. Her hips pushed against his again.
He licked all around the areola, then drew her breast into his mouth, suckling as he’d wanted to do, until she dropped her head back and moaned long and low in ecstasy.