Royal Protector: Traded to the Desert Sheikh / Royal Captive / His Pregnant Princess Bride

“I don’t think I can kiss a man who kept seventeen women,” she said, and he could feel each word against his mouth the same way he could feel the taut points of her nipples against his own chest, and neither was even close to enough. “I don’t think I can reconcile myself to it, whether you emptied your harem or not.”

“Then by all means, do not sully yourself,” he said against the lush seduction of her mouth. “You can stand there and suffer. I do not mind at all.”

And then he slid his hands up into the thick, wet glory of her hair, indulging himself. He dragged that smart mouth of hers the remaining millimeter toward his, and then finally, finally, he took her mouth with his.

CHAPTER FOUR (#u48f153ea-ef24-5b15-a735-d2ccbb5b67e5)

HIS KISS WAS like a bomb.

It detonated inside her, she burst into a shower of light and all the need and want and haunting desire that had been chasing her across the months she’d run from him slammed into her.

Amaya clung to him. She didn’t think. She didn’t want to think.

She kissed him back.

Just like six months ago, his kiss stormed through her. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t particularly kind. His kiss was carnal and dark, a blistering-hot invitation to a wickedness she’d experienced but once and still only vaguely understood.

But she wanted it. Oh, the things she wanted when this man took hold of her as if he had every right to her. As if her presence was all the surrender he required.

His hands moved from her hair to slide sleek against her skin, and she shuddered against him as he fit his hard palms to her breasts the same way he had done earlier to her cheek. But this was nothing like tender. This was pure, uncontainable wildness.

And it thrilled her, low and hot, dark and deep.

Amaya had never considered her breasts one way or the other. They were small, incapable of creating cleavage without help, and she’d have thought they weren’t the least bit sensual or enticing. But that low growl in Kavian’s throat, the one she felt inside her as he continued to take her mouth as if he truly did own her, made her think otherwise for the first time in her life.

Made her feel something like beautiful and cherished, all at once, which was as bright as another flame. And as dangerous.

When he pulled his mouth from hers, she let out a moaning noise she knew she’d later regret, which she almost regretted even as it happened—but in that moment, she didn’t care. She couldn’t.

There was that bright hot fire, dancing inside her. Whispering that she was as beautiful as he was, as powerful. Telling her that she was his. His mate, his match. His.

Amaya didn’t even care when he let out that very male sound of laughter, of sheer and unmistakable victory. She felt the same thing shudder through her, as if the more he won this intimate battle of theirs, the more she did, too. She only shook when he pressed his open mouth to the column of her throat, and then she simply gave herself over into his talented hands.

The way she’d done once before. He made her mindless with longing. He made her shake with need.

He made her feel more alive, brighter and wilder and hotter and right,than she’d imagined was possible.

And Kavian knew exactly what he was doing. He bent his head to her breasts and this time he took one taut peak in his mouth. Then he lifted her against him with another matter-of-fact display of his superior strength, settling her so that she straddled his leg. The bright hot center of her was flush against the rock-hard steel of his thigh, and she could tell by the way that his hands moved to press her there that it was no accident.

And then he sucked her nipple in, deep and hard despite the T-shirt she wore, and the world disappeared.

Heat. Delight. That impossible blaze she’d half convinced herself she’d made up over all these long months alone and on the run—

He never removed her T-shirt, and that made the whole thing feel more illicit, more wild. Amaya could hardly breathe. Her thoughts crashed into each other and flew apart, and there was only him.

Only Kavian. Only this.

He toyed with her through the sheer material, using his hot mouth, the edge of his teeth, his remarkable hands, all the while keeping her in place against his hard thigh, where she couldn’t help rocking herself with increasing intensity as the sensations stormed through her.

It was like being caught in a lightning storm, struck again and again and again.

Amaya couldn’t imagine anyone could survive this—and she didn’t care if she did. It was worth it, she thought. It was all worth it—

Harder and harder she moved herself against him, shameless and mindless at once, wanting only to do something about that wild need that shook through her and centered in her core. Wanting nothing more than him.

Kavian made a harsh noise, and that only lit her up all the brighter.

“You will be the death of me,” he growled, low and intent, as if he read her mind.

As if, she managed to think with no little wonder, she had the same affect on this hard, wicked man as he did on her.

He took one nipple deep into the heat of his mouth again while his fingers rolled the other between them, lazy and sure. The twin assaults were like a new flash of light, a new storm. He did it once, then again, her core molten against his thigh.

“Now, Amaya,” he ordered her, his mouth against her breast.

And Amaya shattered all around him, only aware that she screamed as she toppled straight over the edge into a wild oblivion when her own abandon echoed back from the walls as she lost herself completely in his arms.

When she came back to herself, Kavian had swept her up, high against his sculpted chest, and was carrying her out of the pool toward the central seating area. He wrapped her in a wide, soft bath sheet and sat her down on one of the lounging chairs. Amaya couldn’t breathe—but then he left her there while he claimed his own bath sheet and tucked it around his lean waist, which only seemed to call more attention to the mouthwatering perfection of his glorious form.

She should say or do something, surely. She told herself she would, just as soon as her head stopped spinning. Or when he came back over here and claimed her once again, as he was surely about to do.

But he didn’t.

Instead, Kavian went to the low table and the trays of food laid out for his pleasure. He took his time filling his plate with various local delicacies, and then sat in a lounge chair facing her where he could watch her as he ate.

Amaya didn’t understand what was happening.

Her heart still pounded. She could feel it in her temples, her throat, her belly. And hot and soft between her legs.

“Aren’t you going to...?”

She trailed off into nothing, irritated with herself. Why did this man turn her into the blushing, stammering fool she’d never been at any other point in her life? Why did he make her feel so foolish and so young with only the merest crook of his dark brow?

“If you cannot say it, Amaya, it does not exactly inspire me to do it,” he replied mildly. Almost reprovingly, she thought.

And then he carried on eating, as if he hadn’t left her in a spineless heap only moments before. As if that had all been a demonstration of some kind and he was entirely unaffected by the lesson he’d decided to teach her.

She didn’t know why that made her furious, but it did—in a shocking, searing wave from her head all the way down to her feet. And if the rush of temper felt like some kind of relief, she told herself that hardly mattered. She struggled to sit up, ignoring the aftershocks of all that pleasure that still stampeded through her, as if he really had made her body his own.

She didn’t want to think about that. She refused to think about that.

“I’m not a two-year-old,” she threw at him instead. “I have no idea what your expectations are. We had sex once, by accident, and you chased me all over the planet for six months. You rant about how I’m yours and how I gave myself to you. Butthen you give me an orgasm and break for a quick snack. Right here in a subterranean bathhouse where you kept seventeen women under lock and key until recently, or so you claim. I have no idea what reasonable is under these circumstances. I have no idea what you’re capable of doing.” She pulled in a breath that felt much too ragged. “I don’t have the slightest idea who you are.”

That gaze of his took on an unholy gleam, but he only lounged back in his seat, looking otherwise unperturbed. Remote, as if she were looking at a carving on the side of a temple, not a man. She thought of ancient kings and actual thrones, feats of chivalry and strength and drawn-out, epic battles better suited to Tolkien novels, and found her throat was dry again.

“No one was held here under lock and key,” he said after a moment, when she could feel anxiety like pinpricks all up and down her body, and was afraid she’d actually broken out in hives. “This is neither a prison nor a work of overwrought fiction.”

“I’ll keep that in mind the next time you start thundering on about promises.”