Strangers in the Desert Read online

  Isabella swallowed. No, not near perfection. Definitely perfection. She’d seen enough muscled chests on the beaches of Maui for the past year to know perfection when she saw it.

  “I’m not getting anywhere,” she said, her pulse beginning to throb in her throat. And elsewhere.

  Her body was reacting, melting, aching. The surge of moisture between her legs didn’t shock her. Adan made her feel things that no man ever had. Hot, needy things. She wanted to roll with him in a bed, to feel his magnificent body inside hers, to see if the things she’d dreamed—remembered?—were as good as they were in her head.

  “It takes patience,” he said, stepping over another hedge, and then another one.

  “I’ve waited too long,” she said—and wondered exactly what she meant by that statement. He stepped over the last hedge, stopping in front of her. He was so near, his body radiating so much heat that she thought she might burn if she touched him.

  “Sometimes waiting makes the culmination that much sweeter.” His deep voice was a vibration of sound through her body. She felt the words as much as she heard them. “Finish the path, Isabella.”

  “Will you go with me?” Because it seemed it would be easier if someone was with her. Less frustrating.

  Slowly, he shook his head. “You have to walk it alone. But I’ll be waiting in the center.”

  And then, before she could stop him, he hopped the rest of the hedges into the middle. She wanted to do the same. She stood there, undecided for several moments. It was just a path, for heaven’s sake, and yet it intimidated her.

  “Trust me, habibti. Walk the path,” he urged.

  Isabella blew out a breath and started to trace her way through the path again. She didn’t want to finish. She wanted to be finished. Frustration built inside her like a snowball, gaining layers on each turn. The weight of it pushed outward until she felt she would split apart if she didn’t reach the middle. It urged her to just hop the hedges and join him.

  No.

  She was going to walk the damn thing at least once. She would not allow him to call her a quitter. She wasn’t a quitter, no matter what he might think. She didn’t know why she’d left her father’s house in the night, alone, but she would be damned if she’d let this man continue to believe it was because she had no staying power.

  She’d be damned if she’d let herself think it was because she had no staying power. Because that was her secret fear, she acknowledged. That she was somehow flawed and that Adan had been right. That she’d left because she couldn’t handle the responsibility.

  She circled toward the center again, then back outside, and then, just when she thought she was about to be directed to the outside yet again, the pathway spilled her into the grassy center. She stopped abruptly as a flood of emotion nearly overwhelmed her. And then the feelings of unworthiness, guilt and fear lifted off her shoulders—as if she’d been carrying a load of rocks that had suddenly fallen away.

  It was shocking. Because all she’d done was walk a circular, twisting path into a small clearing. It was nothing significant. Nothing earth-shaking or life-changing.

  And yet she felt as if she’d succeeded somehow.

  Adan held out his hand and she took it, let him pull her into the center of the clearing. He turned her until her back was to him. She could feel his body pressed close to hers, feel the heat and hardness of him. He was so solid, so overwhelming.

  And he’d made love to no one but her in three years.

  Isabella shivered. Why had she thought of that, out of everything she could possibly think of at this moment?

  His lips touched her ear. “It’s surprising how it makes you feel, isn’t it?”

  She could only nod.

  His hands were on her shoulders, burning into her. Then one slipped down, curved around her midsection and pulled her tighter to his body. His arousal was unmistakable, pressing into the small of her back, and she closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath.

  Suddenly, she knew why she was here. Why they were here together.

  “Adan … I want.” She couldn’t finish the sentence. A lump rose in her throat.

  “I know,” he replied. “It’s inevitable. It has been inevitable since the moment I found you again.”

  She turned in his embrace then, tilting her head back to gaze up at him. His face was stark, as if he had been fighting his feelings and could do so no longer. As if he’d surrendered to something bigger than himself.

  And she knew what it was. Desire. Lust. Need. Complete and total, as she’d never felt before.

  Except that wasn’t true, she realized. She had felt it before. For him. For Adan.

  She ran her palms up his bare chest, glorying in the feel of hot naked skin, of the hard smooth planes of muscle and the shuddering tension coiled there.

  He wrapped his arms around her body and pulled her in tight, his head lowering to claim her lips with his own.

  Isabella sighed with the pure pleasure of his kiss. His tongue tangled with hers as if it had done so a thousand times. His hands came up to cup her face, and then he deepened the kiss. She responded immediately, instinctually, though she had no conscious knowledge of what to do.

  Or did she?

  She dropped one hand down his torso, slid her fingers along the waistband of his shorts. She was rewarded with a growl of pleasure. A rush of pure feminine power went to her head.

  How many times had they kissed like this? How many times had she touched him exactly as she just had?

  “We need to go inside,” he said, lifting his head. “I am not prepared.”

  It took her a moment to figure out his meaning. “I’m on the pill,” she replied. And then she almost wished she hadn’t when he stiffened beneath her fingertips. “My cycles were irregular. The doctor said it would help regulate them.”

  She thought he might walk away then and there, but he hesitated only a moment before bending to kiss her again. Then he caught the bottom of her tank top in his fingers and slid it upward. She hadn’t put on a bra to come out here, so when he reached the naked flesh of her breasts, he groaned before breaking the kiss and whipping the shirt over her head.

  His broad hands wrapped around the soft mounds, his fingers tweaking her nipples gently. Isabella’s breath caught at the riot of sensations streaking through her. She clutched his forearms to steady herself.

  “You are beautiful, Isabella. Just as I remembered,” he said. There was an edge to his voice, a sharp slice of—something—that called out to her and made her body flood with heat and moisture.

  She was so ready for him. Ready for whatever he wanted from her.

  “Adan,” she gasped as his head dropped and he took one pouting nipple in his mouth. Her head fell back as he suckled her, his lips and teeth and tongue knowing exactly what to do in order to make that excruciating connection between her breast and her aching core. Every pull of his mouth on her nipple created an answering spike of pleasure in the wet crease between her legs. She ached for him, for his possession, in ways she hadn’t ever dreamed were possible before now.

  He stopped, and she cried out, reaching for him to keep him from stopping.

  Adan laughed, a low, satisfied male sound that made her nerve endings prickle with heat. “Do not fear, Isabella. I’m nowhere near finished with you yet.”

  He made quick work of the zipper on her jeans, sliding them from her body and turning to place them on the ground with her top. Then he slipped out of his shorts and spread them out, as well.

  Isabella’s breath caught at the sight of him naked in the moonlight. His body was magnificent, every line and shadow of him hard and perfectly formed. His erection jutted from his body proudly, and she found herself aching to touch him. To take him inside her and know what it felt like to make love with him.

  She went into his arms without hesitation, and he lowered her to the grass, placing her on top of the clothing. Around them, the hedges shut them in from prying eyes. Over top of them, stars blazon
ed across the sky in the billions while the moon gently lit the curves and hollows of their bodies.

  Adan kissed her again, and she put her arms around him, holding him close as he slipped a hand between her legs and found her wet center.

  His groan made her heart leap with joy. And then she couldn’t think because his thumb slid over her clitoris. Again and again while her body tautened like a bow beneath his fingers.

  When he stopped what he was doing, she murmured a protest, but he only laughed.

  “It will get better, I promise,” he said, and then he was kissing his way down her neck, her collarbone. He took his time with her breasts, licking and sucking until she was panting his name—and then he swiped his tongue down the center of her belly, dipping into the hollow of her belly button before teasing her bikini line with kisses.

  Isabella held her breath as he parted her soft folds. They were slick and swollen and so sensitive that she trembled with the slightest caress of his breath across her skin.

  And then his tongue dipped into her moistness and she arched off the ground in ecstasy.

  “We’ve hardly begun,” he murmured against her flesh. He slid his tongue the length of her, broadside, and then teased her clitoris with soft swirls that didn’t quite do what she wanted.

  But then he did do what she wanted, what she craved, as he licked and sucked and nibbled her until she flew apart much too quickly with a harsh cry. A single hot tear slipped down her cheek as she gasped with pleasure and surprise at the intensity of her release.

  Had it always been like this between them? She wanted desperately to remember, and yet she couldn’t. A trickle of memory here and there was all she’d been allowed, when what she wanted was for the floodgates to open and everything to come back.

  He moved up her body then, his mouth tangling with hers once more as he gripped her buttocks in a broad hand and positioned her beneath him. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her whole body shaking as he began to push inside her.

  “You must tell me if I hurt you,” he said, his muscles corded with the tension of taking his time.

  Isabella swallowed a gulp of fear. She wanted him so desperately, in spite of her release a few moments ago, and yet she was frightened of him, too. Frightened of what this would mean.

  “I don’t really know what to do,” she confessed shamefully. “I’m trying.”

  He kissed her again. “You’re doing everything right, habibti. Everything.”

  He moved forward relentlessly, and for a moment she thought he would be too much for her, that she would have to tell him to stop. Her fingers curled into his arms, her nails digging into him as he filled her.

  And then her body opened to him as if it had always done so, and he slid the rest of the way home with a groan. He was so deeply inside her she could feel the pulse-beat of his body within hers.

  He didn’t move, and she gazed up at him in wonder and shock. Had it always felt this way? The amazing sense of fullness and anticipation sent little electrical charges across her skin until she was dying for him to move, to take her even higher.

  How could she feel so much pleasure when he’d done nothing more than enter her body?

  The look on his face was equally awed and bewildered. It was as if time stopped while they stared into each other’s eyes, as if the world ceased to turn, and no one existed except the two of them.

  I love you echoed inside her heart—but her head insisted it wasn’t true. How could you love a man you’d forgotten, a man you hadn’t yet gotten to know again?

  You couldn’t. It was simply the overwhelming emotions she felt at being joined with him this way.

  “Isabella,” he said softly, and his voice held a kind of amazement that she recognized. As if he too were blown away by feelings he couldn’t explain.

  Another tear dropped down her cheek. He caught it with a finger.

  “It would be the hardest thing I have ever done, but if this hurts you, we can stop,” he told her. “Pain should not be a part of this. Ever.”

  She couldn’t tell him that pain was a part of it for her, but not physical pain. Never physical pain.

  “No,” she said quickly. “Oh, no. Don’t stop, Adan. Please don’t stop.”

  With a soft exclamation, he began to move inside her. He took his time at first. Her body instinctively knew his, knew the rhythm, and she rose to meet him as he withdrew again and again, his thrusts gaining power each time they met.

  It didn’t take long for their lovemaking to slip into the danger zone, to become something so hot and intense that they were no longer in control of it. At some point, their hands twined together on the ground above her head. Though it was cool in the garden, sweat slicked their bodies as they tangled together in the center of the labyrinth.

  Everything Adan did, she realized, was designed to spin out her pleasure for as long as he could make it last. But it was inevitable that it had to end. Isabella caught the fine edge of the wave, and then plunged into the depths of a shattering release that had her sobbing his name as she shoved her hips upward to meet him.

  Adan gripped her bottom in both hands, lifting her to him as he made her pleasure last and last and last. By the time it was over, she was wrung out, spun out, shattered beyond repair. She would never be the same again.

  “Look at me, Isabella,” he said.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  “I want to watch you come for me.”

  “I can’t possibly—”

  “Believe me, you can.” And then he began to move again. For the barest second, she wanted to beg him to stop—it was too much, too intense, and she would never survive it a second time. When he’d brought her to orgasm with his mouth, it had been amazing and wonderful.

  But this … this was earth-shattering not only to her body, but also to her soul.

  And then, just like that, the feeling caught again, spinning up inside her in one long pleasurable wave that she could no more deny than she could stop breathing.

  This time when she shattered, he went with her. He gripped her hips, holding her to him, and plunged deeply into her body, shuddering inside her with such force that he cried out sharply as he came.

  Eventually he rolled to his side, taking her with him until he was on his back and she was lying on top of him. She laid her head against his damp chest, breathing harder than she would have believed possible, and closed her eyes.

  His fingers traced up and down her spine, softly, rhythmically, until she felt herself drifting. They stayed like that until their bodies cooled and the night air sent a shiver tiptoeing across her.

  “We should go in,” Adan said. His voice sounded sleepy, as if he, too, had been drifting.

  Isabella pushed herself up, yawning. “I need my clothes.”

  Adan got to his feet and helped her up. “Forget the clothes,” he said. And then he swung her into his arms and carried her into the house.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ADAN woke sometime around dawn and reached for the woman in his bed. She came to him instantly, opened to him, and then he was stroking into her body and losing his sense of place, his sense of self, as he got lost inside her lush sensuality. He thrust into her with more force, more rawness, than he ever had before.

  She’d been so naive and sweet when he’d married her. He would not have considered making love to her like this, riding her body hard, glorying in the answering urgency of her need. She drove him to this, drove him to want to possess her again and again.

  He hadn’t intended to take her to his bed. Hell, he hadn’t intended to make love to her at all. When he’d gone outside earlier, it had been more out of curiosity than anything else. He hadn’t thought they would end up naked and making frantic love in the center of the labyrinth.

  But they had. And when it was time to come inside, he’d thought they would part ways when he carried her to her bed and left her there.

  Except that he’d gone straight to his room instead. Once there, he’d been deli
ghted when she’d wrapped her hand around him and let him know she was ready for another round. He’d lain on his back and thrust up inside her while she ground her hips against him, her beautiful breasts bouncing in the moonlight, her glorious hair tickling his chest when she leaned forward to suck one of his nipples.

  Now, her breathy moans filled his ears, made him crazy. He took her lips, caught her moans in his mouth and gave them back to her when he exploded inside her a short time later.

  Adan fell asleep again, his arms wrapped around the quivering, sighing woman beside him. When he awoke much later, light was streaming through the windows and across the bed—and he was alone.

  He sat up, half wondering if it had all been a dream. But, no, his body could attest to the fact it had not. He showered and dressed, then went in search of food, coffee and Isabella.

  He found her in the kitchen with Rafiq and Kalila. She carried Rafiq on her hip as she floated around the kitchen island, gathering ingredients from the refrigerator, and pots and pans from the hanging rack above. She looked beautiful, radiant, her entire body glowing with that special look of a well-pleasured woman.

  She smiled when she looked up and saw him. “Look, Rafi, there’s your daddy. Say hi to Daddy.”

  “Dada,” Rafiq yelled.

  Adan’s heart twisted. He loved Rafiq so much, and yet he couldn’t help the twinge of jealousy that stabbed into him while Isabella held their son. He should be pleased the boy liked her, and yet, part of him was not.

  Adan stepped forward and held out his arms, gratified when Rafiq went straight into them. It was petty of him, he knew, and yet he was delighted his boy wanted him more than he wanted to stay with Isabella.

  When he caught her eye, he was surprised to see that she didn’t seem disappointed. In fact, she was smiling at him as if they shared a secret.

  Which, he supposed, they did. She crooked an eyebrow, and he found himself thinking of last night—of her lips, her sighs, the catch in her throat, the feel of her sex surrounding him, of that warm, wet, amazing place he wanted to spend hours exploring.