Today's excerpt is from my Arabian Nights romance novel Heart of Flame. Since the publisher Samhain is shutting down at the end of this month, this is your last chance to see or get your hands on this novel until I reprint...
Ahleme has been abducted by a djinni, who is trying hard to persuade her to become the mother of his children...
So close to begging permission of her, his discomfort revealed itself in the drawing back of his lips, a flash of fire in his eyes. The sharp points of his incisors served Ahleme as a belated reminder of the horror of her situation. She looked down at his open palm over her smooth thigh and noted the curved claws that tipped his fingers. If he gripped her hard he could rip her open, she thought, her mouth drying. She shrank away minutely.
‘No. Please don’t. No more.’
For a moment shadows chased across his skin and she thought he was going to explode, but he swallowed hard and held his temper. ‘Then let me touch you,’ he said, drawing one finger across the small of her back. ‘Your beauty drives me mad with love.’ His breath was hot on her bare shoulder. ‘I’ve watched you and watched you, and wanted so much to -’ He sensed her flinching. ‘Are you still frightened? Don’t you want to be loved like this?’
‘Don’t,’ she whimpered. It couldn’t be mistaken for a command. His lips brushed her shoulder, silk on silk.
'Then carry on with this chess game with me,’ he whispered, the purr of his voice igniting little flashes of sensation across her skin, ‘and the moment you win then I will leave you in peace. Hm?’ When she made no answer he reclined on his elbow again, so close to her that she could feel the radiant warmth of his body. ‘Your move.’
It was a slim chance of a dignified way out of her situation, but it had to be seized. Ahleme knew she wasn’t bad at chess—often it was the only way to pass the long hours in the palace—even if she had no outstanding talent. She narrowed her eyes and considered the pieces, finally making a move.
Unhurriedly, Yazid reached past her for his rook. But when he withdrew his hand he placed it on the small of her back. Ahleme jumped a little.
‘Please don’t touch me,’ she said in a small voice. ‘It’s distracting.’
He chuckled, and his teasing fingertips withdrew. There was the faintest hiss of skin on silk and a long exhalation of breath from behind her. Ahleme’s eyes widened: recent experience was branded on her mind. ‘Please don’t do that either,’ she whispered.
‘You said not to touch you. It’s hardly fair to stipulate what else I might touch. Your move.’
They played in silence for a few moves—or near-silence, anyway. Ahleme was torn between wanting to win and wanting to get her moves done quickly. The quicker the better, she told herself. Yazid was more leisurely: of course, in every way it was in his interests to play for as long as possible. Her one advantage was that his chess-moves were unfocused and grew more so as his breathing became irregular. She heard the click of his tongue as he moistened his dry lips.
‘Check,’ she whispered.
Without a word he rose to press his face to her back, his lips to her skin. Ahleme stiffened, pulled away and half-turned to snap a warning, frightened glare at him and at once Yazid fell back supine on the bed, his eyes fixed on her and aglow with need.
She looked. She shouldn’t have done, but she did: the merest glance down to his groin. He was still clothed, for which she was profoundly grateful. His fingers rested over his lower belly, frozen in mid-caress. Quite visible under the silk was the bulk of his arousal, outlined by the sheen of the silk: flat against his belly, straight as a beam, and to Ahleme’s inexperienced eyes improbably large. She clenched her jaw and tried to turn away but somehow couldn’t stop looking.
Yazid’s fingers strayed to the drawstring of his shalwar. He cleared his throat. ‘Take this,’ he said huskily.
She shook her head, pressing her lips together.
‘Oh come on, my virgin princess. Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know what you do to me?’ He traced his length reverently with his fingers and it twitched beneath the silk, making the breath catch in Ahleme’s throat.
He was right of course. She was horribly, shamefully curious. Like every other young woman of rank she’d seen pictures in instructional books intended to prepare girls for their marriage duties, but those tiny painted miniatures with their garden settings and their sharp outlines and their convolutions of limbs seemed to bear no relation to this here now, so simple and huge and solid. The suggestion that this was her doing, that this was some sort of power she had over him, squirmed deep in her belly. She felt too hot all of a sudden despite her scanty clothes.
‘Have you seen this before?’ His voice was husky.
Her chin jerked to signify No.
‘You’re cruel, my princess. You torment me like this, then you do nothing to comfort me.’ Despite his mass and his muscle he seemed oddly vulnerable and exposed, lying down while she sat at his side, hip to hip. He was laid out for her scrutiny. She couldn’t help wondering what he would feel like under her hands if she ran them over that smooth torso. Were his muscles as hard as they looked? Would that rippled stomach resist the pressure of her fingers? Would his-?
She caught the illegitimate thought and in a panic squashed it, flushing. But she didn’t look away.
Slowly, watching her face for reaction, Yazid wrapped the end of the drawstring tie around two of his fingers, turn after turn. Then he began to pull. The silk string went taut, then lengthened. Knots popped. Suddenly the generous gathered material about his waist was free, and loose enough for him to draw the cloth down, revealing himself.‘There. That’s what you do to me, Flower of the Earth.’
His fingers looked pale against the iron-grey flush of his flesh. Ahleme’s mouth had gone dry. He looked … Muscular was the only way she could put it: like the neck of a proud stallion it invited her touch. She curled her fingers into a fist. It fascinated her. She could feel somewhere deep in her mind things shifting about, pieces sliding into place, doors opening: a mystery had been revealed at last. She needed time to take this new knowledge into her soul.
‘Want to touch it?’ Yazid’s hand moved as if he were caressing a small but strong animal. He shifted his shoulders and grey shadows flickered up his torso from his crotch to his ribs. ‘You want to find out how hard it is? How much it wants to be inside you?’
The manifest impossibility of something that size fitting into any woman almost made her laugh: it seemed like another limb. She bit her lip. He reached out his left hand and trailed the back of his knuckles over her thigh. His right hand moved upon himself, up and down, up and down.
‘Then just let me look at you,’ he rasped. She licked her lips; for some reason this made him groan.
‘Let me—let me -’ His eyes looked dark and his throat was marbled with blue. ‘Oh God—touch me…’ And that couldn’t be taken for anything other than a plea.
Ahleme was moved almost to pity.
Her hand was moved by something else though; a curiosity all of its own. Bewildered, she saw it steal out. She hadn’t meant to do it, she hadn’t consciously intended to lay her fingers on that hot, charged length. She hadn’t allowed herself to really think about what it would be like. And yet—there she was doing it. Her fingers must have felt icy cold to him because he was like burning silk under her touch, silk that moved over a mahogany hardness. She coiled her hand around its girth and squeezed, testing the obdurate mass. Squeezed again.
With a cry he erupted. Like quicksilver, she thought with the part of her mind that was watching in surprise everything that had happened, everything she was doing: Just exactly like alchemists’ quicksilver. It splashed on his belly and puddled in his navel and tricked down his sides to the bed as he heaved and arched—and then in moments it sublimed, vanishing from his skin into the air. Leaving him trembling and hot with fresh sweat and staring.
And a voice inside her that she hardly recognised cried out in awe and triumph: I did that! I did that to him!
Okay...this is absolutely beautiful writing--and definitely hot! You're messing with my schedule today, m'dear!
ReplyDeleteI'd say I'm sorry but I'm not - so I'll say THANK YOU!
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