She looked from it to him as he took hold of her by her throat and chin. The tips of his fingers and thumb dug into her jaw firmly, only a nuance of pressure shy from painful.

“If at any point you want this to stop, you say red. Got it?”

“Got it.” She’d have nodded but for his grip.

His gaze locked on her lips. When he bent over her, for a moment, every eager inch of her tightened in anticipation of his kiss, but at the last moment, he veered away. As if afraid to let himself be gentle with her, his hungry mouth locked on her breast again, suckling one nipple, then the other, spreading her legs wide before he moved down to settle himself between them.

The rasp of his whiskered chin, rubbing across her mound, had her trying to snap her legs shut, but he was lying between them with his arms locked over her thighs. No matter how shocked or surprised she was, there was no blocking him out as he parted the folds of her sex with his fingers, laying her open so vulnerably, mortifyingly bare to the next assault of his mouth—and it was an assault. His tongue lashed her, drinking in her taste as he explored her folds in search of every hidden spot that made her twitch, gasp, and eventually come. Arching off the sheets as the heat of his hard, suckling mouth fastened onto herclit in a kiss so brutally intense, she almost screamed. She bit her arm to keep back the sound.

His tongue was on her, rubbing harsh circles that made her back arch. He was definitely not as new to this as she was.

“Oh my God.” She whimpered, clamping him in the vise of her shaking thighs.

He broke the kiss on her clit, pulling back far enough to give the folds of her pussy two sharp slaps—the sting far more intense than when he’d spanked her.

“Spread them,” he ordered. “You want ‘more’ from me, Princess, then you don’t get to control my movements.” He slapped again when she was slow to get her uncooperative legs to relax enough to open, the tips of his fingers smacking directly over her clit.

Vaulting partially upright, she almost let go of the headrail, but his hard look stopped her.

“Don’t you fucking dare, little girl,” he warned. “Not unless you have a very specific word you want to tell me.”

She trembled, her breathing every bit as shaky as the rest of her, her pussy throbbing from more than the few relatively light slaps. Forcing herself to lie back, she renewed her grip on the headrail.

“You’re very wet,” he said, spreading her open again.

“Sorry.” It took everything she had not to roll her hips in needy anticipation of his next kiss.

Chuckling, Christian very deliberately scraped her clit with his stubbled chin, back and forth, up and down, making her ass jerk, flinching into the mattress as if she could possibly escape the rough, delicious, prickling of those caresses. She clamped her lips, muffling her mouth against her own arm, but there was no silencing the sobbing moan that escaped.

“What’s the matter, baby?” he mocked, one thumb easing into her, followed by his other. He spread her open in the most intimate way a woman could be, stretching her, filling her up.

Aliya moaned, only to swiftly bite back another shrill cry as he deliberately peeled the protective hood back from her clit to begin his next circling assault. He gentle, but it was all whisker, and there was no holding still for it. Held down by the hips, there was no escaping.

Chapter

Ten

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even make a sound for fear of alerting the guards, and it was hard, so very, very hard not to scream out the wondrous pleasure when he finally fastened the burning heat of his mouth onto her belabored nub of sensation. His tongue renewed its torment as his thumbs moved inside her, sometimes in tandem, sometimes not, but there was no escaping his invasion.

She had a man inside her. She had Christian inside her. He was touching her in a way no one else ever had, in a way she’d known since high school biology was a distant but eventual fact of life. Three different high schools, three different nuns—this forbidden knowledge had been imparted in the vaguest, most clinical terms, with such a degree of disgust and disapproval, should the whole messy, painful, and sinful beyond all forgiveness act be committed anywhere but in the sanctity of the marriage bed.

Of course, those classes had been followed by how many months trapped in the company of Fariq’s mercenary men? They’d taken all the vagueness out of it, one coarse and overhead conversation at a time. The women Fariq hired to keep them company had filled in the rest of the missing details. Althoughnot allowed to socialize with either group, Aliya wasn’t stupid. From what she’d overheard in a year’s worth of snips and snippets of other people’s conversations, she knew women were supposed to find this every bit as enjoyable as men, but she hadn’t known it would feel like this.

She hadn’t known every muscle would tighten and shake with every circling stroke of his tongue, flicking, lashing, caressing her clit. She hadn’t known being filled like this, his fingers in her body would awaken every nerve she didn’t know she had, setting them on fire until she was sweating even as she writhed, bucking her hips into the thrusts of his thumbs and the hot suckling of his mouth.

“God!” she groaned into the flesh of her arm. Her toes locked in tight curls, her grip shaking the headrail as she arched under the force of the pleasure exploding through her. “God! Stop, stop, stop!” It was almost painful, it felt so good, and his mouth wasn’t stopping. His thumbs kept stroking. She was going to come again. She panicked.

“Stop!”

The heat of his mouth abruptly abandoned her, leaving her pussy aching with want. His gaze as hard as his face, he crawled straight up her body and grabbed a fistful of her hair, holding her immobile as he straddled her shoulder.

“Is ‘stop’ the safeword I gave you?” he demanded.

Shaking, every nerve in her body crying out the loss of him, she shook her head.

“Don’t you shake your head at me.” His grip in her hair tightened. “You have a mouth for three reasons, one of which is speaking. Use your words.”

“No, ‘stop’ is not my safeword,” she gasped.