Page 211 of The Skeikh's Games

Grinning ear to ear, Keisha felt the same.

He laid her down on the soft bed, and Keisha felt that familiar slow boil of emotions begin within her. Her body began to heat, her skin warming against his smooth touch as his hands began a journey across her skin that was both new and familiar.

With such care, he removed her clothing. He revealed her body to his hungry eyes and allowed them to devour her with looks only at first. The heat in his gaze made Keisha squirm against the bed, silently begging for his touch and his love and his heat.

Letting out a shaking breath to steady himself, he obliged her. His hands reached for her body and began the slow, deliberate caress of her silky skin. They slipped over her calves and up her thighs, tracing over the wide curve of her hips and the small cut of her waist. They stopped only once they found her ample breasts, pausing there to worship the soft orbs. He palmed them and massaged them, pinching at her dusky nipples and then weighing each breast in his palms as though his hands might be scales.

When his lips finally encased a single nipple between them, Keisha let out the soft moan she had been restraining within her chest, her back arching towards him.

One of his hands left her chest to slip down along her body, pausing briefly over her still as of yet flat stomach, only to dip lower. He slipped between her legs and found her nether lips moist already from the want of him.

His fingers slid past them and she cried out again. “Ahmed, please, my love!”

She would not be pleased solely by his hands tonight. She needed more from him. She needed all of him.

Sensing her deepening desires, Ahmed pulled away from her, leaving her briefly bereft, only so that he might remove his clothing. He let it fall to the floor and when he came back to her, he was naked.

Her eyes drifted down over his muscled chest, lower and lower, over his slim waist to find his member already hard and jutting out from between his legs. She shivered in response to it, her body trembling with the need of him.

Leaning down over her so that his body covered hers, her breasts pressed tightly against his chest, she felt his length slide against her. The bulbous head slid across her inner thigh, searching for her most intimate parts, and within moments, had found them. She felt him press between her nether lips, the large head slipping past her lips to push into her already wet opening. When her body had accepted the tip of him willingly, he searched her out with his eyes. Their gazes locked. Then he thrust into her until there was none of his length that was not encased by her warm folds.

“Ahmed!” she cried out until his mouth crashed down onto hers, swallowing up her breaths and her words.

Then he began to move. His thrusts were deep and needy, urgent even, as though he needed this moment to claim her once again as his own and to prove it simultaneously to everyone. She did not mind. She accepted his urgency willingly, lifting her hips to match his thrusts as best she could, crying out in pleasure when his lips finally moved to lick and nibble at other parts of her body.

She gripped at his hair, but then his hands had grabbed her wrists, pinning them above her head. He stared down at her and thrust deeply inside of her, moving her until they were both pushed to the very edge.

When he finished within her, she felt that this was truly it. Their marriage was consummated and their love was recognized.

She did not give his parents even a single thought as they drifted off into the peaceful sleep that only came with two lovers indulging in each other.

Chapter Four

The palace was frantic the next morning. Guards were running around, desperately in search of the crown prince. Aisha was crying, muttering about how it was all her fault, that she should have known her poor, sensitive boy would be swept away and stolen by the wiles of a lowly beggar woman. Itamar, however, was immune to remorse—at least, remorse for his own actions—and was spending the morning lecturing every guard in turn. When he was finished, he would send them off scurrying around in desperate search of his son.

It would be their heads if he did not return.

Ahmed’s three older sisters were alternating between crying over their missing brother and gossiping heatedly about where he might be. Naiad, the oldest, was the calmest of the group and assured her younger sisters that their baby brother would return in his own time.

“He has always been rebellious,” she told Lilac, the youngest, who could not stop crying. She was worse than their mother. A pretty young woman gently, but efficiently pulled back Naiad’s long, thick hair into a black plait that hung loosely down her back. “He’ll come when he’s ready—or when he’s sure mother is frantic enough over him that she won’t scold him for sneaking out without a guard.”

Lilac sniffled, hope shining through her tears. It was Mahira, the middle child, who spoke though. “Is not it enough that he’s everyone’s favorite?” she fumed, taking her seat next to Naiad once her older sister’s hair was done. She insisted hers be done the exact same way, but with flowers woven in.

“He is not everyone’s favorite,” Naiad countered mildly, examining the young maid’s handiwork in the mirror.

“That’s right,” Lilac piped up amidst her sniffles. “Mom and daddy love us equally.”

Naiad shared a look at Mahira, who merely rolled her eyes. Naiad sighed. “Yes, in a perfect world.”

Lilac shut her mouth after that, and let the older girls have their hair done and whisper about what a spoiled brat their brother was. Ultimately, though, as much as they each had their reasons to be annoyed with the youngest of the four siblings, each of them was also worried for his safety.

It was not until about ten in the morning that Ahmed Kandalama, only son of the Sheikh, came walking up the steps of the palace amidst a flurry of panicked guards. One by one as they saw him, and realized who it was, they froze, relief spreading instantly across their faces.

The problem, however, was that Ahmed was not returning alone. Beside him was an intense, glowing beauty, her head tilted ever so slightly downward as she walked only a couple of steps behind Ahmed. His hand was wrapped around hers tightly, and there was no mistaking their connection.

Or his intentions.

When he reached the great hall, his mother was still wailing and his father had found several new guards to take his anger out upon. When his parents finally tore their respective gazes away from their own lives and found him, they froze. Neither said a word, but the tears flowing freely from his mother’s eyes a moment ago had stopped instantly. His father’s angry, fuming expression had shifted to one that was as close to emotionless and blank as Ahmed had ever seen it.

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