Nalini Singh: Craving Beauty

Looking up, she made a face at him, a smile flirting with her eyes when she saw that he wasn't angry. "You were. Except for you, every other male was bad. Then I saw you, and suddenly I had no resistance. I could no longer fight my father—all my will was gone, lost the moment you smiled at me. You were just the best. Com­pared with anyone. So, you see, I wished you for my husband. Only you."

Her unknowing echo of his thoughts only made her confession more poignant. He felt his throat lock as the power of what she was saying roared through him.

When he didn't answer straight away, she said, "Do you understand, Marc? You're the love I waited for all my life, though when you came, it took me a while to rec­ognize you. You see, I didn't expect you to be so blatantly male." The teasing light in her eyes made him kiss her.

After he, set her free, she continued to speak. "I feel so much for you, I don't know if I can find the words to tell you. In Zulheil, there is a saying— Ul al eha makhin. Makhin al eha ul. Lael gha al aishann. " Her voice was full of so much passion, he could almost see her love in the air.

"What does it mean?"

"You belong to me. I belong to you. Together we are complete." Her voice shook.

It was perfect, saying what he'd wanted to but hadn't been able to. "Princess, I promise you that that will never change. Never."

"Until I loved you, I didn't know the whole of the woman I could be." Her eyes were huge and wet. "That woman's love will only grow stronger with time."

Leaning forward, he sealed their pact with a kiss. When she sighed and melted into him, he couldn't help but stroke that golden skin of hers, now almost dry. "You didn't finish your bath," he whispered against her lips.

"Ummmm." Giving him a sultry smile that was mil of a joy he'd never before seen, she slipped out of his arms and into the water, beckoning him with her finger.

Grinning, he stood from his straddling position and went to work on his jeans. There was more than enough room in the huge marble bath for one crazy-in-love ex-thief. He could almost feel the tantalizing coolness of the water; it would be a sensual pleasure on its own after the unrelenting heat of the desert. But the most pleasur­able aspect of the pool was currently looking at him with a distinctly feminine proprietariness in her tawny gaze.

Every male instinct in him was aroused and alert. This was his woman, and he was at once proud of her and ravenous. She was so sexy she was a fantasy and yet it was the very human softness of her that he found the most enticing. His ice princess had turned out to be a woman of hot blood, and he couldn't have been more pleased.

Holding that dark gaze, he undid the buttons on his jeans and stepped out of them and his underwear at the same time. Her throat quivered as she swallowed.

Aware of the ways his wife's body betrayed her arousal, he looked at her thighs. Beneath the water, they were pressed tight together. Her body was flushed with heat that hadn't been present a moment before, her lips parted as if waiting for him.

He walked into the bath, conscious that her eyes had dropped to his erection. He was huge with desire for her, and he was proud of his passion. This was something no other man had ever given her and no other man ever would. He reached her as that possessive thought crossed his mind. He could think of a hundred things he could do to his princess and she to him on this slow desert evening, but first he just wanted another kiss. A kiss that was given joyously by the woman who loved him.

"Marc," she murmured against his lips. "Husband mine."

He went to kiss her again, but, with a mischievous smile, she slipped away and into the water. He followed, stalking her into a corner. "Princess, come here."

"Why do you call me that?" she murmured, letting him trap her.

He winced. "At first it was because you made me so mad when you went all icy."

She chuckled and kissed him, telling him he was for­given for those early taunts. "And now?"

"Now, I feel like the hero in some fairy tale who got the girl." His hands began to slide over her body. "I beat the dragon and won the princess." The timbre of his voice dropped, becoming husky and intimate.

When Hira thought he would pull her into his lap and take her, he put strong hands around her waist and lifted her to the edge of the bathing pool. She gasped as cool marble met her bottom.

In front of her, he spread her legs to position her as it pleased him. Very aroused, she let him stroke her thighs apart, fingering her own hands through his hair. "Husband," she whispered. "Why do you do this?"

His laugh was hoarse. "Baby, you know I like the taste of you." Against her sensitive skin, his breath was a hot caress, a lover's kiss. Moving closer, he put her legs over his shoulders.

She gulped as his hands stroked her flanks, as if lead­ing up to a taste of her. "But you wish to come inside me now. This isn't what you wish."

His grin seared her. " Cher , have you got a lot to learn about your husband. But don't worry, I have a lifetime in which to teach you the finer points." There was such sheer delight on his face that she found herself laugh­ing with him. "Lesson number one—what I wish is for you to be screaming when I take you."

That was all the warning she got before he dipped his head. Hira shuddered and tried to keep her control, but it was futile. Before long she was clutching her fingers in his dark hair, moaning her desire and asking him for more. He gave her more, took more, demanded more. And at last she screamed.

When he finally pulled her down, the water lapped over her in a cool caress that soothed her sensitized flesh but did nothing to quench the boiling cauldron inside of her. She wrapped her legs around him and, with a sigh of exquisite relief, welcomed him into her body, even as their eyes locked in an even more intimate dance.

Her American hunter took her and she let herself be taken. It was far too late to fight, because at last she knew that she was conquered territory, marked with the stamp of this one man alone.

Perhaps it might've made a weaker woman angry to be considered as such, but Hira wasn't weak. Belonging to

Marc allowed no half measures. But, she thought with a smile as the stars exploded around them, Marc wasn't a man who loved by half measures. He'd given her all his passion, all his strength, all his heart. If she'd been conquered, then her conqueror had surrendered into her loving arms.

"People treasure their dreams," Marc whispered into her ear, as they floated down from the pinnacle-of plea­sure.

"Let me treasure you for the rest of my life."

It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her. Contrary to his own beliefs, her hunter of a man knew exactly what words to give his wife. "We will trea­sure each other," she managed to whisper, holding her perfect prince of a man to her.