The Desert Lord’s Bride

To her alarm his eyes became serious. “Is this what you think? That I led an indiscriminate existence?”

“No. I just meant that you-you’ve…”

Gentleness reentered his gaze. “It’s not unreasonable to think someone with my wealth and power might not have known where to draw the line, might have sought escalating experiments and risks to stimulate his glutted senses. But I assure you, I have no excessive or perverted tendencies, was never idle to get into mischief, and I am extremely fastidious and wary. But not sampling them doesn’t mean I don’t know all about stripping games. I never saw the appeal, but now, when the game is between us, when it’s you…” his gaze dragged down her body, totally obscured in the filmy layers of her own elaborate green-and-gold outfit “…I believe stripping is one of life’s most worthwhile activities.” He rose, sweeping her up in his arms in one fluid movement, and headed to the bigger tent.

“So this is why you had us dress up in those elaborate costumes? Many layers to take off.”

He gave her a scorching smile as he pushed aside the tent flap. And she felt as if a genie might materialize at any moment. Not that he’d know what to offer her. She couldn’t wish for more than this. This man, these feelings, this moment.

As for this place, it was enormous, enough to hold a banquet for hundreds, with the tented canvas ceiling undulating from wooden poles, the central one soaring at least fifteen feet, the periphery no less than nine. The ground was leveled and completely covered in a breathtaking array of hand-woven Persian carpets. Everything else, the low couches, the strewn pillows, the tables and urns and lanterns and incense burners, all in a mixture of vibrant colors and burnished brass and copper, was a stunning fusion of many ethnic influences. She could decipher Bedouin, Indian, Ottoman and Moroccan among the blend. And she’d bet that below the authentic decorations lurked all the luxury of ultra-modern amenities.

And in the middle of it all was a twenty-by-twenty-foot chessboard, with pieces made of solid teak and ebony, the tallest, the kings, about four feet tall.

Shehab came to stand in the middle of the chessboard below a hanging brass lantern with Arabian-windows- style glass, its light weaving among the fumes of the sweet-spicy incense, playing over his face. He gave her a playful squeeze. “How about we let the game begin?”

Her head bobbed in a swooning nod on his muscled shoulder.

He set her down on her feet, not giving any sign he’d move away any time soon.

“Your move.”

She shivered again at the passion in his voice, moved away reluctantly. She weaved among the pieces, gliding her hands over them, marveling at the perfect smoothness of their polished surfaces, her mind bounding ahead to images of Shehab stripping.

She’d better get her act together, play a killer game.

She moved her pawn forward. He moved his. In five more moves she’d taken his first rook, and looked up at him expectantly.

“Off with your ghotrah.”

“You have this wrong. The rules are like this. I lose a piece, you strip a piece off of me. You can be as creative, as leisurely as you like in how you do it. And I must stand there and bear it in silence, keeping my hands and every other part of me to myself. Same goes for you, of course. The one who ends up winning has the other at their total disposal for a week.”

She rushed to him, her hands stinging with anticipation. “I love the rules of strip chess.”

“Actually, those are my rules.” He let her reach up and free him of his headdress, groaned and stiffened as she dug her fingers in the luxury of his hair. She urged his head lower so she’d have her fill of massaging his scalp, combing through his hair, twisting locks between her fingers before she finally tugged on them, brought his lips to hers, her tongue gliding over their painstaking chiseling, breaching their seal and dipping into the fount of his taste. He was soon breathing hard, groaning continuously, the hardness she kept pressing against turned to the consistency of rock, his whole body buzzing and quivering with the tension of holding back.

He finally wrenched his inert lips away, staggered back, his heavy-lidded eyes fuming with pent-up frustration. “That everything-off-you stipulation is the most foolish one I’ve ever made. I almost blew an artery.” He shook his head, straightened, moved his bishop and took her knight. “Now I get to pay you back.”

She stood riveted, clamoring for whatever he chose to do to her. He dragged her to the ground, went down beside her, took off her sandals, made her discover the one thousand erogenous zones connecting her feet’s every bone and inch. When she was whimpering and clawing at him, he withdrew, looked on her condition in satisfaction. “It’s a great game, after all.”

The game progressed with each getting more creative, inflicting more sensual torment on the other until she was in her lace panties and he in the drawstring pants he had nothing beneath. Then Shehab moved his black queen.

He came behind her, took her with an arm beneath her screaming-for-mercy breasts, murmured in her ear, “Shah matt.”

“Wha…?”

“Those are the Persian words, what became checkmate. Shah, or king, mat, or died. You’re mine now, to do with as I please.”

Her knees buckled at the sheer depth and darkness of his voice, his passion. “I’m yours anyway, in case you haven’t noticed.” She ground back into him, felt him hot and hard and huge, throbbing into her back. “But you’re wrong.”

She twisted out of his arms, stumbled between the huge pieces. “This isn’t shah matt. This is only Shah, or whatever check was originally called.” Her trembling hands moved her queen. “Now it’s your king who’s matt.”

He stared at her move for stupefied moments. Then he burst out laughing, peal after peal of guffaws that sent another river of hormones gushing in her system. “Hada w’Ullah suheeh-by God, it’s true. I didn’t even see this coming. I’ve officially lost my mind, then. Or more accurately, you’ve stolen it.”

“Turnabout is fair play, since you’ve stolen mine. And now you do as I please.”

He spread his arms wide. “Always. Anything. E’emorini. Command me.”

She stumbled back to him, her prize, heat surging and splashing through her like a relentless fountain, turned and pressed her back into the breadth of his body, stood on tiptoes and squashed her buttocks into his erection. “I want you to take me, just like this, no waiting, no bringing me to orgasm first. I want to come around you, and only around you tonight.”

Something reverberated in his chest, wild and voracious as he snatched her up in his arms, rushed to a compartment at the far end of the tent. Behind the waterfall of damask drapes isolating it lay another setting of senses-soaking sensuality, dominated by a huge bed draped in gold and red satin and flanked by mirror-polished brass panels, with a gleaming copper tray table beside it, laden with fruits and delicacies.

He placed her on the bed, on her knees, tore the drawstring off, let his pants pool to the ground as he freed himself. Then he thrust inside her in one stroke.

The blow of sensation as he stretched her beyond her capacity paralyzed her. But it was their reflection in the brass panels, him bending over her back, her kneeling, impaled on his erection, that made her convulse on a sucker-punch orgasm.

“Aih, come around me, give it all to me,” he growled as she bucked beneath him, screeched and clawed at the satin beneath her fingers. He rode her crest, pressing her down until her face was wetting the satin with tears and sweat, kneading her breasts, her nipples, her mound, spreading her slick core and stroking her everywhere but at the focus of sensations until the pressure inside her rose once more, threatened to implode her.

“I can’t…Shehab…can’t…too much…”

“You can. You will. Take what you want. Me, unable to wait, driven all the way inside you, your captive, at your mercy. You at mine, taking all of me, like this…” He touched her cervix.

Sensations buried her, squeezing wild response from her core, her lungs. “Yes…like that… please, don’t stop…”

He did, withdrew from her. Before she could cry out, he spread her on her back and plunged inside her again, letting her feel the rawness of the strength that could pulverize men twice her size leashed to become carnality, seduction, cherishing. He undulated his hips, stretching her around his invasion, his eyes leaving her one exposed