Would it ease hers? Would it stop the fantasies and make the restless need go away. Would finding her own lover help to stop each impulse of hunger that had her teasing him at every opportunity.
“Don’t.” There was no lessening of the anger, or the iron-hard determination in his expression. But what did change was the addition of painful knowledge that crossed his expression.
He knew exactly what she was asking. Just as he knew exactly why she had asked it.
“Answer me.” She forced him to move back or risk touching her as she came up, kneeling in the bed to stare back at him with her own anger now. “Does f**king those other women make it easier to bear the pain? Will acquiring a lover rather than saving my virginity for someone who doesn’t want it, make it easier to bear?”
For a second, for just a second, shock gleamed in his eyes.
“A virgin?” he seemed to choke on the words before he gave his head a hard shake and moved away from her. “Save your virginity for someone who deserves it.ȍ Self-disgust competed with the anger in his expression as he straightened and stared down at her, his jaw flexing, the muscle working furiously as he obviously fought whatever he was forcing himself not to say.
“You’re absolutely right,” she said, her throat tight with the knowledge that it was something he may want, but he had no intentions of accepting.
She could want him until hell froze over. She could ache, she could need. And at this moment she might even hate him. Because it didn’t matter how much she needed him, or how much he needed her, and she could see that need in his eyes, but he would walk away no matter what she said. No matter what she felt.
“I’m right about what?” he seemed to bite the words out.
“You’re right, you don’t deserve it,” she said bitterly as she forced herself from the bed, found her panties and clothes and dressed hurriedly. “You don’t have to tell Khalid I was here. He’ll only worry.”
“Did you come to see Khalid?” he questioned, his arms going over his chest as a glare settled on his face.
“Actually, I did.” Buttoning the snug jeans she pushed her feet into her sandals before lifting her head and staring back at him, refusing to feel any shame or embarrassment. “I came, because he hadn’t told me you were here, and I just wanted to see you.” The pain in her chest was overwhelming as emotion clogged her throat. “How insane was that?”
“Insane,” he snapped, his expression like stone.
She nodded to the response. “Exactly. So I’ll just return to the house and pack. We’re returning to Greece tonight.” Regret welled inside her when his expression didn’t even shift. No regret, nothing. “I guess I won’t be staying in Virginia this year after all.” She let her gaze flick over him scathingly. “There’s no reason whatsoever to stay.”
She had to get out of there before she lost control of the tears that tightened her throat and threatened to fill her eyes. Turning on her heel she quickly unlocked the door before rushing out of the room and heading for the door and the hall that led to the elevator, and below, back to the safety her parents’ home represented.
Her body still hummed with pleasure.
Her cl*t was still so sensitive and swollen that each step was an agony of sensation as it rubbed against the silk of her panties.
One more year. She would stay away from Virginia, her brother, and her dream of working in America for one more year. And pray it was enough time to rid herself of the emotional and the physical complications Abram Mustafa caused within her.
Because if she didn’t, then he just may well end up breaking her heart.
* * *
Abram watched her leave.
Staring from the window of the bedroom Khalid had given Paige for her visits, he watched as she appeared on the sidewalk, her white silk oversized blouse flattening against her slender body as the breeze whipped around it.
Flame-red hair whipped around her, like strands of burning silk, it blazed around her face, adding a splash of color to the otherwise dull reality that existed around him.
And with each step she took he could feel the bitterness growing inside him as he braced his palms flat on the high windowsill and buried the insane impulse to follow after her. If he did, he would drag her back to this bed and f**k her until nothing else existed for either one of them.
But reality would return. He couldn’t delay it long enough to sate himself with his need for her, or to ensure her safety.
How much more was he to lose? How much more could one man bear to see broken in his life before he finally ceased to exist?
Paige was his last weakness, he thought, answering the question for himself. She was as bright as the sun that rose in the desert, warming those who existed around her, becoming the very essence of their lives if they gave her the chance. To allow his life to break her would be a far greater sin than any he may have committed so far.
To allow his sexuality to break her—her innocence and her dreams—would be the killing stroke. Because the need that would rise inside him to see her beneath a third, one Abram knew he could depend upon to protect her, to pleasure her, to ease her should he ever cease to be, would destroy the romantic dreams he knew Paige had. How could a woman accept that he never wanted to see another man f**k her with the same hunger that he felt to have her beneath him himself? How could a virgin accept the desires he fantasized of fulfilling with her?
Of seeing her beneath Tariq, watching as his dick buried in the sweet, fist-tight grip of her pu**y. Of being inside her himself, filling her little cunt, experiencing the ripples of response in the too-tight muscles as Tariq filled her ass with his cock.
His entire body tightened with the thought of it. Of feeling her pu**y pulse and flex and milk his dick until he couldn’t hold back his release any longer. Until he came with the vicious, pounding spurts of seed that incited a pleasure so deep, so all-consuming it could never be forgotten. And he wanted nothing with any woman, especially with Paige, that could be forgotten.
She may have been aroused, she may be curious, but he couldn’t see her craving that pleasure as he would crave giving her the pleasure, had he not gone as far as he had.
There was also the knowledge that the dark sexuality that was so much a part of him would accept nothing less. It was his own personal torment, that need that drove at him like an addiction he couldn’t kick.
How could he tell her, explain to her, that to see her pleasure, to watch her as she slipped into that realm of sensuality that he had only seen a woman find when she was overwhelmed by two lovers, was more than he could deny himself. It was more than he could deny his lover.