Arranged(46)

My stomach rumbled. “Omar’s?”

“Have you tried it?”

I nodded. I had. Their chicken shawarma, falafel, and hummus were to die for. I loved their food, but could rarely afford the calorie hit.

“I got a little bit of everything. Care to join me?”

What could I do? I agreed to share an intimate, at home dinner with my husband.

He plated my food and served me, just as he’d done for breakfast.

We ate together. He sat so close our knees touched throughout the meal. Every so often his hand would rest familiarly on my thigh. Every so often he fed me a bite from his own plate.

It was delicious and dangerous.

Every time he showed even an ounce of humanity, I wanted to fall onto my back and open my legs.

And worse, I felt myself soften toward him a little.

What the hell was wrong with me?

By the time I was done, I’d eaten too much and I was squirming in my seat. Every time his hand returned to my thigh it moved a little higher. Was he teasing me or testing me?

I experimented by placing my own hand on his thigh.

“Don’t touch me,” he said softly. “I can’t last a second with your hands on me.”

I leaned toward him, tilting my face up to him.

He stared hard at my lips, but he didn’t kiss me.

I’d almost forgotten. He never kissed me on the lips unless we had an audience. It was always for show. In private, he pointedly avoided it.

I was glad I’d thought of it. It made my soft heart harden a little. Enough to keep me sane. Enough to ground me back into reality.

“So I hear the VS people were giving you a hard time about my conditions,” he stated blandly.

So they were his conditions. “Not me,” I responded. “But they certainly got into it with Asha.”

“I understand that they agreed to everything I requested. You’ll be adequately covered for the show?”

I kept my expression perfectly blank. “It seems so. Asha was happy.”

“Good,” he nodded. “Good. You show enough skin as it is. The world does not need to see you in lingerie.”

It was literally a lingerie show. What the hell else did he think I’d be wearing? But I didn’t say any of that aloud. I wanted the job and the exposure that went with it. I’d deal with his reaction after the fact. If and when it came.

“I was surprised to find you here,” I admitted to him. A change of subject wasn’t a bad idea at all.

His mouth curved into something between a smile and a frown. Whatever it was, it wasn’t happy. “You make me feel deprived. Do you know that?”

I felt a minor quake move through me.

“What do you mean?” I asked carefully.

He touched my trembling lips, rubbed them softly with the tips of his fingers.

A major quake now.

“You’re mine,” he whispered.

A sharp liquid throb started up in my loins.

“Legally and literally. I’m with you right now, but I feel like I’m doing without. I have you, but it feels like you’re eluding me. How do you do that?”

Of course I didn’t answer him. I didn’t have an answer. But it was a fact that I felt it too. Exactly as he was describing it.

He didn’t seem to need an answer. Abruptly he pushed his chair back from the table. In one impressive motion he grabbed me by the hips and perched me on the heavy table in front of him. I didn’t have to ask what he intended when he started tugging my sweat pants and panties off, slowly peeling them off my hips and inching them down my legs. They were loose and soft, so it was an easy job. When he had my bottom half bare, he pushed my legs wide apart with his hands and just stared at me for a time.

He shoved his chair closer until he was settled comfortably between my legs. I could feel his breath against my sex as he looked up at me through his lashes. It was an intoxicating thing to behold.

His mouth twisted up into some self-deprecating version of a smile. “I didn’t come here for dinner, Noura,” his voice rumbled deeply from his chest into my core. “I came for dessert.”

His words barely registered as sound. But they were felt. Oh. God. Were they felt.

“Open your shirt,” he ordered, nuzzling into me.

With trembling hands I unzipped my hoodie. All I wore beneath it was a bra.

“Take your breasts out,” he told me.

I obeyed.

“Cup them,” he rasped into my skin. “Pinch your nipples. Rub them. I want you to fondle yourself while I,” he licked, “tend to you. Got it?”

I rubbed my aching, sensitive breasts, rolling my nipples against my palms.

His eyes followed the movements for a long beat, two, three. He looked enraptured. It was very much mutual.

“Good,” he murmured and started to feast.

He ate me out like he was indeed deprived. I responded likewise.

He got me off like it was his job instead of vice versa.

Afterward he rose, setting me on my feet directly in front of him.

I had to hold onto the back of his neck to keep from falling down. Or lying down.

He tilted my face up to him with a light touch. The barely there contact somehow sent a shockwave of awareness through me. “Look at me, Noura.”

The sound of my name on his lips made my knees try to go full liquid.