Dangerous Pleasure

Prologue

   She should be embarrassed. At the very least, she should be completely outraged, so totally ashamed of herself that she couldn’t look away, and fleeing in fear of her endangered virginity.

She shouldn’t be standing there, eyes wide, her senses so dazed she couldn’t force herself to move, as she watched her half-brother’s half-brother in the act of what appeared to be a very complicated sex position.

A ménage.

She knew what it was called. She knew what it involved. But, Paige had to admit, she hadn’t expected to see the object of her own fantasies involved with one.

She recognized the third, a cousin to the Mustafa family, Tariq. But her entire attention was focused on Abram Mustafa as he lay back on the bed, the woman he was fucking stretched out on top of him, her thighs straddling his hips, her head thrown back to rest against the shoulder of the other male behind her.

The dual penetration was obviously incredibly pleasurable for her. She was moaning, crying out.
Paige dared to allow her gaze to slip down once again, where she could glimpse the glistening, thick erections of the two men penetrating their lover. She swallowed tightly, her heart racing, her senses overloading with the sight, the sounds, the sheer implications of what she was seeing.

The total eroticism of the act drove the breath from her body, and she was still attempting to catch it, even as she fought to find the strength to look away.

She couldn’t.

And she couldn’t decide which she wanted to see more, Abram’s face, twisted into a grimace of sublime pleasure, or the sight of his cock, glistening and slick with his lover’s arousal as he pushed the heavy length home with hard, fierce thrusts.

Paige’s pussy clenched, her thighs tightened. She wanted to moan herself at the sensations suddenly building in her body. She could feel her own juices building between her thighs, easing from her spasming vagina. Her breasts were swollen, her nipples hard and aching, her flesh sensitized as her buttocks tightened at the sight of the engorged cock working itself into the woman’s rear.

She’d never thought of allowing a man to take her there. She’d heard about threesomes. There were rumors a certain sect of men in Alexandria and its neighbor, Squire Point, who shared their lovers, their wives—and she’d even heard rumors that her half-brother, Khalid, who she thought of as her brother, was involved with this sect. But, she had never really believed it, until now.

No, Abram wasn’t her brother, and the man sharing the lover he was possessing wasn’t her brother. But, she had also heard that Khalid and Abram had often shared their women after the death of Abram’s first wife, Lessa.

Had Abram and Khalid shared Lessa? No one seemed to know for certain. Now, Paige believed that they had.

Abram shared his lovers.

And he did it so well.

As she watched, his fingers curved around the woman’s breast, lifting it as his head ducked to the hardened, straining tip of her nipple.

He brushed aside a heavy swath of long, rich blond hair with his nose before his tongue reached out, curled around the hard tip, then covered it with his mouth.

“Oh, God. Abram. Yes, fuck me. Fuck me harder.” The woman reached back, one hand clamping to the hip of the male behind her as she cried out for more.

Abram’s cheeks hollowed as he sucked at her nipple, his hands gripped her hips, his hips moved harder, faster, thrusting inside her with hard, even strokes as he began to do just as the girl asked. To fuck her harder, to fuck her deeper.

And she could have imagined much more to say, to cry out, if she were the one sandwiched between the two men.

If she were with Abram. If she was the one causing that look of intense and utter pleasure.

Paige would do anything. She would give whatever he asked to see that look on his face for her.

Biting her lip, she had to fight to hold back a moan as she heard the broken male groan that left his lips as he pulled back from the woman’s breast.

Pulling her head to him, he whispered something in her ear, something that had her crying out his name, her body tightening, a wild cry leaving her lips as she seemed to tense to a point that Paige wondered if she would break.

Her head jerked back as the two men thrust inside her harder, faster. She knew the second they began finding their release.

Or at least, the second Abram found his.

His head tipped back against the pillow, lips tightening, his face contorting into lines of pleasure and pain as he arched tighter into her.

Paige almost orgasmed herself. In the years she had been discovering her own body, she’d never known anything as erotic, as sensual as seeing Abram, imagining he was touching her, filling her with his pleasure.

Her thighs clenched, her fingers balled into fists, and she bit off the need to cry out in feminine fury that she wasn’t the one taking the pleasure Abram was giving.

And if she didn’t get the hell out of there, there would be no way to hide her presence.

She was stepping back, her knees trembling, when his head suddenly turned, his black eyes opening.

As though he knew, or somehow sensed her presence, his gaze zeroed in on her. As she slipped out of the bedroom she saw them narrow as his expression turned sensual once again.

A purely primal, feminine part of her psyche raised its head, previously hidden, unaware, that part of her was suddenly certain that look had been for her, and for her alone.

Rushing into her bedroom Paige closed the door, her hand pressing into the panel as she drew in several hard, deep breaths.

“Abram.” She closed her eyes, his name slipping past her lips in what she recognized was a moment of pure sensual agony.

She was going to have to change her panties. She could feel her juices soaking the thin silk she wore beneath her jeans. Her clit was swollen, demanding attention and the clench of her thighs did nothing to help the pulsing ache centered there.

Paige was tempted to use the toy she had been given by one of her best friends.

It would ease, perhaps, the sensual pain flooding her, but she had been saving that last veil of innocence.

For Abram.

Her hands slipped beneath her white silk oversized blouse to find the hard tips of her nipples beneath the thin lace of her bra.

The touch of her own fingers had a gasp passing her lips. The pleasure was incredible, but still she knew, not as intense as the pleasure Abram would give her.

She cupped the mound and let her thumb stroke against the sensitive tip.

She was aching. So desperate for his touch.

She closed her eyes as a moan whispered past her lips.

Within seconds she had her jeans off and her panties sliding over her legs. She lay back on the bed she kept at Abram’s apartment. Her fingernails raked through the silken curls between her thighs as she spread her legs further and fought to pretend it was Abram. To pretend that it had been her laying in that bed with him and Tariq, that it was her body accepting such pleasure.

He wouldn’t touch her gently. She had a feeling he wouldn’t touch her lightly. Each touch would be firm, determined, dominant. It would border erotic pain, and agonizing pleasure.

He would control her body.

Her fingers returned to her breast, nails rasping her nipples before gripping it and pumping it erotically. Her head thrashed against the bed.

It wasn’t enough.

She needed more.

Parting the folds of her pussy she ran her fingers over her heavily juiced slit, moved upwards, circled her clit and ran a trail of pleasure around the bundle of nerves.

And still, it wasn’t enough.

Desperate, muffled breathy cries were stopped in her throat, the sounds almost silent as she caressed her flesh, sliding downward, circling the entrance and dipping shallowly inside.

And once again, it wasn’t enough.

The need was growing worse with each visit Abram made to Virginia, and now, she would never be able to forget the sight of him sharing his lover, or the pleasure that had contorted her face, as well as his.

She wanted it.

She wanted the extreme eroticism she had witnessed between Abram, his lover, and his cousin. She wanted Abram until she felt as though she were burning up inside. Perspiration dotted her body, it felt as though flames were licking over her flesh. Her pussy clenched, her juices spilling to her fingers as she pressed two together, uncaring of the veil of her virginity as she tucked them against the snug entrance.

Wood cracked against wood hard enough to cause her to pull her fingers free of her body and to jerk her upright in shock.

Eyes wide she stared across the room at the vision of pure male outrage, black eyes burning, his hair sensually tousled and laying around his face and shoulders like course midnight.

He moved across the room, stalking, predatory, the loose white pants he wore laying low on his hips, his cock jutting beneath it, thick and long, as he moved to the bed.

Paige stared back at him, her breathing harsh, the need so spike sharp now that fingers of hunger struck at her pussy with daggerlike intensity.

Abram’s jaw clenched as he stopped at the side of the bed.

His fingers tightened, released, tightened again.

“Lie back.” His voice was like an animal’s growl.

“Go to hell,” she tried to snap, but her voice weakened, the anger, pain, and desperation mixing to create a sound between a plea and a hoarse, broken demand.

“I return there soon enough,” he shot back, his voice sharp. “For this moment though, I will touch paradise no matter the curse to my soul for the trespass.”

And before she could move, protest, or whimper an objection he gripped her legs, pulled her down along the bed and within a breath, he was stretching his long, powerful frame between her legs

There was no time to argue, to protest, or to push him away. There was no will to reject whatever touch, whatever pleasure he would give her.

His arms looped around her legs, pulling her thighs apart as his head lowered and his lips buried in her pussy.

“Abram.” Shocked, uncertain, the hard, burning waves of arousal began to pour over her and pleasure struck with fiery bursts through her system.

“Fuck, yes,” he whispered against the sensitive folds.

“Oh God, yes. Lick me!” The words were torn from her lips. “Abram. Abram please, make me come. Just make me come.”

His lips surrounded her clit, sucking it into the liquid heat of his mouth with a firm, almost hard pressure that had her entire sensory system overloading.

Her knees bent, lifting, her heels digging into the mattress as waves of burning sensation began to tear through her. It was a pleasure that bordered pain, pouring through her body with a strength and a speed that she had no hope of depending her heart against.

Abram didn’t ease her into it. He wasn’t gentle and seductive. He wasn’t teasing and tender. It was almost angry, an uncontrolled hunger that imprinted itself on the act with an eroticism that had her fighting for breath. His tongue flicking at the tiny bud, his mouth sucking it, wet heat and shocking, sharp pleasure tearing through the ultrasensitive bud until the rapture of it ripped through her with an explosion of such ecstatic pleasure Paige was certain somehow, she was lost. A part of her was no longer hers alone. A part of her now belonged to Abram, and that wouldn’t be a good thing, because that part of her would now never be content with another man’s touch.

As she drifted back to earth her lashes opened slowly, warily as she felt him drag himself from the bed.

He was still hard, his cock straining against the cloth of his pants, the tip damp, the flared crest clearly outlined.

His expression was enflamed, with anger or lust, she wasn’t entirely certain.

“Stay away from me.” He came down, his hands going on each side of her shoulders as his face came within inches of her, the pure fury lighting his gaze unmistakable now.

Paige flinched, her breath catching.

“Abram,” she whispered his name. “I didn’t mean…”

“Stay the fuck away from me,” he snarled. “I don’t care that you didn’t mean to. I don’t care that you burn with the same fucking hunger that’s ripping my guts to shreds, stay the fuck away from me, Paige. If you care for your brother, if you have so much as a moment’s drop of affection for me, then I beg of you, never tempt me to this length again.”

There was such fury, such rage in his face that Paige could only stare back at him in bemusement.

There was no fear. She knew in the deepest recesses of her soul that Abram would never hurt her. He would never lift a hand to threaten her. But there was something in his gaze that warned her to beware, that there were far worse things to be frightened of than his anger.

But she also heard, felt, and saw the hunger in his gaze that assured her that he hadn’t been lying about burning just as she did. He wanted her. He was aching for her.

“Do the other women make the need any less sharp?” she whispered painfully. “Tell me, Abram. Does taking another lover ease that hunger?”

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 fucking 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.” 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 clit 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 fuck 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 fuck 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 pussy. 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 pussy 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.

That as long as there was a third, one as strong, as determined to protect her as he was, then what had happened to Lessa wouldn’t have as great a chance of happening to her.

It was the mistake he and Khalid had made with Lessa. Abram had fought that side of him, fearing Lessa gave into his brother’s touch because she knew it was what Abram wished. He had refused Khalid the privileges he would have given a third as well as the responsibilities of one. He hadn’t told Khalid that he would be away from the province the day his brother had been caught unaware, beaten and left for dead, before Ayid and Aman had gone after Lessa.

But, as Khalid had warned him the day he realized Abram had seen Paige as a woman, she deserved more. She deserved a man who knew possessive love, who understood it. But even more importantly, a man who did not bring with him the shadow of death.

“She’s gone?”

Tariq stepped into the room behind him, his voice somber as he posed the question.

He, too, had seen her standing at the door, her eyes wide, face flushed, that look of drowning sensuality filling her expression the moment they had spilled their release into another woman’s body.

In that expression he had seen the knowledge that it didn’t matter the woman they were with, it didn’t matter how he fought it, how he strove to deny it, each time he stepped foot in the U.S., there was only one face he searched for now. There was only one gaze he avoided with everything inside him.

“She’s gone,” he stated, wondering if he had effectively hid the regret that surged through him.

“She was angry?” Tariq probed.

Abram gave a quick shake of his head. “Surprisingly, no.”

No, she hadn’t been angry. It had been disillusionment. It had been bitterness. It had been the knowledge that girlish dreams never came true no matter how desperately she fought to bring them to fruition.

They died. Painfully. Hurtfully. They were tromped beneath uncaring feet and left to wither by a world that didn’t know true warmth.

And he had done no more than contribute to the cold that filled her gaze now, the disillusionment.

She was a woman searching for the dreams that filled her soul, and he couldn’t be the man to fulfill those dreams, no matter his own wishes.

“Has our companion left?” he turned to Tariq, seeing the intent look on his cousin’s expression.

Tariq had been watching him too closely of late whenever they were in Virginia, especially whenever Paige was present. As though he were searching for something, some affirmation of a suspicion.

Abram refused to give into the question in his third’s gaze. They both desired her, and yet, he refused to act on that desire, or in Abram’s case, that hunger.

“She’s showering.” Tariq shrugged his shoulders beneath the expensive cotton shirt he wore. “She seems discontent with your lack of attention now that your pleasure has been attained.”

Now that his pleasure had been attained? His cock was still as hard as it had been the moment he stepped off the fucking plane. And it was still as hard as the moment he had stepped into Paige’s bedroom to see her fingers preparing to thrust inside the heated depths of her pussy.

He had never imagined she was a virgin. Never imagined it, and now, had no idea how he could force himself to forget it.

“See her home, Tariq,” Abram ordered. “I’ll await your return before leaving to meet with Director Jennings and Senator Mathews. I’d like to give them the information we’ve attained on Ayid and Aman quickly, before Azir realizes we have left Saudi entirely.”

His brothers, Ayid and Aman. Younger half-brothers. Twins who shared a rabid rage and intellectual cruelty that never ceased to amaze him. And Azir, his father. How had he ever believed his father could have the smallest iota of kindness inside his blackened soul? Now, six months after the death of the wife Azir had forced him to marry, and the child she had carried, Abram found it almost impossible to keep from killing the old bastard. Especially after he learned exactly how involved his father had been in ensuring there were no heirs other than Abram before he turned thirty-six.

If there were other heirs, then Abram’s death would not result in allowing Azir to turn the province over to the sons he preferred. The sons who shared his warped vision of the future of the world.

That vision had seen to the death of Abram’s first wife, when he had been no more than twenty. It had seen to the death of his second wife, and his unborn child, two years later. And it would destroy any other woman Abram ever allowed himself to care for.

Just as Ayid and Aman would see to the death of any woman Khalid could love, other than his sister, Paige.
They were cursed. The eldest sons of Azir bore the hatred and the fruits of malice that sprang from not just Azir, but also his youngest sons.

As Paige stepped into the back of the car in which she’d ridden into the city, the driver closing the door solicitously behind her, Abram turned and met Tariq’s gaze.

“She’s gone.” He hadn’t meant the words to pass his lips, or the thought to torment him as it did.

Watching her leave, watching that innocence, that hunger and zest for life, and for him, disappear, had driven home the fact that she could be taken forever if he weren’t very very careful.

Tariq’s lips quirked in amusement though, the bitterness and realization that tormented Abram wasn’t a part of the other man’s present thoughts.

“She won’t be for long,” Tariq assured him. “If that mark on your shoulder is any indication, you’ve given her a taste of what you both hunger for. I have a feeling, Abram, Miss Galbraithe will return sooner than you think.”

The mark?

His gaze jerked to his shoulder before he moved to the mirror atop the dresser next to him.

There, on his shoulder, just as Tariq had stated, a love bite that marred his flesh deeper than he would have imagined she could have given without his knowledge.

It marked him far deeper than flesh alone.

He forced himself to turn away.

He forced himself to leave her bedroom.

He forced himself to forget those few, precious moments when his lips had caressed the softest flesh he had ever known, when his tongue had tasted pure, fiery ecstasy.

A taste that would linger in his senses forever.

And a regret he knew he would never outrun.

He hadn’t expected this, he thought, it had caught him unaware the day he had arrived to help her and her family celebrate her eighteenth birthday. When he had seen her in that simple sundress on the sunny Greek island where she and her family lived part of the year. With the tops of her breasts rising above the bodice of the dress, the tiny straps stretching over slender, graceful shoulders, and the red gold of her hair hanging to the middle of her back.

“Abram,” she had whispered his name with a breathy little sigh. “I’ve missed you.”
Stars had gleaed in the emerald green of her eyes. Her face had flushed beneath the soft hint of the Mediterranean-bronzed flesh. Her skin wasn’t as dark as her father’s, but neither was it as light as her mother’s. When combined with the silken flames of her hair, the combination was enough to daze a lesser man.

It was that day he had seen the woman she was. It was that day his cock had swelled, becoming so engorged, so torturously hot and tight he swore he’d been on the edge of dizziness.

He almost grinned at that thought.

Almost. Because, he knew the fate that would await her.

He knew the hell he would revisit and this time never escape.

He couldn’t have her, he couldn’t allow his need to corrupt her, or his legacy to endanger her.

And he couldn’t keep his hunger for her from raging …