Once Upon a Second Chance (1 Night Stand Series) (4 page)

She’d barely had time to glance up again before he pulled her to him, and they tumbled onto the bed. Leila couldn’t stop herself from giggling, yet the mirth died away when he drew up on his knees and stared at her. Passion clamped his jaw, a soft sheen of perspiration dotting his smooth chest and the ridges of his six-pack abs, while his thick and potent arousal rose up to brush his belly button.

So magnificent. All hers. Khalid didn’t strike her as the kind of man who’d wish to have more than one wife—by the laws of Islam and of Abu Dhabi, he could have four. But a part of her knew he would be a one-woman man. His lovemaking had been too scorching, too much a joining of two souls, to convince her he could take another in the same way. Somehow, she knew, and she trusted her instincts.

Hers
.

And she wouldn’t let him leave again if she had the chance to stop him. Yes, he owed her an explanation; he’d also need to grovel his way into her good books once again. But she wouldn’t give him up. Not without a fight.

“
Enty nour einy
,” he murmured.

You are the light of my eyes.

Enta Habib Alby W Hayaty Ya Habibi
, she wished to say to him.
You are the love of my heart and my life, my love
.

Without him, she would still be in her prison. She owed him everything.

She reached out and brushed her hand against his thigh. Inching higher, she caressed his balls. Perfect—he must have shaved the day before, prior to the Friday midday
Jummah
prayer. Good thing Muslim men were required by law to rid their nether regions and underarms of hair at least every three weeks. She loved the clean feel of him, how she could get so close to his skin and revel in his nakedness.

The touch she kept light and subtle drew a hiss from him. Pain reflected on his features, and she gasped when he closed his hand around her wrist, stilling her movement.

“Don’t,” he started.

“Shh,” she coaxed. “Love me,
habib alby
.”

Love of my heart
. The endearment had fallen from her lips before she could think it through.

“
Hyette
,” he growled, before he crushed his mouth to hers.

The love of my life, that which I live for
. Could he really mean the sweet nothing he’d uttered under the spell of passion?

The question shattered from her perception when his naked body came into contact with hers. Skin against skin in a blistering heat that spoke of their denied need for one another. She clutched his shoulders to keep him close to her, afraid he would leave once again and this time, be gone forever.

A gasp tore from her throat when he broke the kiss to trail his mouth along her jaw, down her neck and along one breast. A plaintive moan echoed her first sharp sound when he closed his lips on one nipple and sucked. She arched her body to his touch, welcoming the caressing tips of his fingers between her thighs. He wouldn’t need to touch her to know she lay primed and so eager for him—even she could smell the heady musk of her arousal. But still, he coaxed sigh after sigh from her as he touched and teased, delved into her heat and then rubbed at the center of her pleasure.

She closed her eyes tight and bit her lip when the orgasm exploded through her.

“Let go,” Khalid said. “I want to hear every sound you make.”

Startled, she blinked and stared at him. No doubt about it, her husband was a wonderful lover, gentle and considerate. But she wanted more. She craved passion, unbridled lust, a claiming possession from him to scorch the daylights out of her.

So she clasped the back of his neck and pulled his head down, to take his mouth in as hot a kiss as she could muster. He stilled at the assault, and she took advantage of his surprise to lift her body up and push him flat on his back on the mattress. Straddling his hips, his erection pulsing hot and hard against her stomach, she broke away to let her lips take the same trail on his body he’d taken with her just moments earlier. She gorged herself on the salty taste of his warm skin, taking confidence from the deepening press of his fingers on her hips that pleasure at her attentions must course through him.

When she reached her destination, she paused for a second. A shudder of revulsion tried to wade its way inside her when she recalled the many times she’d been forced to this act in the past, but she quelled it and shoved the memories away. Khalid would never force her to do anything she didn’t want, and she
did
want to bestow upon him this particular attention.

So with gentle slowness, she closed her lips over him. He gasped when she made contact with his shaft, and he lifted his hips off the bed, which allowed her to take him in deeper.

“Leila,” he cried out in a hoarse howl.

Over and over, she slid him in and out, slow caresses leading to hungry sucking, before she changed the pace again.

He throbbed against her tongue.

In a swift move, he removed himself from her mouth, pulled her to him, and rolled her onto her back. She parted her legs and skimmed his sides with her thighs. He entered her the minute she opened for him, his thick length stretching her with the most delicious torment imaginable. Heat pooled and gathered low in her belly, growing toward a crescendo with every push and pull of his body inside hers.

He sought her for a deep kiss. She responded in kind, matching her passion, her need, to his.

Her cry of ecstasy when another orgasm tore through her got sucked into his mouth as he touched his tongue to hers and took their joining to another level. He drank her bliss from her parted lips, and broke away when his own orgasm shattered through him.

Leila opened her eyes. The naked rapture on his face squeezed around her heart, the conviction of their belonging together wrapping itself around the organ in a choking web.

How on earth would she stop him from leaving?

Chapter Four

Tucked into the crook of his arm, the notion of reality stirred inside her consciousness as her empty stomach gave a loud growl. Khalid laughed, the rumble coming from deep within his chest, the sound low and carefree.

He dropped a kiss onto her head before he released her. “We didn’t finish dinner.”

She nodded as she pulled away. “The food must’ve grown cold by now.”

“Pop it the microwave again.”

“Yes. Let’s do that.”

How awkwardly they now acted with each other. The communion of their lovemaking a fading memory, they were two strangers once again. He looked away, anywhere but at her, which made her heart constrict with an ache stronger than anything she’d felt before.

And right then, she would do all she had to do to keep him with her. She loved him, and her life would never be the same, or be worth living, if she didn’t have him with her.

How to convince him, though?

Her stomach growled again, a surge of watery bile touching the back of her throat and making her nauseous. She needed food. The answers to her dilemma would have to wait.

Leila reached down for the discarded dress and froze when he placed a hand on her arm. She peered up to find him offering her his shirt. A chasm wider than the ocean between their two countries in the past three months lay between them, and she bit her lip. How she wanted to be close to him right now, in his embrace, pressed to his strong chest. But the closest she’d get to her husband right then would be through wearing his shirt, so she accepted the garment and slid her arms into the too-long sleeves while he tugged on his trousers.

He waited for her by the door, and she breezed out of the bedroom with her head held high. She wouldn’t let him see the turmoil inside her. What man would want a wimpy idiot clinging to him? After what Bashir Al-Arif had done to her, she should’ve sworn off men. But Khalid Al-Nadir had turned out to be the one who ruined her for any potential future with another man. Because she had fallen in love with him.

In the kitchen, she threw the tubs inside the microwave oven and slammed the door with more force than warranted. Anger burned through every cell of her body, and she wanted to curse Khalid when he came to stand behind her.

The oven dinged, and as she reached out for the food and turned, he grabbed the dishes from her hands.

“I can carry these to the counter, thank you,” she spat.

“It’s not your job to wait on me, Leila, and a man is supposed to help around the house.”

She snorted. “Stop kidding.”

He placed the food on the counter and settled in his place. “It’s the truth. The prophet—peace be upon him—used to help around his household. All Muslim men are supposed to emulate his example.”

“Not how the reality plays out.”

“Unfortunately.”

He let the word die and in the strained silence, they both ate their dinner. She reached for her glass and wanted to spit the juice out when she realized it had turned tepid, with an acrid tang.

He sighed, and she glanced up. “What?”

“Carole told me you refuse to use the money I gave you.”

She shivered, and tried to conceal her trembling. Blood money, so he’d have a clear conscience when he left her, knowing she was well provided for. “I don’t want it.”

“It’s yours, though. The dowry belongs to the wife, and she alone.”

She’d been surprised to hear about this edict on the day of her wedding. Muslim men were expected to pay their bride a dowry, the amount stated in public during the deliberations before the ceremony. Her astonishment had been huge when the
imam
and the two male witnesses had asked her—three times, as per the nikaah, the Muslim marriage rite—if she consented to marry Khalid bin Abdallah Al-Nadir, and if she agreed to the dowry amount of three million US dollars he would bestow on her for this ceremony.

So much money? She thought she’d misunderstood, but three times in a row? She couldn’t be that hard of hearing. The
imam
then proceeded to explain to her how dowry wealth—the
mahr
, as it was called—belonged solely to the wife, money or riches no one but she could use. Not even her husband could claim the assets, unless she wanted to give some of them to him.

Her father had taken the
mahr
money from her first marriage to settle his debts back in England. She’d heard he still lived in Essex, and that Khalid had forbidden him to approach her.

She swallowed her bite of pie hard. At the helm of a three million US dollar fortune, she possessed close to a hundred million Mauritian rupees when they processed the sum through the exchange rate. She was rich, filthy rich, on this island.

But what good would money do when she didn’t belong here?

“I said, I don’t want it,” she bit out. “Now, can we please talk of something else? Or even, not talk, if that’s what you would prefer?”

Her words registered onto him akin to a slap. Guilt and shame marred his features, before he lowered his head and proceeded to finish his meal.

Damn him! He’d started this conversation, and he’d let her hang now?

“Why did you leave me?”

If she’d thought the room was silent before, she hadn’t fathomed how the oppressive tension that fell between them would crackle and reach for their hearts at the same time it pushed them away from one another. That’s how it felt for her; maybe for him, too?

“I had my reasons,” he said in a hushed tone.

That’s it
—she’d had enough of the masquerade. She threw her fork down, not bothering with how it skittered with dangerous aim toward him. She jumped to her feet and stalked around the counter to stand in front of him. Digging her short nails into his shoulders, she forced him to get up.

“I’ve had it up to here with you keeping me in the dark,” she yelled. “You owe me an explanation. Never mind consideration and respect. The least you owe me are the reasons you’ve been hiding behind for the past three months.”

“Leila, I—”

“Shut up, I’m not finished.” She knew she sounded like a harpy, but she didn’t care anymore. “Where do you even come from? Suddenly, six months ago, I am told I have to move to an old shrew’s house because my husband had given me a divorce, when he had sworn never to let me escape his clutches. Not only that, but he’d divorced me because someone else was to marry me the minute he gave me my three
talaaqs
and my monthly bleeding over three months would confirm I didn’t carry his child.

“Indeed, three months passed, and there we were in that living room being introduced, getting married less than a week later.” She paused to strengthen her grasp on his shoulders. “Who the hell are you, and what happened back then? Why me?”

His jaw tautened, and he winced. Khalid clasped her shoulders and pulled her to him.

She resisted. “Answer me.”

Her fight proved futile. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her to his naked chest. “I wish I could.”

At the regret in his tone, the anger left her. He hurt, too, so why wouldn’t he tell her the truth? Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them back. The fight evaporated from her every cell. Spent from all the high-strung emotion, she sagged against him, and he tightened his hold.

“So, this is it?” she mumbled against his skin. “The end for us?”

He didn’t answer. Not with words. But in the way he grew tense, and how he clasped her body to his and kissed the top of head, she got what she sought.

Tonight would be their last time together. He knew it, and now she did, too.

A clock inside the house chimed midnight.

She quelled a sob. Barely five hours before day would break, taking the last minutes of darkness with it.

We still have five more hours to lie together
.

With deliberate slowness, she pulled away. Going on tiptoe, she braced her hands on his collarbones and pressed her lips to his.

He didn’t need further prompting. He pulled her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her back into the bedroom.

One more time. One last time.