The Sheikh's Destiny by Olivia Gates

making it the very embodiment of your noble house—it makes you indescribable. And infinitely more irresistible.”
    Judging that the time to reach out again was now, when she had him boggling at the audacity of her confessions, her hands released his, making another attempt to reach his scar.
    His hands caught them before she could blink. “You can’t really want to touch...this.”
    “Did indescribable and irresistible have too many syllables for you to understand? I would find you both even if you were scarred all over. I don’t only want to touch you, I’ve been waiting all my life to do it.”
    This time, his stupefaction was almost tangible.
    Pouncing on the opening it afforded her, she persisted, “Will you let me touch you? Please?”
    A full-scale war seemed to erupt within him.
    Then, with his gaze the darkest it had ever been, he let go of her hands.
    Her first instinct was to pounce on him. But that starving-woman-at-a-buffet routine would be too much for him at this point.
    Instead, she reached out, hands trembling as they made that first contact. With the scar at his heart.
    The moment her flesh met his at that mark of old and severe pain and damage, her whole being seized, as if her essence flowed through her fingertips into him. She would give endlessly of it, if it would only erase his suffering, past and present.
    On the verge of breaking down, her voice wobbled on the question that seared her. “Does— Does it still hurt?”
    “No.”
    The monosyllable conveyed how much and how long it had hurt.
    “What does it feel like?”
    A shudder coursed through him. Or it might be she who was shaking so hard. She couldn’t tell where the tremors originated.
    “People stop asking when they know it’s not painful anymore.” His voice was thicker, impeded. “They don’t think any other sensation but pain matters.”
    Empathy tightened her throat. “I’m not people. I’m me. And anything that you feel matters to me. Matters, period.” Unable to hold back anymore, one hand curled around his nape, urging his head down so her lips could follow her fingers in exploring that scar that made her only far more appreciative and protective of his every other inch. This time, there was no mistaking the jolt that passed through him as her lips traveled from the edge of his jaw down to the root of his powerful neck. She held him closer, insistent against his damp, hot skin. “Tell me, Rashid.”
    Letting her discover every inch of his scar, his voice ragged, he said, “If I’m totally still, I can convince myself it doesn’t exist. But at the slightest movement, it feels as if the ruined skin no longer belongs to me. It sometimes feels like a chasm into another reality, a fault line where something malicious seeps into my body, infects me with its poison.”
    So he did feel possessed. She’d do whatever it took to make sure he didn’t feel that way ever again.
    Slipping around him, her lips followed the scar as it flowed from his neck to his back, as if she would kiss it better, suck all the negative energy into herself.
    “How do you feel when it’s touched?” she whispered.
    She felt his tension spike before it resumed buzzing through him like high voltage through a maximum-resistance cable. His voice was a hoarse rasp when he answered. “The few times it was touched, it felt like a jolt of acute discomfort and revulsion. It made me feel...violent.”
    Her lips stopped over his shoulder blade, along with her heart. “Do— Do you feel like that now?”
    “No.”
    Her heart clanged at his instantaneous negation.
    When he didn’t qualify it, she resumed her exploration, bolder now. “Then how do you feel when I do this...?”
    A finger joined her lips in their sweep through the ridge.
    When nothing but his slow, deep breathing answered her—which to the über-fit Rashid constituted panting—she nudged her head against his arm. He raised it, letting her follow an uninterrupted path up his abdomen to