by Dani Collins
Ra’id snorted, then sobered as he saw the gravity in Zafir’s expression. “You’re really considering it.”
“She’s nineteen. Young, educated traditionally, but she’s continuing her schooling, planning to be a doctor.”
“So she’s smart, but perhaps not as interested in playing politics as she is in helping all people,” Ra’id suggested.
“Exactly.” Not a bad match at all.
“Pretty?”
Zafir cut him a does-it-matter? look.
Ra’id only shrugged. “It helps.”
“I never did give you that herd of goats for taking my ugly sister off my hands,” Zafir drawled, making Ra’id’s mouth twitch with humor. Ra’id had begun drooling over Amineh before they’d left third form. If he could have, he would have married her before she’d finished school. Their father had been gone by then and it had been up to Zafir to insist his sister pass her A levels before she could marry.
She had, and not only had she been able to marry, but she’d also married for love. Zafir knew she believed he’d come to love Tariq’s mother, but it was not an emotion he’d ever aspired to. It had been his father’s weakness. The driver of actions that had been his undoing.
Love, for him, was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Another arranged marriage for the sake of peace was his lot.
“You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist,” Ra’id said.
“Appreciated,” Zafir said, slapping his friend on the shoulder as he moved away. “I’ll let the children know.” It was an excuse to see Fern. They did their best to avoid each other during the day, which made him feel a heel, but what option did he have? He’d promised her he wouldn’t cost her her job.
“Promise them you’ll send Tariq to us for a few weeks. I’ll find a pocket in my schedule after my cousin’s wedding. It will soften the blow,” Ra’id said.
Fine for Tariq and the girls, but how would he soften the blow to himself?
* * *
Amineh was sitting in on Fern’s lesson today, lending her excellent art skills to sketches of “my favorite animal spotted in the oasis.” When Zafir arrived to say everyone would be leaving in the morning, her tiny class erupted into disorder. Amineh was most vocal of all.
“You know I can’t ignore these things,” Zafir told his sister testily.
Fern was afraid to look at him, certain she’d betray her distress. This was it. The end of her nights with strong arms around her, the scent of a man on her skin, his lips whispering praise and compliments into her soul. It wasn’t just the pleasure he gave her that she’d miss, but the illusion of closeness. She was sure he laughed with all the women in his bed, told them all they were pretty and tasted like honey and smelled like wildflowers, but this was her first experience with pillow talk and she loved it.
As he walked away, she couldn’t help a yearning look at his back, wishing life wasn’t so unfair—
He moved out of sight and her gaze came back to the group and Amineh’s alert, probing stare.
The burn of a hard flush swelled up from Fern’s throat, choking her and making her cheeks ache. She was such an idiot.
Somehow she managed to say, “Didn’t you tell me all your friends suffer the effect? He’s...” She lifted a helpless, hopeless palm. There weren’t words to describe how compelling he was or why she’d fallen under his spell. She just had.
Amineh’s shoulders fell and she smiled with amused sympathy. “They do. And you shouldn’t take it personally that he’s completely oblivious. Oh, Fern.”
Fern waved away the compassion, glad Amineh assumed her crush was platonic, not one fueled by midnight encounters of the most licentious kind. But the prospect of losing those trysts sat like a knife in her chest.
Fortunately the news they were leaving cast a pall over the whole camp. Her long face was one of many. The children were querulous, distracting the adults from Fern’s morose mood, and when Tariq invited her to join them for the final meal, she had a valid excuse to maintain her privacy and keep her misery from being noticed.
“I really do have a lot to gather up and pack. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll miss you,” he told her, making her want to hug him, which was odd for her. She had worked with children his age as part of her certification, had enjoyed them immensely, but being affectionate with students wasn’t encouraged and she wasn’t naturally effusive. Perhaps Zafir had unlocked something in her. She finally felt like she had warmth to offer.
“I’ll miss you, too. You’re a remarkable young man. But I’ll see you in a few months, when you visit your cousins.”
She wouldn’t see his father, but what she had with Zafir was already stolen property, not something she could keep.
She took her time memorizing every aspect of him when she held him that night. He seemed to be doing the same. They’d taken to drawing out their caresses these last few nights, letting the sensations build upon themselves, learning to hold each other at the height of passion so every sensation was played out to its greatest degree.
He sat with his back against pillows pushed up against her stack of packed bags and baskets. She kneeled on either side of his thighs, both of them naked and damp, trembling with arousal. Her mouth couldn’t stop feasting on his and his hands were firm and thorough, like he intended to imprint his touch on her skin forever.
Rising onto her knees under the urge of his hand on her bottom, she offered her breast for his loving attention. They had perfected silent communication, keeping talking to a minimum for fear of discovery, making love blind in the dark.
He tugged at her nipple, tender and bruised by the sweet, nightly torture of his insatiable appetite. It hurt and felt so good. She let her head fall back as she fought groaning aloud at the acute sensations. How would she survive without him? Without this? She’d never felt so free as she did when she was with him. He was magic and fantasy and perfection.
Folding her arms around his head, she kissed his hair and drank in his dark scent, her eyes burning with an emotion she feared was far deeper and more permanent than infatuation.
He pulled back and drew her down to kiss her hard, to stake his claim on her mouth in a fierce way that threw her heart into flight. She pressed herself to him and writhed in desperation, wanting to crawl inside him and stay with him forever.
Her movements slid her throbbing loins against his rampant erection, so firm and ready. She felt like her hands knew that part of him better than she knew her own body. She moved herself against him, wet and aching, aware that abandoning herself this way aroused him nearly to the breaking point.
The carnality of it thrilled her, made her yearn. Rubbing and sliding against him took her very close to drawing him into her. She slowed, savoring every millimeter of his shape against her sensitive core. Pressure threatened as she found his tip and slid away again. Oh that was wickedly tempting, making her entrance weep with desire, strumming her to unbelievably desperate levels.
Barely realizing what she was doing, she grew more deliberate with her movements, pressing harder, liking the piercing intensity and stretch against her aching center. She did it again, pressing for that hot thickness to sink deeper into her.
“Fern,” he gasped as he pulled back, his hands hard on her hips.
“I want it to be you, Zafir,” she sobbed in defeat, scraping her nails across his shoulders as she buried her mouth in his neck. Intense sexual hunger nearly shattered her into weeping. “I don’t want another man to be my first. I want it to be you.”
He was right there. Her body needed his so badly.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” His words were barely audible and he held himself in such tight control, he trembled.
“You won’t,” she assured him, rocking and catching him into her, feeling him press to the deepest point yet.
&nb
sp; His breath rushed out and his arms slid to lock around her.
“Don’t stop me,” she begged.
“Gently,” he said, shaking hands moving up her back to her shoulders. “Go slow—” He bit off a curse as she sank down a little more.
It did hurt. A lot. But she was so aroused it happened easily and she was so happy to feel him filling her. So dazzled by the unique sensation of sitting on his lap this way, nose-to-nose, lips-to-lips, tender flesh burning as she accommodated his thickness, bodies locked in this ancient way.
She smiled as she kissed him and settled fully onto him, taking all of him, possessing him as much as he possessed her.
He ran his hands over her, nipping at her mouth with tender, inciting kisses as he whispered soft words in Arabic that sounded sweet and grateful and loving.
He played with her breasts, teased her nipples and made her react with a tight clasp around him. Intense excitement shot stars behind her eyelids. She wriggled with ecstasy, discovering the deliciousness grew the more she rocked.
“Careful. You’re driving me mad,” he said with a hard hand on her hip. “I’m so close I’m going to lose it if you keep doing that.”
She ignored him as she arched and writhed, moving with all the skill she’d learned from him. She gloried in grinding herself tight against him, then pulling away until she could feel the tension in his fingers as he urged her not to let his flesh leave hers. Her entire existence narrowed to the place where they joined, where her flesh was taut and sensitized and quivered in joy.
And every time she clasped herself tight on him, a deeper pleasure crept closer, like waves lapping at her, climbing, swelling, threatening to engulf her.
“I’m there, Zafir,” she breathed in his ear, feeling the tidal wave rising inside her. “Come with me. It’s so good. So good.” She sank onto him, clinging as the crisis arrived, expanding a white light through her that was pure elation. Exaltation.
Her body clenched around his shape, stunning her with the intensity of it, the tremendous heightening of their connection. He held her so tightly, she could barely breathe, but she needed his arms to hold her together as she shook and her abdomen contracted in ecstatic catches of bliss.
In the middle of it all, she fell, flying, plummeting and landing on her back on a bed of silken sheets. His big body covered hers and his hips moved in sharp, possessive thrusts, stinging her tight flesh, but escalating her orgasm into a new realm. He muffled her cries of joy with a hard kiss and bucked, filling her as his body convulsed in release.
She locked her knees at his waist, embracing him. Her ankles hooked in the small of his back, trying to keep him in her forever.
And when his weight settled fully onto her, she let her breath release with gratitude, utterly at peace. Happier than she’d ever been in her life.
In love, hopelessly and irrevocably in love, but that’s how a woman should feel with her first, right?
* * *
Zafir forced himself to gather his strength and roll away.
Leaving Fern was like stripping his body from his soul, but that part of him would be consigned to hell for this anyway.
It was as dark in her tent as it was every night that he stole in here, but he threw his arm over his eyes anyway, trying to block out reality.
He had meant to pull out.
He had never intended to fully possess her at all, but she’d tempted him beyond bearing, her desire for him the juiciest forbidden fruit to a man going mad with thirst.
And she’d been exquisite. Despite his best efforts to retain his sanity, he’d lost himself to the moment. To her erotic movements. Her heat and the pound of her heart against his own and the fire raging in his blood.
He didn’t even remember how she’d wound up under him, had only come back to real awareness of where he was and how wrong this was when the crisis had been peaked. The most all-encompassing satisfaction had filled him.
Until awareness had crept in with the slowing of his heart rate. Her tight, wet fit around him. Her soft sigh of repletion.
This should not have happened.
“Zafir—” she began in a whisper.
“Shh.” He came up on his elbow and touched her lips with his finger, listening.
Across the camp, he heard one of the girls sobbing and Amineh’s comforting voice going to her.
The small action of caressing Fern’s tender mouth and catching her scent rising warmly off her body made him stir with renewed excitement. He couldn’t trust himself if he stayed here. He’d have her again and now they weren’t the only ones awake in the camp.
“I have to go,” he whispered as he leaned close. “Before we’re caught.”
Her lips tightened under his touch in a flinch. “Okay.”
Her acceptance of his loving and leaving made him disgusted with himself. He wanted to ask about timing, but if he stayed any longer, he’d kiss her, fist his hand in her hair and make love to her all over again. Letting her go and rising from her bed was the hardest thing he’d ever done, but he made himself do it. He left her without saying goodbye, because he was afraid he’d fail to do it at all if he didn’t do it fast and quiet.
Later that morning, he ensured his caravan was ready first. He hugged his sister and kissed his nieces and learned from their father that Jumanah had been crying in the night because she didn’t want to leave.
He could relate.
He wouldn’t let himself dwell on the silky hold of Fern’s body, though, or the clinging limbs that had clawed with passion for his.
“Goodbye, Miss Davenport,” he managed to say when Fern brought one of her bags to the camel keepers. He wanted to ask where she was in her cycle, but they weren’t alone.
She wore sunglasses and her mouth pouted sexily—from sadness? Or his insatiable kisses last night?
“Thank you, abu Tariq,” she said. Their use of more formal names reset their relationship to where it ought to be. Her pale face colored with a pretty shade of pink as she added, “For making it possible for me to visit such a remarkable place.” Her voice wavered and color came up in her cheeks like a thermometer in the sun.
His heart twisted. It had been extraordinary for him, too.
“Bissalama” was all he said. Have a safe journey. It made him feel small until she replied in her quiet voice.
“You, too. Always.”
He took a breath that he wished could knock the weight off his heart, nodded and moved to take the reins of his camel.
CHAPTER SIX
FERN MIGHT HAVE pined away her life if she hadn’t been so distracted, but within a few weeks of returning to the palace, the entire family was packed up to attend a wedding of Ra’id’s cousin in the south.
Ra’id’s country was quite conservative, but this new state was even more so. Fern had to relinquish her passport at the airport and was given a room in a modern-day harem. The annexed compound was a collection of bungalows around a courtyard with an opulent pool, fountains and bronze statues. One passageway led to the main palace.
Her rooms were very nice, but few people bothered to speak to her—just the other foreigners, one a Malaysian nanny and another the wife of a pastry chef flown in from Paris. The rest of the women were family from both sides of the wedding party and came and went, keeping to themselves.
Fern didn’t mind. She was slipping quietly into a state of terror as she awaited proof she and Zafir hadn’t cashed in on the gamble they’d taken that last night. Unfortunately, her cycle grew later by the hour, making her certain they had.
Impossible, she thought. They’d only made love the once. Loads of women took years of active trying to get pregnant. How could she wind up pregnant after one time?
She wrung her hands as she waited for Amineh to collect the girls one afternoon. The girls had another
dress-fitting today, but Amineh was adamant that they keep as much to routine as possible. Jumanah was mixing up the direction of her letters, which wasn’t uncommon at this age, but Amineh wanted Fern to stay on top of it to ensure it wasn’t a more serious concern.
“I kept putting off starting Bashira’s schooling because we had so many other commitments and now she’s six and will fall behind her peers if I don’t make their education a priority,” Amineh had said when asking Fern to accompany them on this trip. “I know it won’t be ideal, but will you come?”
Fern hadn’t been able to say no. Teaching the girls was what she was contracted to do. Plus, she enjoyed the distraction of learning every nuance and aspect of this culture she was immersed in. Welcomed it.
Her mind kept screaming, it was one time. Completely the wrong time in her cycle, too. She didn’t understand it.
But what was there to understand? Sex made babies. She had had sex.
She and Zafir had made—
No.
But as the days wore on and the tenderness in her breasts became nearly unbearable and her churning stomach couldn’t be blamed solely on worry, she accepted that she was as bad as—quite possibly worse than—her mother. Fern, at least, had had the benefit of her mother’s lectures. She should have known better.
The final straw was a pronouncement by Amineh. When she arrived for the girls, she looked as washed out as Fern felt. The girls ran to their quarters to change while Amineh huffed out an exhausted breath.
“Ra’id told me Zafir was talking about arranging another marriage for himself, to the daughter of one of his challengers. Brilliant, I said. I want peace in Q’Amara as much as he does, but if he thinks I’m putting myself through another wedding before this baby comes out— Oh, I’ve shocked you.” Amineh’s hand came onto her arm. “I thought you might have guessed after I nearly fainted on you this morning. You sounded so sympathetic, like you knew what I was going through in this heat.”