‘We cannot be together here.’
She could feel him sliding through her fingers, could feel the beat of her heart in her throat, and it was him and only him that made her bold.
‘No one would have to know.’ He watched her lips part in a smile. ‘What happens in the desert stays in the desert.’
Ibrahim’s fingers moved up her chin and slid into her hair and how he wanted to guide her head down, rather than wait till the morning. He wanted to break a rule, but he was stronger than that, or was he weak, because he could not defy the desert.
‘This is how you work?’
He watched colour flood her face, ached unfulfilled as her hands released him.
‘Of course not.’
‘Go to bed.’ he stood and pulled her from her knees to her feet and felt guilty for shaming her. He fought a rare need to explain himself, that it was safer if they were apart. ‘Anyway, you might change your mind again at the last minute. Just go to bed, Georgie.’
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS the longest night and she lay there both embarrassed and wanting.
The air was thick and warm and soon her jug of water was empty. Georgie wanted to go to the kitchen to replenish it, but was scared to move.
She had tried to seduce him. She closed her eyes in mortification—with all her banging on about being professional, she could hardly believe what she’d done, what the desert had made her do.
Georgie. She could hear him calling her.
Georgie. She heard it again and stood.
Georgie. It was his voice, she was sure of it, and she padded across the room, parting the drape, ready for his summons, but then she heard the shriek of laughter from the wind that taunted her and she ran back to bed and curled up, wondering if she was going mad.
Ibrahim. He heard it too, but he was prepared for it. He heard the desert tease, heard the wind drop into a low seductive voice that danced around his bed, saw her face in his dream and when he awoke, when he could not sleep, when his teeth gritted and his head thrashed with insomnia, his hand stalled on its way down to private solace, for even that release was denied him by the laws that bound him tonight, because he would have been thinking of her.
And sunrise should have brought relief, but there was none. Still the winds blacked it out as they screamed, still it was dark, and she heard his chant of prayer and finally she completely agreed with Ibrahim, for Georgie now hated the desert.
‘Can we go?’ she asked, when his prayers were completed and she padded out of her room.
‘The winds are still heavy,’ Ibrahim said but he did not look at her. ‘Get dressed and we will have breakfast.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Then go back to bed and rest,’ he ordered. ‘I will do the same. As soon as it is safe to do so, we will leave.’
‘I’m scared,’ Georgie admitted ‘I’m scared of the noises …’
‘It’s just wind.’
‘I feel like …’ It sounded madder in words than in her head. ‘I feel like it knows I mocked it last night.’
‘Don’t.’ He loathed what he had said to her in an urgent attempt to halt what they had been doing. ‘You did nothing wrong. I should not have spoken to you like that. Georgie … it’s just tales I was telling.’
‘You believe them.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Yes. I don’t know.’ He didn’t know. He could see her outline in the lamplight, he could hear the fear in her voice, and tales of old were illogical.
‘Come here.’
She stood, scared to do as he said, scared to return to her own bed.
‘Come on.’
His voice was real, the wind was not, and as the wind let out a screech, she ran those thirty-four steps to him, to the solid warmth of his arms. He could feel her heart hammering in her chest as he held her close, because she really was terrified.
‘It’s just …’ He struggled for the words. ‘Old wives’ tales.’
‘So they’re not true?’
‘No.’ he started, but he could not quite deny them. ‘I don’t think so. Come …’ His bed was warm and her skin was cold and he pulled her in.
‘Did your parents not tell you tales when you were younger?’
‘No.’ She gave a cynical snort. ‘We weren’t exactly tucked in with a bedside story each night.’
‘Is that why you ran away?’ He felt her tense. ‘Karim told me,’ he admitted. ‘Not everything, he was talking more about Felicity, about her childhood, how mistrusting it made her. Your father—’
‘Was a drunken brute,’ Georgie finished for him. ‘My mother was terrified of him. Even after he died, he still left his mark on her. She’s still taking tablets to calm her nerves, still scared of her own shadow.’
‘What about you?’
‘I wasn’t scared of him—I just wanted to get away from him.’
‘Which was why you ran?’
‘I was always sent back.’ She was angry at the memory, angry at the injustice. ‘He never hit us—which made it fine, apparently. We were living in chaos, dancing to his temper, but …’ She didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to relive those times again—times when the only thing she had been able to control had been the food that had gone into her mouth, but Ibrahim seemed to understand without her saying it. She felt his hand dust her arm and slip to her waist, to the slender frame that was softened now with slight curves. As her hands had helped him, his hands did their work now, each touch, each stroke assuring her somehow that he knew how hard fought each gain had been, how fiercely she had fought for survival.
He could not not kiss her.
Just a kiss, and as he moved to her mouth for a moment he fought it.
‘What would happen?’ Georgie whispered, and he could taste her sweet breath.
‘Nothing probably.’ With her next to him, he could rationalise it. ‘As I said, look at my parents …’
‘But they still love each other,’ Georgie said. ‘They’re still bound. Felicity told me—’ she did not know if she was betraying a secret ‘—that Karim wouldn’t let her leave the desert till—’
‘It’s old wives’ tales.’ He was sure of it now. ‘After all, I can bring a mistress from the palace to the desert and I am not bound to her. It’s just superstition.’
‘Why doesn’t she come to you?’ Georgie asked. ‘I mean, when you’re younger. Why do you have to walk to the palace?’ She liked the tales, liked hearing the stories.
‘It would be different.’ Ibrahim said. ‘Your first time, at such a young age, you would not be able to separate the two—and if you love her in the desert …’ It was too illogical to even try to explain it, so he smiled instead and felt her calm beside him. There was peace in his heart this morning that had been absent for ages, forgiveness in his soul, and he would be forever grateful to her for that, and he really could not not kiss her.
And that had caused trouble before, but this was a different kiss: this was slow and non-urgent and, a first for Ibrahim, it was a kiss that was purely tender.
And a kiss couldn’t hurt when it felt so nice, and she was content with his kiss, because she’d craved it for months. The taste of his tongue and the weight of his lips. For a while Ibrahim too was content, to feel her breast through the fabric as his mouth explored hers, but then a kiss did not quite suffice, and he opened the buttons as far as they would go. ‘Did your sister design this gown for you?’ he teased, because even with all the buttons undone, he still couldn’t get to her breast and his hand slid to her waist to pursue from a different angle, but that would not be wise so, just a little disgruntled, he pulled back.
His eyes asked permission, for what she didn’t know, but she licked her lips in consent and he tore the fabric and went back to kissing her. She felt his sigh of satisfaction in her mouth as his hand, unhindered now, met her breast, and she kissed him and felt the satin of his skin beneath her fingers. It was still just a kiss, though her hands roamed. They felt the chest s
he’d once touched and explored it again, felt the dark, flat nipple beneath the pads of her fingers. It remained at a kiss even as her hands slid down.
And then, recalling last night, there was hesitation, but his apology came by way of his hands that led her to him and he moaned in her mouth as she held him.
Still just a kiss as she touched and explored what all night she had thought of, then it was far more than a kiss because his mouth would not suffice and her lips trailed down his torso, tasting the salt of his skin till Ibrahim halted her, because he wanted more of her, wanted longer with her, than her mouth would allow.
‘We mustn’t.’ Georgie said, as he pulled her body over his, because she was starting to understand there were rules.
‘We won’t,’ Ibrahim said, because he had more control than anyone, that much he knew.
He liked living on the edge, the brink, and this morning he did just that. ‘We can do this.’ Ibrahim said, and he pulled her till her legs were astride him. He took a breast in his mouth and his hands slid over her bottom, and she steadied herself with her hands and thought she would die because it felt like heaven.
‘We can’t,’ she said, which was different from the I can’t she had once halted him with.
‘We won’t,’ he insisted, as the tip of his thick length stroked her clitoris and he waited for the wind to warn him, or for a sign to halt him, or for Georgie to again recant. Except the desert was silent and there was nothing to halt him, and Georgie bit down on her lip to stop herself begging him to enter her.
She didn’t need to.
He slipped in just a little way and she could never again say no to him, because he felt sublime.
And there was only one law that they followed, and that was nature’s. He inched into her and then lifted her just a little further each time. He wanted the stupid nightdress off, but he did not want to stop touching her for a second. It was Georgie who lifted the fabric over her head and at the sight of her arms upstretched and her body above him he could no longer tease and cared nothing for rules, and he pulled her full down onto him.
The force of full entry had her cry in surprise, so purposefully and assuredly, he filled her, and though she tried to stretch for more of him, her body clamped down in possession, as if to assure herself she wouldn’t flee from him again. He watched, he slid up on the cushions so he could watch them, and she saw more than passion in his eyes. She saw something else too and she wanted to share it, so he pushed her head down a little, so she could share in the dark and light they made. She loved the rules as she watched them unite, she wanted to be bound for ever. Then he guided her head to his and his cool tongue met hers—every beat of her orgasm matched his, every finger knotted in his hair met by the tug on her own scalp. Then, afterwards, their eyes were mirrors both searching for regret or dread at dues now to be paid, and both finding none.
She lay beside him, knew he was thinking and so too was she. ‘Later today …’ he kissed her shoulder, as if confirming a thought ‘… I will take you back to the palace and then I must leave for London.’
‘You’re leaving?’
‘I have to go.’
She looked up at him.
‘I need to speak properly with my father. I need to think about …’ He didn’t say ‘us’, but she was sure that he almost did. ‘He has flown there today to visit my mother.’
‘Because of what you said to him?’
‘In spite of what I said to him.’ The loathing in his voice did not match their tender mood.
‘Is it always like this between you?’
‘Always,’ Ibrahim said. ‘He demands I respect him—but how? Why can’t he just let her go?’
‘Let her go?’ Georgie didn’t understand. After all, his mother had her own life in London.
‘She is still his wife.’ Ibrahim looked down at her, took in the flushed cheeks and rumpled hair, and it felt so good to share his thoughts with her. ‘She regrets her indiscretion—so much so that all this time she has stayed loyal.’
‘But it’s been years.’
‘And there will be many more years. After all this time ignoring her, now he drops in at will. Who’s to say next month, next year he will be too busy? And she is expected to wait.’
‘Can’t she divorce him?’
‘There is no divorce in Zaraq. It is so forbidden that there is not even a word for it. A lacuna, there is no concept, no precedence. My mother knows that even if legally it is taken care of overseas, still always, to him, to the people of Zaraq, she is his wife and nothing can change it.’
He did not notice her flushed cheeks pale suddenly.
‘There’s nothing that can change it?’
‘Nothing,’ Ibrahim confirmed, and she felt her heart still. ‘You cannot undo what is done—that is the rule of Zaraq.’
CHAPTER TEN
HAPPY its work had been done, the desert was silent and finally Ibrahim slept. Unlike on the plane, now, for the first time, he looked relaxed, and as she watched him, it was Georgie who was tense. She was starting to make sense of the strange rules, could see now what Felicity had been saying—that to the people of Zaraq she was still married.
Ibrahim would not mind, she tried to console herself. He would understand, she tried to convince herself, but wrapped in his arms she was unable to face him, felt like a liar, and she rolled over in shame.
At what point should she have said it?
Yesterday, or at the wedding? Was she supposed to walk up to someone and give them so much of herself on contact? But there had been opportunities, her conscience reminded her.
She had tried to tell him last night, but he had halted her, Georgie told herself, then guiltily admitted she had been relieved when he had stopped her, more than pleased to avoid seeing his face when she revealed the truth.
Georgie closed her eyes, and his arm wrapped around her, his warm, sleek body spooned in from behind. There was a possessiveness there that felt tender. There was a beauty in his embrace and a promise in his words that told her this had meant something to Ibrahim, that again they had glimpsed a future, but with what she knew now it was a future that again she might have to deny him. It was an uneasy sleep she fell into, filled with dreams of sacred oils and laughing winds, man-made structures and the sound of an engine.
‘Get dressed.’ His voice was urgent and jolted her awake. ‘Someone is coming. I heard a helicopter.’ The noise hadn’t been a dream. She could hear the whir of the blades slowing. Surely there was time to race back to her room. All she had was a torn nightgown. He threw her a sash of cloth as he pulled on his clothes and she went to dash to her own quarters, but even as she stepped outside, she knew she had left it too late. She stood, shivering and embarrassed in the lounge area, and she couldn’t look at Karim so she turned pleading eyes to Felicity, whose face was as white as chalk.
‘Enjoying your tour?’ Felicity sneered. ‘So where’s your expert guide?’ Georgie was incredibly grateful when Ibrahim, dressed, thoroughly together and not remotely embarrassed, appeared from his chamber and took control.
‘Your sister and I intended to return last night. There was a storm …’
‘Enough!’ Karim’s shout was to silence his younger brother, but Ibrahim refused.
‘Georgie, go and get dressed,’ Ibrahim said, his voice supremely calm, ‘and I will take you back to the palace.’
‘Ibrahim,’ Karim warned, but it fell on deaf ears.
‘Go,’ he said to Georgie. ‘I will speak with my brother.’ He eyed him darkly. ‘We have done nothing wrong.’
‘I warned you!’ Karim shouted. ‘I warned you to stay away from her.’
‘And I chose not to listen. How dare you both walk in here with rage in your eyes and shame her? Have you forgotten how you met your wife?’
Georgie watched colour flood Felicity’s cheeks—for their one night of passion had resulted in Azizah. But her sister seemed to have forgotten that fact as she followed Georgie to her room because Felicity wa
s incensed. ‘How could you, Georgie? This is my husband’s family. You’ve been here a few days and you tumble into bed with him.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Oh, please.’
‘As Ibrahim said, you hardly waited before you jumped into bed with Karim,’ Georgie retaliated.
‘We weren’t in Zaraq!’ Felicity said. ‘Here you play by the rules.’
‘You know what?’ Georgie had had enough. ‘You really are starting to sound like them. What happened to my sister?’
‘She grew up,’ Felicity shouted. ‘She behaved responsibly—but you were never very good at that were you, Georgie? Bunking off school, running away from home …’ And Georgie could see the years of hurt she had caused in her sister’s eyes, the hurt she had apologised for over and over again.
‘I’ve done everything I can to help you and now you do this.’ Felicity had tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I paid for your rehab when I couldn’t afford it. Karim has helped too.’
‘And I’m very grateful,’ Georgie said, but she recalled Ibrahim’s words and would not feel beholden.
‘So this is how you show it!’ Felicity shrilled.
Georgie did not break and she did not crumple, because all it was was a row, a confrontation that needed to be had, and no longer was she scared of it. ‘I don’t have to show anything.’ Georgie said, her voice calm. ‘I’m a different woman now; I’m a different person from who I was all those years ago. Ibrahim and I weren’t just having a bit of fun.’ She was sure of that, quite sure.
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