by Nikki Logan
His eyes lifted to hers, heated. ‘It’s erotic.’
Her breath halted. She sagged back in her seat, dumbstruck, and crossed her hands demurely in her lap. Studying them. Then she looked out into the orange glow of the city lights far below. Then the candle of the table next to them. Taking the time to decide what to say. Taking the time to remember how to speak.
She cleared her throat and had a go. ‘Erotic?’
Didn’t that suggest some kind of attraction? More than just a kiss by the sea kind of attraction? More than just chemistry.
‘It was very seductive.’
A sense of the same empowerment she’d felt dancing there in front of the mirror came back to her now. Dancing in front of the mirror had felt good because it was good, maybe? ‘It’s supposed to be seductive.’
‘We don’t have that kind of relationship.’
Polite Georgia burned to take the hint. To change the subject. But she was tired of being polite. Of doing what everyone expected her to. She kicked her chin up. ‘You don’t have that kind of relationship with the other women there, either, but you weren’t running a mile from them.’
Just her.
The light came on in her mind as slow and golden as the lights of Göreme had glowed to life. But just as certain.
Just her.
She took a breath and whispered, ‘You liked it.’
He didn’t look away. But he didn’t speak. He let her three words hang out there over the city, unanswered, for eternity. But finally he spoke.
‘I loved it. And I shouldn’t have.’
Heat to match his flared up her throat. Her gut tightened way down low. He’d loved her sensual display. ‘Why?’
‘Because we don’t have that kind of relationship,’ he repeated, his frustrated hiss more at himself than her.
She took a breath. Took a chance. ‘Why don’t we?’
He stared. ‘What?’
‘Why don’t we have that relationship?’
‘I’m... You’re... We’re doing business.’
‘Why can’t it be more?’
Those all-seeing eyes suddenly darted everywhere but her. ‘I don’t do relationships. Not of that kind.’
It was true. In the months she’d known him he never once said he couldn’t do a class because he had a date. Never once mentioned anyone in his life. ‘What kind do you do?’
His eyes flicked up. ‘I have...encounters. Short and sharp. Over before they start.’
‘One-night stands, you mean?’
‘Sometimes more. But never much more.’
‘Why?’
His eyes shadowed over.
‘Don’t you get lonely?’ she breathed.
‘There are worse things than being lonely.’
Like what? Being hurt? Making a wrong choice? She wondered again about what had happened to him in the past to give him that view. And what had changed in her that she was about to suggest what she was about to suggest even though she didn’t feel she could ask him about his past.
‘An encounter, then.’ Picking up where they left off that night at Hadrian’s Wall.
She’d never, ever propositioned someone so directly in her life. Even with Dan, their first time was an awkward kind of inevitable. But this didn’t feel wrong. Or loose. It felt exactly as she’d felt dancing in front of that mirror.
Strong. And fated.
‘Right here in Göreme. We have two nights.’ Her own daring made her breathless. Was there a faster way to screw things up between them than to...well...?
‘George—’
‘If you’re not interested, that’s OK.’ Knowing without a doubt that he was interested made it OK. ‘But we’re in a fantasy world for the next two days. We might as well get the most out of it.’
She kept her eyes on his, but it was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
‘Is this a Year of Georgia thing?’ he grated.
‘No. This is just a Georgia thing.’ She filled her lungs. ‘I think we should go back downstairs.’
‘What about dessert?’ he asked, and it smacked of desperation.
‘Do you want dessert?’ she breathed, still locked onto his cautious eyes.
As she watched the caution cleared, the relief filled them, then desire. And that— finally—was what made her pulse hammer. After all the newfound confidence of the last few surreal minutes, the old doubts crept back in. Dancing in front of a mirror was one thing. Getting down and dirty—and naked—with a man like Zander was almost completely overwhelming in principle. Let alone practice.
She imagined the light cotton of her dress was the caress of sheer silk. And that helped. She imagined the respectful scarf she still wore from their explorations of the city was a face veil covering all but her eyes. She imagined the expression in Zander’s gaze was the same as the one she’d caught in the mirror.
Only she didn’t have to imagine that because it was. Identical. Only this one was far less repressed and infinitely more terrifying.
And exciting.
They stumbled to their feet.
‘Which room?’ he asked as he stood back to let her out.
Was he kidding? ‘Yours. That spa is wasted on you.’
His hand burned where it pressed into her back, shepherding but also keeping a gentle contact as he urged her down the carved corridor towards the stairs. A teasing kind of torture. A perfect kind of bliss.
He bent to murmur into her ear, ‘It’s wasted on just me, maybe.’
And suddenly her mind was filled with images of the two of them tangled together in the hot opulence of the old stone bath, and her breath just about gave out. It was all she could do to keep her feet moving, but she knew if she stumbled Zander would just sweep her into his arms and carry her down the three levels to his enormous suite with its enormous bathroom and that enormous, luxurious bed.
Just like the conqueror he’d once spoken of.
He stopped at his door, turned her until the timber was at her back, and pressed into her. Peered down on her. ‘Are you sure?’ he murmured.
She didn’t waste breath on words. Instead she pressed up onto her toes and kissed him. Showed him how sure she was. Even though this was totally out of character for her, even though she had to block thoughts of anything more future than Sunday night from her mind.
She was sure about the next two days.
This was her reinvention, and Zander Rush was an integral part of the new Georgia Stone. She’d never felt more certain about anything.
He hemmed her against the door with his body, his heat, and brought his hands to her face so that he could seal her acquiescence in. His tongue and his lips worked a magic just like this entire city as the cool of the earth soaked into her back.
She shivered. From delight.
‘Hot bath,’ he murmured, misunderstanding, and she wondered how long a big tub like the one he had inside would take to fill.
‘Or hot blankets,’ she whispered, but thought of the blanket of his scorching body on hers would do just fine.
He reached out with one hand, turned the doorhandle, and they fell through into the fantasy interior.
NINE
They never made it to the bed, as it turned out. And the hot bath came quite a bit later. They got about as far as the sumptuous pillow-filled conversation niche off to the side of the room before passion got the better of them and, there, Zander made the kind of love to her that she’d never experienced before. And would never forget.
Worship.
There was no other word for it. He took the sort of care of her body—with it—that she’d only ever dreamed might happen. Measured and thorough and poignantly careful. Not tentative—she had enough aches and stretched muscles to know that he’d challenged and pushed her to be the Georgia she’d never let herself be, never needed to be, before. To roam far, far out of her comfort zone. Safe in his embrace.
She lay on her back on the daybed in the balcony niche, her head hanging back over the edge, and stared at the dark sky.
Only it wasn’t quite the deep black it had been when they’d first come out here, wrapped in traditionally woven blankets, wrapped in each other. It was a deep blue now, with hints of regular blue at the edges.
‘Remind me to get more sleep before having sex with a marathon runner,’ she murmured. Stamina? Oh, my God... ‘It’s nearly dawn.’
Across her legs, the heavy heat of him stirred. ‘Don’t we have somewhere to be at dawn?’
The balloon.
They’d come all this way to do the Cappadocian balloon experience. Could she really justify skipping it to stay here in heaven with Zander?
She sighed. Almost.
‘Come on... You don’t want to miss it.’ He slapped her thigh gently and pushed himself into a sitting position. Dark or not, there was nothing but sky to look in on them high up on the mountain face, but within the hour the sun would be up and hot-air balloons would be rising over Göreme filled with curious, binocular-holding tourists.
And they were supposed to be in one of them.
That was the only thing that got her moving. They. The fact that Zander would be with her. If he wasn’t booked she’d have blown the whole thing off—dream or no dream.
She padded in silence into the room with him.
What exactly did one say after a night of no-holds-barred sensual exploration?
‘Let’s get ready,’ he said, ‘and we’ll get moving.’
Huh. As good as anything, she supposed.
But he tempered the banality of the words by swooping down behind her and latching onto her throat with his lips. For a bare heartbeat. Then he was gone again, gathering up his scattered clothes and rummaging in his suitcase.
She thought about running back to her room to change but, really, when you’d been awake the whole time it qualified as the same day, so slipping back into her day clothes felt acceptable.
Plenty of time to change later.
Though her eyes roamed back to Zander’s big beckoning bath. She really hadn’t had much chance to get clean while they were in there. Quite the opposite, in fact. She did her best to wrestle her secret, satisfied smile into submission.
It wasn’t dignified to gloat.
The rush and bustle of getting out to Göreme’s airfield in the still-dark of morning did a fine job of distracting her from thought, just as Zander’s talented lips had done all night. Whether kissing her or murmuring conversation. It hadn’t all been lascivious. They’d lain, tangled together and curled in blankets, and talked about anything that came to mind until one or other of them—or the conversation—had turned sensual again and then there was no talking for quite some time.
On arrival at the open balloon fields, four enormous bulbs glowed in the dim morning light. They lay, powerless, on their sides, and the roaring gas fires slowly filled them upright. The palest of the four lit up like its own sunrise.
‘That’s ours,’ Zander said, coming back to her side, his digital recorder in hand.
They crossed to the enormous basket that was tethered to the ground and Georgia said a quick whisper of thanks for its size. They might look tiny in the sky but on the ground they were enormous.
She was entirely distracted and romanced by the lumbering bulbs taking shape along the roadway. Looked as if their dawn flight would be a balloon convoy. But while groups of ten and more waited for the other baskets theirs was just the two of them and their pilot.
Nice work, Casey.
‘Are you my private?’ A uniformed American woman stepped forward.
‘EROS radio station,’ Zander confirmed.
‘That’s you. Come on aboard and I’ll give you the pre-flight information.’
By agreement, Zander recorded the whole safety presentation and the pilot put on an extra-thorough show for the media. But by the end of it Georgia certainly felt very sure about what to do if the balloon failed, and absolutely certain that it would not. The whole thing was far more regimented and controlled than she’d expected.
‘I get motion-sick,’ she volunteered out of nowhere and Zander looked up, surprised.
‘We have bags,’ the unfazed pilot said ‘but you won’t need them. You’ll see. It’s as though the planet is moving and we’ll be standing still.’
Zander threaded his fingers through hers and the gentle gesture filled her with the same golden glow that kept their balloon aloft. She tightened her fingers around his as the pilot closed the door.
‘Ten minutes before sun-up,’ the pilot announced. ‘Let’s get you guys in the air.’
Zander curled Georgia into his body and stood behind her against the basket edge in the centre of the basket. She felt both sheltered and protected.
The balloon didn’t rise straight up as she imagined it would when the ground crew dropped their tethers—then again her entire experience of hot-air balloons was from The Wizard of Oz. Instead, it skirted along, centimetres above the ground, and slowly those centimetres became meters and then Georgia got a sense of what the pilot had promised. As soon as they had some height, it suddenly felt as if the earth had started to treadmill below them and they were stationary, just hanging there in space.
The pilot gave the gas its voice and the entire balloon inhaled the burst of flame, long and steady. It rose again. Then she killed the flame and silence resumed; the only sounds were the clinking of guy ropes and the distant squeals of the passengers in the balloon ascending behind them.
Theirs breathed enormous gulps between long silent stretches and climbed and climbed in pace with the sunrise.
‘Do you want to describe what you see?’ Zander murmured against her neck, crossing his strong arms around her and holding the running digital recorder below her chin.
Golden light fingered out from the horizon and the deep blonde colour of the earth began to glow with a vibrancy and a gentle kind of fire. Georgia described the stunning scene, punctuated by the occasional breath of the balloon, and full of words like God and heaven and other-worldly. And whole and healing and soul-breath.
Zander and the pilot remained silent, letting her speak.
They flew over Göreme and then left it far behind as they floated over the lunar-like deserts. A distant mesa grew bigger and bigger as they approached but the pilot kept the balloon level though the others in their convoy all lifted. Georgia’s adrenaline spiked and Zander’s arms tightened around her, but at the last moment the pilot fired the lungs hard and their balloon soared up and over the lip of the mesa and the vast plains of Anatolia were revealed before them.
Tears filled Georgia’s eyes.
Zander recorded the balloon’s respiration as they drifted over great clefts in the earth and the rolling, twisting, ancient tortures of the granite and sandstone crust. He interviewed the pilot and got some close-up sounds of the clanking guy ropes and a passing flotilla of geese, generally capturing the atmosphere of this amazing experience for his listeners.
Though of course that was completely impossible to do.
This was as close to angel flight as she was going to get.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he murmured, back by her side and pocketing the recorder.
She spoke before she thought. ‘Dying.’
He twisted around to look at her face. She laughed. ‘I mean what it might be like after you die. Ascension. I’m thinking it would be like this. So...gentle and supported. No fear.’
‘I didn’t know you were so religious,’ he murmured.
‘I’m not, generally. But it’s tough to be up here and not wonder...’
They fell to silence, but Zander eventually broke it.
‘I remember wondering... I thought when I was young with so many people queuing up for communion there must be something in it.’
She tipped her head half back and contacted the strength of his chest. ‘You’re Catholic?’
‘Sufficiently Catholic to have had mass at my wedding, but not to get up early every Sunday for one.’
He was close enough and smart enough to interp
ret the total stillness of her body—as still as the balloon felt in space—correctly.
‘You’re married?’ she whispered.
The pilot shifted away to the far corner of the basket. If she could have climbed out to check the rigging at the crest of the balloon Georgia thought she would have.
Zander was as stiff as she was now. ‘No.’
Part of her sagged with relief, but she didn’t let it show. ‘But you were married?’
That was a hell of a thing to be finding out now.
‘Actually no.’
She turned her back on the spectacular view and looked up at him. ‘But you had a wedding mass?’
His face tightened. ‘We had one scheduled.’
‘It didn’t go ahead?’ This was too important a moment to be playing word games.
‘No. It was... The wedding was cancelled.’
Oh. ‘You broke it off?’
His brows dropped. ‘Why would you assume it was me?’
Because no woman in their right mind would jilt a demigod? ‘I don’t know. Only that you’re not very pro wedding.’
Though suddenly that particular prejudice made perfect sense if he’d had a broken engagement in his past.
The gas flame belched and they rose slightly.
She tried again. ‘Was it mutual?’
Zander looked out to the now blazing dawn horizon. ‘No.’
Empathy washed through her. If anyone could understand the awfulness of being rejected, she could. Though she knew now that she’d never loved Dan. And Zander had clearly loved his fiancée. So how much more would that have hurt. ‘I’m sorry.’
What else could she say? Better to know now than find out later? Just because she considered Dan’s rejection of her proposal a dodged bullet didn’t mean that was how Zander felt. And judging by the tightness of his expression and his general close-mouthedness on the subject of marriage...
Would it ever have come up if not for his slip up?
‘Did she tell you why?’
‘No. She and her bridesmaids fled England while the ushers were doing the friend-of-the-bride/friend-of-the-groom thing.’
Georgia’s jaw dropped. ‘She left you at the altar?’ Didn’t that only happen in movies?