by Avery Laval
Jana translated the captain’s announcement for Marissa as they boarded the craft, and then, seeing the American’s worried expression, Jana smiled warmly and tried to reassure her. The yacht had very spacious chambers, she told Marissa. Spending the night aboard, if required, would be just as comfortable as a night in the palace.
But what Jana did not understand and Marissa could not explain was that there was something so isolated—so intimate—about being trapped on a vessel with Khalid, with no escape, even with the three aides and four bodyguards watching their every move. After all, hadn’t Khalid proven on her first night in Cairo that he had a way of getting whatever privacy he desired? Could she protect her heart from him if they were alone together now?
She turned away from the others and leaned over the balcony of the yacht, staring vacantly out at the beautiful Persian Gulf. Again she reminded herself that Khalid was the last man on earth interested in being alone with her right now. He hated her for keeping the pregnancy from him. He hadn’t spoken more than a grunt to her in three hours, and when he looked at her, which she’d seen him doing often, it was with narrowed eyes and a disapproving expression. She had nothing at all to worry about in that department.
Unfortunately, whispered some tiny voice in her unconscious. The voice remembered how amazing their lovemaking had been, despite its drastic consequences. She was fighting hard to ignore it.
“Would you like to see your room?”
Marissa started at the masculine voice, spinning around. While she’d been warring with herself, she had hardly noticed that the deck had cleared but for the very man she was going round and round about. Now he stood, hands on hips, just feet away from her. Alone. In the bright sun, he looked more tempting than the rows of comfy chaises that overlooked the sapphire sea below. Wouldn’t she like to stretch out atop him...
Her ridiculous thoughts must have shown on her face, for he smiled just a little and raised his eyebrows sardonically. Like a panther he stalked closer, crowding the space between them and making his masculinity almost palpable. Clearly, he still enjoyed having the upper hand—though when he’d done it three years ago, it had seemed so much more playful and far less dangerous. “After all,” he said in a low growl, “we could be stuck here for some time. You might want to rest. Or maybe take a bath?”
She forced all lascivious thoughts as far from her brain as she could and smiled serenely up into his face. “Actually, I’d love a bath. Maybe you have something I could read while I bathe? The National Examiner, perhaps? I hear it’s very reliable.”
He frowned at her jab.
She rolled her eyes. “Food would be great.”
He nodded. “Follow me.”
She followed him down into the belly of the ship, through a long twisting corridor that emptied, eventually, into a small stainless steel galley. Every surface shone silver or black, every inch of space packed efficiently with small versions of top-of-the-line appliances, knives, and pans.
“I’ve never seen such a masculine kitchen before,” she said, working her eyes around the room, looking for just one soft spot or personal item and coming up empty.
“Thank you, I think,” he said gruffly. “Have a seat.” He held out a mahogany stool that had been nestled under a high counter and offered it to her, then took off his suit jacket and draped it over a wall hook.
“Are you cooking for me?” she asked, incredulous.
“Don’t get too excited. My cooking is a regular occurrence these days.”
She thought back to the times they’d cooked together in Las Vegas. He’d been a willing helper, and good with a chef’s knife. But when it came time to apply heat to the food, he was a notorious scalder. “When did you learn to cook?”
“When I found out that I could get some privacy in the kitchen.”
“You don’t have a chef?”
He shrugged. Was it a stupid assumption, she suddenly wondered, to think that a prince would have his own personal chef to serve him at any beck or call? “I do. But he’s understanding about letting me busy myself in the kitchen, and what can my staff say? I have to eat.”
She smiled. “Very crafty of you, Khalid.” His back was to her as he rustled in the fridge, and when he stepped out from behind the door, he held eggs, bundles of bright green herbs, and a round of goat cheese.
“Omelette?” he asked her.
“Yes, please,” she answered. He turned back to the counter and set to work, leaving Marissa to watch and remember another time they’d made omelettes together: after the first time they’d made love. She’d insisted on taking things slowly, though it had killed her, and when finally she’d dropped her guard and let her passion go where it wanted to, it was nearly impossible to stop. They’d stayed awake half the night pleasing each other. When they awoke the next morning, they’d been ravaged with hunger. She had padded off to the kitchen wrapped in a towel, but no sooner had she poured the eggs into the pan, he’d arrived after her, slipping his arms around her while she tried to cook. He’d grabbed an edge of the towel and spun her toward him. She’d had to throw away that skillet—the eggs had been burned on permanently. But, oh, was it ever worth it.
Now look at him. He wasn’t sitting there mooning over times past. He was whisking the eggs like a pro, chopping herbs and crumbling cheese like he’d done it all his life. If she were pregnant, would he cook for her just for fun, maybe make her whatever she craved, even in the middle of the night? More likely he would push her off on his chef, delegate her like another duty to be faced, another responsibility. How would she survive like that, ignored every day by a man she couldn’t seem to get over, despite his past idiocy?
Or could he learn how to be part of a real family, when a family was thrust upon him?
“There’s something I always wanted to ask you, after you left,” she blurted, before she could think about what she was about to say.
“Oh?” He didn’t take his eyes off the heating omelette pan.
“What was it like—suddenly having a family where you’d had none before? It seems like a pretty amazing sensation.”
His face quirked. Was he, too, thinking of the family she might be growing inside her at this very moment? Then he took a deep breath and went back to his work. “It wasn’t as amazing as you might think. Finding my grandfather—well, him finding me—that was wonderful. But when I got here I found that my more recent family legacy was as iffy as the one I’d had growing up in foster care.”
Marissa rolled her lips together thoughtfully, wondering if she’d accidentally strayed into some sticky territory. “How so?”
Khalid inhaled deeply, as if preparing himself. “Growing up in foster care, I’d always known I didn’t belong anywhere. For some reason, my parents hadn’t wanted me, and the thought of that was painful. But I could imagine whatever I chose about their reasons for keeping me. That they were young, or they were poor, or even that they were dead.”
Marissa gasped in a little.
“I know, it’s crazy to think that I actually fantasized about dead parents. But then, that would have meant that they did want me. It was something, however small, to hold on to when I was a boy.
“Then I found out the truth, and it was nothing as romantic as I’d imagined. My mother was a one-night stand. My father was a selfish prince who didn’t want to face what he’d done. He paid her off, and she dumped me off. Their lives went on as usual. Discovering all of that was hardly what I’d hoped for when my grandfather first knocked on your apartment door.”
Marissa was speechless.
“The thing is,” Khalid added softly, his focus riveted on the pan, “my father actually came for me. Maybe he felt guilty—or parental, or what, I don’t know. He came to the States and found me while I was still young, was granted temporary custody and spent two weeks looking after me. Then he changed his mind and dropped me back off, in the middle of the night, and never came back. Went to California and lived in a hotel in L.A. until he died. Thirty y
ears, just one state away from me all that time.”
Her mouth was dry. “Do you remember him?” she managed to ask.
“I was too young to remember any of this. It was all there, though, in my grandfather’s files.”
“Do you sometimes wish your grandfather had never found you?”
Khalid put down the spatula he’d been staring at so intently and turned to her. “No, I never wish that. Rifaisa is my destiny.” He smiled sadly. “You were the one always talking about destiny, remember? You said it was what brought us together.” His voice was cold, almost mocking, when he said the words.
“I don’t believe in all that anymore,” Marissa said, even as she let one hand slide over her stomach unconsciously.
Khalid plated the omelette he’d made, handed it over to Marissa, wishing he’d never started talking about his family, his father, all that dirty laundry that didn’t need to be aired. Back in Vegas, one of the things he’d loved about her was her way of listening that always drew him out. She still had it. She still had a lot for him to love.
Apparently, though, she didn’t have the blind faith in the world that everything would turn out how it was supposed to anymore. He frowned. Had he been the one to shatter that, when’d he’d let a rumor drive him away from her?
“Bon appétit,” he said, as he poured her a glass of sparkling water and set it before her on the tall counter where she sat.
“Aren’t you eating?” she asked. “There’s enough here for two, easily. Maybe three.”
Khalid narrowed his eyes. “Sorry, no,” he said, already backing out of the galley. “I’m needed on the sundeck, with everyone else.”
She inclined her head, curiously. “Taking the afternoon off with your staff?” she asked. She looked genuinely surprised. Apparently, she too had decided he was a workaholic.
“Working,” he corrected her, and stepped backward. “We get better sat phone reception up there.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know how anyone can work with the beautiful ocean stretching out in every direction like this.”
He responded only with a frown, before he turned and left the galley. He knew what she was thinking but refused to say. He’d started taking all the trappings of his new life for granted. And suddenly he wished he didn’t have to. Having her here, watching her look around in wonder at the yacht and the sea and the plane and everything else that came with his job—his destiny, as she might have called it all those years ago—was bad for his work ethic. Having her so close by in this damned claustrophobic yacht—a yacht that had seemed more than large enough when he’d first laid eyes on it—was more distracting than he cared to admit.
He needed to get used to it, he told himself. If she were pregnant, this would be his life. Her presence in the palace, slinging barbs at him, looking so goddamned irresistible while she tucked ravenously into an omelette—and then forgetting he existed the moment he was out of sight. He thought of his constant diplomatic trips and groaned, running a hand through his thick black hair in frustration. Would he even be able to leave her behind if he had access to her body in the marital bed? He would be distracted if she were there and distracted if she weren’t.
And then there was a piece of him—the piece that had been awakened when she told him about her prior pregnancy—that dared to fantasize about the possibility of a child. He had always imagined he would make a fine father—not that the bar was set very high based on his past experiences. He would enjoy sharing his world with children, hearing them laugh when they saw the peacocks in the garden, teaching them soccer. He just hadn’t imagined it would be under these circumstances.
As he began to climb the stairs to the sundeck, his steps grew heavier. He didn’t want to try to focus on contracts and negotiations and politics. Those things would do little to distract him from his thoughts of Marissa, of her long fall of dark hair curling around the face that had him so hypnotized. Of how her soft, willing body had felt under his that night in Cairo.
He needed a distraction. A physical distraction, something that would exhaust his body and quiet his mind. He pushed his shoulders up and back and let his head roll around loosely for a moment, discarding the tension that had been building and building since he had laid eyes on her. Then he went to the bridge to deliver a specific set of instructions to his captain. Work would wait.
Within a half an hour they were anchored a hundred meters off Jumeirah beach, along with a dozen or so pleasure boats at the end of their days of cruising and sightseeing around the man-made islands to their west. The sun was still bright, and there would be a few more hours of daylight. Khalid would spend them in the water. He made quick work of changing into surf shorts and headed for the swimming deck at the stern. In minutes he was swimming away the frustrations of his current circumstances, nothing on his mind but water and breath. The sweet, familiar burn in his lungs as he worked harder and harder, swimming out first in the creases the waves made, and then bodysurfing his way back to the yacht. It was heaven, the sun low enough in the sky to turn the waves into piles of diamonds, but still warm enough to evaporate the droplets on his forehead each time he stopped to catch his breath. He had no idea how long he was out, but when the sun began to color the sky a rich orange, he knew it was time to turn in. Finally he felt still, quiet, calm. He drank in the sensation as he swam back for the swimming deck at a leisurely pace, taking deeper and deeper breaths, cooling his body down.
An effort that was wasted when he saw what was waiting for him.
Wearing nothing more than what seemed to be a length of butcher’s twine with a few squares of white fabric over her breasts and a long towel wrapped around her waist, her hair loose over the pale white skin of her shoulders, a mermaid appeared to be sitting on the deck of his ship. But no, it was a human woman hanging her ankles into the sea and watching him intently. Her body was real, as were her long, creamy-colored legs that dangled absently in the water and her full, rounded breasts, only a scrap of cloth away from his hands. From his mouth.
He groaned and felt himself stir below. It seemed he would be staying in the water a little longer than he’d planned—at least until he could get control of himself. He swam to the deck and used one strong arm to wrap around the ladder and hold himself steady as he looked up at her. But the close-up view of that bikini—barely thick enough to cover the buds of pink nipples that cried out for his tongue—only made the desire grow stronger.
“Thinking of a swim?” he called, hearing the thickness of his voice. Watching her lick her lower lip in unconscious response.
“I was. But I changed my mind when I saw that the water was already occupied.”
He smiled despite himself. “I would hope the Persian Gulf would be big enough for the two of us.”
She looked away, saying nothing in reply. Maybe she was thinking the same thing as him—that even this vast expanse of water might feel small when shared between them.
The thought of it heated him. Made him want her more than ever. “Get in,” he called up to her. He let go of the ladder and swam closer to where she sat. He knew he shouldn’t, but he did it anyway.
“I like it up here. From above, I can almost see all of your ego.” She jutted out her chin with defiance. That little action pushed him over the edge.
“My ego would like you in here,” he said, his voice now little more than a growl. His mind, and his reason, had disappeared into the rolling waves. All that was left was lust.
“I don’t think so,” she said, but her words were halting. Hesitant.
“Then I will persuade you.” And with the words, he reached for her calf. Brought it up in his hands, and caressed it softly, luxuriating in the sensation of her smooth, strong legs. And then without any hint of what he was about to do next, surprising even himself, he pressed his lips to the ball of her foot, dragged upward, and then slipped her big toe inside his mouth with a groan.
Marissa leaned back on the swimming deck with a gasp. She’d watched him swimming
for so long, she’d forgotten that he would eventually come back in. And when he did, his dark skin cutting through the blue-green ocean, the muscles of his back hypnotizing her, she’d forgotten where she was. Forgotten he would see her watching him. Forgotten that when he wanted her, she was powerless to turn him away even after everything.
And he wanted her now. His tongue ran a circle around her toe, then retreated, then made its lazy loop again, making every inch of her foot feel as though it were electrified, sending waves of current into her body, up her legs to the core of her. His mouth hot from the sun and the exertion, his kiss seemed to burn a path across the pad of each toe, as he took one after another into his mouth and swirled it with his tongue, and then he moved his attentions to the curve of her instep, using his lips to rub and nibble at the sensitive skin there, while she did nothing but lean back on her hands and sigh with pleasure. It was too much to ask that she stop him. What he did to her made her lose control. And the wicked look in his eyes told her that he knew it.
When her left foot was covered in kisses, he lowered it back, trailing his hands up her calf and under the sarong she had tucked around her waist as cover-up, untying it, revealing the somewhat scandalous bikini she had found wrapped prettily in a box on her bed earlier. She’d believe it a thoughtful gesture on his part. Now she saw his ulterior motive. And she couldn’t seem to make herself care. Not while he was running his fingers down her other calf and repeating his teasing licks and kisses every step of the way. When her right foot was as well attended to as her left, he pushed her feet together, grabbed her by the thighs, and pulled her into the water with him. There was a splash as her body entered the warm water, and she clung to him as she got used to the feeling of lightness and wetness. And then, as she hung off his hard body, he took her mouth in a sun-warmed kiss, the kiss she hadn’t known she needed. But she did, desperately.
Like a misplaced key finally finding the right lock, his kiss undid her. The passion of it traveled down her spine and liquefied her core, leaving her mindless with desire. The long kiss was followed by another and another, each deeper and more desperate, until he broke his mouth away and said, “At this rate, we’ll both be drowned in minutes.” He pushed her up against the ladder, hard enough that it gave her a little shock, and she wound her arms up through the handles and held on for dear life.