by Olivia Gates
Shehab felt as if a stinging slap had landed on his cheek.
And every preconceived opinion of her crashed back on him, blasting away her spell, jogging him back to ugly reality.
Here she was, the woman who’d treated him to such a kaleidoscope of emotions for the past ten hours, sitting before him, her future lover, talking to her current one, lying to him, to them both, without batting a lid.
She slid shut her phone and looked at him, elation sizzling in her eyes, looking like a little girl who’d just done something naughty for the first time in her life.
He struggled to empty his gaze of aggression, to access the desire that was independent of his opinion of her. He felt it only becoming fiercer without the shackles of softness, the brakes of empathy, until he struggled not to rise and pounce on her. He had no idea how he only smiled, opened his arms wide.
She rose and rushed to throw herself into them, all fairy-tale gown, overpowering femininity and undetectable pretense. But one thing she wasn’t pretending about.
She couldn’t wait for him.
He’d make her wait. And when the time was right, he’d end the waiting. He’d sate himself with her. Then, when she’d served her purpose, even as they continued their sham of a marriage, he’d discard her. And he wouldn’t feel bad about it.
She deserved whatever he did to her.
Shehab was doing things to Farah she hadn’t known there were to be done.
All through their flight, he’d proved to her there was no ceiling to the sensations he could make her experience.
He was now examining her hand as they talked. Shaping each finger with his fingertips, sliding up and down their length, following the outline of each bone and joint, mapping the pattern of each crease and line, testing the resilience of each pad of flesh. She lay back, enveloped in his sister’s cool, white cotton sundress, drenched in the cold sweat of stimulation, tormented, hypersensitive and praying that he’d never stop exposing her to his attention and appreciation.
Suddenly she interrupted his account about the neighboring Damhoor. “I had no idea hands could be erogenous zones…”
She started to bite her lip, stopped, sighed. They’d been talking almost nonstop for the past twenty hours, all but for the half hour she’d left to change and shower, followed by two separate half hours when he’d left her to do the same and then take care of other details. He was beyond certain by now that she had no filtering system in her brain to stop inappropriate comments from gushing through uncensored-and he kept assuring her he loved it.
His smile knocked her breath from her. Ever since she’d accepted his invitation to go home with him, she’d sensed some change in him. A new intensity. As if he’d been holding back and had let go. It had worried her. For about a nanosecond.
She trusted him, wanted him to feel as intensely about her as she did about him. And his intensity had so many levels and textures, it felt like a deep ocean she could plunge into forever, exploring and experiencing, and never come close to fathoming.
“And I had no idea just holding your hands could awaken new erogenous areas, in both my body and brain.” Her heat shot up another notch at his confession. She was already addicted to how open he was about his feelings, too. He took her hand to his lips, flicked his tongue lightly along her lifeline. She hoped he wasn’t shortening said life’s expectancy. He had her squirming before he withdrew. “And by the way, we’ve arrived.”
She twisted around to peer out the window. They were descending, approaching his island. It was shaped like an irregular kidney, with its concave side harboring bright emerald waters, its outer curve surrounded by much darker ones. In the noon sun its wraparound beaches shone almost silver, pristine except where mangroves covered them in areas on the convex side. The jet was now flying over one apex of the island, just above a low, huge building that overlooked a bay. Dense palm trees and what looked like all sorts of desert flora surrounded it on three sides. The jet was flying over other annexed structures heading to the other end of the island when it hit her.
She turned to him, exclaimed, “It’s a real island.”
His smile grew wicked. “That was the general idea when I said it was. You know, land surrounded on all sides by water.”
She gave him a playful poke. “So I’m geographically challenged, but not to that extent. I thought it would be one of those tiny morsels of land advertised on the Internet as private islands. But this is just…just wow. How big is it?”
She had no idea why, but her eyes dragged down his body until they stumbled on the bulge in his pants. She snatched them up only to find his gaze had been investigating the path of her fascination before it came up, steamy, challenging.
“How big do you think it is?”
“Big.” And there was no doubt what her croaked adjective was referring to, not when her blush must be suffusing the air around her with a reddish glow.
He decided to take pity on her, to pretend they weren’t talking about his endowments. “It’s around 150 square miles.”
“That’s more than the combined size of the Maldives!”
“So you’re not that geographically challenged after all.”
“I only know that because Bill has recently expanded his shipping interests to those islands.”
His face remained smiling, but it now felt like the frozen, eerie smile she got when she hit Pause on a video. And again unease slithered down her spine.
This had happened every time she’d mentioned Bill. Could he have heard that Bill had a younger mistress, and either realized or suspected it was her? She’d just die if he had.
But he wasn’t one to let something like that go unverified. And she was certain he wouldn’t come near another man’s woman, mistress or whatever.
No. He couldn’t know. Thank God. And she would rather skydive without a parachute than explain how this charade-which she intended to end as soon as she saw Bill again-had started.
So what did the stillness that came over him when she mentioned Bill mean? Was the businessman in him shoving aside the passionate man every time anything or anyone connected with business was mentioned?
Whatever it was, she shouldn’t try to analyze it. She now recognized that any apprehension she felt originated within her, was triggered by her inability to believe her luck.
She still couldn’t hold his gaze, turned away to watch the ground zooming closer. And suddenly realized what else was wrong with this picture. She hadn’t thought…“…we’d be landing here!”
His eyebrows rose. “Care to explain that outburst to a poor man whose first language isn’t English?”
She groaned. “You’d have to speak Farahish to get it. That’s a language half-spoken mentally, with the out-loud half coming out as seemingly out-of-the-blue incoherencies.”
His eyes crinkled as he smoothed her cheek with the back of his hand. “I can’t tell you how eager I am to be fluent in Farahish. But I think I’m getting the hang of the basics. You didn’t think we’d actually land on the island, did you?”
“You understood! Wow. People always think it’s a sign of loose brain components, and it only gets worse when I explain.”
He frowned. “It’s pointless to try to explain anything to those whose minds were poured in casts. But I’m almost grateful to the rigid wretches. They make you appreciate me even more.”
“If I appreciated you more than that I’d be in deep d…” She gulped, then stammered, “Uh…anyway-I did have a mental image of a tiny island and assumed we’d land in a neighboring kingdom and head here by a smaller jet, maybe a helicopter or yacht.”
They touched down as she spoke, a perfect, imperceptible landing. She was so impressed she broke out clapping.
He laughed. “The pilots can’t hear you as they would on a commercial flight, but I’ll make sure to relay your approval.”
Godly and gracious. She beamed at him. “Oh, please do.”
He rose to his feet, smiled down on her. “Shall we?”
She jumped up and groaned as everything inside her did, too. His arm came around her, his touch and gaze concerned.
“My joints need oiling after sitting down for so long.”
He pinched her cheek softly. “Next time, take my advice. If you’d at least lain down in one of the bedrooms, you wouldn’t be aching all over now. But have no fear. All joints will get well oiled around here. You won’t sit down much while I’m around.”
He let that marinate in her mind with a hundred mental spices as he walked her down through the jet to the air-stairs.
The moment the stairs touched down, hot, dry air rushed in to greet them, making her gasp. He secured her to him as they descended to the tarmac. She smiled up her thankfulness-and gasped again.
If she’d thought seeing Shehab by moonlight had added to his mystique, to his beauty, she’d again been measuring by mere mortals’ standards, those who needed darkness to hide their imperfections. In the merciless glare of the island sun, Shehab was-was…There was no single adjective. Not a dozen, either.
Where a twelve-hour beard made most men look unkempt and in need of a shave and shower, it only deepened his bronze statue impression. His skin really was perfect, spread taut over the masterpiece chiseling of his bone structure, burnished, the color so complex, so rich it set off the whites of his eyes, the night of his irises. His hair looked alive, the luxury of its waves an extension of his vigor and character as much as his eyes and lips and hands, its ebony highlighted by honest-to-goodness indigoes and blues as if his electric nature imbued it. And then came his features. She hated to think what the light and the harsh shadows it generated were doing to her own haven’t-seen-daylight-in-seven-years paleness. But exposed to their pitiless test, the symmetry and precision of his features were enhanced to the point where she felt she’d discover he was some higher being after all.
Before she could again wonder how such a being could be as hard hit by her as she was by him, he rushed her to a sleek, matte-black monster of a toy, a helicopter the likes of which she’d never seen before.
In moments she was strapped into the passenger seat and he was in the pilot seat and they were sweeping away from the mini-airport in a smooth arc to soar over the sandy and rocky terrain of the mostly virgin island.
“You can fly,” she finally exclaimed.
“No, I can’t. I can’t even manage simple levitation under my own power. But I’m working on it.”
She pinched his arm and he threw back his head and laughed. She was becoming addicted to the way he ribbed her, too.
She teased back. “Well, until you manage it and I can pick your brain for the method, will you teach me how to fly this beauty? I always wanted to be able to fly something, but never got the chance to try even a kite.”
“I’ll teach you to fly, ya jameelati. Everything.” His eyes became heavy with promise. “And in every way.”
With that he left her dealing with another attack of arrhythmia and concentrated on flying, and talking on his radio.
In ten minutes they were approaching the mansion she’d seen from the jet. Then they were landing in a cobblestone courtyard nestled between palm trees at the side facing away from the sea.
He rushed around to hand her down. As soon as she was out of the copter’s controlled environment, her feet wobbled.
He swept her up in his arms. “The heat’s too much for you?”
Her head flopped on his shoulder. “Now it is.” He chuckled, strode toward the mansion, which looked deserted. “But before you had me defying gravity, what got to me was the crisp purity of the air. I feel like a fish out of her AC-grown bacteria and carbon monoxide.”
He chuckled again. “Mermaid, not fish. But I’ll detox you. This beauty deserves only the best this earth has to offer.”
Surprised again by his praise-the one thing that had managed to stun her into silence-she clung to him, took in his mansion.
Built of sandstone and covering at least thirty thousand square feet, it combined the rawness of the natural habitat, the richness of the culture and the grandeur of royal prosperity. As far as she could tell, it had architectural influences from all over Arabia and Asia in its design, in every line, embellishment, column, arch, door and window, but there were also other influences, simpler ones-Bedouin, even a bit of modern. Much like its owner, the mansion was a mix of the best of all worlds. And like him, its overall effect was breathtaking.
As soon as he scaled the dozen stone steps leading to the columned patio, footmen in Arabian garb seemed to materialize out of nowhere, rushing to open the gigantic oak double doors.
She blinked at them as Shehab crossed into the darkened interior. She should have known the deserted impression was an illusion. A place this big must have dozens of people seeing to its upkeep. And they’d stay out of the way until Shehab needed them.
Flustered that they’d seen her in Shehab’s arms, she tried to resume autonomy. But he tightened his hold, dropped a kiss on her temple. “You’re exhausted, ya jameelati. Let me pamper you.”
She went limp in his arms once more, surrendered to his coddling as the interior’s coolness robbed her of what was left of her volition. He was right. She was exhausted. It had been over thirty hours since they’d met. It felt like thirty chaotic days. Weeks. Within ten of those hours, she’d made a decision that would change her life, change her, forever.
As he swept her through his mansion, she barely took in the gigantic hall in the subdued lighting of a circular bronze chandelier that was strung up by dozens of feet of chains from the soaring ceiling to hang just a few feet above head level. All she registered acres of sand-colored marble floors and a massive fountain in the center of it all. As they passed it, the sound of water made her bones melt faster.
He climbed up one side of the twenty-foot-wide marble stairs that bifurcated to the upper floor, entered a corridor as wide as her condo back home. Still holding her securely in one arm, he opened an arched oak door, entered an expansive bedroom. His?
Her powers of observation were dwindling. She got only impressions of mirrorlike floors, soaring ceilings, whitewashed walls, ten-foot terrace windows draped in semi-opaque brick-colored curtains that turned the ambiance inside the room into that of a warm, intimate dream.
The one thing she saw every detail of was the bed. Huge, spread in crisp white sheets and an Arabian-design earth-tone bedspread. He swept away the covers and lowered her onto it.
She clung to him, cried out when he came down on top of her, his weight, his heat, his leashed power pressing down on her with just the exact measures of domination and consideration to let her feel his hunger, to make her feel cherished.
She wound herself around him, and he groaned, sank deeper onto her, flooded her with his taste and feel.
After the surreal madness of those minutes in the gardens, she’d shied away from visualizing what would really happen between them. She had nothing to draw on in the realm of intimacy but one crushing disappointment. She couldn’t predict anything, had even been afraid to. She’d been scared that reality would only suffer in comparison with fantasy.
She should have known. He was magic. Better than anything her meager imagination could conjure. He was her mate. The one she’d believed existed before life had crushed hope out of her. He was the only one. And she wanted him. All of him. Now. Now.
He wrenched himself from her arms, making her feel he’d taken her skin with him. “Slow…I said we’ll go slow.”
“But I don’t need slow. I never needed…but I need you…”
“La, ya ghawyeti.” He caught her seeking hands, kissed them, crossed them over her heart. “No, my temptress. You’re overwrought, and this isn’t how I want you to feel during our first time. It has to be glorious, memorable. So we’ll take our time. As I said we would. I keep my promises, always.” He swept the covers over her, tucked her in. He walked to the windows, drew blackout curtains beneath the drapes, plunging the room into almost pitch-darkness. He
came back to her, bent and pressed his lips to her mouth with such tenderness, tears welled in her eyes. “Now sleep, ya hayati. And dream of me.”
Six
Dreams had never been like this.
Dreams had been drab and nonsensical, forgotten even as they blipped their disjointed patterns over the gray landscape of unconsciousness. The ones momentous enough for her to follow, that left a mark on her memory once oblivion lifted, had been filled with replays of loss, of frustrations that would forever echo unresolved.
Now her dreams were vibrant and full of splashes of emotion and gusts of excitement. Blinding in clarity, transporting in delight, open fields of possibility and impossibility, where she flew, soared, right alongside her knight of the desert.
Now they were taking a new turn, for the tangible.
Pleasure rained all over her from warm, gentle caresses, spiced with the scent of maleness, accentuated by the rumbles of cosseting. She filled her arms with the dream, held on. It expanded, pulled back on a lazy purr. “It’s incredible to have you devour me in your sleep, ya gummari, but I’d rather have you do it awake.”
Panicking, she reached out to catch it, and in her alarm, opened her eyes. And something far better than any dream filled her vision, blocked out the world. Shehab.
She moaned his name. The most wonderful thing she’d ever heard or had on her lips. “Shehab…”
The smile he gave her, the indulgence he poured over her made her feel as if she’d melt into the bed beneath her.