by Olivia Gates
Snatching his eyes away from her spell, he continued her education. “On that side of the island, the water is knee-high for over two miles before deepening very gradually. On the other, the depth drops hundreds of feet at once.” He cocked his head at her. “Do you swim?”
“I haven’t swum in over ten years, but I was quite the fish when Dad was alive…” She stopped, bit her lip.
Every time she mentioned the man she’d lived her life believing was her real father, her mood plunged. He wanted to probe, was burning to hear her version of why she’d so vehemently rejected the new father fate had sent her.
But no. At the merest slipup, she’d sensed she was being manipulated. He couldn’t afford another mistake.
He gathered her closer, cupped her breast. “So you’re a mermaid for real. I knew it.” He succeeded in distracting her as she melted in his hold, thrust her firmness in his hand for him to do what he would with it. He groaned as the dual-bladed weapon he used on her cut deeper into him. “It’s another perfection, ya aroosat bahri-my mermaid. By daylight, I’ll take you to the deep end, plunge you into the dimension of the coral reefs, and by moonlight, we’ll roam the shallows, soak in them.”
She shuddered at the images he evoked, and he moved to the next step in her sensory overload. He cleaned his hands, produced refreshments from the hamper he’d arranged, poured her some, put the tiny crystal hourglass-shaped glass to her lips.
She took a sip, moaned appreciatively, “Mmm-what’s that?”
“The famed Arabian coffee…a brew of lightly roasted special beans and cardamom. For best effect you eat this with it…”
She unquestioningly opened for the dried date he put to her lips, moaned as she described the incredible chewiness, the caramelized flavor. After he had her finish three cups and half a packet, he began fondling her lips, prodding her to lick his fingers clean of the stickiness. She was soon sucking him in earnest, every pull lodging in his erection, where he almost felt those lips performing the same abandoned ritual. He pulled his fingers out of her mouth, clamped her between his knees, stilling her movements before he exploded. “I said behave.”
The eyes that had gone smoky jade with arousal turned a disconcerted bottle-green at his growl.
It made him rush to add, “If you do, I’ll take you to see the burst of flowers and grass that followed the outpouring of rain a couple of weeks ago, before the green carpet dries and dies under the blistering sun. We might catch some of the island’s inhabitants taking a snack, wild rabbits, gazelles…”
She lurched in his arms, her forlorn expression burning away in a blast of delight. “Gazelles? You have gazelles here?”
He nodded. “A population of over 300 roaming freely.”
She whooped, spilled from his arms, jumped to her feet, pulled at him. “Get up, get up. Let’s go see them.” Her face fell again as soon as he stood up. “Oh, man, I don’t have a camera, not even my phone.” Her brightness dimmed completely as she exhaled. “They’ll probably run away when we approach, anyway.”
He produced his phone for her. “Capture everything to your heart’s content. And, no, they won’t run. They’re used to me and the horses. You can even feed them, if you like.”
“If I like?” she squeaked. “If a gazelle eats from my hand, I’ll just die, and die happy!”
“Adjust that to live and live happy, and I’ll make certain you feed gazelles, ya gummari, today, in their natural habitat. Then I’ll bring a few to the mansion for you to feed regularly.”
She bounced up and down before smothering him in exuberant hugs. “Thank you, thank you…for giving me this.” She withdrew, threw her arms open wide. “And all of this.”
He stared at her. Could this woman who was in ecstasies at the idea of hand-feeding gazelles be real? How could she coexist with the one who’d manipulated her aging lover into agreeing to her leaving on her latest fling, into even apologizing for being upset about it and begging for an assurance that she’d miss him? An assurance she’d given as she’d devoured him with her eyes?
His smile felt like it was digging into his flesh as he struggled to keep it pinned on. “I’ve done nothing yet, ya galbi. I want to give you the whole world.”
Her eyes became mossy-green. “Oh, Shehab, it’s wonderful of you to say that. But what would I do with the whole world? I’d take gazelles to pet and feed over that any day.” With that she whooped again, swung away, ran back to Ablah.
He was determined not to rush to her. Never giving her what she wanted when she wanted it was the only way to stop her from winning the battle she didn’t know they were having.
Then she turned to him, a fantasy out of his land’s richest fables, shimmering in the flowing robes of its deserts, incandescent in her excitement, overpowering in her eagerness.
And he gave in, obeyed. He rushed to her.
“…with slow, graceful wing movements, the black-backed manta ray flew through the water like a giant alien bird.”
Shehab’s words caressed her nape as he helped her put on her wetsuit. She sighed, let it all wash over her. His heat and presence, his yacht’s gentle undulations, the early morning sun’s warmth, the salty breeze’s purity. It all coalesced into this incredible new world he’d let her enter, let her share in its adventures. He kept telling her of the many that she hadn’t been there to share before the last glorious two weeks-weeks that had washed away a lifetime of city dwelling and aloneness, had taken over her memory. She could barely remember her life before them.
Hypnotized, she hung on every syllable of his latest tale.
“It was over twenty-five feet across and I could have swum into its mouth as it gaped to sieve plankton-laden water.” He turned her, smoothing her suit, raising her zipper and her longings. “Then it stopped in front of me. Its huge eyes gazed at me for a moment, then with an elegant flip of its wings, it banked away. I was nine and it was my first plunge into the coral reef. Meeting that gentle monster gave me a taste of the underwater world I knew would take me a lifetime to explore. I never wanted to leave, but it took me almost two decades to realize my boyhood dream, when I finally owned this place.”
She exhaled, almost in tears at imagining him as a boy falling under the spell of this island’s diverse magic. “And it’s magnificent. I feel privileged you wanted to share it with me.”
And she felt more than privileged. She felt blessed.
Two weeks ago she’d been scared that emotions would consume her. But this was too glorious. She’d live it at any cost, wouldn’t wish for more. For what more could there be? This was everything. The man of beyond her dreams, patiently lavishing his care on her, even as hunger escalated. The last time he’d drawn back from the precipice, she’d wept, and his distress had been as deep.
But soon, he wouldn’t draw back, and she’d be his. She already was. She’d be his forever. It didn’t matter how long he remained in her life, the life she’d thought she’d live inert, undiscovered. He’d recognized her, unearthed everything that had lain dormant and useless inside her and brought it to life.
She loved him. Would always love him. And her love would always be the best part of her life, the one to give it meaning.
And when his path swerved from hers forever, she’d be happy she’d had that much. The lifetime’s worth of wonders he’d shown her, in the reef, in the air, on land. But the true wonders had been what he’d shown her of him, the companion, the playmate, the incomparable man. She couldn’t wait for the next wonder.
She ran her hand over his sculpted torso in the confines of his own wetsuit. “What will you show me today?” He’d been teaching her to dive since the second day they’d been there.
“Today we dive a little deeper. If you think you’re ready.”
“Oh, I’m ready.”
And she was. Ready for anything at all with him.
After he helped her with her diving gear, double-checked everything, they dove into the luminous green waters. He’d told her it was now
infinitely more beautiful to him for echoing her eyes. Their descent was like slow-motion skydiving, a sublime philosophical experience, a plunge into an alien world.
Once they were hovering in a blue-green nothing where she could see neither surface nor bottom, she saw something huge moving in the distance. She clutched his arm in alarm. He soothed her, gestured for her to watch as the shape began to resemble a compact swarm of bees. It turned out to be a school of striated, anchovylike fish. He tugged at her, and they flowed smoothly toward it only for a tunnel to open up in the wall of fish, engulfing them. Her heart thundered with excitement as he hugged her and they swam in what felt like a cave with moving walls as the uncountable fish moved as one all around them as if guided by a single brain, turning the fusion of their own limbs into a dance of oneness she’d never imagined could exist.
He guided them out and gestured for her to watch. He suddenly kicked toward the fish and the school packed itself into a giant ball. The moment he touched it, the ball exploded.
Exhilarated at the fish fireworks he’d treated her to, she clapped as he swam back to her. He made a theatrical gesture, accepting her adulation before clamping her to his side and propelling her up slowly, his light revealing an explosion of color from the fan coral that grew out from the reef wall, their stunning, feathery tentacles constantly performing a rhythmic dance, opening and closing in unison like beckoning hands.
Their legs tangled in their short wetsuits, rubbing in the silk of the fluid dream they were enveloped in. And she couldn’t bear it anymore. She’d beg him for an end of the waiting today.
Suddenly she saw a striated red, yellow and black lionfish hovering behind him, incredibly beautiful fins flowing, long spines separated and-and…poisonous.
The certainty of this once-learned knowledge flooded her with panic as the fish approached Shehab’s back, bending its own like a snake. She pounced on him, swept around him, exchanging places. The next second pain shot between her shoulder blades, as if she’d been skewered by a red-hot poker.
Her scream gurgled into her regulator.
Seven
Farah would remember what happened after the lionfish stung her in the same way she did her garbled dreams.
She’d felt as if she were outside her pain-ridden body, watching as Shehab swept her up in his arms and torpedoed to the surface before hauling her onto the deck of his yacht as if she weighed no more than a few pounds, not her hundred and forty plus the diving gear.
She lay in a state of shock, the white-hot agony lodged in the middle of her back the one thing telling her this wasn’t a dream. She watched him as he frantically took off his gear, pounced on hers. The moment he divested her of her goggles and breathing equipment the tears and sobs they’d been stifling seeped out of her burning eyes and lips.
His hands were shaking with urgency as he stripped her down to her swimsuit, turned her to her side to examine her injury. At the sight, he inhaled a sharp, taxed breath, reached for something that looked like a walkie-talkie and ground out a string of Arabic, his eyes feverish on her.
Then he threw the thing aside, scooped her up and rushed to the shade of the upper sitting area, placing her on a couch on her side so it wouldn’t chafe against her injury before tearing open a first-aid kit and rummaging through it for a tube, his movements slowing down and gentling only after he produced gel from it and carefully applied it to the sting. She moaned as a freezing sensation poured over the burning, her flaccid body going rigid against the bombardment of confusing signals. He soothed her with hands and voice. The spasm passed, and she felt the whole area going numb. She blinked at his blurred image only to wince at his fierceness and focus, barely managed a rasped, “Thanks.”
“Thanks? Ya Ullah, why did you do that?” She stared at him. Was he mad at her? Or was she hallucinating as the poison coursed through her system? Would she die now? “I told you never to approach anything you don’t know, to look but never touch. But you almost attacked that lionfish and it struck back so hard its spine penetrated your wetsuit. And it could have been worse, a stonefish…” He stopped, his face working, his fists bunching.
From a long distance she heard herself stuttering, “I’m s-sorry…b-but a-all I knew was it’s poisonous and it was going to sting you…”
He went totally still. His face drained of all agitation and expression. Froze. And her ears were filling with thunder.
Then she was again watching it all happen to someone else as Shehab swooped down on her, carried her to the deck where she realized the thunder wasn’t blood roaring in her ears, but his helicopter, which, it turned out, could land on water. He had her inside, she didn’t register how, in the back, secured on a stretcher, then stood up to strip down to his knee-length swimming trunks before kneeling beside her.
She lost all perception of time as the flight ended and he rushed with her in his arms into the mansion, his men streaking before them, opening doors. But this time he took a different path, one leading somewhere she’d never been before.
The sensation of wading in a dream thickened as he swept her through what felt like endless spaces shrouded in dimness and incense, their Spartan sparseness stamped by virility and power. This must be his quarters. Her gaze clung to the huge bed, a bed she’d longed to share with him. Now she might never share it…
Consciousness surged as lights rose, illuminating the space he’d crossed into. The impression of moving through the landscape of One Thousand and One Nights intensified as she gaped around the gigantic, all-marble-and-stone chamber. It interconnected on each side with two others, each space ringed with arches supported by tapering columns. The middle chamber, which he’d just entered, sprawled beneath a soaring dome dotted by circular bottle-glass openings that let sunbeams slash through the half light permeating the place, pouring from the semi-opened windows that ringed the walls beneath the dome.
He gave her no chance to linger over details as he rushed to the chamber on the right. It was dominated by a shallow rectangular pool, tiled in checkered black-and-beige marble. He lowered her onto a long stone seat with utmost care before rushing away. He calibrated some mechanism at the wall, hurried back, jogged her out of her stupor by scooping her up again. She opened groggy eyes to find him stepping into the pool. Her thoughts swirled in confusion, wondering why he considered giving her a bath important as he lowered them both into the water. And she screamed. It was boiling.
He restrained her, his arms cleaving her back to his chest, his legs imprisoning hers. “Shh…shh…ya galbi, it must be done.”
“You must…boil me?” She twisted in his arms, unable to bear the scalding heat. “And…you’re boiling…yourself, too…”
He only lay back in the water, submerging them both, then clamped his limbs around her tighter and crooned, “The water temperature is only 114°F.”
“Only?” she whimpered, the initial shock passing, only for the full measure of discomfort to register, every cell overheating, every drop of moisture pushing to the surface, flooding out, getting lost in the surrounding water.
He kept her submerged, his hands and voice gentleness itself. “I know it’s very uncomfortable, but it’s for the sting.”
She thrashed her head against his chest, feeling as if she were suffocating one cell at a time, her lifeforce seeping out of her every pore. “But I don’t feel it anymore.”
“That’s the effect of the local anesthetic, but it isn’t a treatment for the poison. Only high heat can stop it.”
“So-I won’t die?” she choked, just now realizing she’d been too numb to think, to be really scared.
“Ya Ullah, you thought the poison was fatal?” She nodded, shook her head, nodded again. He let out a dark groan as he hugged her tighter, burying his face in her neck. “The one with fatal consequences is the stonefish’s sting. The worst of the lionfish’s is the pain, which is excruciating. I tried to catch one when I was eleven. Yes, we were both reckless at that age. So I have first-hand experience with t
he agony you suffered. But the poison isn’t to be treated lightly. If not neutralized by heat, it would have coursed through your blood until you started vomiting before you lost consciousness from hypotension.”
“I was starting to get queasy…thought it was a sign of-of…”
He turned her face to his, stemmed the rest of her projection in his mouth, his growl reverberating inside her.
Her consciousness was slipping away when he wrenched his lips from hers and heaved them both out of the water. “Enough. Any more heat and you’ll faint from heatstroke.”
She shuddered hard as the cooler air hit her. He tightened his hold around her as he stepped out of the pool and strode to the middle chamber. She lay limply in his arms, her head cushioned by his muscles, her bleary eyes taking in a raised marble platform of purest white right below the center of the fenestrated dome. It seemed to glow in the unearthly illumination. Or maybe her vision was all fuzzy. Whatever it was, it felt like a continuation of her journey into the dream.
Images invaded her mind, her nerve endings, of Shehab, naked, lying face down on the marble as steam swirled around his magnificent body, his muscles glistening, their tautness after a grueling day’s negotiations relaxing under her hands, all hers to caress and cosset, to tease and taste.
He put her on the platform as if he were placing a priceless work of art on a pedestal, and her imagination made a sharp turn to him rising from his surrender to her pampering, yanking her to his slick, hot flesh, letting her feel what she’d done to him before laying her down on the marble…
The sequence shattered as her sweltering skin touched the cool marble for real. He leaned over her, one arm at the back of her thighs, the other at her upper back, his face flushed to copper, drenched in sweat, clenched in anxiety as he seemed to count her breaths. “How are you feeling now, ya galbi?”
She gulped around the thick, dry thing that used to be her tongue. “Thirsty.”
He let out some expletive in Arabic, some self-abuse by the look on his face, laid her down completely before streaking away. She turned a head that felt filled with seawater, saw him disappear into his bedroom. He seemed to reappear at once, carrying two bottles and two glasses. He filled each glass from a bottle, scooped her up, put the first glass to her lips and his lips to her temple. “Drink, ya galbi.”