‘Are you as fearful of the sea as you are of the air?’ Yusef was dressed in faded jeans and a black polo shirt, barefoot—piratical. The gleam in his eyes told Gemma he was teasing, and as Abed said goodbye and the pirate helped her on board, she forgot all the reasons she shouldn’t be spending time alone with this man, and went straight into his arms.
No kisses just a tight embrace, holding each other close, no need for more, an unspoken agreement between them that more—should there be a more—could wait till later.
Neither had she any qualms, feeling a certain rightness in this stolen time together, knowing it could, in the future, be a very treasured memory.
‘Now I have to cast off,’ he finally murmured, breaking away from her but keeping hold of her hand. Gemma followed him down the length of the craft, waiting while he threw the rope ashore, then did the same at the prow before releasing the sail and adjusting it so the light breeze filled it and they drifted silently away from the wharf.
‘The sea is turquoise,’ Gemma whispered, afraid if she spoke too loudly the bubble of delight that was wrapped around them would surely burst.
‘And the sand is white, for all the black stone of the mountains,’ Yusef said, tugging her towards him so they sat together in the sunken cockpit, one of his hands holding the rope that moved the sail, the other clasping hers. ‘We are going to my island.’
‘Your island?’ Gemma queried, and he laughed.
‘One of the only perks I’ve yet discovered about this highness business,’ he said. ‘An island where only the ruler can go. Originally it was a place where he met with the gods to get advice or maybe orders, and through the ages it has retained some special significance so only the ruler and those he chooses to accompany him can set foot there.’
‘Privacy at last,’ Gemma muttered, disconcerted by the mix of emotions she was experiencing. Yes, she was excited, physically excited, about being alone with Yusef, but what was the point of them spending the day together—and sharing whatever pleasure the day might bring—when nothing could come of their relationship?
‘You don’t yearn for that?’ he asked, picking up on the sarcasm in her voice.
Gemma sighed.
‘Yes, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t,’ she admitted, ‘but aren’t we making things harder for ourselves? Wouldn’t it be easier to make a clean break? In fact, didn‘t we do that? Haven’t we managed to avoid seeing each other the last few weeks?’
‘Is that what you want?’
Gemma turned towards him and saw the concern in his dark eyes. She shrugged, a helpless gesture. ‘Not necessarily what I want,’ she told him, and brushed a kiss across his lips. ‘But given that there’s no point in taking our attraction further, isn’t it the sensible thing to do?’
He kissed her back, but swiftly for they were out in a channel now and the wind was frisky.
‘Then let’s not be sensible—at least, not for today,’ he said, before concentrating solely on the sail. ‘Let us be as unsensible as it is possible to be! And maybe, just maybe,’ he added softly, ‘there might be a point in taking the attraction further. I have an idea. Just you wait and see!’
He brought the boat ashore in a narrow inlet, beaching it on, yes, white sand between high, jagged rock walls that reached out into the sea. Beyond the beach, green grass and stunted trees grew in what looked like a hidden valley—a secret place.
Yusef helped her clamber out, and led her across the sand. At the top of the beach a picnic had already been set up, a carpet spread in a patch of shade, thick cushions thrown around on it, a brazier with a coffee pot on it, and a wicker basket promising an array of delights to eat.
Gemma sank down among the pillows, and sighed with the sheer delight of it.
‘Coffee?’
‘Does his highness actually serve the coffee or are a troupe of servants about to appear out of the bushes?’
Yusef smiled, and only now, as he felt his body relax at her teasing, did he realise how tense he’d been.
‘No servants,’ he said, sitting down beside her then leaning back so he lounged among the cushions.
‘Then no coffee,’ she whispered, and the restraint he’d been practising for what seemed like for ever broke and he took her in his arms, holding her close, kissing her pale lips, tasting the strawberries again.
And for long, long minutes kissing was enough, learning her through taste and touch, but soon, knowing the dhow shielded them from any possibility of being seen from the water, and that the island was completely uninhabited, he began to undress her, delighting in her response, in the shivers that ran across her skin as he drew off her shirt, the goose-bumps that formed when he kissed her now naked neck.
She slid her hands beneath his shirt, splaying her fingers across his chest, pressing into his flesh as if to steady herself while he continued his tender assault.
Gemma wondered if hearts could burst, so fast was hers beating. Yusef was stripping her with gentle but persistent efficiency, and his actions, not to mention the kisses accompanying them, were firing her to a heated desire she’d never felt before.
His long, strong fingers explored her body, awakening it to magical sensations. She could hear the little cries she gave, counterpoint to the shushing of wavelets on the beach, then urgency fired both of them, and she was touching him as well, touching him with the same licence he was using on her.
‘We have all day,’ he reminded her, but patience had no part to play this sunlit morning. His hands and mouth signalled urgency and Gemma’s body screamed for more than tender touches, so clothes were now shed willy-nilly and once naked, he held her to him, so skin met skin. He kissed her lips, looked into her eyes, and accepted the invitation of eyes and hands, sliding deep inside her, their bodies joined, adjusting, then moving, moving, moving, lost in the chorus of delight that fluttered from their lips.
It became a battle, Gemma holding out, not wanting to reach a climax until she knew Yusef, too, was ready, but he teased her and built the pressure higher and higher until, with a flash of sensation so riveting she shuddered again and again, her moment came, her body clenching, finally breaking his control so both were spent.
Now they ate, Yusef feeding her grapes.
‘Like the goddesses painted on ancient vases,’ she said, and he bent and kissed her grape-wet lips.
‘It was the gods who were fed, you lazy woman. You should be doing this for me.’
She reached up and touched her forefinger to his lips.
‘You don’t get enough pampering?’
He nodded, but she saw the smile slide from his face and realised for all the multitude of servants he might have, he probably didn’t get enough pampering. Not private, personal pampering.
Now she sat up and pushed him back among the cushions.
‘So it’s my job, is it?’
She took the bunch of grapes from his hand but, rather than feed him, she set them back in the picnic basket and searched in the big handbag she’d brought with her, coming up with a tube of hand cream.
She squeezed some on her hands then spread it on his shoulders, massaging it in, pushing her thumbs into the tight tendons at the back of his neck and pressing against the pressure points at the base of the skull.
‘To do this properly you need to roll over,’ she told him, and when he did, she straddled his back, naked and unashamed for there was something out of time and space in this encounter and they were in a magical place. Spreading more cream, she massaged his shoulders, finding more pressure points and kneading them until he squirmed with the pain.
‘I know it’s good for me, it feels good and bad at the same time, but enough’s enough.’
His voice was muffled by the pillows, and Gemma moved her hands lower, running her thumbs up and down the side of his spine, sitting now on his buttocks, delighting in the freedom he was allowing her—the freedom of his body!
His beautiful body!
Her fingers slid around his ribs, and felt a
scar.
‘An accident?’ she asked, still massaging.
‘An operation.’
Her hands stilled and she tried to work it out.
‘It’s not appendicitis, wrong place for a scar. What happened?’
‘I gave Abed a kidney.’
He said it as easily as she might have said she’d offered a friend a biscuit.
‘You gave Abed a kidney?’
He turned over now, tipping her off his back but catching her so they lay close again.
‘He had a bad form of nephritis as a child and neither of his kidneys worked too well. In our twenties we decided to look for a donor and it turned out I was a good match.’
‘Which means you only have one kidney now,’ Gemma said, wondering why her heart was beating out a panicky rhythm.
‘We have one working kidney each and one is all anyone needs,’ he said, so calmly the panicky rhythm eased a little. ‘In fact, research done on thousands of living kidney donors has found that our lives run on exactly the same lines as nondonors. The kidney that is left actually grows and takes up eighty to ninety per cent of the work the two kidneys once did, so there is no danger.’
‘No danger?’ Gemma said. ‘But don’t you have to treat it carefully because it is the only one?’
‘And how does one treat a kidney well?’ he teased. ‘Are you aware of any action you take to protect your kidneys? Anyway, you can be sure that I am always careful,’ he said, and began to kiss her again, but Gemma’s mind was on the operation. Presumably this had all happened well before anyone had known Yusef would end up as the country’s ruler, or surely he wouldn’t have been allowed to go through with the donation. And often the donor suffered more than the recipient in the post-operative stage, Gemma having seen this situation during her general training.
‘You’re not with me in these kisses,’ Yusef complained, pushing up to lounge on one elbow. ‘Perhaps a swim?’
Of course people with one kidney could lead normal lives, Gemma chided herself, but now she knew this she found herself worrying about him. Would the water be too cold? If he got a chill could it affect his kidney—?
‘Come,’ he said, hauling her to her feet. ‘Do you think I didn’t go through all you’re thinking when I did it? I was a medical student at the time and knew enough to be able to imagine the most appalling consequences, but the truth is as long as it isn’t damaged by disease or accident, my one kidney is perfectly adequate. And disease or accident could carry me away anyway, even if I had the full complement of kidneys.’
Gemma knew he was right, and that her sudden spurt of anxiety was totally stupid, but that didn’t stop the little knot of worry that stayed planted in her head.
She followed him down the beach and into the warm, clear water, feeling it wrap around her, cleansing and supporting her. She lay on her back and kicked her legs, feeling her hair float round her head like seaweed, wondering how the sexually shy and slightly prudish Gemma she had been had suddenly been transformed into this creature frolicking naked in the water.
With a man!
But what a man!
He swam with long clean strokes out to the entrance of the inlet, then back again, swimming because he enjoyed the freedom of it, Gemma guessed, out here, away from all the pressures of his position. And that there were pressures she knew, for even after they’d made love, the strain and tension remained etched into his face.
‘Sex in the water?’
He’d bobbed up beside her, a wide grin chasing away the lines she thought she’d seen.
She felt her face colour and knew the shy and prudish Gemma wasn’t totally gone, but now he was touching her, and before long the concept he’d suggested became not only clear but strangely exciting as well.
CHAPTER TEN
AFTER the swim, he offered her a clean wezaar, the white cloth he wrapped around his waist beneath his gown. She tied it, sarong-style, around her body, knotting it above her breasts. Then, covered well enough to not feel embarrassed, Gemma followed him along a narrow path into the green valley.
It was beautiful, moss and lichen growing on stones in what might, when it rained, be a tiny creek. More rocks formed a waterfall, dry now but greenly beautiful with delicate, dangling ferns.
‘There must be enough water retained in the rocks to keep the plants growing,’ Yusef said, and Gemma realised he was as intrigued by the place as she was.
‘You haven’t been here before?’
He shook his head.
‘I didn’t have the right to come,’ he explained. ‘I don’t know if my father ever used the island, but if he did, he certainly didn’t bring any of his children along or I’d have heard.’
They’d climbed the rocky fall and reached a high point from where they could look out over the sea and back towards the mainland.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Gemma breathed, sitting down on a large rock to drink in the view.
‘And you, too, are beautiful,’ Yusef told her, taking her hand and holding it in a tight clasp. ‘So beautiful I cannot give you up. I have thought,’ he continued, ‘about our situation, and it seems to me there is a simple answer.’
He’d been speaking slowly, as if thinking out each word, and quite softly, so when the words did come Gemma wasn’t certain she’d heard them right.
‘A simple answer?’ she echoed.
‘Very simple,’ he said, dropping a light kiss on the back of her fingers, ‘although it would mean big changes in your life and it might not be so simple in your way of thinking, in Western thinking. Here it would be quite acceptable for you to be my mistress, to have a house I would provide for you within the compound. Financially you would be secure for ever, even should you find in time the arrangement doesn’t suit you and you decide you wish to leave, although I would hope that wouldn’t happen.’
Gemma eased her hand away from his and battled to make sense of what he’d just proposed.
‘Let me get this right,’ she said, moving as far away from him as she could on the tiny plateau. She slammed her hands on her hips and glared down at him. ‘Ever since we got here, every time we’ve stolen a kiss, you’ve been telling me that an affair between us could cause such a scandal the people would throw you off the throne, now you’re proposing to set me up as your mistress and that’s okay? Have I got it straight?’
He frowned at her and shook his head but when he spoke, his words denied the head shake.
‘It is understood in all cultures that men have mistresses,’ he said. ‘This would not be a scandal.’
‘But it would be a scandal if it was just an affair? Wouldn’t it be the same? Wouldn’t I be your mistress if we were having an affair?’ Gemma persisted, growing more angry by the second.
He held out his hands in a helpless gesture—about as helpless as a lion guarding his prey, Gemma guessed.
‘An affair—it smacks of something not exactly underhand but shifty or illicit, whereas to take a mistress, well, that is not so different from taking another wife. My father, although he only had the allowed four wives at any one time, kept many mistresses.’
‘Oh, well, if your father did it, that must make it all right!’ Gemma retorted. ‘And just how many wives and mistresses are you planning on having?’
‘You’re making a mockery of it now,’ Yusef growled. ‘Do you not see I am serious?
‘Serious about taking a mistress, and a foreign mistress, at that? That’s okay, is it? That’s not going to wreck the succession? That’s not going to tip the scales should your brother decide to force you off the throne?’
Yusef sighed, banking down the anger that had risen to replace his original disappointment. Gemma was angry enough for both of them, although he couldn’t fathom why. In his head it had seemed the ideal solution. He had mapped it all out.
But in practice it had not gone at all the way he’d hoped. Well, the first part of the day had, it had been stupendously successful, but now he had this woman even more firmly ensnared in
his blood, she was being difficult.
Impossible!
He tried for patience. Began again.
‘You do not like the idea?’
‘I hate the idea,’ she snapped. ‘And so should you! What’s wrong with you, to be thinking this way? Has this highness business gone to your head? You’re a caring man for all the power you wield, yet you’d offer me some kind of—of dishonourable position in your life. And what of Fajella? What of your daughter? How, as she grows up, do you explain me to her?’
And with that the woman with whom he had been inexorably falling in love stormed away, scrambling down the gully and disappearing into the green grove of trees.
Gemma slipped and slid, her mind whirling with too many thoughts and emotions for her to separate them. She tried to analyse how she felt. Maybe if she could sort out her physical state then her mind would fall into order later. She’d start with the heaviness in her chest, where her heart, which had only recently admitted its love for this man, was now clumped like a lump of lead.
Heavier, if anything!
Why?
She gave a scoffing huff of laughter.
She could answer that one. It was because the man you thought just might love you—though why you thought that, who knows—has just positively proven he doesn’t, by asking you to be his mistress!
Yusef heard her crashing progress down the gully. What now?
They were stuck together on a deserted island.
She was probably thinking he’d abandon her there if she didn’t agree.
Gemma’s response had startled him. She’d been so responsive—so warm and loving and utterly wonderful in his arms, so generous in her love-making—that her reaction to his suggestion had come as a total shock.
Had he misread the situation as far as the word ‘mistress’ was concerned? Here the women in these positions enjoyed a better position than a wife—with far fewer responsibilities. He had understood similar situations were accepted in the Western world but maybe the word had different connotations in Australia?
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