“It is nothing I have seen. I simply feel that the work that you are doing may carry risks.”
It went through her like a bolt of lightning. “You think they’re going to come after me?” They hadn’t thought of that. They had thought only of the threat to the turtle nests, they had never once thought that the saboteurs might take a more direct action.
“‘They?’” Arif’s eyebrows went up. “I see the idea does not entirely surprise you.”
“We thought—we thought they were sabotaging the nests, but it never occurred to us that—but what good would it do them to…?”
“Who is the they you suspect?”
Aly bit her lip. She had promised Ellen, but if she couldn’t trust Arif all was lost anyway. She had to act on her own judgment now. She heaved a breath and looked at him.
“Webson Attary, the pharmaceutical giant. Which also owns Mystery Resorts. They’ve got a strong double motivation.” She could see by his face that it was a new idea to him. “Who do you suspect?”
He hesitated. “Kaljuk agents.”
She jumped so high she almost went through the hatch. “Kaljuk agents!” Aly stared at him. “Kaljuk agents,” she said again. And then, as her brain started to make sense of it, “It’s political?”
“For all the reasons I told you before. Tell me how you think it would benefit Webson Attary to destroy the Johari turtle,” he said.
Belatedly she realized she had slopped mineral water into her lap. She brushed the drops away, but all her focus was on Arif.
“Well, it’s multi-pronged. We know they want two things: Mystery Resorts wants to take over the whole island group and create a high-end holiday resort. But that will take major building works and this is a World Heritage site now, because of the turtles. So the long-term goal there would be to wipe out the turtle and eventually get the World Heritage designation revoked.
“But the big one is, Webson Attary still hope to patent the active ingredients in the medicinally effective herbs that are found here on the islands. That could be worth billions, but at the moment, again, it’s a World Heritage site, and the islanders have the rights. If they can move in and buy the islanders out one by one with the excuse that it’s for the resort—in other words, they won’t be paying royalties on the herbs because they won’t be admitting that’s what they really want—they can cut the islanders out completely. So they benefit two ways—they get the islands for their exclusive resort, and they get the herbs, and there’s little to pay and no one to harass them if they are wrecking the ecosystem here.”
Arif listened with focused interest till she stopped speaking. He nodded, sipped his cognac, set the glass down. “Interesting,” he said.
He paused, gazing at her, then seemed to come to a decision. “You are concerned to keep me at a distance when you are marking the nests, Aly. And you have mismarked many nests, even sometimes returning to marked nests to do so. What is the reason for what you do?”
Aly drank till the sparkling water burned her throat. It was an inexpressible relief to be open with him. Never had she so wanted to trust a fellow human being, and now that she could, tears of relief burned at the back of her eyes.
“Unless there’s some mysterious new disease happening, we can be almost sure that nests are being sabotaged. So that’s a dilemma—because we need to mark the nests in order to track what’s happening, but in marking them, we may assist the sabotage. Our plan was to false mark a majority of the nests so that we would have a way of measuring which nests end up dying.”
“Why have you not told me all this before?”
“I couldn’t, because…”
She ground to a halt, catching her lower lip between her teeth. She didn’t want to tell him.
“Because?”
“Richard was suspicious when you insisted on coming with me. He thought…”
But she couldn’t look into that noble face and say what Richard thought.
He took a sip of his drink and the blue eyes regarded her calmly. “And did you share Richard’s suspicions?”
“No,” she admitted, wondering if that were some kind of confession. “I wanted to confide in you, but they insisted, and Richard’s got much more experience than I do of official corruption. I had to keep an open mind about it. I thought I needed more reason than just my own personal conviction before I broke their embargo on telling you. But it’s been hard.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Now it’s your turn,” Aly said. “What do the Kaljuks stand to gain?”
“The Kaljuks are worried by the constant demand for independence that rages in Joharistan. And they know the importance that many Johari people place on the turtle’s legendary connection with independence. We think that someone in the Kaljuk regime has made the decision to wipe out the turtle altogether, in order to dishearten the revolutionaries.”
Aly blinked in horrified dismay. “That’s sheer evil,” she whispered. Arif nodded. “Does anyone know anything for certain?”
“Like you, I cannot be certain even that sabotage is happening, let alone who might be behind it. But there might even be someone among my own people. They know, or should know, what importance I place on the sea turtle’s survival, and yet your grant application was cut to the bare minimum without any reference to me. But even with so few resources, Aly, I have hopes that your scientific expertise will make some discoveries during this trip.”
“Oh, I hope so too.” A world of troubles had been lifted from her shoulders within the space of an hour. She had always wanted to trust him, and now it felt so right. Aly sank back into the sofa cushions with a sigh that came from her toes. Tension she didn’t know she had was just floating away.
Silence had fallen over the port, the soft lighting enclosed them in their own world, and the night was close and comforting,
“Thank you, it’s been the most wonderful relief to get that off my chest.”
And suddenly she had no more defenses against her feelings. Hunger ached in her stomach, a desperate need for Arif’s touch, for his smile, for him to want her the way she wanted him.
In the backwash shame rose up, acid in her chest, fire in her face. What if he saw it in her eyes? How awful to be gently rejected, or even worse, to be offered his sexual generosity. He could probably smell her utter inexperience, men like him knew things like that, didn’t they? She was sending out who knew what signals, and he would surely pick up on them.
Aly set her glass down with a bang and sat up. “It must be two a.m.” she cried. “I’ve got to be up in a couple of hours.”
His eyes were shadowed, dark, with an expression in them she had never seen in a man’s eyes. It electrified her, even though it couldn’t mean what it seemed to mean. She wanted to stand up, but now she was moving through honey. Everything slowed, and the night was heavy on her flesh.
Arif’s dark, strong hand reached out and enclosed her wrist, and Aly went still with shock. With yearning.
“Do you know how beautiful you are?” he said in that cat-fur voice. He was going to do it. He was going to take her to bed as an act of charity. He was even going to pretend he found her desirable. Oh God, how appalling!
She jumped to her feet, and almost tripped over the coffee table. He steadied her with a hand on her shoulder.
“Aly?” he murmured, and he was there, he was close, nothing but silk covering that gorgeous body, nothing but a cotton shirt between her and humiliation. If he got any closer her mouth would melt and then she wouldn’t be able to say a word to stop him.
Aly swallowed and clenched her teeth and hands, struggling for sanity. “Oh, yes, I think so,” she said. “Don’t you worry about me, Arif, I’ll get along.”
She turned and took a step towards her cabin, but his hand was on her arm now, just that, just a touch, but it didn’t take more than that for her to know how much of a fool she could make of herself right now. Delicious ripples were running from under his hand to her breasts, stomach, thighs, to every
square inch of skin, to every pore. Nothing had ever been like this. Her body was alive, a flame of sensation wrapping her, melting her.
“Aly?” he said softly, and she should say no, she must say no, but she had to keep her mouth closed tight against the moan of pleasure and pleading that was in her throat, because that would give her away.
“Aly.” Her name was rough and silky in his mouth, and she felt it like his tongue between her thighs. Her knees buckled and she stumbled, and his arms went around her, her body tight against his. The shock of his hand was in her hair, and he drew her head back and looked down into her eyes. For one electric moment blue fire burned into her. Then he bent and his mouth clamped hers with reckless, wild hunger, his tongue driving into the soft cavity of hers over and over, and each stroke exploded like a burst of gunpowder in her blood. Aly’s mouth opened wider and wider under the onslaught, and deep in her abdomen heat coiled and curled and rose up.
His erection pressed into her stomach, hard and hungry, till he reached one hand under her butt and lifted her off the floor to fit against him. Instinctively her legs wrapped around his hips, and now her thighs were spread wide over the hard flesh that pulsed and urged its way into her body even through the layers of clothing. A sea of liquid sensation flooded out from her center to drown muscle and bone and nerves with delight.
Her arms were tight around his neck, her fingers curling into the thick black hair that clung like sweet silk around her fingertips. His kiss pushed deeper and deeper, his tongue drew hers into a sensuous dance and her brain reeled. Then his mouth lifted and she moaned her loss.
“Aly, look at me,” he whispered, and drunkenly she opened her eyes and stared into scorching blue flame.
“Aly?” he asked. Somewhere a long way away a voice cried that this way led to disaster.
She opened her mouth, but all she could whisper was his name.
Chapter Fourteen
Aly lay in the curve of his arm, her head swimming, her body gently rocking, but whether it was the movement of the boat in the water, or her own blood returning to stillness, she couldn’t tell. Her body cleaved to his in gratitude—for the pleasure, for the sense of connection, for…the freedom. They hadn’t slept at all, but soon she would have to get up.
She stretched luxuriously and felt sweetness in every muscle. He had been fierce and gentle all at once, and he had made her body into a mine of pleasure. Nothing could be further from the blighted experience she had had once before.
If she’d had the strength to choose, she’d have turned away from it, which just went to show what a fool she could be. What did it matter if on his side it was charity? There were lots of different forms of charity. She worked for a charity—why should she turn away from receiving it? And what did it matter if it was a one-off for him and she never experienced such bone-deep joy again? She’d entered a different world, and now she had been there, she wouldn’t have traded the knowledge of it for any amount of ignorant bliss.
Arif was so experienced, so capable, so passionate, and so generous, that she hadn’t even had time to be nervous about her own awkward inexperience. Passion had shown her the way. If he never looked at her again, she was still richer than she had been yesterday. And if the miracle happened and he gave her more such loving over the next few weeks—well, she was richer than her father had ever been.
“You were a virgin?” Arif murmured above her head.
Her skin shivered along a path from shoulder to hip—it was his hand tracing sparks in her flesh. She knew that his touch would always move her, but now wasn’t the time to worry about the future. She must live in this moment or lose it forever.
“Well…almost.”
His smile rippled down to where her cheek rested against his chest. “How is a woman almost a virgin?”
“I had a boyfriend, and we made love…once. Or at least—he tried. But he came as soon as he was inside. It was over in ten seconds. I call that almost.”
“This kind of thing happens. Do you mean that he was afraid to try again? Or did you—”
“No. Julian was embarrassed, but the thing that killed it was timing. My father was exposed as a fraud just a couple of days later and it all came down with staggering speed. We never spoke again.”
The pale light of dawn was now shadowing the room. His chest was damp under her hand, and muscled and hard. She stroked down to his stomach and saw the muscles contract, heard his intake of breath. Her heart kicked. He caught her hand, lifted it to his mouth, and kissed the palm.
“A little more recovery time, please,” he said. “Julian dropped you?”
“He texted to say he…I can’t remember exactly what he said, but I knew anyway. His father had lost a huge amount of money, along with all my father’s other friends. Of course it was over between us. I knew it would be.”
“But that must have been years ago. Did that experience have such a profound influence on you? Why has no man succeeded with you since?”
A little burst of laughter gurgled in her throat. “No man has tried. Once my father lost everything there wasn’t the draw of money anymore. Even Julian—or maybe his father—had only thought of me because of my father’s money.”
“What? Why do you tell yourself such stories?”
“Look, I’m under no illusions. I think Julian could hardly bring himself to make love to me. He’d been ordered to take me out by his father. That’s why it happened the way it did.”
Arif let out a puff of incredulous laughter and her head rocked with his chest. “There are several possible reasons why a man suffers premature ejaculation with a woman. One of the least likely is that he doesn’t find her attractive. He may be inexperienced, or overexcited—or he may find her too attractive, love her so much that he fears he will be inadequate. And then, of course, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“Count Julian out of that one,” Aly said.
“And the question isn’t Julian’s state of mind, but your own.”
Aly frowned and lifted her head. “It’s dawn already. Why hasn’t the muezzin called?”
Arif laughed. “Because this is a resort for wealthy foreigners, and they do not like to be awakened so early.”
She leapt up. “I’ve got to get out onto the beach.”
She groped on the floor for her nightshirt as Arif asked lazily, “Can’t the turtles wait for half an hour?”
For a moment she gazed down at his body, damp and glowing in the lamplight, relaxed and perfect, a god who had fallen to earth from the sea. Her heart filled to bursting with the sight, with the memory of sheer physical joy in her muscles and blood. Half an hour more of bliss beckoned. She shook the temptation away.
“A beach as busy as this one is the last place that can wait. I’ve got to get out there.”
“Ah, that is too bad,” Arif said, tossing aside the sheet and flinging his long, strong body upright. Aly watched him, hypnotized. “I had plans for you. But when duty calls…”
“You don’t have to come, you know,” she said. Then she tore her eyes away and dashed into her own cabin. Only when she was under the shower did it occur to her that she had forgotten to be anxious about her own body in his eyes the morning after.
…
The bay was beautiful in the early light, the sea dancing and shining, the sun kissing treetops with gold and sparking off the masts of the moored boats. The air was as fresh and clean as the world’s first day. Except for a little dog who seemed inclined to keep them company, they had the beach to themselves. They were walking together, because in the crowded port it was not practicable for the dinghy to accompany her. They walked sometimes side by side, sometimes a few yards apart, depending on the beach architecture, but always she felt his presence, always her body inclined to him in pure physical gratitude.
She had never been so wide awake, so alive. A southerly wind was blowing, and Aly lifted her face to it, savoring this moment of perfection. Arif was the first man she had ever been able to trust
so completely, and she threw her heart into the wind, and was free. Tomorrow was tomorrow, but today he was hers and she would remember him and this moment forever. If she never had it again all the rest of her life, this moment was enough.
It was Arif who found the first traces of a nest, and they mounted a cage over it, with a sign in three languages warning people not to mess with it. Then Aly pulled two small bundles of wooden stakes out of the backpack and handed him one of them. She marked out the back of the nest with a stake, then pushed Arif into position on one side of it.
“Pace me,” she instructed, and then, the little dog following, the two of them walked a straight line down to the sea, a meter apart, planting stakes, till they got to the water’s edge. Then Aly unhooked the roll of raffia fencing from beneath her backpack, and ran it all the way from the water, up around the nest and down the other side to the water again.
“I have been wondering what this was for. What is the purpose of it?” Arif inquired, as he helped her to fix the half-meter-high fencing to the stakes. His hands soon learned the knack of the ties. In the same way he had learned the knack of her body, and with one glance at those expert fingers at work her body remembered the pleasure they had given her and softened to prepare for more. Aly forced her eyes away.
“It protects the hatchlings from the lights of the resort. At night those lights up there will be brighter than the stars on the sea, so the hatchlings will go in the wrong direction and die of dehydration in the morning, or be picked off by gulls, when they don’t find the sea. You remember.”
“And what about the potential for sabotage?”
“We have to protect against the bigger risk. Richard and Ellen and I agreed that on the populated islands sabotage may be deemed too risky, anyway. But if we’re wrong about that, the hatchlings are doomed anyway, unless we do this.”
She spoke in her scientist’s voice, she was nervous with her own softening towards him. As they packed up their tools and he lifted the backpack again, she heaved a deep breath. Better say it now, even though there was nothing more magical than walking with Arif in the golden light of dawn and dreaming.
Her Royal Protector (a Johari Crown Novel) (Entangled Indulgence) Page 13