‘You believe them.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Yes. I don’t know.’ He didn’t know. He could see her outline in the lamplight, he could hear the fear in her voice, and tales of old were illogical.
‘Come here.’
She stood, scared to do as he said, scared to return to her own bed. ‘Come on.’
His voice was real, the wind was not, and as the wind let out a screech, she ran those thirty-four steps to him, to the solid warmth of his arms. He could feel her heart hammering in her chest as he held her close, because she really was terrified.
‘It’s just…’ He struggled for the words. ‘Old wives’ tales.’
‘So they’re not true?’
‘No.’ he started, but he could not quite deny them. ‘I don’t think so. Come…’ His bed was warm and her skin was cold and he pulled her in.
‘Did your parents not tell you tales when you were younger?’
‘No.’ She gave a cynical snort. ‘We weren’t exactly tucked in with a bedside story each night.’
‘Is that why you ran away?’ He felt her tense. ‘Karim told me,’ he admitted. ‘Not everything, he was talking more about Felicity, about her childhood, how mistrusting it made her. Your father—’
‘Was a drunken brute,’ Georgie finished for him. ‘My mother was terrified of him. Even after he died, he still left his mark on her. She’s still taking tablets to calm her nerves, still scared of her own shadow.’
‘What about you?’
‘I wasn’t scared of him—I just wanted to get away from him.’
‘Which was why you ran?’
‘I was always sent back.’ She was angry at the memory, angry at the injustice. ‘He never hit us—which made it fine, apparently. We were living in chaos, dancing to his temper, but…’ She didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to relive those times again—times when the only thing she had been able to control had been the food that had gone into her mouth, but Ibrahim seemed to understand without her saying it. She felt his hand dust her arm and slip to her waist, to the slender frame that was softened now with slight curves. As her hands had helped him, his hands did their work now, each touch, each stroke assuring her somehow that he knew how hard fought each gain had been, how fiercely she had fought for survival.
He could not not kiss her.
Just a kiss, and as he moved to her mouth for a moment he fought it.
‘What would happen?’ Georgie whispered, and he could taste her sweet breath.
‘Nothing probably.’ With her next to him, he could rationalise it. ‘As I said, look at my parents…’
‘But they still love each other,’ Georgie said. ‘They’re still bound. Felicity told me—’ she did not know if she was betraying a secret ‘—that Karim wouldn’t let her leave the desert till—’
‘It’s old wives’ tales.’ He was sure of it now. ‘After all, I can bring a mistress from the palace to the desert and I am not bound to her. It’s just superstition.’
‘Why doesn’t she come to you?’ Georgie asked. ‘I mean, when you’re younger. Why do you have to walk to the palace?’ She liked the tales, liked hearing the stories.
‘It would be different.’ Ibrahim said. ‘Your first time, at such a young age, you would not be able to separate the two—and if you love her in the desert…’ It was too illogical to even try to explain it, so he smiled instead and felt her calm beside him. There was peace in his heart this morning that had been absent for ages, forgiveness in his soul, and he would be forever grateful to her for that, and he really could not not kiss her.
And that had caused trouble before, but this was a different kiss: this was slow and non-urgent and, a first for Ibrahim, it was a kiss that was purely tender.
And a kiss couldn’t hurt when it felt so nice, and she was content with his kiss, because she’d craved it for months. The taste of his tongue and the weight of his lips. For a while Ibrahim too was content, to feel her breast through the fabric as his mouth explored hers, but then a kiss did not quite suffice, and he opened the buttons as far as they would go. ‘Did your sister design this gown for you?’ he teased, because even with all the buttons undone, he still couldn’t get to her breast and his hand slid to her waist to pursue from a different angle, but that would not be wise so, just a little disgruntled, he pulled back.
His eyes asked permission, for what she didn’t know, but she licked her lips in consent and he tore the fabric and went back to kissing her. She felt his sigh of satisfaction in her mouth as his hand, unhindered now, met her breast, and she kissed him and felt the satin of his skin beneath her fingers. It was still just a kiss, though her hands roamed. They felt the chest she’d once touched and explored it again, felt the dark, flat nipple beneath the pads of her fingers. It remained at a kiss even as her hands slid down.
And then, recalling last night, there was hesitation, but his apology came by way of his hands that led her to him and he moaned in her mouth as she held him.
Still just a kiss as she touched and explored what all night she had thought of, then it was far more than a kiss because his mouth would not suffice and her lips trailed down his torso, tasting the salt of his skin till Ibrahim halted her, because he wanted more of her, wanted longer with her, than her mouth would allow.
‘We mustn’t.’ Georgie said, as he pulled her body over his, because she was starting to understand there were rules.
‘We won’t,’ Ibrahim said, because he had more control than anyone, that much he knew.
He liked living on the edge, the brink, and this morning he did just that. ‘We can do this.’ Ibrahim said, and he pulled her till her legs were astride him. He took a breast in his mouth and his hands slid over her bottom, and she steadied herself with her hands and thought she would die because it felt like heaven.
‘We can’t,’ she said, which was different from the I can’t she had once halted him with.
‘We won’t,’ he insisted, as the tip of his thick length stroked her clitoris and he waited for the wind to warn him, or for a sign to halt him, or for Georgie to again recant. Except the desert was silent and there was nothing to halt him, and Georgie bit down on her lip to stop herself begging him to enter her.
She didn’t need to.
He slipped in just a little way and she could never again say no to him, because he felt sublime.
And there was only one law that they followed, and that was nature’s. He inched into her and then lifted her just a little further each time. He wanted the stupid nightdress off, but he did not want to stop touching her for a second. It was Georgie who lifted the fabric over her head and at the sight of her arms upstretched and her body above him he could no longer tease and cared nothing for rules, and he pulled her full down onto him.
The force of full entry had her cry in surprise, so purposefully and assuredly, he filled her, and though she tried to stretch for more of him, her body clamped down in possession, as if to assure herself she wouldn’t flee from him again. He watched, he slid up on the cushions so he could watch them, and she saw more than passion in his eyes. She saw something else too and she wanted to share it, so he pushed her head down a little, so she could share in the dark and light they made. She loved the rules as she watched them unite, she wanted to be bound for ever. Then he guided her head to his and his cool tongue met hers—every beat of her orgasm matched his, every finger knotted in his hair met by the tug on her own scalp. Then, afterwards, their eyes were mirrors both searching for regret or dread at dues now to be paid, and both finding none.
She lay beside him, knew he was thinking and so too was she. ‘Later today…’ he kissed her shoulder, as if confirming a thought ‘…I will take you back to the palace and then I must leave for London.’
‘You’re leaving?’
‘I have to go.’
She looked up at him.
‘I need to speak properly with my father. I need to think about…’ He didn’t say ‘us’, but she was sure that he almost did. ‘He has flown there today to visit my mother.’
‘Because of what you said to him?’
‘In spite of what I said to him.’ The loathing in his voice did not match their tender mood.
‘Is it always like this between you?’
‘Always,’ Ibrahim said. ‘He demands I respect him—but how? Why can’t he just let her go?’
‘Let her go?’ Georgie didn’t understand. After all, his mother had her own life in London.
‘She is still his wife.’ Ibrahim looked down at her, took in the flushed cheeks and rumpled hair, and it felt so good to share his thoughts with her. ‘She regrets her indiscretion—so much so that all this time she has stayed loyal.’
‘But it’s been years.’
‘And there will be many more years. After all this time ignoring her, now he drops in at will. Who’s to say next month, next year he will be too busy? And she is expected to wait.’
‘Can’t she divorce him?’
‘There is no divorce in Zaraq. It is so forbidden that there is not even a word for it. A lacuna, there is no concept, no precedence. My mother knows that even if legally it is taken care of overseas, still always, to him, to the people of Zaraq, she is his wife and nothing can change it.’