MEET ME AT the stables.
Ayaan looked at the note a little girl had fluttered in his hand. Frowning, he looked up and realized he had missed half of what Imran, his security chief, had said.
Motioning him to repeat, he walked toward the stables. And promptly stopped on the path when Imran was done. “So this information comes from the same source who provided us information last time on where the terrorist group will convene next?”
Imran shook his head. “No.”
Intelligence about a terrorist gathering in Dahaara the next month... It was the third time this information was coming his way. Information that had been accurate the first two times but was beginning to sound too good to be true. And this time, it was coming from a different source.
Something niggled at Ayaan, even though he couldn’t exactly place it. “See if you can trace it back to the source,” he said, taking another step in the direction of the stables.
“Are we not—”
“We are not acting on this until we figure out if there is a connection,” he said, dismissing him and covering the distance to the stables.
Imran had requested this meeting two days ago, and Ayaan, unable to focus on anything, had forgotten.
Like a teenager riding the first waves of infatuation, his mind, and his body, refused to focus on anything but on the image of Zohra underneath him, her beautiful brown eyes bewitching with raw need, sparkling with trust, the tight heat of her body, the heady moans from her mouth.
At some point past midnight, when he had exhausted them both, they had finally fallen sleep. Dreamless sleep, Ayaan had realized with a shock the next morning.
It had been two days since, two days where she had occupied his every thought, during which, interestingly, she had avoided him just as he had, where he had had more than enough time to berate himself for what he had done, to find numerous reasons why he could not do it again.
Even if his body, forever in a state of painful arousal, didn’t understand the fact.
He made his way to the stables, curiosity for once trumping the distinct unease he felt anywhere near it.
He stood inside, the echo of everything he had gone through in there rumbling through him. He understood the spine-tingling fear that had driven him to take Zohra, the need to keep her close, the need to lose himself in her body, but in the cold light of the day, the evidence of the instability of his mind skewered through him.
The scent of her carried to him through the light breeze, his body thrumming to life as though a switch had been turned on. He turned around to face her and frowned. Dusk was still a few hours away yet she had wrapped a thin shawl over her torso with white leggings under it. Her hair was covered with a scarf of the same color, and she looked the very picture of vitality, of life, an embodiment of everything he was not.
“Ayaan,” she said, as if she needed to force him to acknowledge her presence, as if the memory of how she tasted, how her body clenched him tight wasn’t etched into his very cells.
“You have been avoiding me,” he said. Tugging the scarf from her neck, she dropped it to the floor. Sunlight glinted in her hair, turning it into strands of coppery gold. “Are you regretting what happened?”
“No. And I’m not the one who’s doing the avoiding. I just didn’t hound you like I usually do.” She ventured farther in and tugged the huge door closed. Then her fingers pulled the shawl she had wrapped around her torso. Inch by inch, she unwound the fabric until it fell to the ground with a soft whisper.