Reading Online Novel

The Sheik Who Loved Me(6)



She looked like a wax sculpture in the golden glow of the kerosene lamp, a surreal angel. She was in her late twenties, he guessed, possessing an unconventional and exotic beauty, with high defined cheekbones, elegant arched brows and almond-shaped eyes fringed with thick amber lashes. She was tall, her muscles long and lean. But above all, it was those eyes that had undone him. They were closed now. And that made him feel a little safer.

But when they’d flared open he’d been stunned by the hugeness of them, the deep emerald green. And when she’d found focus and stared up into his own eyes, he’d been rocked by the depth he’d seen in them.

A man could drown in eyes like that. Eyes the color of the ocean.

Then a thought slammed him up the side of the head so hard and sudden he sucked in his breath. Aisha had drowned in an ocean that color. While he was diving, taking personal pleasure in the beauty and depths of a coral reef. He’d left her and Kamilah alone, up in the boat.

David swallowed against the hard knot of pain, of love and loss and irrational guilt. That was almost two years ago. The memories should be a little easier now. But they weren’t. A part of him didn’t even want them to be. A part of him relished the sharpness of the pain they brought him, as if hanging on to the hurt would preserve his love for his dead wife, as if it might absolve his guilt in some way.

He didn’t deserve easy memories as long as Kamilah still suffered. And he didn’t deserve to dive in waters like that, ever again. Which is why he hadn’t. Not once since Aisha’s death.

The woman in his bed moaned softly, jerking David’s attention back to the present. He felt himself bracing for the incredible green of her huge eyes.

But she didn’t wake. Her breathing settled back into a soft and regular rhythm, her chest rising and falling under the Egyptian cotton sheet he’d placed over her. Her hair was dry now, full of wave and curl. It fanned out about her face over the white pillows, the fiery color of a Saharan sunrise.

Her neck was sleek, elegant in the way it curved down to her collarbone. His eyes followed the lines of her body down to where the sheet rose gently over the swell of her pointed breasts. He thought of the soft and heavy weight of those breasts, naked against the palm of his hand, against his bare chest. He thought of the dusky coral nipples. David’s mouth went dry. Unbidden heat spilled low into the pit of his stomach.

He wiped the back of his hand hard across his mouth in shock. This was sick, to be aroused by an injured and barely conscious woman. A woman who couldn’t be more vulnerable if she tried. But by God she was desirable, in an unattainable and otherworldly kind of way.

Kamilah was right. If he’d had to conjure up the image of a mermaid in his dreams, this would be it.

A smiled tugged at his lips. Maybe he had more in common with his daughter than he dared admit. His smile deepened as he allowed his thoughts to go. Because in his dream the mermaid too would be naked with perfect coral-tipped breasts, waist-length amber hair, bewitching green eyes and an emerald-green tail.

He mentally shook his head. This was ludicrous. His thoughts and emotions were bouncing all over the place. This woman was real. A normal human being. And what might have passed for a tail was a swath of tangled green fabric. Still, he couldn’t shed the deepening sense of unreality.

He reached out, tentatively touched her cheek, almost to prove to himself she was not a figment of his imagination.

She murmured again.

He jerked his hand back. His breath snared in his throat. His heart rapped a light and steady beat against his ribs. The lamplight quivered, teased by invisible fingers of warm wind that had found their way through cracks in the shutters.

He felt edgy. Finding this woman on his beach had totally unstrung him.

She groaned suddenly, wrenching her head from side to side, wincing from the obvious pain and discomfort the movement caused her. Instinctively he reached out and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “Shh, it’s okay,” he soothed. “You’ll be all right. You’re safe here. There’s nothing to hurt you here.”

She stilled, as if listening for his voice.

“You’re safe,” he whispered again.

Her eyelids stopped flickering. The tension in her features eased. He’d managed to quell her angst, and that satisfied something primal within him. He began to move his hand away but was arrested by the silkiness of her hair against his skin. It was impossibly soft.

He lifted a long strand, let the curl twist around his fingers. And inside he felt a sudden, aching, vast and indefinable emptiness. His eyes flicked down to her left hand. There was definitely no sign of a ring, no tan line, nothing to indicate a ring that may have been lost to the storm. A hot thrill of promise speared through his chest and into his belly.