The Sheikh’s Disobedient Bride(46)

Curiosity piqued, Tally followed.



Tair led her to the door of his room and when she balked at the entrance, he smiled mockingly down at her. “And just what do you think I’m going to show you? A part of my anatomy?”



Heat surged to her cheeks and she rolled her eyes. “No.”



“It is spectacular,” he added, his dark eyes glinting wickedly, “but it’s not why I’ve brought you here. You won’t get that lesson until our wedding day.”



“Which will be never,” she muttered beneath her breath.



“Not so,” he corrected, “but for tonight, let’s focus on this—” He pushed open his door, took her hand and led her through his room to the set of glass doors across the way.



Tally expected to go through the doors to a balcony much like hers, a balcony with a view of the desert and the endless vista of moonlit sand, but his room had French doors on both sides of the room and while one set of doors opened on the desert, there was another set that opened to a private patio—a huge patio, a virtual walled garden that shimmered in the moonlight. Shimmered.



It was a pool. A pool carved from the stone, a pool that must have been like something in Eden. So natural, so real, so…cool.



Tally felt immediate relief and she looked up at Tair who was watching her, smiling his faint knowing smile and then she looked back to the water. “You have your own pool.”



“I am the sheikh.”



Tally stood just inside the doorway staring at the glistening water. My God, this was like the VIP rooms at the elite hotels and clubs. This was the life she’d never known, a life she didn’t think existed, a life carved from rock and on the surface arid, so dry, but in truth nothing like that. Tair’s world was more seductive, more erotic than anything she’d found in Seattle or the Pacific Northwest. Tair’s world was…indulgent.



And Tally, deprived of indulgences, found it horribly, shamefully attractive.



You won’t be bought, Tally, she sternly reminded herself. You have better morals. Remember your scruples. Remember that high road, that’s the one you decided to take.



But really, the high road was less interesting than what lay before her. The high road was hot and difficult, rough and lonely and God—what she wouldn’t give to plunge into the pool and just float there, cool, calm, comfortable.



“Can I swim?” she asked, laying an impulsive hand on Tair’s arm. “I don’t have a suit but it’s dark out and you won’t see—” She broke off, remembered herself. Remembered him. “Unless you have a suit for me?”



“Not readily, no.”



“So your lady friends don’t keep suits here?” she asked, knowing she was being arch and unable to help it. She was curious after all.



“No.” He closed the French doors, so that they were alone in his walled garden with the pool reflecting the very nearly full moon.



“They swim naked?” she persisted.



Tair moved toward her, took the outer robe in his hand and drew it off, over her head and dropped the dark fabric in a puddle at her feet. His gaze lowered, lingered, taking in the fullness of her curves beneath the thin silk of her aqua gown.



“They swim naked.”



Naked.



Tally sucked in air, heat flooding her limbs yet again.



The man had a way with words.



Trying to hide her flurry of nerves, Tally moved away from him, walking to the edge of the pool. She crouched at the side, reached in, touched the water. Not hot like a spa, nor cold. Just perfect.



Staring toward the bottom she tried to make out the depth of the pool and she couldn’t see the bottom, not easily. It wasn’t a shallow pool. And it wasn’t small. It was a pool one could swim in, exercise in.



Tally stood, dipped a toe into the water, the hem of her gown trailing in the water, too.



“You’re getting your robe wet,” he said, watching her from the shadows.



She smiled. “I don’t have a suit.”



“And so what are you going to do?”



Her smile stretched and she felt suddenly, surprisingly carefree. My God. She was here, she was okay, she was—and just like that, she dove into the pool, a shallow dive, not deep, just in case the pool was more shallow than she thought, but the water was perfect, so cool, so refreshing and Tally surfaced and turned over on her back and smiled up at the sky. She hadn’t felt so free ever before.



“Look at all the stars.” It was such a beautiful night. Stars and stars—galaxies of them.



Tair joined her at the pool, sat down on one of the low chairs at the pool’s edge. “Better?”