The girls leaped up to fetch proper shoes.
“Why...?” she asked, feeling persecuted.
“You’re safe, Fern,” he assured her, one hand lifting to calm her as he held his distance.
She didn’t feel safe! Not when his sweeping gaze seemed to visualize her nude beneath a soaked gown. She crossed her arms, hiding that her nipples prickled into points and trying to protect the fragile ego squirming like a wisp of smoke behind her breastbone.
“I shouldn’t have presumed this morning.” A mixture of compunction and frustration flashed in his expression. “If I frightened you, I apologize.” He sounded sincere. Looked it, even though his gaze was now penetrating hers in a way that was extremely uncomfortable. “It won’t happen again.”
Well, that certainly told her how irresistible she was. Her eyes grew damp with a startling mixture of frustration and longing. She lowered her lashes to hide her completely misplaced disappointment.
“Lust is bad,” she managed to say, stating it for her own benefit, hoping to soothe this sting of rejection by making it sound like she wouldn’t go to bed with him even if he wanted her to.
His mouth twitched, the corners deepening with a pained and secretive smile. “Says the woman who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” He sobered into the man she had read was a determined leader of a troubled populace. “But in this case, yes. The consequences aren’t worth it.”
A thick lump rose in her throat. His words cut to the bone and set her adrift. Funny how it really didn’t matter that Zafir’s kiss had been incidental, brought on by proximity and availability, nothing personal. She had done what females did around all alpha males: projected willingness. His reaction had been as biological as hers.
She shouldn’t want him to do it again, but she did.
Lust. Hormones. Whatever it was, they were very detrimental to a woman’s good sense. She ought to thank him for dismissing any possibility of giving in to it.
But she was just hurt.
He smiled and offered, “I’m only here because Tariq pled your case at lunch.”
“My case?”
“His own,” he answered with a tilt of his head. “Ra’id has asked you not to take the girls beyond the camp without him, but he has agreed with Tariq that I am an acceptable escort.”
“I—” think, she urged herself “—don’t want to impose.”
“We’re also facilitating for Ra’id and Amineh,” he said.
“In what way?” She looked up from setting rocks on the children’s sketches so they wouldn’t blow away if the wind came up.
Zafir’s dry lift of his brows made the wheels roll and click in her head. But he couldn’t really be saying what she thought he was saying. They were having sex?
“You’re like one of those chameleons that switches color between one breath and the next.” His husky tone laughed at her flush.
“Well, I can’t believe what you just implied! It’s rather personal, isn’t it? And she’s your sister. Did they actually ask you...?”
“No. And I’m not going to dwell on whether that’s what they’re really doing. But the girls both have birthdays about nine months after past vacations here. Ra’id has had a killer travel schedule the last few years, but he told me last night they’re looking forward to a more settled life next year.” He shrugged. “And he loves his girls, but his successor is his brother. He’d like a son.”