Fern rose to fling her sarong around her waist and begin gathering her things.
“Oh, Fern, you don’t have to rush away,” Amineh protested breathlessly.
“It’s your family time,” Fern said, trying not to look too flustered even though she was fighting a stab of envy so deep she could barely speak. “And I should prep for tomorrow’s lesson.” Because I’m a spinster schoolmarm who will never have what you have. Her heart wrenched in her chest as she acknowledged that she did want what Amineh had. Badly. So badly.
“You’ve embarrassed her, being all sexy like that,” Amineh chided, nose-to-nose with her husband.
“Can’t be helped. All I’ve been thinking about since we saw you from the plateau is getting down here to kiss you.” He kissed her again, making Amineh release a stifled moan.
Fern walked away, deeply self-conscious, trying not to be obvious as her gaze traveled to the top of the canyon wall. What had Zafir thought when he had looked down on her? she wondered. He hadn’t rushed to see her, so apparently she didn’t hold the same allure.
Oh, stop it. Of course she didn’t. She had to shake this preoccupation with him. It wasn’t healthy.
She reached her tent and dropped her bag in front of it, then went to the side where she was using the wires as a clothesline. She hung her damp towel then swept her sarong from her waist and shook out the sand.
“Fern.” Zafir.
Snapping her head up, she pressed a hand to where her heart nearly left her chest.
His shadow came around the side of the tent and his expression tightened when he saw her. He took in her swimsuit and the colorful sarong dangling from her loosened fingers.
Contradictory messages went through her. Habits of a lifetime urged her to cover herself, but a more overpowering weakness held her still for his inspection. Her body tingled under his gaze. Yearning to please stripped her naked to her soul. She was behaving shamelessly, standing here like this without making any attempt at modesty, thinking of all the ways he’d ravished her in her mind, but she did it anyway.
Did he know what she dreamed about?
She looked into his eyes and felt a delicious kick of desire right into her belly. He did. The magnetic pull she felt toward him was visceral. He grew bigger before her eyes as he drew in a hissing breath, chest expanding—
He grasped her arms, overwhelming her as he walked her backward to the tiny strip of sand behind her tent.
She pressed her hands into his chest, more for balance, alarmed by how quickly and easily he’d taken control of her, yet incredibly weak. He wasn’t being rough. There was nothing forceful in his handling of her. She capitulated like her bones were sand and her muscles melted wax.
When she felt the powdery give of sand beneath her back, she had another moment of thinking do something, but Zafir was looking at her mouth and her lips were searing with need. She licked them and he swooped to kiss her. She responded by parting her lips and moving them against his.
A punch of pure desire went into her middle as the kiss deepened like a fall into an abyss. Her buckling arms fell away from between them. She splayed her hands on his rib cage and began lightly kneading to learn his form through the folds of his thobe. When his tongue flicked into her mouth, she dashed her own against his and white light flashed through her. The pressure of his mouth increased and she welcomed it, opening more for him, not able to breathe but not caring.