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That final day, Amina and Ahmed had taken Zara to meet Amina’s sister in London, leaving Yana and Nasir behind. At his dictate, she’d learned later. To make it easier on Zara when Yana left the castle, but she wondered if he thought she’d also cause a scene.
Dread and something else curled around Yana’s chest. She’d miss Zara with all of her being. She’d miss the staff, Ahmed’s gentle care, Huma picking at her for ideas and even Amina, who’d thawed so greatly that she’d once said Yana was the daughter she’d never had. As skeptical as she’d wanted to feel, she’d thought the older woman had actually meant it.
As if her dark fairy-tale romance had to continue the theme, a great storm darkened the skies that last evening, chasing her and Nasir indoors. As if someone had set a background score, a hum of anxiety had thrummed through her all day.
As usual, Nasir and she ate together, then worked for a little while on their respective laptops in the great big library in quiet, comfortable silence. He put the gramophone player on, and she stood up to stretch and suddenly, he was behind her, clasping his arms around her and leading her in a slow, sensuous tango around the room.
She had no idea how long they danced like that. How long they stayed silent even as their bodies communicated freely and easily and effortlessly. In her three-inch heels, she was at perfect height for the V of her thighs to feel his thick erection. She’d gone braless and her nipples felt deliciously tormented pressed up into points against his hard chest.
He tilted her chin up with insistent fingers and Yana read his raw desire as easily as she could hear the thundering pulse of her heartbeat in her ears.
She went with a willing wantonness as he pressed her upper body over a centuries-old side table full of crystal decanters and expensive candlesticks. She moaned like a brazen seductress when he pulled up the hem of the icy-blue cocktail dress she’d worn for him because he’d whispered once when he’d been deep inside her that he loved seeing her in it. She turned her head and let him see her greedy abandon with an eager push of her hips when he tested her damp readiness. She slammed her palm onto the dark wood when he thrust into her with one long, deep stroke. The decanters and the candlesticks rattled, the table hit the wall with a rhythmic thud and the entire castle felt like it was standing witness to them, and she wondered just who was seducing and who was surrendering.
And then she realized it didn’t matter anymore.
Her breath came in sharp pants and shallow gulps when his thrusts began to gather speed, but suddenlylostthat finesse. Then his fingers were at her core, and his mouth was at her neck and he was demanding she come for him and he was telling her she was the sexiest thing he’d ever beheld and he was all over her and around her. The clever, wicked man that he was, he hit the exact spot where she could see glorious stars and soon, she was climaxing so hard that she thought she might never come back together in the same way ever again.
Yana felt undone, unraveled, as if he’d wrested away parts of her. Her legs wobbled when he helped her straighten and she thought he was on shaky legs, too. She turned and smiled and then he was kissing her and telling her what a good, quiet, biddable lover she was and she was thumping him in his chest with her fist because he was deliberately provoking her all over again before he kissed her.
She had no words to describe the tender reverence with which his lips touched her. How they said so much that he couldn’t or wouldn’t say. She buried her face in his neck and let herself drown in the delicious scent of the man.
They stood like that, while the storm raged outside the castle, and Yana wondered at how perfectly it mirrored everything that was happening inside her.
“Come back to me,habibi.”
“I’m here,” she said and yet she felt like parts of her were going to stay behind forever with him. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”
“I know.”
“Thank you for giving me tonight. With you. With just you.”
“You think it was a favor to you? It was a selfish man’s selfish desire. To have you all to himself for one final night.”
“Then for the first time in our lives, I think we’re in agreement,” she said, forcing a humor she didn’t feel. “I’ll return whenever I can.”
“I know.”
“I’ll call Zara every day.”
“I know.”
“I’ll let you know when you can drop her off with me. Mira would love to see her, too. And Aristos. And Nush and Caio. I want Zara to meet them all. I want her to think of them as her family, too.”
“You’re very generous,habibi, and Zara is lucky to have you.”
“Are you mocking me?” she asked.
“Do I dare?”
She looked up and ran her fingers over the scar almost obsessively and then pulled back. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re welcome to touch me anywhere, Yana. Even the scar. I don’t mind.”
“I know,” she said this time, and he smiled, and she smiled back, and it was a moment of perfect communion.
Age had only made him more handsome, more distinguished. Laugh lines crinkled out at his eyes even as grief and loss had permanently etched themselves onto those stern features.
It came to her then how much he’d changed after the incident that had given him those scars, how a shroud of grief had hung around him. With her usual foolish naiveté and a reckless urgency because it had pained her to see him like that, she’d not only trodden on his raw, wounded emotions but also declared shamelessly that she was in love with him and that he belonged to her.
