was compelled to it, took him into her mouth.
His breath caught, and the sound shivered over her skin. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to the pleasure of giving pleasure. She felt his hands in her hair, cupping her head, felt the intensity of his need.
‘Too much,’ he said hoarsely after a few moments. His hands moved to catch her shoulders, and he drew her up into a fierce embrace. ‘Too much.’ He leaned away from her for a moment, she heard the puff of his breath, and then the tent was in darkness.
In another moment, she was wrapped in his embrace.
Chapter Twelve
THE haunting sound of a distant muezzin woke her. Desi slipped out of bed, leaving Salah still sleeping, wrapped herself in her bathrobe, and went out.
The sky was showing the first signs of morning, the moon palely giving way to her ferocious brother as the sky paled. The air was deliciously fresh and crisp. Beneath her feet the sand was cool. When she dug at it with her toes, the layer underneath proved to be still warm, as if the earth were a living creature and she had burrowed under its fur. She stood, shivering a little, her feet warm in the sand, savouring the lonely sound of the muezzin’s voice against the utter peace of the desert, until it fell silent.
Then she took the spade and went into the dunes. When she returned, the camp was beginning to stir.
It was her first desert dawn, and Desi was moved by its perfection. She went back into the tent to discover Salah up and gone, and the pitchers filled with fresh water. She hurried with her washing and dressing, not to miss a minute of the morning.
When she got outside again, dressed in khaki shorts and a T-shirt but still barefoot, the sky was the colour of smoke, with a straggle of cloud and a swathe of rich, deep pink at the horizon. She set off running. Overhead slowly the sky revealed itself as blue, while above the horizon the pink expanded into red, gold and yellow, setting the cloud alight, and a tiny burning arc of fire appeared behind the dunes.
She jogged out towards the camel corral, where the beasts regarded her with placid condescension as she passed, and up the steep side of a nearby dune, her feet sinking deep into the sand, which brought her to the top breathless.
She stood looking out over the vista as the newborn sun painted the tops of the dunes in bright gold. The camp was revealed as a few broad, low tents pitched around a small central area where a pit had been dug to form a brazier. A man was stirring the coals into life.
Not far away from the camp, women were drawing water from the concrete housing of a well. In the light wind of morning their brightly patterned robes and scarves fanned out against a backdrop of endless pale sand. A herd of white and black goats clustered around, eagerly pushing towards the broad troughs that the women were filling. Their bleating was the only sound on the morning air, a dozen different pitches and rhythms like strange music.
The women were covertly watching her. From her vantage point on the dune she waved, and two of the older women smiled, one of them shyly waggling her hand at chest height. The younger ones drew their scarves up to cover their mouths and dropped their eyes.
Back in the tent, she found Salah, looking handsome and intimidating in desert robes, seated lotus-position on the ground, consulting a map. When she came in, fresh-faced with her exercise and the morning chill, he looked up and smiled. Her breath caught with surprise. It was the first time she had seen him so relaxed. The frown was gone from his eyes.
‘Ready for breakfast?’ he asked.
‘Ravenous! Is it going to be local fare again, or do they provide the usual tourist stuff?’ she asked as he led her outside to where someone had placed a carpet for them with cushions side by side in the sun. A man in flowing robes and turban was setting down plates.
‘They aren’t so changed yet. The few travellers they see are still the sort who want to experience what the world has to offer, not impose their own lifestyle on it. We will be offered the best of their own food.’
‘Can’t wait!’
As last night, the only utensils were spoons, and again she washed her hands under the stream of water poured for her from a ewer.
Little bowls of yoghurt and a curious mudcoloured paste were set before them and Desi was negotiating with the yoghurt when the pièce de résistance arrived: a huge, deliciously sizzling, buttery, puffy pancake that had been grilled over charcoal. Something that looked suspiciously like honey was drizzled all over it.
On the pure desert air the scent of it was tantalizing.
‘Oh, totally too fattening! I must remember to ask before I go around demanding the local food,’ Desi exclaimed helplessly.
‘You can eat all the yoghurt.’ Salah grinned and tore off a large chunk of the pancake, expertly rolling it up in one hand before taking a bite. Honey dripped onto his lower lip and he licked it off, his eyes closing with enjoyment.
He turned his head and looked at her from under lowered eyelids. ‘Hot. Sweet.’ Like you.
The thought of what those long, strong fingers, his tongue and mouth had done to her last night stormed through her. Her neck was suddenly too weak to hold up her head.
She took a hasty mouthful of the yoghurt and shivered as a blast of sourness reached her nerves. ‘I give in!’ she cried, reaching to tear off a bit of the pancake and dipping the end in a little pool of honey that had collected in the lower levels of its bubbly terrain.
‘Delicious! That’s so yummy it should be classed as a dangerous weapon! Is every meal over the next few days going to be diet sabotage?’
‘Boiled camel feet sometimes lack that certain something,’ he advised. ‘Eat while you can.’
‘Between the suntan and the fat, my agent will kill me.’
‘Start a fashion for voluptuous,’ he suggested.
‘You don’t understand. I am voluptuous. I abandoned the waif figure years ago. Do you think this body is size zero? Think again.’
‘What is size zero?’
‘That’s the size models try to be. I’d have to lose ten or twelve pounds to get there. As a model I’m considered borderline fat, as my agent keeps warning me.’
Salah stared at her for a moment, then began to laugh. It started as a chuckle, but quickly descended to his belly, where it took on a deeply contagious quality that drew her irresistibly into laughter, too. With great gusts and hoops, they were caught so helplessly that finally Salah fell backwards into the sand.
She turned to look down at him, at the black curls dusted with sand, sun-crinkled eyes, white teeth and laughing mouth. A new expression came into his eyes, and the laughter died on her lips.
He lifted his hand up her back and clenched it in her hair.
‘You are perfectly beautiful,’ he said, and for an uncharted time they were still, gazing at each other through ten long, wasted years.
Then Salah’s eyes widened in something like alarm. His face became shuttered and he sat up.
‘It is time to leave,’ he said flatly. And only then did Desi breathe again.
As he had predicted, several of the older women were sitting near the camel corral as they left, with their crafts and other wares spread out for examination.
Desi crouched down in front of the spread. Dolls made of bits of cloth and coloured thread, stones with fossils embedded in them, some pottery bowls with a curious design, and, best of all, some beautifully etched and painted bits of camel bone.
Desi oohed and aahed over everything, miming her admiration, and, unable to disappoint such dignified, open people, who clearly were very poor, carefully chose several items.
The camel bone work was exquisite: carved and engraved rings and pendants, and little etched scenes on flat