all closed, awnings flapping and snapping in the wind.
‘So where are we going now? Why couldn’t we stay with the plane?’
‘The crew are staying with the plane. It is, after all, Al-Jiradi property. They will not leave it.’
‘So we must?’
‘There is a small hotel on the coast. Very exclusive. You will be more comfortable there.’
‘And you?’
‘This is not about my comfort.’
If there was comfort in this hotel, it was proving elusive to find. There was luxury, it was true: the plushest silk carpets, the finest examples of the weaver’s art. The most lavish of fixtures and fittings, from the colourful Byzantine tiles to the gold taps set with emeralds the size of quails’ eggs.
But comfort was nowhere to be found. Just as it was impossible to sleep. Even now, when it seemed the worst of the storm had passed, lightning still flashed intermittently through the richly embroidered drapes, filling the room with an electric white light and bleaching the room of colour. But the atmosphere in the room remained heavy with the storm’s passing, and the soft bed and starched bed-linen felt stifling. She looked longingly at the doors that led onto the terrace overlooking the sea.
Ever since they’d arrived she’d locked herself away in her suite, wanting desperately to find distance from that man. He’d been impossible on the plane, sullen and resentful at first, openly explosive when the news had come of their flight’s delay, as if it had been all her fault.
Maybe it was. She had been the one to agree to him seeing her safely home, but it wasn’t for the reason he was thinking—that she somehow imagined that he might change his mind, that he might take her back.
What kind of arrogance led a man to believe a woman would want him back after the things he’d said to her?
Did he think she had no pride?
No, the man was unbearable.
So she’d taken refuge in her room, savouring her privacy and her time alone to call Catriona and explain about the delay. She took her time to talk to each of her children and tell them she would soon be home to hug and kiss them and tickle their tummies until they collapsed with laughter again.
It had seemed such a good idea to lock herself away like this while the storm had raged all around. But like the worst of the storm, hours had passed, and still she could not sleep. Still, she could not make sense of the war going on inside herself.
For she hated him, didn’t she? Hated him for the way he had amputated her from his life as quickly and decisively as if he’d been slicing a piece of fruit—as if she had never meant more than that to him. Yet still one sight of him and some primal, some base, bodily response kicked in and she had been wet with wanting him. Even now her body ached with need, as if he had flicked some kind of switch and turned her heartbeat into some kind of pulsing drumbeat of desire.
What kind of woman did that make her?
Was she mad? Or simply wanton? The party princess out for nothing but a good time and not caring who it was who gave it to her.
God, it was hot! The mattress seemed to cocoon her, trapping the heat of her thoughts and slowly roasting her in them. She pushed herself up and a bead of sweat trickled from her hair down her neck.
So much for a refuge. All she’d succeeded in doing was exchanging one kind of prison for another. And, in a few short hours from now, she’d be back on the plane—with him—and the torture would continue.
Another flash of lightning lit up the room, and her gaze went to the doors again. There was a chance they could be opened now, without being blown off their hinges or she being blown away herself. And maybe it would be cooler outside on her terrace. Maybe the wind would tear away some of the heat from her overheated skin, and maybe the air might have a chance to cool her sheets while she was gone.
She slid from the bed and reached for her gown, only remembering then that it was still tucked somewhere deep in her luggage because she had thought the weather too warm to need it. She thought for a moment of the hotel robe waiting neatly on a hanger in the closet, but the thought of towelling against her skin when she was already so hot …
She hesitated only a fraction of a moment. She didn’t really need it. It was three in the morning, and she was only stepping onto the darkened terrace. She wouldn’t be outside for long, and she so craved the feel of cool air and rain on her skin.
The wind had dropped but still she had to hang onto the door lest it slam open. She snicked it firmly closed behind her, knowing the sound would not carry over the waves crashing on the nearby shore, the wind already whipping her hair around her face and sending swirls of air up the slit in her long nightie, brushing against her legs and fanning against her heated core.
She shivered, not with cold from a sprinkling of rain, but with the wind’s delicious caress against her skin, and she turned into the onshore wind, pushing against it until she reached the balustrade overlooking the sea.
This was more like it. The shoreline was thick with dancing foam, bright white against the inky black of sea, the tang of salt heavy in the moisture-laden air. In the distance the storm rumbled and lit up the world for an instant at a time.
Then a wild wave crashed on the rocks below and she was hit with the spray, the wind turning the droplets icy on her skin.
She gasped as it hit, her body electric and alive from her head to her toes, and she flung her arms out wide and laughed into the wind with the sheer thrill of it. It was wild. It was exhilarating. And she felt free, just like she’d always yearned to be.
Like she had been once, before Bahir had stolen her heart.
He watched her from his doorway, where he had been standing for more than an hour watching the storm boil and simmer away. At first he had not heard her, whatever sound she made whipped away by the wind or lost under the crash of the sea, but then he had caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, a vision of a woman in a long white nightgown. But not just any woman. Marina. A ghost from his past, moving across the terrace with bare arms and bare feet while her black hair followed, untamed, blowing riotous and free.
He watched and grew hard as the nightdress was plastered against her body by the wild wind and the rain, against her lush breasts and the slight swell of her belly, against the sweet curve of her mound. Plastered hard against all the places he remembered, and plastered so close that she might not have been wearing anything at all.
The wind tore at her gown, peeling the fabric high around her legs, and he grew still harder wondering if she still never wore anything under her nightgown.
He growled. Why would she wear a white nightgown? So very virginal and innocent.
Who was she trying to kid?
She was nowhere near a virgin. She was a sorceress. She was wanton in bed, hungry and insatiable. She was sinuous and lithe, moved and twisted with a dancer’s grace, and he knew he should go. He should leave now, while he had the chance, before he was tempted to do something he might regret.
But he could not force his feet to move. He could not turn away. Instead he stayed and watched while she was hit by the spray of a wave crashing below; watched while she flung her arms out wide and laughed as brazenly as the weather, watched while her damp white gown turned transparent—and he knew that he had no choice.
Knew he had to go to her.
Her gown was soaked with spray and clinging to her, her hair blowing wild where it wasn’t stuck to her scalp and skin, and she knew that soon she would feel sticky with salt and think herself insane for doing something so utterly reckless when she should have been trying to sleep.
But for now she felt more alive than she had in months. More awake. More liberated.
She spun around, lifting her sodden hair high to cool the back of her neck as another wave sent spray flying, when lightning illuminated the terrace