“Your cover is blown,” Aly observed to Arif when the door had closed behind them.
“Yes, and it has been salutary to see how differently I am treated as a Cup Companion than as mere Jafar Hamrahi,” he replied, leading her along the thickly-flowered outdoor path towards their suite.
Aly laughed. “You didn’t get such a good table the other night?”
“Nor quite such devoted and obsequious service. You were responsible for much of the change, of course. I was not accompanied by a beautiful woman last time.”
“It did seem to be de rigueur,” she said, because the room had been full of amazing women, but she was done apologizing. People would just have to take her as they found her, with none of the advance apologies or self-deprecation designed to pre-empt criticism.
They talked as they walked, their voices soft on the perfumed night air, saying nothing and everything, and all the time her heart was beating the rhythm of need, her body liquid with hunger and anticipation.
When he looked at her in the shadows his blue eyes were dark sapphire. Could one drown in sapphires? They were the midnight sea.
And at last they were home. He unlocked the door onto the softly-lighted suite. “I can wait no longer,” Arif said hoarsely, and he turned and his arm tightened around her as he lifted her face for his kiss.
…
Later, as they lay entangled in each other and the sheets, she murmured, “I never even imagined it could be like that.”
Masculine satisfaction made him smile. She had responded like the woman of his dreams, her shy self-consciousness giving way to a wild sensual abandon under his tutelage. Giving and demanding without shame so that he, too, had been swamped and drowned, a pleasure like nothing he had ever experienced. A place he had never been, where he could go only with her. “Like what, my rose?”
Aly lifted herself up on his chest and looked down at him with wide open eyes, and in those grey depths he saw all he would ever ask from life. “Like the storm. Everything threatened and then—coming through alive. Alive, and…” she searched for the word, “…changed.”
He lifted his head to kiss her lips, his hand clasping her head, then sliding possessively down the female curves of neck, shoulder, back, hip, to clasp and press her body. Owning it. “Changed,” he said. “Yes. For me, too.”
She sighed luxuriously, turning over, and his hand found her breast. She arched into his touch like a cat. “Oh, that’s lovely,” she whispered after a moment. “You never did that before.”
He laughed. “Do you expect to exhaust all my talents in one night? We have all the time in the world, Aly. And there will be new pleasures to fill each day.”
He felt her go still. “Arif…” she began, and his heart kicked him hard.
“Have I not understood after all, my rose? Do you object to forever?”
“But…”
“I will not ask you to give up anything, Aly. Of course you will go back to London and your work. We will find a compromise. You want to be here anyway, for part of the year, you told me so. You want to study the language. We can make it work.”
“Arif, are you sure?” he heard the old doubt in her voice.
He bent up over her, his hand clasping her cheek, urgent and possessive. He gazed down into her eyes, searching for the answer he needed.
“I am sure, Beloved. You belong to me as surely as my own name. Don’t you feel it? Don’t you know that we have come home? I love you. Give me an answer, Aly.”
“Yes, oh yes,” she whispered.
…
Later, she said, “I’ve got something to show you,” and struggled up out of arms reluctant to let her go.
Aly went to her own room and snatched up her trip notebook. On the way back she paused in the bathroom, where now in the mirror she seemed to see another person—as if Arif’s passionate, soul-stirring lovemaking, and not makeup and hair, had been the real makeover—and returned to where he was now propped up on pillows. The hunger in his eyes went straight to her heart.
“What is it?” he asked, as she lifted the notebook.
She opened and passed it to him, sinking down beside him on the bed.
“This is my general trip diary. I noted down our planned schedule at the outset, you see? Here.” Several pages held a long list of island names, with compass coordinates and dates. A black line was scored through them all. “That was our original plan, Richard and Ellen and I drew that up way back. The next section is the curtailed trip we planned when I was going to go alone.”
She turned the pages and showed him the new, shorter list. “See? Now check out where I would have been yesterday afternoon if I’d been on schedule.”
Arif’s eyes followed her finger down to where it stopped at yesterday’s date. She ran it over to the island name, and felt him go still. “Faatin Island,” he read aloud in a hoarse voice.
“I’d have been there on my own. On Oneira,” she whispered. “You saved my life, Arif. If I’d been caught in that storm I’d never have made it through, and if I’d been safe in the harbor when it hit but caught on the beach by those men…” She stopped, because he had flung the notebook aside and reached up to claim her with his arms, with his mouth.
“Barukhallah. So close I came to losing you?” He pulled her down into his embrace, his hungry kiss drowning her. “Is it possible?”
“I love you,” she whispered when he lifted his mouth again. “I love you so much. You’ve changed my life. I owe you a debt that I don’t think could ever be repaid.”
“Not true,” he interrupted her, a finger to her lips. “There is a way for this debt to be repaid.”
“What way?” she whispered.
“Your life is now in my keeping, Beloved. Isn’t that what they say? When a life has been saved, it belongs to him who saved it.” His hands stroked her, hungry, urgent, face and breast and thigh. “Isn’t that what it means?”
“Does it?” she asked, half choking with love and desire.
“Tell me it does.” His hands pressed her, and his possessive mouth teased her lips till body and heart were aflame with love. “I love you, Aly.” His voice growled with need, sending heat all through her. “I will love you forever. Tell me you belong to me. Tell me that is what it means.”
“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes, Arif. That’s what it means.”
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Acknowledgments
My very grateful thanks to Jo and Dennis Wallace for their generously given advice and information about boats and sailing, to John Conlin and John Eldridge for answering my questions about sea turtle conservation, to Archelon for allowing me to work with efforts to save the sea turtle in Crete, to Margaret Sellers for her usual tireless reading of the manuscript in various incarnations, to the determined _caretta caretta_ hatchlings who inspired my story, and to Candace Havens, editor, for showing me how to make it better. I couldn’t have done it without you.
About the Author
Canadian born, Alexandra Sellers was raised in Toronto and on the prairies. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London (UK) and acted on stage for several years before her first novel was published by Dell and Robert Hale in 1980. Since then she has written over 40 books. The author of the popular Sons of the Desert series, she is the recipient of the Romantic Times’ Career Achievement Award for Series (2009) and Series Romantic Fantasy (2000). She divides her time between London, Crete and Vancouver.
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