Behind the Curtain

by BETH KERY

  “Sure you could,” he insisted.

  “You don’t understand,” she murmured.

  “Maybe not. I’d like to try, though.”

  She gave a shaky laugh and shook her head, as if to minimize the importance of what she’d said. There was a defined black circle around the clear, light green of her iris. The smile faded from her lips . . . ripe-looking, dusky pink lips. She parted them. He caught a glimpse of her tongue, and suddenly, it was happening.

  He was taking his first taste.

  Chapter Six

  She saw the way he was looking at her, his bluish-green eyes gleaming from beneath heavy eyelids. She felt his stare in her lungs. It made them heavy and difficult to expand. Then he was leaning closer. His warm mouth brushed against her lips, and her lungs released. She gasped softly and moved her mouth against his.

  It was the sweetest kiss: questing and sun warmed and gentle. Laila had never known there was a part of her that was frozen, deep down inside, until she felt it thaw beneath Asher’s mouth.

  His tongue dipped between her lips. Heat unfurled in her belly and expanded like a heavy ache to her sex. He cradled her jaw with one hand and kissed her more deeply, their rubbing, tangling tongues, his taste, all of it making her dizzy. She ran her hand along his naked shoulder, loving the sensation of dense muscle gloved in smooth, sun-kissed skin. He made a low, rough sound in his throat and leaned further into her, his kiss growing hungrier and more demanding. The ache at her core grew sharper. She twisted her hips toward him, increasingly desperate to relieve the pressure there. The air mattress slipped out from beneath her.

  Suddenly, she was plunging beneath the surface of the cold water.

  She felt his hand on her upper arm. He hauled her up to the surface. He struggled to stay on his raft while holding her. She found her footing at the rock-and-sand bottom of the lake. She sputtered with laughter.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, wiping water and wet hair out of her face. She grinned from ear to ear. He smiled.

  “It’s kind of a rare talent, making out on air rafts,” he said.

  “One that apparently you possess, and I don’t,” she replied dryly.

  “It must be a genetic talent, because I’ve never done it before,” he assured her with a pointed glance. “Screw it,” he said, swinging his body into the lake and shoving his air mattress toward the shore. “It’s a wasted talent if I’m the only one who has it,” he said before he took her into his arms.

  All her amusement faded at the sensation of his long, hard body pressing against hers in the cool water. She stared up at him—he was a good eight or nine inches taller than her. His head blocked the afternoon sun. His face was cast in shadow, but she saw that he’d sobered as well. And suddenly, he was kissing her again, and she could feel his body through the thin material of his swim trunks. It was like that moment when she’d first seen him on the beach and witnessed his arousal, the sheer flagrancy of his maleness, but this was a thousandfold times that experience. It shocked her a little, the intimacy of it all. Before she’d considered male desire exciting, but also coarse, somehow. Crude. Often tiresome. Never beautiful.

  Until now.

  His arms closed tighter around her. One large hand cupped her hip and shaped it to his palm, the other wrapped around her waist. She moaned softly into their kiss, loving the way she fit into his embrace. Her fingers dug gently into the muscles of his back, and then she was delving them into his wet hair. She pressed closer to him, using her hold on him to tilt his head slightly as she twisted hers, deepening their kiss. Distantly, she was a little amazed at her sexual aggressiveness, but he’d started a fire in her. She felt it sizzling at her core, making her hunger. Ache. His hands began to slide up and down her body, as though he were learning her and pleasuring her at once, stroking and rubbing . . . building the friction in her. She felt his erection swell against her belly, and suddenly, he was lifting her.

  She rose out of the water. Their kiss continued, even more wild and ravenous at the new angle. He grabbed one butt cheek and pressed her tightly to him, the long, rigid column of his cock pressing against her sex. They moaned in unison.

  He broke their kiss and pressed his mouth to her throat. She opened heavy eyelids, dazed by the bright sunlight and Asher’s hot mouth moving on her neck. And all the while, his arousal burned against hers.

  “Tell me how to say ‘I want you’ in Moroccan,” he said gruffly against her neck.

  She smiled and pressed her lips to his cheek. He was so unexpected. “Kan bghik,” she murmured.

  “Kan bghik,” he said, and he lifted his head. His gaze smoldered as it toured her face. His fingers moved on the bare skin of her buttock just beneath her bikini brief. She felt his erection lurch against her. “And you, Laila?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, swallowing thickly. “I want you too. Isn’t it obvious?”

  A shadow passed over his handsome face. “Ah. I sense a but in there.” When she didn’t argue, she saw his jaw muscles tighten. He set her back on her feet. Reluctantly, she moved back from the temptation of his body several inches. The barrier of the cool water did little to soothe her firing nerves. He released her slowly but grasped her hands in his beneath the surface of the water. She was thankful for that.

  “I barely know you,” she said, staring down at the rippling, glistening water. It was the most obvious of a whole host of concerns she had, like that her parents would never allow her to date a rich white boy who was only in Crescent Bay for a last summertime fling with his friends, or that he was moving to California soon, or that she wasn’t even sure he wanted to date her. Possibly he just wanted to have sex.

  And then there was the fact that she was a virgin . . .

  Yeah. That was a pretty big worry.

  He released one of her hands and touched the bottom of her chin with one fingertip. “I realize that. I do,” he said seriously when she gave him a doubtful look. “I didn’t ask you here to have sex, Laila.”

  “Really?”

  He exhaled in frustration. “Okay, I do want to have sex with you. Obviously. A lot,” he added dryly. He held her stare. “But I meant it when I said I didn’t ask you here specifically for that. I like you. You’re beautiful and sexy and sweet and . . . special. I’ve never wanted someone the way I want you,” he said in a preoccupied fashion, as if he were having the realization for the first time. Euphoria rushed through her at his words. But then this his mouth went hard.

  “I am being selfish, though. You’re not the kind of girl I should be fooling around with, under the circumstances. That’s what you’re thinking, right?”

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking,” she confessed. “I know what I’m feeling. And it’s a little . . . overwhelming.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. His damp fingertip caressed her cheek. She went still beneath his touch, her nerves tingling in awareness. When he noticed her entranced expression, he dropped his hand with a rough sigh.

  “You say you barely know me, but I spilled my guts out earlier to you . . . all my deep, dark, boring secrets. Maybe you need to tell me one of your secrets. In the spirit of getting to know each other, and all,” he added fairly when she gave him an amused, doubtful glance.

  Maybe he was right. She felt butterflies flicker in her belly. She inhaled to still the sensation.

  “Okay. You guessed correctly. Yesterday.” She noticed his questioning glance and swallowed down her nerves. “I do write poetry. And music. And lyrics. I’m still amazed you knew somehow.” She met his stare willfully, despite her flaming cheeks. “I’ve never told another soul that before.”

  “You haven’t?” he asked her slowly.

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a stupid, childish obsession.” The words burst out of her throat. “I don’t even know why I d
o it!”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I do?” she asked, stunned by his confidence.

  “Yeah.” He squeezed her hands under the water. “Think about it for a minute.”

  She did, replaying the feeling she got when she finally had a few private moments to herself and could pull her music and lyrics out of the old toy chest stored at the back of her closet. She thought of how it felt when she finished a song to her satisfaction, and the rush that went through her when she finally got the perfect lyric or caught the exact nuance of meaning she wanted with her poetry.

  Joy. That was what she felt then. Pure and simple.

  “It makes me happy,” she whispered, a tremor of feeling going through her at the realization.

  “Then it’s not childish or stupid. Far from it.” He leaned down and brushed his lips against her cheek. “I told you that you were an artist,” he murmured. She looked up at him and smiled shakily.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For being the first and probably only person to ever call me that.”

  She felt his smile in the deepest part of her. “An artist isn’t something you’re called. It’s something you are.”

  She swallowed back the lump in her throat.

  “I really have to go,” she said reluctantly, noticing the position of the sun in the sky. “Tahi and Zara will be waiting for me at Crescent Bay South.”

  “They’re covering for you?”

  She nodded, avoiding his stare.

  Among her cousins, she was typically the voice of moderation and reason, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t learned how to maneuver around her parents to function in the world. Still, she hated straight-out lying. Yes, she’d dissembled many times before in order to escape to the inland lake, but that’d been different than today. On those previous occasions, she hadn’t been misleading her family to secretly meet a guy that her parents would wholly disapprove of her seeing, especially under such intimate circumstances.

  “So Zara and Tahi know that—”

  “I came to see you today. Yes. I just didn’t tell them where we planned to meet.”

  They both moved at once, starting to walk toward shore. Laila shivered when they reached the beach. They toweled off in silence, Laila glancing with furtive desire at Asher as he dried off. Now that they weren’t touching anymore, she wished they were.

  “You’ll come back tomorrow,” he said suddenly, his intensity startling her. She turned and saw the seriousness of his expression.

  “I . . . I don’t know if I can,” she said, thinking of her cousin Zarif’s visit. “The whole family will probably go to the beach, and my uncles and cousins will probably go fishing. We’ll do a cookout and everything. I’m not sure when my cousin is leaving.”

  He nodded, but he looked strained.

  “The next day? At one o’clock again?”

  “Yes. I’ll try.”

  Asher decided they should leave the air mattresses there. No one else seemed to know about the lake, anyway. She helped him store them behind some large boulders at the edge of the beach after they’d finished dressing.

  “Do you have a phone?” he asked afterward.

  She nodded and retrieved it from her backpack. They exchanged digits and repacked their phones. Afterward, they stood facing each other, the silence causing a heavy pressure to press down on her chest.

  “Your parents wouldn’t want you to see me. Would they?” he stated rather than asked.

  She gave him an apologetic glance and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she confirmed softly.

  “Don’t apologize. I think it sucks, but I get it. Have you, though? Dated other white guys? Before, I mean?”

  “Yeah. In high school a few times, and once for a little bit in college,” she admitted. “But it never lasted for very long. I guess the guys didn’t like sneaking around all the time. Or that I couldn’t be with them at the drop of a hat.”

  “Are you arranged to marry someone?”

  “No,” she assured him. “Arranged marriages aren’t that common for Moroccans. Zarif—my cousin—found his own fiancée, and my auntie and uncle really like her. But even so . . .”

  “She’s Moroccan?”

  Laila nodded.

  “You love your parents . . . your entire family a lot. Don’t you?”

  She opened her mouth, searching for the right words to explain.

  “They’re my whole world,” she said tremulously after a moment.

  A silence descended.

  “Would it help if I came over and introduced myself to them? If I was honest about—”

  “No,” she interrupted, shaking her head rapidly. “Trust me, that wouldn’t be helpful at all. Especially if we ever want to see each other at all while we’re here.”

  His expression hardened. Maybe he was considering all the complications that came with her for the first time too, and was finding the whole thing unappealing. At the very least, he probably thought she was way too much effort for a summer fling.

  “Well, I guess I should be going,” she said, her heart suddenly feeling like a stone in her chest.

  “I’ll see you here. The day after tomorrow?”

  Relief coursed through her. “Yes. Hopefully. I’ll text if something comes up.”

  When he didn’t say anything else, she turned to leave.

  “Laila,” he called when she got several yards away. She turned back. He hadn’t moved.

  “Anytime you’re free, and you think you might be able to meet, text or call. Just assume I’ll want to see you. No matter what time it is. No matter for how long.”

  She saw it then for the first time: that hard glint of determination in his light eyes, the stubborn set to his jaw, the diamond-hard focus. It suddenly struck her that Asher Gaites-Granville wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met in her life. He was like a force of nature: powerful and undeniable.

  What she’d said before about her family being her whole world was true. But Asher had entered the picture. And somehow, she knew her world was about to change.

  Chapter Seven

  By prearrangement, she met Zara and Tahi at Crescent Bay South beach after she left Asher. That way, they could all arrive at the cottages at the same time, and Laila’s secret would remain safe. She was so preoccupied by her meeting with Asher, she was unsurprised to see Asher’s friends Eric, Rudy and Jim on the beach with Zara and Tahi. While Tahi, Rudy and Jim sat on beach towels, talking and listening to music, Zara and Eric lay several yards away, Zara flat on her back and Eric leaning over her, his bronzed muscles gleaming in the hot summer sun.

  “How’s Asher?” Rudy asked Laila slyly when she approached. Laila shot Tahi a condemning glance.

  “Hey, why do you assume I gave you away?” Tahi defended.

  “I don’t think Asher would,” Laila said.

  “You’re right. He wouldn’t,” Jim said levelly. Laila gave Asher’s friend a small smile for his loyalty.

  “But Zara would,” Tahi muttered.

  Laila rolled her eyes and glanced over at her cousin, who was in the process of drinking from a silver flask. She giggled loudly at something Eric said.

  “Has she been drinking?” Laila asked, frowning.

  “Not much. I don’t think, anyway. That flask isn’t very big,” Tahi said, standing and grabbing her beach cover-up.

  “Zara, we’re going,” Laila called. Zara sat up partially and cast a sullen glance their way. When Eric kissed her neck seductively, she turned her attention back to him. Their mouths met and clung. Laila watched, her brow creased in worry, as Eric pushed her cousin back on the towel and kissed her deeply.

  What right have you got to be worried about her, when you were doing the same with Asher a half hour ago?

  Maybe she was worried about both Zar
a and herself.

  “Rudy asked us to go to Asher’s place tomorrow night. We’re going out on Asher’s boat, and then we’ll cook out and swim,” Tahi said as she picked up her beach towel and shoved it in her bag. “Did you know his family owns the white house?” she asked with incredulous excitement.

  Laila nodded.

  “Hey . . . is that where you two met this afternoon? His place?”

  “No,” Laila said, helping her cousin pick up her belongings from the beach. “And you know your brother is going to be here tomorrow night. We won’t be able to get away.”

  “No, Zarif has to leave at four to take his precious Mina to some hospital benefit. We’ll be free,” Tahi said, giving first Laila, then Rudy a significant glance. Rudy grinned.

  “We’ll see,” Laila said distractedly. For the moment, her only concern was unpeeling Eric from Zara so that they could get back in time for dinner.

  • • •

  Thankfully, her mother was over at her aunt Nadine’s cottage helping to prepare the dinner when Laila got home. Her father, Zarif, Noor and her uncles had gone fishing on a rented boat. Laila rushed into the only bathroom in the cottage, desperate for some privacy, wild to be alone with her thoughts.

  She felt restless and tense as she stood under the hot spray of the shower. She kept reliving the moments in Asher’s arms, when their bodies were sealed tight together . . . the moment he’d lifted her so effortlessly, and his rigid erection had slid against her sex.

  Her hand slid between her thighs. She touched herself, her finger coming away slick from her previous arousal.

  Her present one.

  She couldn’t rid herself of memories of him. He remained in her blood and in her flesh, even though he was miles away. A fever had settled on her. The water suddenly felt too hot. She turned it to a cool setting, willing the water to soothe her simmering, tense body. It wasn’t working. Her hand pressed between her thighs again. Her eyes shut, and she vividly saw Asher’s fierce gaze as he looked down at her. He’d looked like he’d wanted to eat her alive—