by Sophia Lynn
“You shouldn't worry, little songbird,” he said kindly. “The true storms have not yet begun, and the pilot is very skilled.”
“I'm not worried at all,” she said determinedly, even if they both knew it was a lie. “Though if you want to keep us both distracted, I wouldn't mind hearing more about where we are going.”
He smiled at her, and she was grateful when she did not let go of his hand.
“Well, I have told you that we are going to Greece, which as these things go, is not a terribly good explanation. There are hundreds of small islands in the sea near Greece. Some of them contain nothing more than small towns, and others are deserted except for the shrines to gods no one worships anymore. The place we are going, well, it is somewhere between them.
“There is a small town on one side of the island, and there is a ferry that runs twice a day to the mainland and a city. The other side of the island, however, is mostly feral olive trees and abandoned grapevines, and that, along with a house, belong to my family.”
“You own an entire half of an island?” she asked, unable to tell if he were joking or not. At the moment, however, Nadim looked entirely serious, and she shook her head at his wealth.
“My family does. It is completely private, and it will be completely ours. I think it will be a good place to discharge our duties. After all, the doctor did say that the more relaxed we were, the better.”
She blushed and privately cursed herself for doing so. God, it wasn't as if she were inexperienced or something. It was just that ever since she had made the bargain, she had been unable to keep her mind off of what was to come, the real work of their bargain. The money was a part of it, and the secrecy was, of course, and they could talk about all of that until they were blue in the face, but the true test would not come until...well, until they were on the island together.
“Are you thinking of it, little songbird?”
He had come so close to reading her thoughts that she nearly jumped, and he laughed. Nadim had a very nice laugh, Elise thought absently. It was rich and warm, making her think of caramel coffee and mornings spent lazily in bed.
“You were,” he said with some delight, and then he leaned close. She could smell his cologne now, something dark but bright, spruce and musk, and with it a scent that she could only describe as male. She wondered if she smelled as good to him.
“I...I might have been,” she admitted. “It's...it's not as if we're just meeting and going back to your place after the bar, is it? We...we're going to be working with each other. We are doing something with a specific goal in mind, and we are...we are...stuck...”
“I like to think that that means that we have all the time we need to fine-tune things,” he said, blithe as if he was not bothered at all. “After all, the doctors do say that pleasure does make things work better...”
Be careful. His doctors likely told the same things to his wife as well.
The idea of Nadim's wife made her straighten up, but she found that she could not break the spell created by the swirl of his fingertips against her inner wrist. His touch was just shy of ticklish, and she couldn't resist leaning in to him, smelling that delicious scent and pressing against him a little.
“And beautiful little songbird, I want to make sure that I give you all of the pleasure that I can. I want to make sure that you sing with it, that you shout with it, that you can barely move or breathe after...”
“And how are you going to do that?” she asked. A more experienced woman would have asked it as a tease, but with her, it came out excited and breathy, more wondering than anything else.
His chuckle was dark, and he leaned in so that his mouth was just an inch from her ear.
“Well, of course I would start with my hands, and I would strip you. I want to see you completely naked before me. I want to see if you are so pale everywhere, and I want to see whether your nipples are a soft and lovely coral pink or a deep brown. I want to see if your breasts feel as good in my hands as I think they might, and whether your hips are as round and heavy as they look... I want to run my palm between your legs and feel how warm you are there...”
The moan that flew out of her lips was entirely without her will. As he spoke, she could almost feel phantom hands on her, feel the way he was touching her.
“And of course I would want to use my tongue. I knew that you were delicious from the moment I kissed you first, and I cannot wait until I have the ability to taste you again. I want to taste your lips, and the tender skin of your belly, the crease of your thigh, the place behind your knees...”
“Is that all?” she whispered, and he laughed. His breath was warm, and it disturbed some of the fine blonde hair that drifted in front of her ears. She shivered, that soft touch felt somehow throughout her entire body.
“Oh no, beautiful, not at all. I want to taste the sacred well between your legs. I want to make sure that you are wet and ready for me, and oh, believe me when I say I will work on that beautiful pearl until you are shouting my name because you have forgotten your own.”
She gasped as if he had slipped his hand up her bare thigh. Elise's eyes flew open and she looked straight into his eyes.
This is a business arrangement, she thought desperately to herself. For the love of god, don't give him more than he has paid for.
Despite her frantically defensive thoughts, she couldn't shake the idea that something had happened then. It was as if some small part of her soul had flown into him, and vice versa. This was more than sex, this was some kind of meeting, something that was permanently embedded in her soul, her spirit.
Whatever it was, she could tell that he felt it too. His eyes widened in surprise, and then he looked almost hesitant. She could tell that Nadim was not a man who was hesitant. He was a man who did as he pleased, and being surprised was not a part of the bargain.
Then the pilot's voice cut in, speaking in calm and quiet tones, saying that the sheikh and his guest should buckle their seat belts because they were coming in for a landing on Omorphia.
With surprise, Elise glanced out the window, where the storm had faded to a faint gray drizzle, and even beyond that, she could see faint traces of blue.
“You...you were distracting me,” she said, her voice so accusatory that he laughed.
“Well, I like to think that I was entertaining and arousing us both, but as you like it. Put your seat belt on.”
Blushing bright red, she did as he told her, but she wasn't surprised to see that her hands were shaking. When she glanced at him, he looked utterly calm.
God, what is it going to be like when he actually gets his hands on me, she wondered, and she couldn't tell if she were dismayed or excited.
***
After they touched down on a small airstrip that Elise suspected was only for use by the royal family, Nadim helped her into a sleek dark car that took the sharp curves of the road like a dream. The landscape of Omorphia was rugged, but there was a kind of beauty to it that took her breath away. After the storm, the sky above them was clearing up just in time to reveal a gorgeous sunset. The sky seemed immense, and without the light from a city, it looked as if it truly did go on forever.
“It's hard to believe that I'm really here,” Elise said softly. “This is the kind of place that I used to dream about as I was growing up.”
Nadim looked surprised and then vaguely chagrined.
"It is interesting what a difference perspective makes," he said, shaking his head. "This was one of the family homes when I was growing up. At least once a summer, my parents would bring me here, sometimes with cousins, and sometimes all alone. I enjoyed it well enough when I was young, but when I turned fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, that was when I started to get rebellious. Believe me, there is nothing a teen from Hadara wants less than to be separated from his friends for three weeks on a remote island.”
Elise said nothing. At the age of fifteen, she had been working full time during the summer and part time during the school year. She had nev
er been able to imagine the life that Nadim might live. She had expected to feel a little bit of resentment, but instead another thought occurred.
"So do you think you will bring your own children here?" she asked, and he looked surprised.
"I suppose I will," he said with a slight smile. "I think it will be good for them to get away from the city for a while, to let them be truly themselves away from it all. It certainly helped me."
"Good," she said with some feeling.
She didn't know why she suddenly looked into the future of the child she was going to be carrying. She had started to think of this arrangement in very businesslike terms, where she would produce a child and then the arrangement would be over. Now, when she imagined a child with Nadim's dark hair darting through the twisted olive trees, it was a little hard to maintain her distance.
They drove in silence for a little while. Elise wasn't sure when her hand came to rest on Nadim's thigh, but there was something endlessly comforting about having it there, having it rest there so warm and easy.
The sun was halfway down when they came around a thick grove of trees and found themselves at the place Nadim had affectionately called the cottage.
Elise gasped a little. It was easily twice as large as the home she had grown up in, and it was beautifully modern, all steel and glass. However, despite that, there was a classic quality as well. The lines of the house were good, and she could see a path that led down to the lapping dark waters and around the rear, a small hot tub as well.
"What do you think?" he asked. "Will this be a good spot for our endeavors?"
"I think it's beautiful," she said. "I think...I think there has been a great deal of happiness here."
Nadim laughed.
"You would be right about that. This half of the island has belonged to my family for a very long time, but a house has stood on the foundations since before that. A lot of lives have touched this area. One likes to imagine that all of the people were happy, at any rate."
She smiled at him and allowed him to guide her into the house. There was a full bathroom complete with raised pedestal tub connected to the master bedroom, but each of the three other bedrooms had their own smaller bathrooms as well. When she gave in to temptation to peek into the refrigerator, she could see that it had been well-stocked with food, and Nadim told her that it would be restocked every three days.
"If you need anything sooner, leave a note for the housekeeper. She comes in for an hour or so every day."
Elise shook her head in amazement.
"I don't know if I should get too used to living like this," she joked. "It's going to make my classic meal of a can of tuna and some crackers some getting used to."
She was joking, but there was a slightly sad look on Nadim's face.
"You never have to eat that again unless you want to," he said. "By the end of this, whichever way it goes, you will have a great deal of money."
She smiled at him, reaching out to squeeze his hand gently.
"Well, in all fairness, tuna and crackers are really quite good."
Nadim laughed.
"Well, perhaps you can introduce it to me."
In the closet, Elise was startled to find a rack full of loose and flowing dresses, apparently in her size.
"I had someone guess with the information that was picked up at the doctor's office," he said. "I wanted you to be comfortable, and I saw that you did not have much after you left your own room. Do you want the things you left behind sent for? It is something that I can arrange easily enough."
"There's nothing to send for," she said absently, fingering the fabric of the light dresses. They were lovely, in almost every color imaginable, most light enough for the warm Mediterranean days. "Everything I have is with me."
She squeaked with surprise as Nadim wrapped his arms around her from behind, dragging her against his powerful body.
"You say these things and have no idea what it does to me," he murmured softly in her ear. "That makes me want to take you straight to Milan and load you down with clothes of every description."
Elise wanted to say something tart about him not even knowing whether she wanted nice clothes at all, but that all flew out of her mind when she felt how powerful he was behind her, when she could sense the heat of him through their clothes.
"I'm going to be perhaps a little too honest here," she said, her voice soft. "I really don't want to go to Milan. I want to be right here..."
Elise could feel the shudder go through him. She could feel the soft puff of air in her ear as his breath hissed out. There was something tremendously arousing about the fact that she was arousing him.
She angled her mouth up, waiting for the passionate stormy kiss that she knew was coming...and then she paused as he had pulled away.
"Come into the kitchen with me," he said, and puzzled, Elise followed him.
The bedroom had been a twilight place, all shadows and mystery. The kitchen was blessed with bright lights and a kind of no-nonsense practicality that made her blink.
He poured her a glass of seltzer water, sweetened with something delicious that she couldn't quite recognize. Elise toyed with her glass and looked at Nadim, who was gazing out the dark windows towards the sea. She thought that someone sweeter than her and kinder would have some kind of ploy to draw him out, but instead, she was herself.
"So did you lose your nerve?"
The look he shot her made her shiver. It was dark and humorous, but over that, it was hungry. Whatever had made him stop, it was not nerves, and that look would have sent women more nervous than her running for the hills.
"Hardly. We were in there, we were touching, and if...given another moment, I would have torn your clothes off."
Elise licked her lips automatically at the thought even as she wrapped her arms around herself. Sometimes, it was so hard to tell what it was that she really felt with this man.
"And here I thought that that was what you want to do," she mused. "Or have you reconsidered the test tubes?"
His laugh was a jangling, hard thing.
"Believe me when I say that test tubes are the last thing on my mind," he retorted. "But...what if I frighten you? Or hurt you? It has...been some time, and Elise, believe me when I say that I want you."
For some reason, his words echoed inside her. She didn't know how, but somehow, she realized that he had not cheated on his wife. His words, his posture, the darkness in his eyes now made her feel perfectly certain of the fact. She had no idea if it counted for anything, but somehow, to her it did.
"You're not going to frighten me," she said, her voice low. "You are not going to hurt me, and believe me...I want you as badly as you want me."
There was a change in the air like the shift before a storm. One moment, he was watching her from across the kitchen, and the next he had swept her up in his arms, causing the glass to tumble from her fingers.
She had a moment to think that it must be made of fairly tough stuff as it bounced instead of shattered, and then he was carrying her back to the bedroom, his mouth seeking hers even as they moved.
If Elise had thought that Nadim was hungry beforehand, that was nothing compared to the torrent she felt now that he was allowed to do as he liked.
He deposited her on the bed, and with a strength that was terrifyingly casual, he ripped her clothes from her body. One moment, Elise was clothed, and the next, she was lying in a flutter of rags and her dull underwear.
"I need you naked," he growled as he moved over her. "I want nothing between us, just skin on skin."
"Then see to yourself," she retorted, reaching for her own bra. "I'm not you, I can't tear it all away."
He pulled away just long enough to strip to the skin, and by that time, her bra was flung over the edge of the bed and her panties received the same treatment. She was just turning back towards him when he took her by the shoulders and pinned her to the bed.
In the dim light of the bedroom, he was like a god made out of darkness
, rising up to whisk her to some dark realm. There was a moment of tenderness where he ran his fingers down her cheek, and then it was replaced by savagery as he bent his mouth to hers. He thrust his tongue between her lips in imitation of what awaited them, and she gave herself up to it with a cry. She relished the taste of him, wrapping her arms around him and winding one leg around one of his. He was right, now that she had felt the beauty of skin sliding against skin, she never wanted this to end. The touches they had shared before, so intense and powerful at the time, felt pale and tired in the light of this fiery revelation.
His mouth moved from her lips to her ear to her throat, where for a few moments, Elise could feel him measuring her rabbiting pulse with his lips. Then she shivered as she felt the white sharpness of his teeth pass over the sensitive skin. When he nipped her hard there, she gasped, but it was perfect. She would have let him bite harder, but then he kept going, raining kisses all over her body. She had never thought that there were so many sensitive places, but he was slowly finding them all, his body and especially his mouth a fire that she was passing under.
"I want you so much," she whimpered as he caressed and kissed her thighs, and he laughed, a low and menacing thing.
To her surprise, he took her hand, leading it between his own legs. She could feel the sleek hot column of his manhood in her fingers, and wide-eyed, she stroked it twice before squeezing it. The squeeze drew a deep sigh of mortal pleasure from him, and when Nadim looked down at her, she whimpered.
"There," he murmured. "You can feel how much I want you."
He might have been desperate for her, but still he didn't take her. She had wondered a little earlier if she would simply be thrown down and ravished, but the sheikh had more patience than that, she realized. He continued to touch her with confidence and assurance until every inch of her was on fire. By the time his strong fingers breached her entrance, she was already panting and needy. Her whimpers turned into a cry when he started massaging the pearl at her apex, the sensitive flesh turning against her with a torrent of heat.
