The Call of the Desert

Eventually, when she felt as if she had some measure of control, she glanced at him. He was standing with one shoulder propped nonchalantly against the wall, looking at her from under hooded lids. With one hand in his pocket, the glass held loosely in the other, he could have stepped straight out of a fashion magazine.

He looked dark and dangerous, and Julia gulped—because she felt that sense of danger reverberate within her and ignite a fire. She tried to ignore the sensation, telling herself it was overactive hormones mixed in with too many evocative memories and the loaded situation they were now in. She looked back out of the window with an effort. She felt hot and tingly all over, her belly heavy with desire.

“I … we just grew apart.” She shook her head. “It seemed like a good idea, but it never really worked. And our difficulty with having children was the last straw. There wasn’t enough to keep us together. I’m glad there were no children. It wouldn’t have been the right environment to bring them into.”

Julia had never told Kaden that she was adopted, or about her own visceral feelings on the subject of having children. She’d never told anyone. It was too bound up in painful emotions for her. And perhaps she hadn’t told him for a reason—because on some level she’d been afraid of his judgement, and that what they shared hadn’t been real. She’d been right to be afraid.

She was aware of tension emanating from Kaden and didn’t want to look at him, afraid he might see the emotion she felt she couldn’t hide. Her face always gave her away. He was the one who had told her that as he’d held her face in his hands one day …

Suddenly from out of the still ominously cloudy sky came a jagged flash of lightning. Julia jumped so violently that liquid sloshed out of her glass. Immediately shocked and embarrassed by her overreaction, she stepped back. “I’m sorry …”

Kaden was there in an instant. He took the glass out of her hand, placing it down on the table alongside his own. He was back in front of her before she could steel herself not to react. His dark eyes looked her up and down and then rested on her chest. As if mesmerised, Julia followed his gaze to see where some of the drink had landed on her shirt, right over one breast, and now the material was clinging to the rounded slope.

Panicky, Julia stepped back, “I’ll get a cloth … I don’t want Samia’s shirt to get ruined.”

A big hand snaked out and caught her upper arm. “Leave it.”

Kaden’s voice was unbearably harsh, and in that instant the air between became even heavier and more charged. As if the tension and atmosphere between them was directly affecting the weather, a huge booming roll of thunder sounded outside.

Julia flinched, eyes glued to Kaden’s with some kind of sick fascination. Faintly she said, “I thought the storm was over.”

With a move so smooth she didn’t even feel it happening Kaden put his hands on her arms and pulled her closer. Their bodies were almost touching.

“I think the storm is just beginning.”

For a second confusion made Julia’s head foggy. She didn’t seem to be able to separate out his words, or even understand what Kaden was saying. And then she realised, when she saw how hot his gaze had become and how it moved down to her mouth. Desire was stamped onto the stark lines of his face and Julia’s heart beat fast in response. Because it was a look that had haunted her dreams for ever.

Desperately trying to fight the urge to succumb to the waves of need beating through her veins, she shook her head and tensed, trying to pull back out of Kaden’s grip. His hands just tightened.

“Kaden, no. I shouldn’t be here … we shouldn’t have met again.”

“But we did meet. And you’re here now.”

Julia asserted stiff ly, “I didn’t agree to come here for this.”

Kaden shook his head, and a tiny harsh smile touched his mouth. “From the moment we stood in front of each other in that room earlier the possibility of this has existed.”

Bitterness rang in Julia’s voice. “Even when you pretended not to know me?”

More lightning flashed outside, quickly followed by the roll of thunder. The unmistakable sound of torrential rain started to lash against the window.

“Even then.”

Nothing seemed to be throwing Kaden off. Had he somehow magically dimmed the lights in the room? Julia wondered frantically, feeling as though reality was slipping out of her grasp. The past was meshing into the present, and the future was fast becoming irrelevant.

Julia tried again. “The possibility of this stopped existing twelve years ago in Burquat—or have you forgotten when you informed me our affair was past its sell-by date?” Bitterness laced her voice, but she couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there, much as she would have loved to feign insouciance. The rawness of that day was vivid.

Kaden’s hands were steady. “I don’t wish to discuss the past, Julia. The past bears no relationship to this moment.”

“How can you say that? The past is the reason I’m standing here now.”

Kaden shook his head, eyes glowing with dark embers, effortlessly stoking Julia’s desire higher and higher, despite what her head might be saying.

“I would have wanted you even if tonight was the first time we’d met.”

His flattery did nothing for Julia’s ego. The evidence of how unmoved he was by the past broke something apart inside her. Of course it had no effect on him now. Because he felt nothing for her—just as he’d never really felt anything for her.

Julia tensed as much as she could. She had to get out of there. Things were spiralling out of all control. “Well, the past might not be relevant to you, but it is to me, and I think this is a very bad idea.”