Secrets of the Oasis

Salman growled, ‘I agree. I feel very animalistic at the moment.’ His eyes had grown heavy and dangerously slumberous, but still with that provocative fire igniting in their depths.

He tightened his hold on her jaw and swooped down, his mouth a searing brand over hers before she could take another breath. Their bodies touched, chest to chest, hip to hip, and Jamilah felt an immediate wild excitement coursing through her blood.

She wanted to rip the wet clothes from her body and arch closer to Salman, to feel wet skin on

wet skin. A vivid memory of another shower, another time, flared up. He had lifted her naked body against the wall and urged her to wrap her legs around his waist. He’d found the hot wet core of her and had surged up and into her, making everything blur into a heat haze of passion.

Anger at her reaction and at the vividness of the memory made her kiss him back, defiantly at first, and then she realised the folly of that when Salman pulled her in even closer. She had to battle harder than she’d ever done in her life not to respond, not to let him suck her under to a dark vortex where past and present might merge and make her forget where she was and what he had done to her.

She seized her opportunity when he lifted his head momentarily. With an abrupt move she snaked out from under him and out of the shower, dripping water everywhere and only then realising how much the wall had been supporting her when her legs felt like jelly.

Salman turned slowly under the spray of water and looked at her. She fought the wild clamour of her pulse. As she watched his hand snaked down to his jeans. He flipped open the top button and drawled, ‘I’m going to make myself more comfortable, if you’d care to do the same and join me?’

Jamilah dragged her gaze back up and shook her head, feeling as if she were on fire inside. ‘I wouldn’t join you if we were the two last humans on earth and the future of civilisation depended on us procreating.’

Salman smiled and lazily pulled down his zip. Jamilah could see the whorls of dark hair which led to his sex in her peripheral vision. Heat threatened to engulf her completely. She wondered why she couldn’t move.

And then Salman said, ‘But wouldn’t we make beautiful babies?’

Jamilah made a garbled sound. She was so mad she wanted to cry, or slap Salman’s mocking face. And through that emotion, completely unbidden, came the sudden awful yearning to be heavy with this man’s child. That brought with it the return of bitter reality and the sharpest pain of all—because she knew what it had felt like to carry this man’s child for the briefest time, before nature had taken its tragic course. She could still feel that dragging pain, the wrenching sense of loss, and he would never know.

Even now he was still mocking, taunting, pulling his wet jeans down over lean hips and off, blissfully unaware of the nuclear implosion happening within Jamilah. Before he could see any of it she tore her gaze away and grabbed a towel hanging on a nearby rail. While she still could, she walked on wobbly legs out of the bathroom to the sound of a dark, mocking chuckle and a softly intoned, ‘Coward.’

Salman stood in the shower after Jamilah had walked out, his hands against the wall and his head downbent between them. Only minutes before he’d held her captive. Dripping wet and the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. He finally turned the water to cold as he faced the prospect that for the first time since his teens he might be forced to pleasure himself just to reclaim some sanity. But he had to acknowledge now that his sanity had fled along with Jamilah.

Her white shirt had turned see-through the minute the water had hit, clearly showing her white lace bra and the puckered tips of her berry-brown nipples. Her breasts were still beautifully round, firm and high. And he knew that they would fill his palms like succulent fruits.

He groaned softly when his wayward body persisted in responding, despite the stinging cold spray, and he valiantly resisted the urge to wrap his hand around himself and seek all too transitory relief. There was only one way to relief now. Past or no past, history be damned, one thing was clear: he would have Jamilah back in his bed until he’d sated himself—until he’d sated them both. Because their desire was mutual, explosive and unfinished. And there was no way he could survive a month here without taking her. He’d go crazy.

All concerns for Jamilah’s emotional welfare and the state of his soul were dissolving in a wave of heat. He took some reassurance from the way she’d stood up to him. He could be in no doubt that she was no longer some shy, timid and idealistic virgin. And you did that to her. He blocked out the voice.

His mind stalled for a moment. Dammit, she had been a virgin. He’d assumed that she’d been at least a little bit experienced. He could still remember his shock when he’d thrust into that slick tightness and felt her momentary hesitation, seen the fleeting pain on her face. And then heard her husky moans and pleas for him to keep going. She’d just been too seductive. He was only human, and he hadn’t been able to stop.

His mouth tightened. But hadn’t she all but told him that she’d had plenty of other lovers, and that the turmoil he’d witnessed that day in Paris had merely been a passing crush on her first lover. He should feel comforted by that thought…yet he didn’t.

With an abrupt move he switched off the shower and stepped out. Towelling himself dry roughly, he made a mental vow that if he was consigning himself to hell for ever by resolving to have Jamilah in his bed, then she was coming with him—all the way.

As he found and dragged on clean clothes he thrust thoughts of Jamilah aside with effort. He had some things to attend to—and one of them was making sure that his ill-advised party guests had indeed been shown the door. For the first time in years living vicariously through those around him, watching them lose all sense of self and envying them their opiate nirvana, hadn’t worked to block out his own reality.

‘I apologised to Hana, and to Hisham.’

Jamilah steeled herself before she turned from where she’d been unpacking her suitcase in one of the guest suites. She hadn’t wanted Salman to know so soon that she’d given in to both Hana’s, and Nadim’s chief aide’s pleas for her to move up to the castle. Taking a deep breath, she finally did turn round—to see Salman in dark trousers and a white shirt, leaning insouciantly against the open door.

‘I know,’ she said stiffly, trying to ignore the response in her body and treacherously wishing she wasn’t wearing her habitual uniform of jeans and a shirt—albeit fresh ones. It had been a long day since that eventful morning, and she was exhausted.

She didn’t need to be reminded of how he’d wound the intractable Hana around his little finger. She’d been all but blushing when she’d told Jamilah of his apparent heartfelt apology.

‘So…’ Salman quirked a brow. ‘You’ve been sent to babysit me? Are you going to ground me for bad behaviour?’

Jamilah heard the edge to his voice and guessed that he didn’t often find himself in the position of having to apologise for his actions. She didn’t feel that he was in any way repentant, despite his apology.

She focused on his eyes, and then wished she could look anywhere else when she was sucked into the dark depths and butterflies erupted in her stomach. Salman had a unique ability to plug into her deepest emotions and stir them around. He’d always had that ability.

That realisation made her voice frigid. ‘They asked me to come and stay here. That’s all. With Nadim and Iseult away there’s a lot to take care of, and clearly you’re not interested in taking responsibility.’

She saw his eyes flash at that, but it was gone in an instant and Jamilah wondered why she should be feeling bad.

Salman’s mouth twisted into a mocking smile. ‘What? And not live up to my reputation as the prodigal bad-boy brother?’