The Sheikh smiled slowly, and Aurora’s shock dissipated enough for her to truly take him in. He looked almost exactly the way he had when he’d summoned her to his room, wearing a crisp, tailored suit that did nothing to disguise his lean, muscular frame. A bright red flower bloomed at his lapel, and Aurora glanced down at her dress to see that Khaleel’s flower was the same kind as hers—pink instead of white, but the petals the same shape.
“I don’t know,” Aurora replied, just as Khaleel touched her arm in a ghostly caress. “I don’t even remember why I came out tonight.”
Khaleel laughed. “You agreed to meet me, remember?”
Aurora suddenly did—she had come to the gallery for the opening of a new show.
“You look absolutely stunning.”
“Thank you,” Aurora said, confusion still swirling in her mind. But then she realized that her confusion didn’t matter; she was where she was supposed to be, she had found what she had been looking for.
“Shall we take a wander around? Or have you gotten your fill of art?”
Aurora looked around, aware that the people in the gallery seemed to be moving strangely—fast and slow at the same time, almost dancing around her.
“I want to look around a little bit more,” she told Khaleel. She was trying to figure out how she felt, trying to understand the strange feeling of being displaced in time. Khaleel’s hand closed on hers and Aurora wove her fingers between his automatically.
They wandered the seemingly endless gallery, and Aurora had the impression that she’d seen all of the art somewhere before. Khaleel asked her opinion of this painting, that sculpture, the installation that hugged one wall. Something about his questions tugged at a memory in the back of Aurora’s head. Have I been here before?
“I think we’ve made the full circuit,” Khaleel said. “Do you feel like going to dinner?”
“Sure,” Aurora said, not entirely sure of what she was agreeing to. For an instant everything went black, and then just as suddenly, Aurora found herself in a spacious, low-lit dining room, in a high-end restaurant somewhere downtown.
Khaleel sat across the table from her, and she seemed to have come back to herself in the middle of a conversation.
“Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?” Khaleel didn’t sound angry, just amused.
“Of course,” Aurora said tartly. “You were telling me about art galleries you’ve visited around the world.”
“Okay,” Khaleel said, still looking amused. “So which do you want to visit next? Anywhere in the world.”
“Can I pick somewhere I’ve already been, or does it have to be somewhere new?”
“Somewhere new,” Khaleel told her, nodding firmly. “We can visit the ones you’ve been to before after you’ve seen all the new ones on the list.”
“Can we visit Paris?” Aurora felt her cheeks warming—she couldn’t quite believe she was planning a trip abroad with someone she’d only just met.
“Of course! My family has an apartment just a few blocks away from the Eiffel tower,” Khaleel told her. “We can look at all three of the big museums, visit a few of the smaller galleries.”
“How long are we talking about?” Aurora smiled, unable to help herself. “I mean, there is a lot of art in Paris.”
“I’d say a week at least,” Khaleel replied, looking thoughtful. “That way we can take our time, and go to plenty of restaurants as well.”
Aurora laughed, shaking her head. “A week in Paris? I’ve got responsibilities of my own, you know.”
“This from the woman who spent months backpacking through—what was it? Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore?” Khaleel smiled at her. “I don’t believe it. You know how to drop your responsibilities for a while.”
“That was planned! Not just going on a whim.”
“You went on a whim. You found the money to go, and you went.”
Aurora shrugged. “We can agree to disagree,” she said with a smile.
Somehow the dinner flowed by her; she knew that she ate something, and that it was delicious, but not what it was. Aurora found herself leaving the restaurant with Khaleel, stepping out into the balmy Miami air. Khaleel took her hand in his, led her along the sidewalk outside of the anonymous restaurant, and then they were in the back seat of a limo together.
“I’m glad you decided to meet me,” Khaleel told her.
“I don’t actually remember deciding,” Aurora countered. “But I’m glad I did, too.”
Khaleel chuckled lowly, carefully pulling her just a little bit closer to him on the back seat. “The entire time you were on the yacht, I was thinking about how I could convince you that I wanted you,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think it would be a good idea to make a move on you then, but now that you’re free…”
“Now that I’m free?”
“Now that you’re free, I don’t have to feel guilty. You can say no whenever you want.” He pulled her into his arms and pressed her body lightly against his as he leaned in.
Aurora gasped as Khaleel brushed his lips against hers, and then deepened the kiss, his hands sliding over her, caressing her everywhere.
She shifted in his arms, tasting his lips and tongue, feeling his body against hers—first ghostly and insubstantial, then somehow more than real, hyper-real. Their bodies slipped and slid, and Aurora lost herself in the passion of the moment, her skin tingling, heat rising through her body, making her shiver in Khaleel’s arms. She wanted more—she wanted to be alone with him, wanted to take in the sight of him in detail. She remembered all too vividly the way the Sheikh had looked when she’d first met him, coming out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel. She hadn’t realized how much that image had stayed with her, how it had stirred something that no amount of resentment at her confinement could possibly suppress.
She moaned out, and Khaleel broke away from the kiss. Abruptly, with no warning, the limo fell away, and somehow, Aurora was in an alleyway, somewhere downtown—familiar, but foreign at the same time. “What just happened?” she murmured.
She looked around, but the Sheikh was nowhere to be seen, and Aurora’s heart began to pound in her chest. “Khaleel?” She saw his face in the gloom, backlit with a cheap sodium light. “Oh thank God…I totally lost myself for a minute there.”
Khaleel chuckled and started to move towards her, but then, just as abruptly as Aurora had found herself out of the limo and in the street, Khaleel’s face began to morph and change. In the span of a few heartbeats, the man in front of her wasn’t the elegantly clothed Sheikh, the wealthy man who’d been romancing her all night. Instead, a greasy-haired man in a too-tight suit began walking towards her, his face slowly resolving.
“I told you I would find you.”
Aurora gasped and staggered backwards, but there was nowhere for her to go. Before her eyes, the man completed his transformation, and suddenly it was Jon in front of her. The loan shark wore a grin that made his teeth look bizarrely sharp, and he rubbed his hands together as though he were anticipating putting them on her.
She tried to back away from him, tried to find a way out of the alley, but Aurora felt as if she was frozen in place. There was nowhere to run, nothing she could do.
“Of course, since you’re refusing to pay me, I’m going to have to make sure that no one ever makes that mistake again—I have to make an example out of you, you understand.”