He took her hand when she faltered, enveloped it, infusing her with his power, giving her the strength to finish her story.
She went on, “But I fell in love with this land the moment I set foot here, really began to understand the hold it had on my father. I was torn about leaving, wanted to stay, to try to get to know him by getting to know the culture that had ruled his life and choices. But stay to do what? I wasn’t up to applying for a job, didn’t even want one. Then practically on my way to the airport just two days ago, I stumbled on GAO’s ad, asking for volunteers. And it was like a prayer answered and a dream come true in one. I always wanted to join GAO, but my responsibility to my mother tied me to one place with a regular job. Now I no longer have to provide for her, I’m doing what I always wanted while also getting my chance to stay here. And with the money my father left me I can afford to stay here as a volunteer for at least a couple of months, quite comfortably.” She gave him another wavering smile. “So that’s my whole life story, till the moment you drove me off the road.”
Malek stared at her, his heart staggering in his chest.
He’d never known such honesty, such unadorned recounting of such heart-wrenching events. He’d never known that such compassion towards those who’d ruined one’s life could exist. She’d given them all forbearance and forgiveness, when she didn’t extend half the mercy to herself. The mother who’d deprived her of her childhood and youth, of normality and peace, the father who’d abandoned her to the custody of a damaged mother while he’d lavished his all on his legitimate children, those who had taken it all and refused to even recognize her as their blood kin.
How he felt the need to avenge her, to erase her suffering.
Not that she acknowledged she’d suffered or sacrificed. She’d cited her ordeals matter-of-factly, and now they were over she was moving on to the next chore. Joining GAO so she’d spend heaven knew how much more of her life giving to others, with no expectation of pay or thanks or even acknowledgement.
She’d already made him feel what he’d never felt before, but this insight into the depths of her suffering and strength increased her appeal a thousand fold.
And it went beyond passion. Beyond compassion. She moved him, shook him. On every level.
Nothing was left in him but the need to comfort her, connect with her, erase all damage, imbue her with all he had of healing and succor. It was no use resisting any more.
He reached for her, watched her eyes widening, her flushed lips parting on a tiny cry of surprise and, he knew, surrender, as he swept her over his body, folded her in his lap and contained her in a hug. It felt as if she had been made to fit within him, as if he had been made to wrap around her.
“Malek …”
He had no idea if she’d gasped his name, or if he’d felt it reverberating in her mind. He’d never realized his name was so beautiful. It was, on her lips, in her mind. Where he wanted it to be, always.
He drove a hand into the depth of that mink-soft mane, his fingers combing through it soothingly, his other one pressing her face into his neck as he murmured to her in Arabic, what she made him feel, how he wanted to comfort her.
Feeling her in his arms, her hot resilience unraveling him one nerve at a time, he knew he could stop himself from taking the comforting deeper into communion, flesh to flesh, lips to lips, as easily as he could stop breathing.
He leaned back against the wall, taking her unresisting body with him, raising her with an arm around her waist, bringing her face level with his, saw in her eyes a reflection of his fever, in her trembling lips his admission of defeat. A gentle hand behind her head urged her to close the gap, end the aching, brought the sweetness of her breath scorching him, the first touch with her lips half a gasp away. And his cellphone rang.
The single-note ring went through him like a skewer.
It had an even more spectacular effect on her. She lurched, twisted off him, gasping, scrambling away from him, ending up in a heap on the opposite collection of cushions.
They stared at each other for a suspended moment. All he wanted to do was to storm up to his feet, crush his phone beneath them, then swoop down to scoop her in his arms, claim that kiss, claim her, then sweep her back to his place.
“Will you please answer that?” Her voice wobbled as her hands shook over her hair and clothes, smoothing away the signs of their surrender to insanity. “That ringtone is drilling a hole in my head. And it seems whoever it is won’t give up.”
“They will have to. Janaan …” he started, needing to fix this, continue it more slowly, or to end it at once. He didn’t know which. Or anything.
She cut through his words. “Please—just answer it. I doubt you give your number to just anyone. This may be an emergency.”
He acknowledged her logic. And that he had lost his. Probably irrevocably.
With a last glance at her he muttered a curse, retrieved his phone from his discarded jacket. He almost punched his finger through the answer button. “W’Ullahi ya Saeed …”
And the sworn promise of retribution only froze on his lips with Saeed’s first urgent words.
CHAPTER FIVE
“WHAT IS IT?”
Jay heard the shaken question spilling from her lips. She wondered if he’d heard it, understood it. She barely could.
Even ten minutes after the phone call had interrupted her headlong plunge into his arms and insanity, she still felt Malek’s body beneath hers, every sinew and bone and muscle driving into hers, liquefying her, still felt his breath scorching her face, his warm, tough fingers in her hair, until she was certain there’d be marks singed into her skin, carved into her flesh everywhere he’d touched.
She bit her lips. The almost kiss was what burned her most. Her lips were swollen, chafing, and only abusing them seemed to lessen the throbbing, curb the mad desire to obey their screaming, go bury them into the power and hard, virile beauty of his exposed neck and chest.
It didn’t help that every now and then through his call, his eyes had fallen on her, drenching her in his simmering hunger and frustration. All her nerves jangled an all-out response that had only subsided to endurable levels when he’d torn his eyes away and progressed to the next phone call.
She’d waited for him to end the last one to ask her question. But he only gave her an absent glance and started another one. Either he hadn’t heard her, or she’d been as incoherent as she’d thought. Or he didn’t think it a priority to answer her. She didn’t understand any of his barked colloquial Damhoorian, but it was enough to see the urgency in his face and body to know that something was wrong. Dreadfully wrong.