Despite the breathless clutch of attraction, Samira found herself smiling. ‘You have a shadow.’
He turned his head just as the stallion lipped at his shoulder. Tariq murmured something she couldn’t hear to the big animal, then, swift as quicksilver, he was through the fence to stand before her, his eyes keen beneath lazy lids.
Samira breathed him in hungrily, clean sweat and warm spice. Moisture sheened his forehead and the burnished skin of his collarbone. Her eyelids flickered as the pulse between her legs quickened.
‘How did you do that?’ she asked, needing words to fill the expectant silence.
‘Do what?’ His eyes were on her mouth and her nipples pebbled in anticipation. She shuffled back a step.
‘That.’ She nodded to the stallion. ‘The way you break in a horse.’
‘Ah.’ He drew the sound out as he followed her a pace. Heat beaded Samira’s brow. He was too close. ‘That’s the secret.’ He bent his head and his words feathered warm breath across her face. ‘I don’t break them. I gentle them.’
His eyes caressed her and she felt it like the graze of hard fingers along her throat and over her cheek.
She blinked. ‘Gentle?’ Was he some sort of horse whisperer?
‘It’s a matter of trust,’ he murmured in that low voice with just a hint of gravel. It trawled through her insides, furrowing pleasure in its wake. ‘Once they know I’m not going to hurt them, they learn to trust.’
The liquid heat in his eyes told her he was talking about more than horses.
She stiffened. ‘You won’t hurt them while they abide by your rules, you mean. You want to be master.’ Just as he wanted to be hers. Disillusionment was still fresh in her memory. Of how he’d duped her into believing he was safe.
No man had ever looked less safe.
Or more appealing. That was the problem. Her heart hammered her ribcage as if yearning for her submission.
‘You think it’s about power?’ Slowly he shook his head, his gaze never leaving hers. ‘You had the wrong teacher, Samira.’ Heat scorched her skin at his words. They both knew he was referring to her ex-lover. ‘It’s all about partnership, mutual understanding and enjoyment.’
‘Enjoyment?’ Instead of disbelief, the single word sounded...needy. She swallowed hard, unable to break away from the enchantment Tariq wove around her with his rich voice and those slumberous eyes that yet danced with anticipation.
‘Of course.’ He smiled and something hitched in her chest. ‘If we don’t both enjoy the partnership it won’t work.’
Tariq’s words hung in the air like a promise. Partnership, enjoyment...was that what he offered where she saw only capitulation and danger?
Samira looked over his shoulder to the dark, glistening eye of the big stallion. Far from being cowed, mischief glinted there. And delight.
Or perhaps her imagination ran away with her. She shook her head, stepping back abruptly to break the spell Tariq wove around her.
Long fingers closed around her hand. His grip was firm but not unbreakable, yet she found herself stilling.
‘We’re not enemies, Samira.’ His tone coaxed. ‘We want the same thing.’
She swallowed the words all but bursting on her tongue. Emotionally charged accusations that stemmed from fear, not of Tariq as much as of herself, of this weakness she couldn’t eradicate but dared not give in to again.
‘Risay is here,’ she said stiffly. ‘Unlike his brother, he refused to settle for a nap without seeing you.’
Tariq’s hand loosened around hers as she pulled away, yet even with four whole paces between them the imprint of heat still shackled her.
Then he moved past her in long, easy strides. He hunkered down to Risay’s level and weathered his son’s enthusiastic embrace with a smile that confirmed what she already knew: that his boys were the light of his life.
He didn’t look back over his shoulder at her. His whole attention was focused on his son.
To her dismay, Samira felt excluded. She wanted some of what he gave Risay: his attention, his loyalty. She wanted to bask in his smiles, share his laughter.
And more...so much more.
* * *
Laughter rang out, the sound curling around Samira’s heart, making her smile. Adil shrieked with joy as his father threw him up and deftly caught him in strong arms. Water droplets caught the dying light as Tariq shook his head. Samira made herself look away. She’d spent too long furtively ogling his powerful body.
This time at the oasis had been far more confronting than the night of their wedding, when Tariq had come to her bedroom and insisted she kiss him. A week had passed and with each day the tension in her had twisted harder.