Older Woman, Younger Sheikh Read online

  Now her heart was beating fast, but not from fear of water or excitement of seeing land.

  “Ummm,” she said, in appreciation, as he pulled her tight against his front. “I wonder why you brought me here.”

  His face was very close to hers. His very fine lips only inches away. “I wonder.”

  “Let’s go up on the beach,” she suggested. She could focus much better on the nearness of him, of the sexy masculine smell he gave off, if she wasn’t up to her knees in water.

  Amin turned his gaze to the sky for a moment, as if thinking, and there was something about the way he did it that gave her the idea he was in a playful mood. “Let us not. In fact—”

  He let her go for a moment, but only for long enough to whip his shirt off over his head and step out of his khakis. She peeked, of course. Black Euro swim trunks for Amin. The kind that went to mid-thigh, but held tight to everything underneath.

  Not a look everyone could pull off, but on Amin’s lanky frame, very nice. Really very nice.

  The part of her mind that wasn’t concentrated on how really very nice he looked in his swim shorts noted that he hadn’t been wearing shoes this whole time. For some reason, that detail stuck out in her mind as important. Not in a life-altering way, but important in a small, everyday way.

  He gave some instructions to Cassius over her shoulder, and drew her close again. As close as she could get with her still in her thick lifejacket.

  Hmm, it seemed she wasn’t the only one thinking about how little space there was between them. When he pulled her against his hips, there was some solid evidence he was thinking about it, too.

  Well, she would do something about that. But he had said he wanted truth from her… She hoped that meant she could ask some honesty from him in return.

  “So, I guess you’ve gotten over—” How did she say it? That Ghassan had me fuck other guys? That your guardian not only used me as his own prostitute, he also whored me out? “—what I told you last night?”

  “No,” he replied quickly. “I haven’t stopped thinking about the investments you made on behalf of ANI.”

  If Ghassan had changed the subject like that, she would have let it go. But she needed to test how far this limit went. “The other thing, Amin.”

  “I haven’t stopped thinking about that, either,” he admitted, loosening his hold on her hips.

  Merda. She’d gone too far. She should have left it alone. He hadn’t gotten over it. No, how could he?

  “I could not believe that you stayed after that. For all those years.”

  Her throat closed, salty and swollen. The sound of the Zodiac zooming off registered in her mind.

  The ship’s crew had just left her alone with him. How mad was he that she’d been with other men? If he were Ghassan, he’d be angry enough to do something extremely…

  Thank God he spoke before she had a chance to finish the unworthy thought. “Then I remembered how young you were when you met him. Ghassan was a powerful man in Qena. If you had not done what he asked, he was capable of making things difficult for you.”

  Making things difficult for her? What an odd phrase for someone who had threatened her, and her family, with the same consequences.

  “I do not blame you, Rania. Nor do I see you as tainted by what has been done to you. You clearly did not enjoy what Ghassan required of you. You did what needed to be done. I cannot imagine the strength that this took. You will never have to do this again.” He tightened his grip on her again. “So long as you are with me, of course.”

  The promise, and the threat, in his words made her throat close again. Set free from Ghassan’s demands? Excellent. But she wasn’t likely to be with Amin for long, was she? Since Shafa pointed out Amin would need a wife soon, she hadn’t stopped thinking about it.

  She put the oncoming storm out of her mind. She was here with him now. Time to focus on him and make the best out of the situation. Like she always had.

  A whisper of a smile tricked at Amin’s lips.

  “What?” she asked. “Is something funny?”

  “I think you could take the lifejacket off now.”

  She looked down at her feet. Just to check. “Nope. Still in the water.”

  “The garment makes it harder to kiss you.”

  She shrugged. “You’ll have to make do.”

  The smile dropped, and a chill crept under her ribs. Wrong thing to say.

  “Then I believe I shall.”

  He wrapped his arms around the extra bulk of the orange vest with a mock seriousness that forced her to giggle. But the kiss didn’t make her laugh. It heated her through and through.

  He started at the corner of her mouth, lightly touching his lips to the seam. Taking things slow and easy. Taking little nibbles that set tiny fires wherever they landed.

  She responded the way she thought he’d want, doing the same to him, even though what she really wanted was to throw herself into the flames. She played it cool, restraining herself. Letting him being charge.

  It was what he paid her for, after all.

  The water seemed to be rising a little. Maybe. Hard to tell with her eyes closed, making little appreciative sounds she thought he’d like.

  She followed where he led as he drew her closer and closer to him. Yet he seemed to be getting farther away. What was with that?

  Finally, having enough of the frustration, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him as fully as she wanted to.

  He really was an amazing kisser. His lips were as talented as they were intriguing. He pressed just the right amount of softness and firmness against her. Her body responded fully, sending wet chills up her spine, with slick warmth wherever their bodies touched.

  The pleasure he drew out of her made her feel floaty, like gravity had lost control over her body and she could lift her feet from the ground if she wanted to. Her sense of up and down skewed, as if she could lean into him as far as she wanted and never fall. It just wasn’t right.

  Wait. She paused, her mouth mushed against his awkwardly. It really wasn’t right. The reason she felt entirely weightless was because it was true.

  She opened her eyes.

  And screamed.

  The water. They were in the middle of the water.

  Panic whooshed into her and set up camp. Her heart was going to burst from sending hot blood splurting through her veins. She was going to inhale water. She was going to drown.

  In her memory, she went over the side all over again.

  The dark wave that came out of nowhere, swamping the deck of the Nasim. Her feet were punched out from underneath her by the slick water. A too-long, too-fast fall through the nothingness to be plunged into water that sucked all the heat from her. Trying to breathe air and tasting only water that burned her lungs like acid.

  Grab on to anything you can, her instincts ordered, climb Amin like a ladder.

  But he was in the water, too, in terrible danger. She let him go. She was the one with the lifejacket, and it was sort of helping her, when she wasn’t splashing uselessly.

  “Rania, Rania,” he was saying, trying to get her attention. He was saying other things, too, but they were coming from very far away and the sound was muffled through water and panic.

  The island. If she could get to it. Maybe get both of them there…

  Where was it? Nowhere. She twisted, but couldn’t find the damned thing. Oh figlio un cane, she’d lost the stupid island.

  But then, like a miracle, everything settled. The island—there it was. Now she was facing it. And she wasn’t tipping over at random angles. But where was Amin?

  “You are okay,” he was saying, in her ear, from behind. “Please, stop. Just put your feet down. Rania, please calm yourself and listen to me. Put your feet down.”

  She looked over her shoulder, and there he was, an even more intense look in his dark eyes than usual, holding up her lifejacket by the back shoulders. With him there, stabilizing her, she seemed to find a core of calm, and be
gan to relax.

  “Rania?” Rania, are you okay, or are you going to freak out again?

  She swallowed to compose herself, tasting only a splash of salt. She nodded, but that was kind of stupid, since he couldn’t see it from behind her.

  “I’m finished now. But please don’t let me go.”

  “I will not,” he assured her. “But you can easily touch the bottom here. There is no danger of drowning.”

  She inched a toe downward, which was dumb, because she had zero fear of having sand under her feet.

  He was right. The water was only up to mid-boob. The sole of her foot hit the bottom easily. True to his word, Amin kept a hold on the back of her day-glo orange jacket.

  The adrenaline rushing through her died to a trickle. Oh, sure, one of her eardrums still beat like a huge kettle tympani at the back of an orchestra, but the trill of fear felt more like a flute than a tuba now.

  “Oh.” The syllable was all she could squeak out past the boulder wedged in her throat. He must think she was an idiot. Because, of course, that’s exactly what she was. “I’m—”

  He twisted her around to face him. “Please do not apologize. I put you in this situation knowing your phobia. You have nothing to regret. In fact, I must apologize to you. I thought that if I distracted you, I could help you get over your fear. It was poorly planned. Please forgive me.”

  “Amin, no. You don’t need to—”

  “Yes, I do. I should not have done this without your consent. You do not need to treat me like your employer at this moment. This was more than I should have asked of you.”

  His widened eyes and the tense muscles in his jaw spoke of sincerity, and of a genuine anger at himself for what he’d done.

  And yeah, if she wasn’t still a little scared of the water and even more scared that she would screw up her role here and he’d dump her on the street, she’d be mad at him. Really, who practically threw someone who was afraid of the water and couldn’t swim into the ocean?

  “Whatever you feel toward me right now is justified,” he told her. “But you are still in the water. Let us get to shore. I will call the Zodiac and we will return to the Miizaan as soon as you wish.”

  With that, he, still holding on to her lifejacket, took a couple steps toward the beach.

  She dug her toes into the wet sand.

  “No.”

  He turned to her, an eyebrow lifted.

  She licked her lips nervously. “Yeah, I’m surprised, too. But I’m in the water here and I don’t seem to be drowning. Right now, anyway. I think I can stay a bit longer.”

  “You do not have to do this for me.”

  “I’m not. I’m doing it for me. And I’m going to do this for me, too. Come closer.”

  He did. She swatted him on the arm, not too hard. His eyes went wide in disbelief.

  “Jerk,” she said. But her heart smashed against her ribs rhythmically. Time to change the subject. “Okay, I’m done now. Why did you bring me here? I mean, other than terrifying the living shit out of me.”

  “I apologize for that once more. Are you well again?”

  She scanned her body. Yes, she felt on edge, her anxiety high, but she had her lifejacket, she could touch the bottom, and Amin was here. So she nodded. “For now.”

  “I wished to teach you to swim.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You are afraid of the water,” he clarified, as if she didn’t know. “The best way to not be afraid of something is to become the master of it. So, to remove your fear, I thought that I could help you through it.”

  Was the numbness in her toes from the water, or from his explanation?

  “You arranged this for me?”

  He looked to the side, then back, as if seeking someone else to tell him what was going on. “Yes, of course. But it is also quite pleasant and private here, the crew informed me.”

  She blinked at him a couple times, waiting for the gray cloud to appear around the silver lining. “Really?” Her voice broke on the word and she had to swallow before continuing. “That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

  His eyebrows slammed together over his nose. “I find that hard to believe.”

  Oh crap. Right, she was supposed to play the sophisticated mistress. Heat went to her cheeks. “I’m sorry, I exaggerated that. I won’t do it again.”

  “Very well.” He looked at her sideways, his mouth in a thin line that showed no emotion.

  “So this swimming thing. How do I do it?”

  “We will start with small steps today.”

  “What’s the first one?”

  He gave the lifejacket a significant look and she stopped breathing. No way was she taking it off. “Oh, no. Not going to happen.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps we shall start with you putting your face under the water, then.”

  She bit the inside of her lip. “Okay.”

  It wasn’t easy, for a couple reasons. Her panic, of course. Having to hold her breath instead of scream for her life went against every instinct. Also, the floaty lifejacket got in her way. She could kind of see his point about that one.

  But she got her face under for a terrifying three seconds, and when she emerged from the water into the light, a sense of accomplishment thrilled her.

  After, he had her blow bubbles of air into the water. Again, the lifejacket impeded her, but the secure hug of it wasn’t something she wouldn’t give up.

  Then she took her feet from the bottom, and, hanging on to his hard biceps, kicked a few times, floating. That would have been much, much harder without the lifejacket. Really, that jacket was doing a lot of the work of swimming. As long as she was wearing it, she wasn’t really swimming, she guessed.

  When they were done with that, the soaring feeling she got from conquering her fear made her ride high, ready to face the next challenge.

  It was Amin who had given this to her. Without her asking, he’d given her something Ghassan had always blocked her from having. In fact, he’d noticed what she needed without her saying a word, and made it happen.

  No one had ever done anything like that for her. The opposite, really. She’d always had to make good things happen for other people, no matter what it cost her.

  Amin had not only noticed what she needed, he hadn’t only given it to her, he’d done it himself.

  He hadn’t needed to do any of this. Yet he had.

  Somewhere, deep inside him, that sweet kid had turned into a thoughtful man.

  “Perhaps that is enough for today,” he suggested, the sun making his wet skin even more golden than usual.

  She took a deep breath. “No. I’m ready now.”

  “Ready?”

  She reached down and undid the first of three clips that held the lifejacket on. The snap cracked in her ears like something breaking. A cloud darkened the sun for a moment, making her shiver.

  He took over for her, unclipping and unzipping as she tried to soothe herself mentally. In the end, though, she could panic all she wanted; Amin was here and Amin would not let anything bad happen to her.

  At least, she didn’t think he would.

  When he took the beautiful, amazing lifejacket off her, she dug her toes into the sandy bottom as if that would keep her on a firm foundation. He kept one hand on her arm as he flung the jacket through the air to the beach. It whirled like a Frisbee, and a lot of her courage whirled away with it.

  “This is very brave of you, Rania.”

  She mashed her lips together and nodded, trying to keep her panic down. She didn’t feel very brave.

  He led her into shallower water, so that the waves lapped at her midsection. She must be broadcasting fear on every frequency, holding herself as tight as possible, maintaining a pincer grip on his arm.

  He bent, putting a hand at the small of her back. “Very well, now lean back like you did before. You will float and I will hold you up.”

  Her attention snapped to his face and she softened her eyes to plead with him
. “Please don’t let me go.”

  “This is something you must do if you wish to learn to swim. But you have done so well today. We can do this exercise another time.” His tone attempted to soothe her, but a solid core of dread sat like a sharp stone in the pit of her stomach.

  His offer tempted her, but if she got out of the water now, would she ever get in again? No. She had to do it now. Not only to show Amin that she could conquer her fear, but also for herself. Because she wanted to.

  “No.” She dug her fingers into his arm. “I can do this. Just don’t let me go.”

  She leaned back, concentrating on the feeling of his warm palm at the base of her spine. As she let her knees fall out from under her, she felt his other hand, solid and reliable, in the middle of her back.

  Strange and terrifying—to balance on only two points of contact. Yet she wasn’t sinking.

  “Spread out your arms,” he told her. “And lift your hips if you can.”

  She did both, and found herself even more weightless. The slow, uneven ripple of the waves stopped threatening to swamp her and started holding her up. The sensation was like floating on air without rising toward the sun that glowed in the intense blue sky far above them.

  She laughed. She’d been afraid of this? Floating this way was actually great. A totally different experience than getting swept overboard into a gnashing ocean.

  With the sun behind his head, Amin was only a dark silhouette above her. “Good, Rania. You are doing so well.”

  Another memory came to her, her father teaching her to ride a bike on one of their trips to Italy. He’d run behind the vehicle to help hold her up, then…

  “Don’t let me go.” The words came out as an order, which she instantly regretted. But she really needed him to keep her floating.

  “I will not,” said the black shape in front of the sun.

  “You will. I know you will.” It made sense. Her father would have. Ghassan would have.

  “Perhaps I have done so already.”

  Her panic hit her chest with the force of a shotgun blast and she started to sink—only to find herself supported.

  “These are my fingers.” Ten small dots pressed into her skin. Then a more substantial support. “And my hands. I would not remove them, as I am enjoying this far too much.”