Page 36 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

CHAPTER TEN

MALAKHELDOUT his hand and Shona didn’t have it in her to refuse it.

Even though there was that noise inside her head, warning her of all the terrible ways this could end. All the other shoes that could fall and crush her, even in a palace like this—because they always, always did. Even though there was that hitch in her chest that she was terribly afraid was the heart she’d thought so well armored and so protected after all these years that nothing could ever come close to threatening it.

But on the other side of all of that was Malak, and that hand outstretched before her.

Unwavering and certain, as if he had no doubt whatsoever that she would take it.

And she couldn’t seem to help herself. She reached out and slid her fingers into his.

He pulled her close and her body knew him now. She melted into him, and then, better by far, his mouth was on hers.

And it was still so good. His kiss was like light, heat and longing, despite the fact she would have told herself that she had nothing left in her. That she’d given all she had to give, long ago.

He led her out onto the marble balcony, bathed in the crisp, bright light of another desert morning. Then he led her off to the side, where a gleaming, rectangular pool sat on its own raised platform, part of the water beneath billowing canopies that provided some little bit of shade.

“I don’t swim,” she told him, but she didn’t pull her hand from his. She didn’t slow her stride. She didn’t immediately launch herself into action—she just said it.

Almost as if you’ll do anything the man asks you to do, a little voice inside her observed. But she pushed that aside, because there was a kind of fluttery sensation deep inside her and she didn’t know how to name it. She didn’t want to name it.

“You don’t have to swim,” Malak told her, his dark eyes glittering as if he knew. As if he knew everything that moved inside her, heat and disquiet and fluttering alike. “You need only float.”

“I don’t float.”

Malak eyed her, standing there in all that desert sunlight, bright and clean and so unlike the thick Louisiana air she knew. He studied her face as if she was wearing some kind of mask when the funny thing was, she had never felt more exposed or raw.

“You come from a city that is below sea level. Of course you can float.”

“I wouldn’t know. Who had time for swimming lessons?” Shona laughed a little at that. Because the very notion was absurd. One of her foster parents setting aside time—and even more unlikely, money—to take Shona to unnecessary lessons? Impossible. The subject had never come up.

“Then this will be another first, little one,” Malak told her. “We can only hope it will be even half as delightful—and instructive.”

Shona felt hot at that, and she couldn’t pretend it was the Khalian sun. Then she felt hotter still when Malak let go of her hand so he could strip himself of the loose, flowing white trousers which were all he had on—and which did nothing at all to direct attention away from the lean power of his sculpted body.

And the reality of what they were doing hit her, then. Standing outside, absolutely stark naked, together. In the brightness of the Khalian morning, where anyone could see them.

If anyone could see onto the king’s private balcony, that was, which Shona doubted. But still.

Shona knew she should have been horrified. Embarrassed, at the very least. Her experiences of being naked or close to it around other people were limited to that hotel room with Malak all those years ago, the night she’d given birth to Miles and now.

She should have wanted to run and hide.

Especially since the man wanted her to get into a pool, of all things.

But she didn’t run. She didn’t even try to conceal herself. She watched as Malak climbed over the lip of the pool and then sank into the sparkling turquoise water until he was submerged up to his waist. He lifted up his hands and she took them, then let him help her down into the water’s embrace.

He had taught her how to catch fire. How to lose herself in the slick, sweet beauty of one body deep inside another. He had taught her lust and longing, need and release.

All that and the fluttering that made her feel like a winged thing, bright and feathery, as if at any moment she might take flight.

But this bright morning, when she’d woken up alone only to find that she wasn’t, after all, Malak taught her something else. He led her down into the water with him and held her in his strong grip, and he taught her how to float.

How to let the water hold her aloft, so that she really did feel like she was flying.

And he taught her something else, there where there was nothing but blue water below and blue sky above, and him in the center of it all, stern and sweet and his dark green gaze on her as if there had never been anything in all the world but the two of them together, just like this.

He taught her that the other shoe she’d feared would fall was far more dangerous than any she could have imagined, before, when the only thing she had feared was the possibility of his reappearance.