“For God’s sake, why would I leave you, now that I have you?”
“You almost did!”
“Never.” He rubbed his stubble along her shoulder. It was terrible. Terrible, what it was doing to her, what she was allowing him to do. There was no reason for it this time, no excuse. Her breathing deepened. Stop, said a weak, unconvincing voice inside her head. Don’t stop.
“A piece of important advice.” Gabriel stood up suddenly, offering his hand. “Never sit arse-naked in the sand. You’ll regret it for days.” His fingers tightened around hers as he pulled her to her feet. The way he threw her about was dizzying. Self-conscious, she needed to be near him, to wear him almost, like a piece of clothing, so she moved against him, felt his chest on her breast and his arm around her back. Gabriel had never looked so tame, so loving. “Walk,” he said, pushing her gently away from his safe skin. “Enjoy the Garden of Eden.”
“This? Paradise?”
He nodded. “The day after the apple, God turned Eden into desert.”
“And they had to find their way out.”
“Without GPS.”
It was strange, wonderful, to walk naked along the ridge of a dune, kicking her feet, while the sun, still kind, was rising on her skin, warming her, head to toes, back to front. Her hair was full of sand. Her ears, too. Where did she end and the desert begin?
When she turned around, Gabriel was doing the salute to the sun on a shelf of level ground. All thoughts of flight, of hurrying back to civilization, seemed silly now. Civilization meant accountability. Their affair would be short. Flash in the pan. Dash in the sands. Being there was like being nowhere, and what took place nowhere could not have taken place. To secure escape, she had seduced him; to experience escape, she wanted to do so again. In the pale yellow light, she laid out his shirt and sat on it, to be there when he was done, and watched him extend his limbs in yogic poses on the toasted earth.
It brought on another wave of pity, a pull on her heart. Too close to him now, she had become part of the oddity that was Gabriel. Why else would she pity him, or admire his peculiarity, the way he lived and functioned like any man, yet existed in a realm of his own making? He had no other option. After dismantling his brother, there wasn’t much to be done except take cover. And what a job it must be, she thought, waking up every day knowing that while he swanned about in the wadis, Max struggled to get out of bed.
Thea wondered what would become of him when she was gone. Fate might have been kinder by leaving Gabriel in the comfort of his fantasy that Prudence would one day return.
The invitation was quickly read. The salute completed, Gabriel scrambled over and without any fuss—since the seduction was already done—fell back on her and pressed in, there on the flank of the dune, while she opened her eyes at the sky.
“You see how patience pays off,” he said, his lips against her ear.
She lifted her knees around his back. No one would ever know.
“Can you feel us?” he whispered, touching her.
Not one—other—person—would know.
“Both of us.” Gabriel said. “In you.”
“What?”
“Her and me, Prudence. You and her. We’re all together now.”
Thea yelped, wriggled, pulled away. “Get off!”
“Ow! Fuck!”
“What did you say?”
“‘Fuck.’”
Thea stared, panting. There again. Gone again.
“What’s got into you?” he gasped, grasping his groin.
She scurried down the dune, like a crab scuttling, her hands and feet beneath her, until she reached the level and ran to the tent, where she rummaged through their clothes. Her phone was in her pocket. Pulling on her own shirt, she collided with Gabriel as she crawled out again, but pushed past him and headed for another dune and ran up it, the sand pulling her, sucking her backward, impeding her, as if someone were gripping her ankles. Gabriel was pulling on his jeans outside the tent.
Her phone, lifted to the heavens, found no signal. “Shit!”
She turned another way, but Gabriel took the phone from her hand, saying, “You’re out of range.”
“Jesus Christ!” He was dressed already. There already.
“Next time you get a fit of guilt, try not to castrate me, would you? What the hell’s come over you?”
“You tell me some jinn lover of yours is in me, and you wonder what’s wrong?”
“I never said that. I didn’t say anything!”
Doubts harassed her. Vacillating so fluidly between fear and desire, she no longer knew if he had spoken at all. “You were down by the tent. Just now, you were down there. How did you get up here?”
“Are you all right?” he asked. “You’re babbling.”
“Me? Babbling?” She heard hysteria in her voice. “I want to leave now.”
“Fine.”
There was movement down by the tent. Sand spiralling up. Dust devil. Thea grabbed her phone from him. “The only reason I had sex with you was because you were going to drive off.”
“I told you. I will never leave you. And you can’t leave me either.”
Given their situation, there was a truth in those words that drained her. The sun’s early kindness was over. Its warmth had become its heat, and its heat was becoming its deadliness. The aim it took. Like phone signals, clicking onto coordinates. A shard of fire on her scalp. She had yet to drink. She must drink. When did she last drink? “I have to get back to Muscat.”
“We’ll go to the cave first. I want you to see Majlis al-Jinn.”
“No!” That earthly howl echoed plaintively. “No way. The only place I’m going is Muscat! I have a flight to catch.”
Gabriel smiled, walking backward. “I’ll pack up.”
And he did. The scene was so ordinary—a man collapsing a tent, opening the back doors of his 4x4—but the ordinary wouldn’t hold. It kept shifting, moving, leaving Thea adrift. She had to phone Abid. Get him to come. Hoping
