She also had an overwhelming compulsion to go towards this complete stranger as she was. Naked.
She took another step forward. The water broke just over her breasts. Another step. Now her breasts were bared to the man’s dark gaze. She could see him more clearly now. His eyes were dark. His jaw defined. Tight. His gaze dropped. Her nipples were already tight and hard from the water. They tingled.
She kept moving forward and the water lapped at her belly, then her hips, the tops of her legs and thighs. Between her legs, where the centre of her body pulsed with heat.
In some corner of her brain she was aghast at herself for behaving with such wanton confidence. She wasn’t this person who would allow a stranger to see her naked body. But here, in this place—this place that had been a sacred refuge to her for her whole life—she felt removed from reality. Removed from the confines of normal behaviour.
And this man was more than just a random stranger. She’d sensed it the minute she’d laid eyes on him. He held himself with the arrogance and confidence of a born leader. Entitled. Proud.
She stepped into the shallows and reached for the robe he held out. She pulled it on over her head, aware of that dark gaze watching as the fine material settled over her body, the bottom wet from the water.
The heat from his body lingered on the robe and made her skin prickle even more. Her breasts felt heavy. Tight.
‘Thank you.’ She sounded breathless.
‘You’re welcome.’
Strangely, even though she was covered again from neck to toe, she didn’t feel any more protected from that penetrating gaze. Up close, she realised he was even more magnificent. A virile man in his prime. Tall. Broad. With dark olive skin that gleamed under the rising moon, stretched taut over hard muscles.
He held out a hand and Liyah looked at it for a long moment. The air was heavy around her. Heavy with a tension that had nothing to do with conflict or conversation. It was a tension that came from the crackling energy between them. A tension that came from this whole improbable situation.
In all her years of coming here she’d never met anyone else. Ever. But tonight, on the eve of her wedding to a man sight unseen, here was this compelling stranger. She wasn’t usually prone to superstition, but it felt somehow...fated.
Tomorrow her life would change for ever, but tomorrow wasn’t here yet... There was a whole night between now and then. A whole night of tantalising freedom left. The last piece of freedom she would have for some time.
Before she could think about it she put her hand into his. It was big. Slightly callused. Something about that evidence of hard work thrilled her. His fingers closed around hers and he tugged her out of the shallows and onto the sand.
Sharif had wondered if he was hallucinating. If he’d conjured up the goddess who had disappeared into the black depths of the oasis pool. But then she’d emerged, like Aphrodite, dark olive skin glistening like satin as the water sluiced over her body.
She was no marble statue, cold and rigid and pale. She was all woman. Flesh and bone. Limbs long and sleek.
And the hand in his now felt real enough.
Instinctively his thumb felt for her pulse and it throbbed at her wrist, echoing the throb in his blood.
‘You are real...’ he said, almost to himself.
Even though she was covered again, her naked image was imprinted on his brain. For ever, he suspected. He had watched her disrobe, too transfixed to say a word. Her body was carved from an erotic fantasy he hadn’t even realised he’d had—strong and supple, athletic, but with curves that pronounced her a fertile woman in her prime.
Wide hips, small waist, long legs, lush bottom. And her breasts... Bigger than he would have guessed. Firm. Perfectly formed, with dark nipples that made his mouth water.
Dark tight curls at the juncture of her legs—he wanted to spread her there, see if she glistened...
‘I am real.’
Her voice, husky, cut through the fever in Sharif’s head. His hand tightened around hers and he tugged her towards him. He caught her scent—roses and earth and sand and heat.
The other thing that slammed into his awareness now, up close, was the fact that she was stunningly beautiful—and tall. The top of her head would graze his jaw. Dark eyebrows framed huge almond-shaped eyes. He couldn’t make out their colour in the light, but they weren’t as dark as his. Straight nose. High cheekbones. That dark olive complexion.
His fingers itched to reach out and touch her, explore to see if her skin felt as satiny as it looked.
But her mouth...
His avid gaze stopped there. Her mouth was beyond provocative. A lush invitation to taste and explore. To crush under his as he enticed her to give up all her secrets.
Sharif felt dizzy. He had met and slept with some of the world’s most beautiful women and not one had ever affected him like this. On a visceral, primal level. He knew that if he didn’t have this woman—
He couldn’t even finish that thought. He would have her. He had to.
Her thick, wild hair was wet, but he could see that it was already showing a tendency to curl again.
‘Where did you come from?’
A man not remotely prone to superstitions or fantasies, Sharif felt for the first time in his life as if the world around him wasn’t entirely...concrete.
‘I could ask the same of you.’
The fact that she sounded equally at a loss to explain this set of events was little comfort.
‘Does it matter?’
Sharif knew as soon as he asked it that it was a rhetorical question. They were here now. That was
