A torrent exploded on the other end. She made the face of someone being forced to listen to a thousand nails scratching on a board. At last she interrupted. “I did give you every reason to believe I’m some sort of an android, but look up my contract and you’ll find out I do belong to the race with those pesky little side benefits called human rights. And of course there is the job description, which we both know I’ve gone far and above beyond.” She fell silent again, but Bill had been duly chastised and spoke now at a volume that didn’t carry beyond the phone’s receiver. “Yeah, it is overdue. Uh, I don’t know how long it’ll be…” She again looked at him. He shook his head, catching his lower lip on the sensuality of open-ended promise. It would be as long as it took to make her an Aal Masood bride. She smiled back, hunger glowing in her eyes before Bill drew her back to their conversation. She smiled again, affectionately this time. “And you take care of yourself.” She lowered her voice and averted her face, smiling as she murmured, “I’ll miss you, too.”

Shehab felt as if a stinging slap had landed on his cheek.

And every preconceived opinion of her crashed back on him, blasting away her spell, jogging him back to ugly reality.

Here she was, the woman who’d treated him to such a kaleidoscope of emotions for the past ten hours, sitting before him, her future lover, talking to her current one, lying to him, to them both, without batting a lid.

She slid shut her phone and looked at him, elation sizzling in her eyes, looking like a little girl who’d just done something naughty for the first time in her life.

He struggled to empty his gaze of aggression, to access the desire that was independent of his opinion of her. He felt it only becoming fiercer without the shackles of softness, the brakes of empathy, until he struggled not to rise and pounce on her. He had no idea how he only smiled, opened his arms wide.

She rose and rushed to throw herself into them, all fairy-tale gown, overpowering femininity and undetectable pretense. But one thing she wasn’t pretending about.

She couldn’t wait for him.

He’d make her wait. And when the time was right, he’d end the waiting. He’d sate himself with her. Then, when she’d served her purpose, even as they continued their sham of a marriage, he’d discard her. And he wouldn’t feel bad about it.

She deserved whatever he did to her.

Shehab was doing things to Farah she hadn’t known there were to be done.

All through their flight, he’d proved to her there was no ceiling to the sensations he could make her experience.

He was now examining her hand as they talked. Shaping each finger with his fingertips, sliding up and down their length, following the outline of each bone and joint, mapping the pattern of each crease and line, testing the resilience of each pad of flesh. She lay back, enveloped in his sister’s cool, white cotton sundress, drenched in the cold sweat of stimulation, tormented, hypersensitive and praying that he’d never stop exposing her to his attention and appreciation.

Suddenly she interrupted his account about the neighboring Damhoor. “I had no idea hands could be erogenous zones…”

She started to bite her lip, stopped, sighed. They’d been talking almost nonstop for the past twenty hours, all but for the half hour she’d left to change and shower, followed by two separate half hours when he’d left her to do the same and then take care of other details. He was beyond certain by now that she had no filtering system in her brain to stop inappropriate comments from gushing through uncensored-and he kept assuring her he loved it.

His smile knocked her breath from her. Ever since she’d accepted his invitation to go home with him, she’d sensed some change in him. A new intensity. As if he’d been holding back and had let go. It had worried her. For about a nanosecond.

She trusted him, wanted him to feel as intensely about her as she did about him. And his intensity had so many levels and textures, it felt like a deep ocean she could plunge into forever, exploring and experiencing, and never come close to fathoming.

“And I had no idea just holding your hands could awaken new erogenous areas, in both my body and brain.” Her heat shot up another notch at his confession. She was already addicted to how open he was about his feelings, too. He took her hand to his lips, flicked his tongue lightly along her lifeline. She hoped he wasn’t shortening said life’s expectancy. He had her squirming before he withdrew. “And by the way, we’ve arrived.”

She twisted around to peer out the window. They were descending, approaching his island. It was shaped like an irregular kidney, with its concave side harboring bright emerald waters, its outer curve surrounded by much darker ones. In the noon sun its wraparound beaches shone almost silver, pristine except where mangroves covered them in areas on the convex side. The jet was now flying over one apex of the island, just above a low, huge building that overlooked a bay. Dense palm trees and what looked like all sorts of desert flora surrounded it on three sides. The jet was flying over other annexed structures heading to the other end of the island when it hit her.

She turned to him, exclaimed, “It’s a real island.”

His smile grew wicked. “That was the general idea when I said it was. You know, land surrounded on all sides by water.”

She gave him a playful poke. “So I’m geographically challenged, but not to that extent. I thought it would be one of those tiny morsels of land advertised on the Internet as private islands. But this is just…just wow. How big is it?”

She had no idea why, but her eyes dragged down his body until they stumbled on the bulge in his pants. She snatched them up only to find his gaze had been investigating the path of her fascination before it came up, steamy, challenging.

“How big do you think it is?”

“Big.” And there was no doubt what her croaked adjective was referring to, not when her blush must be suffusing the air around her with a reddish glow.

He decided to take pity on her, to pretend they weren’t talking about his endowments. “It’s around 150 square miles.”

“That’s more than the combined size of the Maldives!”

“So you’re not that geographically challenged after all.”

“I only know that because Bill has recently expanded his shipping interests to those islands.”

His face remained smiling, but it now felt like the frozen, eerie smile she got when she hit Pause on a video. And again unease slithered down her spine.

This had happened every time she’d mentioned Bill. Could he have heard that Bill had a younger mistress, and either realized or suspected it was her? She’d just die if he had.

But he wasn’t one to let something like that go unverified. And she was certain he wouldn’t come near another man’s woman, mistress or whatever.

No. He couldn’t know. Thank God. And she would rather skydive without a parachute than explain how this charade-which she intended to end as soon as she saw Bill again-had started.

So what did the stillness that came over him when she mentioned Bill mean? Was the businessman in him shoving aside the passionate man every time anything or anyone connected with business was mentioned?

Whatever it was, she shouldn’t try to analyze it. She now recognized that any apprehension she felt originated within her, was triggered by her inability to believe her luck.

She still couldn’t hold his gaze, turned away to watch the ground zooming closer. And suddenly realized what else was wrong with this picture. She hadn’t thought…“…we’d be landing here!”

His eyebrows rose. “Care to explain that outburst to a poor man whose first language isn’t English?”

She groaned. “You’d have to speak Farahish to get it. That’s a language half-spoken mentally, with the out-loud half coming out as seemingly out-of-the-blue incoherencies.”

His eyes crinkled as he smoothed her cheek with the back of his hand. “I can’t tell you how eager I am to be fluent in Farahish. But I think I’m getting the hang of the basics. You didn’t think we’d actually land on the island, did you?”

“You understood! Wow. People always think it’s a sign of loose brain components, and it only gets worse when I explain.”

He frowned. “It’s pointless to try to explain anything to those whose minds were poured in casts. But I’m almost grateful to the rigid wretches. They make you appreciate me even more.”

“If I appreciated you more than that I’d be in deep d…” She gulped, then stammered, “Uh…anyway-I did have a mental image of a tiny island and assumed we’d land in a neighboring kingdom and head here by a smaller jet, maybe a helicopter or yacht.”

They touched down as she spoke, a perfect, imperceptible landing. She was so impressed she broke out clapping.

He laughed. “The pilots can’t hear you as they would on a commercial flight, but I’ll make sure to relay your approval.”

Godly and gracious. She beamed at him. “Oh, please do.”

He rose to his feet, smiled down on her. “Shall we?”

She jumped up and groaned as everything inside her did, too. His arm came around her, his touch and gaze concerned.

“My joints need oiling after sitting down for so long.”

He pinched her cheek softly. “Next time, take my advice. If you’d at least lain down in one of the bedrooms, you wouldn’t be aching all over now. But have no fear. All joints will get well oiled around here. You won’t sit down much while I’m around.”

He let that marinate in her mind with a hundred mental spices as he walked her down through the jet to the air-stairs.

The moment the stairs touched down, hot, dry air rushed in to greet them, making her gasp. He secured her to him as they descended to the tarmac. She smiled up her thankfulness-and gasped again.