She slept. He studied her, all the nuances her features, her expressions, her every breath in sleep revealed, reveling in the unprecedented experience, the unknown intimacy, and was almost sorry when she stirred. Then she wobbled up, her now-dry hair raining over his chest, and gave him a smile that made him feel he could indeed fly under his own power.

“The first moment I saw you…” Her voice was different, awareness-laden, smug. “It was like I turned into a living tuning fork, and your vibe was the frequency that set me off. But no fantasy could have done what you just did to me, what you gave me, justice.”

“You gave me as much, and more.” Joy burst in her eyes, rained in kisses over him. When the homage reached his heart, it almost rammed out of his ribs for a direct kiss. “But we needed to go through all that we did, to achieve this pinnacle.”

She murmured in agreement, undulating in a sinuous dance.

“Shehab, take me again, don’t make me wait.”

“You’re sore. You can’t take me again.”

“I can. I want to feel your weight on me, feel you inside me, dominating me, until I’m finished, complete.”

In answer to her pleas, Shehab sprang out of bed, gave her a bedeviling smile as he scooped her up and carried her to the shower. “All mind-blowing pleasure comes to she who waits.”

Eight

“I’ve never heard of strip chess.”

At her breathless comment, Shehab lifted a face ablaze with the flames of the fire he was stoking, the majestic sunset and the passion perpetually brewing between them.

They’d dived again today, had had another session in his hammam, prepared a meal together, then he’d seen to some business, as he’d been doing for the past three weeks.

Since that day he’d made her his, he’d almost never left her side, had concluded his business on site. She’d been ecstatic yet worried he was succumbing to their magic and neglecting his work. He’d assured her the worst of the crisis was over, that he was now smoothing edges. If he had to leave, he would, but he would take her with him this time. He couldn’t be apart from her now. And he never was, never left her side during days and nights spent in the escalating delight of exploring each other.

He’d taught her to fly, in every way as he’d promised, freely admitting that she’d taught him, in turn, how to truly experience and revel in the flight. He said she’d done the same in everything else, made him feel with new senses. And they’d shared everything, from listening to music, to discussing books, movies, world state and business affairs, to preparing meals and tasting food, to sharing jokes and games and silence, to experiencing every nuance of this place, from its skies to its underwater world, from dawn to dawn.

He straightened from the fire, looking straight out of impossible female fantasies, in another of those sumptuous traditional garbs he’d promised he’d wear for her to have the pleasure of seeing him in it, and the far more intense delight of getting him out of it.

This one was more intricate, in gold-embroidered grays and blacks, the open abaya billowing around him in the gentle wind like the swirls of a magic spell.

He approached her as she sat under the small shade tent they’d put up, facing the fire. The huge bespoke tent he’d had erected for them earlier was at his back by the lapping waves. His movements echoed the tranquility all around them, deepening his impact, and that of the evocative surroundings.

He came to stand over her, brushed his hand down her cheek. “It does exist, I assure you. You’ve just led a sheltered life.”

She loved his teasing, its wit and gentleness of intention. He was always true to his early words, laughing with her and never at her. And loving it when she reciprocated.

She shivered as he came down on his haunches before her. The weather was hot and dry, would become balmy at twilight, cooling gradually as the night deepened, until he’d have her wrapped in the warmth of cashmere and the velvet of his heat. Right now her shudders were emotion-induced. How she loved him.

She reached an unsteady hand to the ebony locks that had escaped the darkness of his headdress, and teased back. “While you’ve sampled all life has to offer?”

To her alarm his eyes became serious. “Is this what you think? That I led an indiscriminate existence?”

“No. I just meant that you-you’ve…”

Gentleness reentered his gaze. “It’s not unreasonable to think someone with my wealth and power might not have known where to draw the line, might have sought escalating experiments and risks to stimulate his glutted senses. But I assure you, I have no excessive or perverted tendencies, was never idle to get into mischief, and I am extremely fastidious and wary. But not sampling them doesn’t mean I don’t know all about stripping games. I never saw the appeal, but now, when the game is between us, when it’s you…” his gaze dragged down her body, totally obscured in the filmy layers of her own elaborate green-and-gold outfit “…I believe stripping is one of life’s most worthwhile activities.” He rose, sweeping her up in his arms in one fluid movement, and headed to the bigger tent.

“So this is why you had us dress up in those elaborate costumes? Many layers to take off.”

He gave her a scorching smile as he pushed aside the tent flap. And she felt as if a genie might materialize at any moment. Not that he’d know what to offer her. She couldn’t wish for more than this. This man, these feelings, this moment.

As for this place, it was enormous, enough to hold a banquet for hundreds, with the tented canvas ceiling undulating from wooden poles, the central one soaring at least fifteen feet, the periphery no less than nine. The ground was leveled and completely covered in a breathtaking array of hand-woven Persian carpets. Everything else, the low couches, the strewn pillows, the tables and urns and lanterns and incense burners, all in a mixture of vibrant colors and burnished brass and copper, was a stunning fusion of many ethnic influences. She could decipher Bedouin, Indian, Ottoman and Moroccan among the blend. And she’d bet that below the authentic decorations lurked all the luxury of ultra-modern amenities.

And in the middle of it all was a twenty-by-twenty-foot chessboard, with pieces made of solid teak and ebony, the tallest, the kings, about four feet tall.

Shehab came to stand in the middle of the chessboard below a hanging brass lantern with Arabian-windows-style glass, its light weaving among the fumes of the sweet-spicy incense, playing over his face. He gave her a playful squeeze. “How about we let the game begin?”

Her head bobbed in a swooning nod on his muscled shoulder.

He set her down on her feet, not giving any sign he’d move away any time soon.

“Your move.”

She shivered again at the passion in his voice, moved away reluctantly. She weaved among the pieces, gliding her hands over them, marveling at the perfect smoothness of their polished surfaces, her mind bounding ahead to images of Shehab stripping.

She’d better get her act together, play a killer game.

She moved her pawn forward. He moved his. In five more moves she’d taken his first rook, and looked up at him expectantly.

“Off with your ghotrah.”

“You have this wrong. The rules are like this. I lose a piece, you strip a piece off of me. You can be as creative, as leisurely as you like in how you do it. And I must stand there and bear it in silence, keeping my hands and every other part of me to myself. Same goes for you, of course. The one who ends up winning has the other at their total disposal for a week.”

She rushed to him, her hands stinging with anticipation. “I love the rules of strip chess.”

“Actually, those are my rules.” He let her reach up and free him of his headdress, groaned and stiffened as she dug her fingers in the luxury of his hair. She urged his head lower so she’d have her fill of massaging his scalp, combing through his hair, twisting locks between her fingers before she finally tugged on them, brought his lips to hers, her tongue gliding over their painstaking chiseling, breaching their seal and dipping into the fount of his taste. He was soon breathing hard, groaning continuously, the hardness she kept pressing against turned to the consistency of rock, his whole body buzzing and quivering with the tension of holding back.

He finally wrenched his inert lips away, staggered back, his heavy-lidded eyes fuming with pent-up frustration. “That everything-off-you stipulation is the most foolish one I’ve ever made. I almost blew an artery.” He shook his head, straightened, moved his bishop and took her knight. “Now I get to pay you back.”

She stood riveted, clamoring for whatever he chose to do to her. He dragged her to the ground, went down beside her, took off her sandals, made her discover the one thousand erogenous zones connecting her feet’s every bone and inch. When she was whimpering and clawing at him, he withdrew, looked on her condition in satisfaction. “It’s a great game, after all.”

The game progressed with each getting more creative, inflicting more sensual torment on the other until she was in her lace panties and he in the drawstring pants he had nothing beneath. Then Shehab moved his black queen.

He came behind her, took her with an arm beneath her screaming-for-mercy breasts, murmured in her ear, “Shah matt.”

“Wha…?”

“Those are the Persian words, what became checkmate. Shah, or king, mat, or died. You’re mine now, to do with as I please.”

Her knees buckled at the sheer depth and darkness of his voice, his passion. “I’m yours anyway, in case you haven’t noticed.” She ground back into him, felt him hot and hard and huge, throbbing into her back. “But you’re wrong.”