The Desert Princes. Jackie Braun
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Lilac competed with tangerine clouds, and there were aqua smudges and lacy hairs of light along the horizon. It was a distraction, but not enough of one to keep her gaze from feasting on Raffa’s naked form, currently entangled with her own.
‘I think you’ll find it’s necessary to take one or two breaks,’ he observed, winding a curl of her hair around his finger to draw her close.
‘Well, I think that’s absolutely outrageous,’ Casey whispered against his lips. ‘And quite unnecessary.’
‘Do I take it you want more?’ Raffa said this approvingly, drawing her on top of him as he spoke. ‘Surely you don’t want to miss the sunrise in the desert? It’s the reason I brought you here…’
‘Then you’ll have to bring me here again…’
Making love with Raffa was the ultimate joy, the ultimate freedom.
Or the biggest self deluding screw-up yet?
No, Casey argued with her inner voice. She wouldn’t let self-doubt spoil this moment. Raffa might be a king and married to his kingdom, but she’d take this for what it was and then walk away.
Oh, really…?
Clinging to him, she kissed him passionately, but the feeling that this was a dream, and the fantasy she indulged in back home was the only reality, refused to go away.
‘SO…IS your palace far from here?’ Casey asked Raffa, remembering she had thought that was the point of this expedition.
‘My palace?’ Loose-limbed and sexier than ever in the aftermath of sex, he rolled onto his back to stare into the brightening sky. ‘This is my palace…’
‘This…?’ Joining him, Casey exclaimed softly when she saw what he was looking at. A pair of eagles was swooping and wheeling in what appeared to be an intricate courtship dance.
‘Can you think of anything more beautiful?’ Raffa murmured.
No, she couldn’t Casey thought, watching the great birds swerve and dive.
Raffa sat up, completely unconcerned that he was naked. ‘Shall we go for a swim?’
‘Has the water warmed up yet?’
Wrapping a rug around her shoulders to keep her warm, he cupped her chin and dipped his head to drop a kiss on her lips.
Her eyes were closed, and she was suspended in that moment longer than he was, Casey realised, opening her eyes to find Raffa already slipping his robe over his head. Reaching for her clothes, she started to put them on. A sense of inevitability had gripped her, as if this marked the beginning of the end. She shook it off determinedly as Raffa turned to speak to her.
‘Come as you are,’ he said; ‘that’s all you need.’
As he reached for her hand, she took hold of it with confidence. He hoisted her to her feet and then paused by the cliff edge, staring out across the vast plain.
‘Are you expecting someone?’ she teased him. There wasn’t a sign of human trespass other than theirs.
‘The wilderness grounds me,’ he said. ‘It reminds me who I am and where I’ve come from.’
And where he must go back to? Casey wondered with a shiver of dread. ‘Will you tell me about your parents?’ she said, clinging on to what felt like their rapidly disappearing time together.
For a moment she thought she had gone too far, but then with a shrug Raffa lifted his powerful shoulder. ‘What I can remember of them,’ he said.
‘If you don’t want to—’
‘No, I do…’ He came away from the edge and stood in the shadow of the mountain. ‘They were killed in a coup many years ago. I was just a baby at the time. My mother could have left the country and fled to safety with me. Instead she sent me to England with a relative, while she stayed on in A’Qaban with my father.’
‘What a beautiful love story—and how tragic.’
‘Yes, it was both of those things.’
As Raffa spoke, his voice so cool and distant, Casey’s heart went out to him. ‘They certainly gave you something to live up to.’
‘Something to live for…’ He spoke firmly, and there was a message in his words that made her fears that their time together was limited all the more real.
She reached for his hand. At first he was unresponsive, but then slowly his fingers relaxed and laced with hers. He’d made her think about the close-knit family she had left behind in England. She couldn’t bear to think that all the good the desert had done Raffa had been undone because of her.
‘I had a very lucky upbringing, and I didn’t mean to pry—’
‘Yes, you did.’ The tug of the old humour on his lips was more than she could have hoped for. ‘That’s not unreasonable,’ he went on. ‘In your place I would have done exactly the same.’
‘And now?’ Lifting her hands, she let them drop to her sides, wondering why she had to blurt out everything in her head.
‘Stop worrying,’ Raffa said, reading her as easily as he always had. ‘Now we swim.’
‘Okay…’ She made a pretence of smiling. This was as good as it seemed. She was having the adventure of a lifetime, and maybe it was the start of something even more than that…
Why shouldn’t it be? Casey demanded, when smutty little doubt demons came to haunt her.
‘What’s this?’ Casey ran excitedly from tree to tree when they reached the rock pool. She reached up to free a plump ripe peach from a palm tree. ‘Did you do this?’
Raffa held out his arms and smiled. ‘That’s the trouble with you city girls.’ He caught her to him when she returned with her prize. ‘You’ve got no imagination. No,’ he insisted when she brought the ripe fruit to her lips, ‘you can’t eat it before you’ve paid for it.’
‘And how am I going to do that with no money to hand? You’re impossible,’ she exclaimed, seeing his expression.
She was happier than she had ever been, Casey realised as Raffa kissed her, and when he released her she realised she was still staring at him like a lovesick fool. She quickly turned her attention to the peach, to distract both of them.
‘Mmm, this is delicious,’ she said, juice running down her chin.
‘Let me help you,’ Raffa suggested. Holding her, he sucked the peach juice from her lips.
‘Aren’t you going to have one of your own?’ She was in no hurry to let him go, and could have stared at him for ever, but there were peaches hanging from every tree. ‘I must have been sleeping when you did this.’
‘You ask too many questions.’ Raffa stared her in the eyes. ‘Why can’t you just enjoy?’
‘We’re never going to make it into the water.’
‘Who says we won’t?’ Raffa turned from teasing the sensitive hollow just below her chin to throwing off his robe in seconds. Standing in front of her like Hercules, he challenged, ‘I’ll race you.’
‘You have an unfair advantage.’
He took unfair advantage of it too, diving in seconds before she arrived. He was already swimming strongly when she joined him, exclaiming in shock at the cooler water on her overheated skin. ‘You said it would be warm.’ She turned around, but he was nowhere to be seen.
‘It is warm,’ Raffa said, making her shriek as he surfaced.
‘You frightened me.’
‘Then