Page 40 of Under the Arabian Sky

Whatever it was, I felt something that day.

I felt a connection.

I felt my energy become one with the earth.

I felt a pulse surging through me, a heat that rose up into the palm of my right hand and passed through my entire body before exiting back into the earth through my left hand.

At that moment, I felt what I can only describe as a sense of purification.

“Open your eyes,” I heard Tariq whisper.

When I did so, I saw on the peak of the dune opposite us, the most exquisite-looking creature I’d ever seen before standing on the sand, calmly watching us. It was a four-legged animal, not unlike a zebra but without the stripes. It had white skin with black markings on its legs and snout, and from its forehead rose two long elegant horns that pointed to the cloudless sky.

“Am I seeing things?” I whispered. “What is that?”

“An Arabian oryx,” Tariq replied in an equally hushed tone. “She is the queen of our desert, a native creature in a landscape where only the clever and the brave survive.”

Whether or not the oryx knew we were there, I couldn’t be certain. But if she did spot us, she did not appear threatened. Instead, she stood for a moment, surveying her surroundings, before disappearing down the other side of the dune.

As she vanished, Tariq stood then reached down to give me a helping hand up. He pulled me up with so much strength that my feet slid in the slippery, shifting sand and I tumbled into him.

He caught me in his arms.

I stopped and held my breath.

Our faces were closer than they had ever been, our lips mere centimetres apart.

He looked me in the eye and began to ask, “May I…?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“You don’t know what I was about to say.”

“Yes, I do. You were going to ask if you can kiss me,” I said boldly. “And yes, you may.”

Tariq sighed with relief and smiled. “There’s just one thing.” He paused a moment. “Arthur, I want you… but I need to know. Is Andrew your lover back home? If he is, please tell me. It’s enough for me to defy my religion, I don’t want to feel humiliated as well.”

A certain sadness stirred inside me along with my sense of longing. “I would never want you to feel humiliated. Andrew was my lover. I thought we’d be together forever. But he died. For a long time, I thought I couldn’t live without him… but I suppose I’m learning. I suppose time and distance heals all wounds.”

Tariq let me finish speaking, then gently he planted his lips on mine.

He kissed me with so much longing and desire, I’d almost forgotten what real passion was.

He took my face in his hands, like a chalice to drink from, my neck the stem and my lips the brim of the cup. He lapped up my yearning. He pushed his tongue into my mouth, and I welcomed it, letting it probe me, taste me, want more of me.

He pushed himself onto his knees and removed his agal and ghutra. He hitched up his kandura, enough to raise his arms and lift the garment over his head. There he knelt before me, wearing nothing but his boots and underskirt. His chest heaved with the hot air, drawing it in and pushing it out as though every breath might be his last. Beneath his ezar his bulge was growing more prominent by the moment.

I wanted to take that bulge in my fist.

I wanted to take it in my mouth and drench the hot silky skin of his cock.

But before I could seize his crotch, he pulled me up onto my knees. He took the camera from around my neck, then pulled off my agal and ghutra and began lifting my kandura over my head.

He tossed my gown aside too, and soon we were kneeling there on the golden sand, facing each other in our underskirts and boots.

But not for long.

He stood, and taking my hand in his he lifted me to my feet.

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