Page 72 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

She saw her own shadow on the wall, and then looked up and saw she was there on the ceiling too, her hand outstretched for the glass.

Her fingers were far longer than they were in real life...even the curls at the ends of her hair were magnified and somehow enhanced. Her eyes were heavy with sleep, and she thought she could even see her eyelashes flutter...

It was hypnotic...lying there, watching herself...

Her shadow self.

Or was it the real her?

Violet didn’t know. And even though she got back to her book her shadow was still there, and apparently braver than she...more accepting of the low throb of desire in her stomach... The woman who danced across the walls as she lifted her leg and looked at her toes didn’t mind where she was, or the circumstances that had brought her here.

Goodness, those poems made her bold—or was it something about the desert that lured her other side out? Was it simply that the man who had brought her here made her feel she could be whoever she really was?

Whoever she wanted to be?

Violet climbed out of the low bed and stood still. Oh, she was notthatbold. She wasn’t about to follow her shadow where it tempted her to go. No, she would not be slipping into Sahir’s bed. Nor was she about to perform for him...

In the scheme of things, it could be considered tame. All she did was stand and lift the heavy jug by her bed, fill her goblet with water.

She did not glance up to check her shadow, nor did she intend to taunt.

Perhaps a little.

She took out the combs from her hair. Really, she only did what she might do at home...

It just felt very different here.

Sahir lay there.

He did not politely avert his gaze from her erect nipples...

He enjoyed the slow shake of her head as she loosened her hair and then climbed slowly into bed...

He knew that was for him.

Of course Violet would have worked it out.

And now she was taunting him for being the first to say goodnight.

When possibly she should be grateful that he wouldn’t make her his lover tonight.

She could never be Queen.

A lover, a confidant—whatever the way it was described—that was all she could ever be for him.

Sahir knew one thing, and it kept him from turning on the lamp, beckoning her to his bed.

She deserved more.

CHAPTER NINE

VIOLETWOKETOno shadows.

She lay there, staring and still a little more bold, more curious... And, no, she would not hide, or sulk, or even justify why she’d climbed out of bed last night as she heard him pass.

‘Sahir...?’

He was just on his way out when she appeared, holding the curtain over her scant nightwear.

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