Page 83 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

She inhaled sharply, bit her bottom lip, and then she just stared back as he took her slowly, precisely...

She felt just the slightest feather touch of him against her sore vulva, over and over as he moved deep inside. Even the increasing speed of his thrusts, the deepening intensity that brought little pinches of tension to her thighs, that had her sex tightening, her back arching, were almost secondary to the feel of her heart opening to him.

The game had stopped, and she put her arm over her eyes because she knew now that she loved him.

‘Help me,’ she said.

Because she did not want it to be true, and she did not want it to end.

And then she really was helpless, just a writhe of knots and this orgasm that would almost hurt if he did not hold her steady—that would be agony if he did not spill into her with the same precision and slight distance with which he’d taken her.

‘I can’t—’ she choked, feeling him pulse inside her, trying to tell herself she could not love this man when soon it would be time to say goodbye.

‘I know.’

She pulled back her arm as he carefully pulled out. She wasn’t sore—or possibly she was, but this deep revelation was certainly a distraction.

‘Better?’ he asked as he laid her down.

She summoned her most flirty smile and nodded. ‘So much better.’

And then they were back to the game—but not quite. Because she lay in his arms and it was almost as before, his hands moving her hair from his face, then moving down to her arms and holding her, and yet she could hear the click of her thoughts in the silent air, and hoped he could not hear them too.

‘That was bliss,’ she said, trying to speak as she once had, to tone down the song in her heart.

She thought her world had changed when she’d met him. If she’d asked herself, she’d have named it as being then. But now, hearing the sound of his ragged breathing, seeing the look they were sharing, she felt as if they’d stumbled upon a new language. One only they knew or understood... And yet neither acknowledged it or denied it.

It hadn’t been at the wedding.

Nor on boarding the plane.

Not even being alone in the desert.

For Violet they were all ‘before’.

Now it was ‘after’.

For the first time in her life she was completely in love.

And love made you brave.

‘Can I stay?’ She closed her eyes. ‘I mean...’

Sahir felt her stiffen, as if braced for rejection, and from all she’d told him, from all he knew, he realised that Violet hadn’t ever dared ask that question before.

‘Just for a few more days?’ she said.

He thought of her at the restaurant that first night, putting up her hand, not wanting a farewell speech. How she’d been prepared to leave that first morning.

She’d been forced to be independent. Had been let down over and over again. And he felt a great sense of responsibility as she now held out a piece of the heart that had been broken by so many.

‘I can’t leave you alone here,’ he told her.

‘I know.’ She sat up. ‘It was a silly idea. I was just...’ She shrugged.

‘Come to the palace.’

She swallowed.

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