She stirred, and he knew when she woke by the sudden tension in her body where before there was only languor. He smoothed a hand down her side, tracing the curves of her body, as if he could erase what she had suffered so easily.
“I did not mean to fall asleep,” she whispered into the dark room. She moved under his hands, as if testing her boundaries, as if she thought she was his prisoner.
Tariq did not respond. He only held her and pretended he did not know why he could not let her go.
“In the morning,” she continued, her voice much too careful, much too polite, “I will head home. I think it’s best.” She moved as if to separate from him, and he let his arm fall away from her when he wanted only to hold on, to keep her close, as if she was sunlight and he was an acre of frozen earth, desperate for winter to end.
“Tariq?” She turned toward him. He twisted over onto his back, aware of a different kind of need surging through him. A need for peace, the peace that only holding her close had ever brought him. “Should I find somewhere else to sleep?” she asked, her voice tentative. Scared. Of him. And why shouldn’t she be, after the things he had done?
He could not bear it. And he refused to think about why.
And then, from that place inside him that he could not fully admit existed, yet could no longer ignore, he whispered, “I do not want you to go, Jessa. Not yet.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ONE week passed, and then another, and the subject of Jessa’s departure did not come up again. Jessa had made the necessary calls home to her sister and to her boss, and had taken the long overdue vacation time she was owed that she had never bothered to take before.
“Where are you?” her sister Sharon had asked, shocked, when Jessa got her on the phone. “Since when do you run off on a holiday at the drop of a hat?”
“I had an urge to see Paris, that’s all,” Jessa had lied.
“I wish I could swan off to Paris on a lark!” Sharon had said. And then the time to mention who she was with and why she was with him had passed the moment Sharon put down the phone, so it had remained Jessa’s secret.
It wasn’t that she was trying to hide the fact that she was with Tariq from her sister, necessarily, but she wasn’t planning to trumpet it from the rooftops, either. She told herself that there was nothing unusual in it; she and Tariq were simply giving themselves some space and time to process the loss of Jeremy together rather than apart. Who else could understand how it felt? They were being healthy, she thought, modern; and part of her believed it.
Jessa had all of Paris to explore each day, as Tariq spent his time closeted in meetings or on the telephone with his advisors, political allies, and business contacts—tending to his kingdom from afar.
“Tell me what you saw today,” Tariq asked each evening, and Jessa would relate stories of freshly baked baguettes, lazy afternoons in cafés, or walking tours of famous monuments. Each evening she tried harder to make him smile. Each evening she found herself more and more invested in whether or not she succeeded.
“I have always loved Paris,” Tariq told her one night as they lingered over coffee out in one of the city’s famous restaurants, where the service was so impeccable that Jessa almost felt compelled to apologize every time she shifted in her chair. “My uncle used this residence as a vacation home, but I prefer to use it as a base for my European business concerns.” He leaned back against his chair in an indolent way that called attention to all the power he kept caged in his lean, muscled frame.
“What isn’t to love?” Jessa agreed with a happy smile, propping her elbow on the table and resting her chin on her hand. She could look at him for hours. His face alone compelled her—all that harshness and cruelty tempered by the keen intelligence in his eyes. “It mixes magic with practicality.”
It was as if she had forgotten they had ever felt like adversaries, though, of course, she had not. This sweet truce between them was far more dangerous than the wars they had already fought and survived. She was so much more at risk when he looked at her the way he did tonight, with something she so desperately wanted to call tenderness.
“Indeed,” he agreed now, and their eyes caught, something more potent than the rich brew in their cups surging between them, making Jessa’s pulse race.
“Tariq,” she said softly, not wishing to break the spell between them but knowing she should speak, knowing she should acknowledge the truth of things, “you know that I—”
“Come,” he said, pushing back from the table. “We shall walk home along the Seine and you will tell me which Van Gogh in the Musée d’Orsay you prefer.”