The morning was bright and unseasonably warm for Paris in autumn, which seemed to Jessa like a stark, strange contrast to inside the bedroom suite, where Tariq had taken her once again before she had fully come awake, pushing his way into her morning shower with that intense look in his eyes and driving her to ecstatic screams against the tiles. She was still quivering.
Tariq had called for breakfast to be served on the private balcony outside the bedroom, more secluded than the one she had seen that first night. He wore a dark button-down dress shirt over dark trousers, the coarse silk of his hair brushing the collar. She thought he looked like a warrior god pretending to be at rest, masquerading as some kind of businessman. The early morning sun teased the treetops and casement windows that lined the ancient street in front of her, and made her think she could do what she’d decided she must do in the shattering aftermath of his lovemaking. She pulled her robe tighter around her and touched the wet hair she’d piled atop her head. She could act serene and calm and disinterested over rich black coffee and croissants so soft they seemed like clouds and butter. She could prove that she was no longer that infatuated, broken girl he’d left behind once before.
“Will you not?” He did not glance up from the papers he read, and yet the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up in warning.
“Of course not,” she said, feeling her temper engage and roll through her. Surely he should at least pay attention when she was attempting to be noble! She knew that if she went with him to Nur, she would not be able to maintain even a tenuous grip on the realities of their different situations in life. She knew she would be lost. “I have my own life to be getting back to, in any case.”
Tariq laid his papers to the side of his plate and leveled a look at her. Jessa kept herself from squirming in her chair by sheer force of will.
“If you do not wish to accompany me to my country, then say you do not wish it,” he said evenly. “But do not wrap it up in some attempt to release me from an obligation. If I did not want you to come, I would not have invited you.”
“I was not—” she began, stung, though his words resonated more than she would have liked.
“We leave tomorrow morning,” he said, rising to his feet. He crooked his brows as he looked down at her. “You must decide.”
“Decide?” she echoed, her heart thumping too hard against her ribs. “Decide what?”
“If you will accompany me of your own free will,” he said, his eyes gleaming, “or if I will simply take you.”
“You cannot take me anywhere!” she gasped, but her body betrayed her, her sex warming and melting as surely as if he’d touched her with his clever, provocative hands.
“If you say so,” he said. He reached down and cupped her cheek with one large hand, his mouth unsmiling and his gaze intent, though still showing his amusement. And still it was as if he was branding her with his touch, his eyes. She felt small, safe and threatened at the same time—and more than that, his.
Completely and indisputably his.
His thumb dragged across her full lower lip, sending desire shooting through her body, tightening her nipples, wetting her sex further. Tariq smiled then, as if he could see her body’s reaction. One dark eyebrow arched as color heated Jessa’s cheeks. Point made, he turned away, disappearing inside the house and leaving her to her ragged breathing and her pounding heart.
He wanted to take her to Nur.
Part of her rejoiced for what that must mean, surely. It meant at the very least that he did not want this idyll in Paris to end any more than she did. But, of course, it was not quite that simple. Jessa drew her legs up beneath her on the chair, and stared out over the city she had come to love over the past dreamlike weeks, as if that could give her the answer.
She could not go to Nur. She could not continue to stay with him, ignoring reality while she played pretend. There were hundreds of reasons she should run back to York as quickly as she could.
And only one reason to stay.
Jessa rested her chin on her drawn-up knees and let out a shuddering breath as the shattering truth washed over her like the Paris sunlight, sweet and bright and unequivocal.
I love him.
She was in love with him. With Tariq, who had hurt her and lied to her. Who she was still lying to, if only by omission. Who she had made love to anyway, deliciously and repeatedly. Whose pain upset her, made her want to comfort and heal him, even when she was what caused it, and even when her own pain matched his. Their complicated, messy history should have made him the last man on earth she could ever have feelings for, but instead she felt closer to him because of it. As if no one could ever really understand her or what she’d been through, more than the man who grieved along with her.