Her heart stammered, his words driving deep inside her and pouring pleasure through every crack of her soul, but that was, in and of itself, a warning. A warning to be wary, to keep him at arm’s length. “You will have to keep imagining,” she said. “I’m cold.”
“I can warm you.”
“Yes,” she pulled her shirt on, hiding her smile. “But first, you wanted to have a conversation and we’ll both be able to concentrate better if we’re dressed.” She cast a pointed look at his own spectacular nudity, then turned her back as, with shaking hands, she pulled her pants in place.
When she turned to face him, he was dressed. At least, half dressed. He’d dragged on dark jeans, but left his shirt where it was, rumpled against the wall, and more importantly, his sculpted torso on display. She was pretty sure he was seeking to distract her but Cora wasn’t going to complain. She could stare at him like this for years.
“So? What is it?”
He looked at her for several beats, his eyes so dark, boring into her, so heat flushed her body, and she found it almost impossible to concentrate.
“Samir?” She insisted emphatically when he didn’t speak.
He lifted his hands in silent apology. “I wanted to see you again,” he said quickly, then a tight smile formed on his face. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. I liked being with you.”
Her lips parted in surprise and her first reaction, to immediately refuse, died in her throat. “I—,”
He waited, but she didn’t know what to say, and so he continued instead. “We both have a high profile. If anyone were to discover we were dating, it would be…less than ideal, for both of us.”
“Mainly for you,” she couldn’t help inserting, unable to stop the little burst of pique at his admission that he couldn’t publicly be seen with someone like her. Like hethoughtshe was, she corrected mentally.
“For both of us,” he insisted. “Since your divorce, you no longer court the media’s attention as you once did.”
She made a soft gasping sound.
“There are photos of you, yes, but at events like your cousin’s gallery opening, or charity balls. Not nightclubs and not parties. You are no longer photographed with the men you date. You are as discreet as I am.”
She bit down on her lower lip. He was right, and he was wrong. Since her divorce, she’d been celibate, made that way by embarrassment and trauma. But he was right about her desire to avoid the spotlight, and any relationship with Samir, if they were seen in public, would turn a glaring spotlight right down on top of them.
“So you want to see me,” she murmured, connecting the dots, but only here. “And by ‘see me’, you mean ‘sleep with me’.” She frowned. “Like an ongoing booty call arrangement.”
He moved closer to her, lifting a hand and smudging his thumb over her lower lip, a frown on his features. “After what just happened, I can see why you’d think that. I like having sex with you. A lot. But I also likeyou,Cora. I like hearing your thoughts on things, answering your questions, asking you mine, watching you, laughing with you; I just like spending time with you.”
“Your life is in Al Medina,” she pointed out. “You told me that.”
“Yes, and so too my future. But for right now,” he said with urgency, “I can be here.”
“Until you can’t, and then I’m all alone again,” she said with a shake of her head, past fears coursing through her, so that no matter how tempted she was, she knew she couldn’t agree. “I can’t do it,” she said quickly. For as much as her divorce from Alf had hurt, she knew this would be three thousand times worse.
“It’s no different to any other relationship you’ve had since your husband,” he pointed out, with no idea how false his belief was. “You see men, and then you stop seeing them.”
“No, I don’t,” she said with a sigh, deciding it was time to stop hiding the truth.
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t seen anyone—romantically or physically or anything else—since my divorce.”
Samir was very still, his hand moving to cup her cheek. Cora found it hard to look at him. “Are you sure?”
She made a soft laughing sound, even though she wasn’t amused. “I’m positive. I have avoided entanglements with men like the plague. I can’t go through that again,” she said with a shudder, so Samir lifted his other hand, cupping both cheeks, tilting her face to his.
“He hurt you.” His lips were grim, his eyes impossible to read.
It wasn’t completely accurate. Alfhadhurt her, but it was the media, the embarrassment, the knowledge she’d made a mistake when she’d married him. The whole thing had hurt, not just Alfonzo. Cora no longer trusted her judgement.
“I was hurt, yes,” she said after a beat, eyes lifting to his.
“Badly enough that you have avoided men since,” he said in wonder, as though that kind of celibacy had never occurred to him.