Only it didn’t feel reckless. It felt right.
More than right.
After weeks and weeks of feeling broken and scared, she felt complete. Safe. Happy.
Just like she had in Vegas, when Omar had slid the ring on her finger. When they’d run hand in hand through the hotel corridors to their ludicrously over-the-top honeymoon suite, she had got so close to believing in happy endings, so close to believing in the two of them, in the possibility of their future together.
And now, lying here, wrapped in his arms, their bodies fused, it was so tempting to let herself believe the same.
But she hadn’t known then what she knew now. That even if somehow, they could put the past behind them a future was no longer possible.
What had happened in London had changed everything. Or maybe it wasn’t that it had changed everything so much as shown her what was real and possible and what was just fantasy.
Her heart began to beat faster. She knew everything there was to know about fantasies. Ianthe and Dylan had been a Romeo and Juliet for the social media age. Two photogenic lovers: unfiltered in life, undivided in death. Tens of thousands of words had been written about their tempestuous relationship, and their most devoted fans might still want to believe their affair had been a real-life fairy tale.
But as far as she was aware there were no stories about Sleeping Beauty sleeping off a hangover, or Prince Charming being too stoned to go to the ball.
The wind was drumming against the roof, but not loudly enough to drown out the pounding of her heart.
As for their tempestuous relationship: with hindsight it was clear that her parents’ arguments had been inspired not by passion but by alcohol and insecurity. Their rows had been frequent and explosive, but the next day it had always been as if all of it—the shouting and the screaming and the door-slamming—had never happened.
No wonder she found it so difficult to talk. To express her feelings. To say what she wanted. What she needed.
‘Where have you gone?’
Omar’s voice broke into her thoughts and, twisting round in his arms, she tilted her head back and met his eyes.
‘I’m right here,’ she said quietly.
The tension had left his body and it suited him. Relaxed, he looked even more sexy than normal, with his limbs resting negligently against the hay and his eyes dark and drowsy. Skin prickling, she reached up to touch his face, needing, as always, to check that he was real.
As if reading her thoughts, he pulled her closer, and her breath caught as his fingers moved lightly over her hip to caress her bottom.
‘And so am I.’
Her heart thudded. Unlike her, Omar always knew what to say and how to say it. It was how he had got under her skin all those months ago, so that the barriers she’d built against the world softened and melted. But nothing had changed, she told herself. Not really. Whatever her body was saying. Which was lucky, she thought a moment later, as he shifted position so that her breasts brushed against his chest, and she felt her hips lift towards him without her consent.
‘Can I get you anything? I’m not sure I can offer much, but there’s a fridge in the office.’
The lazy softness in his eyes reached out to her, and she felt fingers of heat tiptoe over her skin ‘Some water would be great. I’m just so thirsty suddenly,’ she lied.
‘Okay.’
She had wanted him to move and put himself out of temptation’s reach, but as he got to his feet, she felt the loss of his sleek, hard body like the amputation of a limb. Then, to add insult to injury, she had to watch him walk away, and her mouth felt as if it had been sandpapered—which served her right for lying.
Don’t look, she told herself.
But it was impossible not to. Not to savour his gorgeousness. Except for his silver wedding ring he was naked, and with his rippling muscles and smooth golden skin he was as gloriously, unashamedly male as the stallions in the neighbouring stalls.
And he was still aroused.
She squirmed against the hay, her insides liquid and hot. As was she.
‘Here.’
Omar was back. He handed her a glass of water, and she took it, trying not to look at his body as he sat down beside her. The water was ice-cold and she drank it thirstily, wishing it could satisfy all her needs.
‘Is there anything else you want?’ he asked, pulling her close.