The tremor squeezed every muscle tight when she found it, and she dropped her arms and crossed them defensively across her belly when she saw who was sitting beside it.
Rafiq.
How long had he been sitting there, lounging back against the sand like a modern-day pirate, his white shirt bright in the moonlight, his pants rolled up at the ankles? How long had he been watching her?
What defences the sea had managed to wash away were hastily re-erected. The relaxing benefits of the motion of the waves were suddenly for naught. With her water-cooled flesh exposed to both the balmy breeze and to his gaze, her flesh was turning to goosebumps.
Couldn’t he at least look away?
She forced herself forward, crossing the sand on uncertain legs, refusing to meet his gaze, wishing she’d thought to pack a swimsuit in her hastily packed bag. She made a swipe for her abaya, but he got there first, picking it up in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees as he held the garment. But at least he wasn’t looking at her any more. His gaze was turned out to sea, no doubt so that he could pretend he hadn’t noticed she had just been reaching for it.
‘Have a nice swim?’ he asked, the sides of his mouth turned up.
He dared to smile? As if this was some kind of game? ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Don’t you know it’s dangerous to swim alone at night?’
‘Don’t you know it’s rude to spy on people?’ The words were out before she could stop them, her boldness shocking her so much that she took an involuntary step back across the sand in defence. She wasn’t used to thinking such thoughts any more, let alone speaking them aloud—not when she knew what the consequences could be.
But Rafiq’s smile merely widened, as if he hadn’t noticed her transgression. He kept his gaze seawards. ‘I was worried about you.’
‘You thought I’d run away?’
‘Not really. But you do have this thing with sand. I didn’t want to take any chances.’
Was that supposed to be funny? Or her cue to fall down and thank him for rescuing her today, even when he’d frozen her out and treated her as if she didn’t exist ever since he’d rescued her? When he’d snatched up her clothes so she couldn’t get dressed? Not a chance.
‘As you can see, I’m fine.’
Now he did look at her, his eyes searing a path all the way from her knees to her face, the slow way, until her skin burned and she cursed herself for inviting him to look.
‘Would you mind handing me my dress?’
His white teeth flashed in the moonlight. ‘What if I said I liked the view just the way it is?’
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but even while her flesh tingled a tiny part of her wanted to rejoice in his words, because it had been Rafiq himself who had uttered them. But it was still wrong—for so many, many reasons. He shouldn’t look at her that way. Couldn’t he see her shame? Couldn’t he tell?
She remembered the men who had admired her body and her looks, the men who had run their pudgy fingers through her hair, their alcohol-heavy breath perilously close to her own as they had whispered secret wishes in her ear that had turned her stomach.
And she remembered too the men who had recoiled from her, their faces shocked and appalled, as if she were no more than a piece of dirt.
She was worthless. Could he not tell?
She spun around on the soft sand, banishing the poisonous memories as she turned her back on Rafiq for evoking the twisted memories of days thankfully gone, for the long-forgotten desires of her own wayward body combining inside her into a potent mix. ‘I just wanted to have a swim in private. Is that too much to ask?’
And something in her tone must have worked its way into his arrogant brain, for suddenly he was next to her, holding out her abaya. She snatched it from his hands, bundling it over her head and punching through her arms, struggling to get it down over her still-damp body, not waiting to get it right down over her legs before she set off down the beach, away from him, desperate now to return to the camp where there were others, where there could not be this talk of ‘liking the view’ of her, undressed or otherwise. Where the conversation would be on safer territory and not in this permanent quicksand that seemed to surround their every exchange.
She sighed. She’d hoped earlier that she’d had her last encounter with the sinking sands, and yet they were all around her, in his words and in his heated looks, ready to trap her and suck her down.
‘I don’t need you to follow me,’ she protested, enjoying her newfound freedom to speak her mind as he drew level alongside her. ‘I don’t want you here now.’
‘You are a woman walking in the dark alone. Your safety is my responsibility.’