‘Tonight you will wear the blue gown.’
She looked up at him, uncertain, her dark eyes wide. The stars in the night sky were reflected in their depths, he noticed, a galaxy of stars that along with the flicker of torchlight gave her eyes a molten glow. Soon, he knew, it would be him who turned them molten.
Later, in her tent, bathed but still shaking and breathless from the unexpected encounter, Sera held the blue gown up in front of her. What would it be like to wear such a bold colour? As much as she was tempted, after so many months of covering herself in black the idea of colour seemed somehow daring. Provocative.
Or was it just because of the way Rafiq had looked at her, with hunger in his eyes and a wicked smile curving his lips?
She dragged in air, needing the burst of oxygen. How could she decide when she could not so much as think rationally?
So, instead of thinking, she shrugged the gown over her shoulders, letting the weight of the stone-encrusted fabric pull it down over her skin. She felt the whisper of silk, the weight of tiny stones, and the close-fitting gown moved against her like the slide of a thousand fingers. And then it was on, and she looked once more in the small mirror and she saw someone else—a stranger, a woman she hadn’t seen for more than a decade—standing before her. A few years older, maybe, but not so markedly different that she couldn’t recognise the girl who had come before.
For a minute or two she just stared, before realising that it wasn’t just the colour of her dress that made her look so different and turned back the clock. It was her eyes that had changed also. They looked alive, somehow. Excited. As they had so many years before. As they had when they’d been filled with love—and desire—for Rafiq.
The desire was still there.
Her heart fluttered in her chest and she gasped, unused for so long to feeling the heat of need, surprised by its power. She’d once put this feeling down to adolescence and the stirrings of the first tender buds of first love.
But it wasn’t that now.
She’d tried to deny it because it was beyond modesty to think of such things—forbidden territory for a woman in her position to feel such raw, potent need.
She’d tried to deny it because she was so ashamed of her past. So ashamed of the things her body had been used for.
But there was no denying it.
She did want him. She did need him. And it didn’t matter what happened after this—for destiny seemed determined to keep them apart—it didn’t matter that she’d married another when she’d loved Rafiq, it didn’t matter that he’d sworn he’d never marry her now. There was no denying it. She wanted him.
Star-crossed they might be, destined never to be together, but maybe tonight, this night, they would become lovers.
She brushed her hair, giddy with anticipation, her blood fizzing in her veins at the recklessness of her thoughts. She’d never known the pleasure a man could give. She’d never known the magic she’d heard newly married women giggle about in muffled whispers to each other in the hallways of the palace. She’d never known the delights of the flesh.
Rafiq, she was sure, could supply them.
And why shouldn’t she take advantage of this beachside encampment, just as Rafiq intended? Why should she not use it for her own purposes, to assuage her own desperate longings and desires?
Just one night, with a man who would never love her, never marry her. It was wrong on so many levels. And yet on so many more it was right.
She smoothed down her dress, garnering her resolve in the process. If he did intend to kiss her again tonight, if he did want them to be uninterrupted, she would not be the one to interrupt.
This night was like a gift from the gods. People said you didn’t get a second chance, that you couldn’t go back, and maybe they were right. Maybe there was no going back to the days when she had believed she and Rafiq would one day marry and share their lives together for ever. Those days were surely gone.
But one night—this night—was something. A glimpse, perhaps, of what might have been. A bittersweet reminder of what she had lost.
And something to hold close to her when he had gone from her life again. For he would leave soon, return to his business in Australia, forget about her all over again.
She would have this one night to remember for ever. She took one last, steeling breath of air, recognising the effort was futile, that she would never settle the butterflies that even now jostled for air space in her stomach, before she stepped from the tent.
All was prepared. Rafiq waited patiently. The table under the stars was prepared; the food was ready to serve. All that was needed was Sera.
Away from the tents he could hear the men talking around their campfire, the burble and fragrant scent of the shisha pipe carrying on the night breeze. A perfect evening, neither too hot nor too cool, with the blanket of stars a slow-moving picture overhead.