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had been over six hours since he’d brought her here. He debated calling Hala to check on her, but decided he would do so instead. He would not hide from her, would not shrink from the raw emotions still rolling between them like a storm-tossed sea.
    He found her on the small terrace off her room, her long hair loose and flowing down her back, the wind from the sea ruffling the auburn strands. She’d put on a fluid cream-colored dress that skimmed her form. It was slightly darker than the milk of her skin, but it made her look ethereal. Like an angel.
    She turned her head as he approached, setting down the coffee she’d been cupping in both hands. Her expression went carefully blank, but not before he saw the yearning there.
    It gutted him, that yearning.
    “Are you feeling refreshed?” he asked.
    “I am, thank you,” she replied, glancing away again.
    He pulled out the chair opposite her, setting it at an angle so he could view the sea and her face at once if he so chose. “Your luggage is intact, I take it?”
    “Yes. Everything arrived.”
    She picked up the coffee again, her long fingers shaking as she threaded them on either side of the cup. He did that to her, he realized. Made her as skittish as a newborn foal.
    It reminded him of the first time they’d made love. She hadn’t been a virgin, but she hadn’t been terribly experienced, either. Everything he did to her had been a revelation. Soon, she’d been bold and eager for more.
    His body hardened instantly.
    This was the problem, he thought, with no small measure of anger. This need that flared every time he was with her. He’d ceased trying to understand it long ago. He’d never been the sort of man to be ruled by his penis—until Sydney came along and turned everything upside down.
    He blew out a disgusted breath and turned to stare at the container ship gliding into port in the distance. It wasn’t simply the physical that drew him to her.
    No, he’d been dissolute long before Sydney came along. He’d indulged every appetite, every whim. It had been great fun.
    At first.
    But in the last couple of years, the more he’d pushed the envelope, the emptier he’d felt.
    And she seemed to fill that emptiness somehow.
    “I’m going to need internet access,” she said, cutting through his thoughts. “I have work to do while I’m here.”
    “There is Wi-Fi,” he told her. “I will have someone give you the password.”
    “Thank you.” Her fingers drummed against the side of the cup. He heard her draw breath, as if she was planning to speak, but she said nothing. Several more times she tried, until he finally speared her with a look, pinning her into place.
    “Say it, habibti.”
    She was looking at him with those big grey eyes, her long lashes sweeping to her cheeks and back up again as she let her doubts war with her desire to speak.
    Then she bit her lip, and he forced himself not to turn away. Forced himself to deal with the slice of pain that shafted into him, the flood of desire that pooled low in his groin.
    He would conquer this ridiculous need.
    She was a woman, like any other. She was not special, or different. She possessed nothing that he couldn’t obtain elsewhere. Whatever pull she had on him, whatever imagined void she seemed to fill … she was not irreplaceable. No woman was. He knew that better than most.
    Her expression changed by degrees, turned fierce, and he knew she’d made up her mind. He relished her fierceness. It was far better than wide-eyed defeat.
    “I want to know why you never brought me here,” she burst out, gesturing at him, her hand encompassing his entire body as she swept it up and down. “This is who you are—the clothes, the desert—but you never let me see it.”
    She leaned toward him then, her eyes stormy. “Did I embarrass you that much?”
    There, she’d said it. She’d finally put voice to the pain that had been nagging her since the moment she’d arrived and seen him dressed in