Was it her imagination or did her head suddenly feel heavy?
“I think I should probably eat something,” she mumbled.
“Of course,” Khalil told her. “Dinner is waiting whenever you’re ready.”
“Great.” Except the thought of standing up was suddenly too complex. “Maybe in a minute.”
She looked at him, at his handsome face. The lines of his profile were sharp, like a statue of granite. He was dark and dangerous, like the desert at night. Not that she had any personal experience with the desert at night or during the day.
“I know this is unfamiliar,” he said, lightly touching the back of her hand. “We need to spend a little time getting to know each other. Why don’t we talk about our past? After that, we’ll eat dinner, and then we’ll make love until dawn.”
Making love, she thought hazily. Now that would be very nice. Maybe they could skip the other parts and get right to doing it. She hiccuped softly, then took another drink. She wanted to do it again and again until she learned everything about it. She wanted to touch Khalil and have him touch her back. She wanted to see him naked, in fact she thought this little chat about their past might be more enjoyable if he took his clothes off right now. She would very much like to see the “it” that made doing it so very enjoyable.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
His question cut through her fantasies and left her confused. Then she remembered that they were getting to know each other. A sensible plan. Khalil was right—once they knew more details about each other’s lives this wouldn’t be such a strange situation.
She finished her glass of champagne and started to set it on the coffee table, but Khalil filled it instead. She thought about refusing, after all, her head was already spinning, but wouldn’t that be rude? It was his wedding, too, and…What had been his question?
“No, I’m an only child.” She leaned back against the sofa. “My mom never said anything, but I think I was a mistake. She and my dad got married about two months before I was born. After that, he was never around much. They divorced when I was seven.”
“I see. I’m the youngest,” he said. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be an only child.”
“It’s lonely,” she said bluntly. “Probably not for some kids, but it was for me. My mom worked a lot to support us, and my dad wasn’t one for regular visitation. Plus, I wasn’t really popular at school.” She shrugged, then rolled her head so that she could look at him. “Too smart. I wasn’t pretty enough to get in with the right girls, and I think I scared all the boys away. Plus I was shy, and I never knew what to say to anyone. It was easier to hide out in the library and read.”
She took another sip of champagne. It tasted tartly sweet and slipped down easily. The tingling in her belly had spread to her whole body, and her brain definitely felt thick, but in a nice way. Like she was protected from anything too scary.
“When did you stop being lonely?” he asked.
She angled toward him and pulled her knees up onto the sofa. “Yesterday, I think. I can’t really remember.”
Khalil’s features started to blur together. Had she had too much to drink? Or was it just the soft lighting in the suite? Her eyes fluttered closed, and she felt warm fingers brush against her cheek.
“College wasn’t too bad at first,” she said dreamily, getting lost in the past. “I had a scholarship that paid for most things. I liked being in a place where it was considered a good thing to be smart and to work hard. But living on campus cost more than I thought, and I had to get a job to supplement my expenses.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “My mom didn’t have any extra money to spare. I don’t suppose that’s ever been a problem for you.”
“No, it hasn’t.”
“Must be nice.”
“Sometimes, but we’ve had other problems.”
“I guess everyone does. Anyway, I started tutoring. I worked with athletes a lot. Mostly because they paid the most. But they weren’t interested in anything but getting by. They didn’t want to learn. Isn’t that horrible?” She blinked and found that her eyelids were extraordinarily heavy. She swallowed a little more champagne to help her stay awake.
“One day I found my study notes missing. I confronted a couple of the guys, and they wouldn’t admit they’d taken them.” She sighed remembering the hurtful things those boys had said. “I refused to tutor them anymore. About three weeks after that, a bunch of the guys were caught cheating. They were going to be expelled, but they weren’t content to go quietly. They said that they were using a cheating system I’d come up with and had charged them for.”
Her words caught in her throat. That had been so long ago, she would have thought it didn’t have the power to hurt her anymore, but it did. She remembered her time in the dean’s office, when it had been her word against theirs.
“Six of them told the same story. Six,” she repeated quietly. “No one believed me, not about the notes or that I refused to work with them, or that I hadn’t had any part of the cheating. So I was expelled along with them. I went home, got a job and saved my money. A year later I started at my local community college, then I received my associate’s degree.”
She pressed her lips together. “This probably isn’t what you wanted to know, is it?”
“I want to know whatever you want to tell me.”
She tried to smile, but her face felt numb. “I don’t think so. I doubt any part of my life is very interesting.”
“That’s not true.” He stroked her cheek again, and the contact felt lovely. “Why didn’t you go back to college and get your four-year degree?”
She shrugged. At least it felt like she was shrugging on the inside, even if she didn’t feel any movement on the outside. “I was afraid of what might happen. I didn’t want to go through that again. Except for when Gerald left me in that airport in Kansas, it was the most alone I’ve ever felt.”
Khalil leaned close and took her glass from her, which was a good thing. When had her fingers gotten so stiff? She could barely bend them.
“You, my desert rose, tell a very sad story,” he murmured. “But all that is about to change.”
She desperately wanted to believe him. “Do you promise?”
“Yes.” He moved next to her and took her in his arms. “Nothing is going to hurt you ever again.”
“Not even you?”
“Least of all me.”
Then he kissed her. Those wonderful warm, firm lips settled on hers. Her eyes drifted slowly closed as a lethargy filled her body. She was drifting, drifting, drifting…And then there was only darkness.
Chapter Six
The redheaded model strolled down the center of the showroom, her lithe, insanely slender body barely making any movement under the burnt umber silk of
