Chapter Six
Adil watched the mother and daughter pair in their plush airplane seats, a slight smile on his face. In the rush of the last week, they had both been given a wardrobe that would be more suitable for their lives in Saki, but nothing had taken away their wonder at the world around them.
“Are we really so very high up, Mama?” asked Marissa in awe. “Are those really clouds?”
“They are, pumpkin,” said Annabel. “They're condensed water, hanging around in the atmosphere and waiting to rain on the world below...”
Annabel shot Adil a look that was half-defiant and half-wary.
“This is the first time she has been up in an airplane, let alone one so fancy,” she said, and Adil waved her words away.
“It is very beautiful, and I am afraid that I have become more than a little jaded to it,” he said with a smile. “The truth is that seeing it through a child's eyes again for the first time is a gift...”
She did that sometimes, he observed. She was always waiting for him to make fun of her or her daughter, to think of them as simple or bumpkinish, but in fact it was quite the opposite.
He hadn't been able to be by their side for every moment of the last week, but he had been there as much as he could. By tacit agreement, they had not kissed since their last kiss in her shabby little kitchen. It seemed... somehow untoward.
Instead, Adil had returned to the hotel suite where he had been staying before. He had his own matters to attend to as Annabel had gotten her affairs in order and received a very thorough checkup from a discreet clinic in Manhattan. The results had been expedited, and he and Annabel had received the news at the same time.
“I am pleased to tell you, Ms. Lister, that your body is in excellent shape for you to attempt to conceive,” said the smiling doctor. “Your eggs are healthy, your body is in great shape, and you should have as smooth a pregnancy as might be guessed at this point.”
He had assumed that the doctor's words would bring about in him a sense of satisfaction, a feeling that everything was going to go according to plan. He had thought he would be pleased certainly, but perhaps no more so then when a great dam was nearing completion or when a skyscraper was approved to go up in Sakhi.
Instead, what had coursed through his body was pure possessive joy. The doctor had given him the missing piece of the puzzle, and everything else was falling into place. This strange woman was going to be his, she was fertile, and the child that came from her womb was going to be one they created together.
The thoughts were so foreign to him that he froze. It took him a moment to murmur words of pleasure and gratitude to the doctor. Through it all, however, he was still a little shocked at himself.
Those were not the thoughts of a civilized man, even one who was as given to enjoying his own hedonism as much as he was wont to do. They felt almost barbaric, primitive, the thoughts of an ancient desert lord. The idea of planting his seed in the belly of the quiet woman next to him made him feel as if the earth was tilting at his whim. It was a victory he had not earned but felt with every bone in his body.
Adil knew that he had to be careful. This entire enterprise was strange enough to say the least. He could not afford to go off the rails, and glancing at Annabel's pale face in the doctor's office, he could not afford to frighten the mother of his child either.
***
Somehow, the doctor's words made it real in a way that it had not been before. When Annabel and Adil left the doctor's office, she found that she was shaking a little. At first, she thought that Adil hadn't noticed her disquiet or worse yet, hadn't cared, but then he sat her down in a tiny green space tucked into one of the hospital's courtyards.
"Having second thoughts?" he asked softly, and Annabel shot him a surprised look.
"Would it matter at this point?" she asked, and he looked a little surprised.
"But of course," he said. "This is your choice. Before you have my child in your belly, this is always your choice. This is not something that I can force you to do."
For some reason, that comforted her more than she would have thought. He took her hand, and though there was perhaps a great deal to be said between the two of them, they simply sat in silence. When she glanced at his serious face, she wondered what a man like him, so used to living close to his own whims and desires, could think of the future.
He is kinder than you think he is, she mused to herself. He might be kinder than he himself knows.
This was the thought, more than any others, that kept her buoyed up as the days passed and she readied Marissa for their move. With the resilience of young children, Marissa took their move at face value, simply excited for a change of scenery and the fun that a new home would bring.
After a short while looking out the window, however, Marissa tired quickly. She had been up early to get to the airport on time, and now her mother could see her flagging. Though she fussed a little, the prospect of sleeping in a real bed on a plane fascinated her.
"Do you mind if I go get her settled?" Annabel asked Adil.
"Of course. That is not something that you need permission for, after all. You are her mother."
Hand in hand with her daughter, Annabel walked to the rear of the plane, where there was a small bedroom. It was actually close to the size of Marissa's room in their apartment -our old apartment, she corrected herself- but the bed practically went from wall to wall.
Marissa climbed in eagerly, stirring the covers around her until they were practically a nest, and Annabel came to lie next to her.
Absently, she listened to her daughter's drowsy chirping until even that trailed off, and then she listened to Marissa's soft breath. She remembered when Marissa was still a baby, and she had been doing this all alone. She would go to her daughter's room and listen to the breaths in and out, always terrified that the next breath wouldn't come.
For a moment, all she wanted to do was to wait until she fell asleep as well. It wouldn't take long. The warmth of the jet, the soothing sound of Marissa's breathing and the incredible softness of the bed underneath her would all mean that she fell asleep sooner rather than later.
However, then she would wake up, and the world would still be as large and unknown as it had been when she went to sleep. Adil would still be out in the cabin.
She fought with herself for a moment, and then with a barely audible sigh, she stroked Marissa's hair one last time before rising from the bed.
I might not be holding any of the cards here, but I'll be damned if I let him think of me as a coward, she said, and lifting her chin up, she walked back into the main cabin.
She was almost disappointed to find him doing something as simple as reading on his tablet. She came to sit down across from him again, and he was the first one who spoke.
"You needn't look as terrified as you do," he said, not looking up from his tablet. "There is nothing to fear, not when you are with me."
"Excuse me?" she asked, and she was a little concerned that he could feel the edge of her fraying temper in those words. When she spoke next, Annabel's words were certainly a little softer.
"I'm not terrified, I think I am just... a little nervous."
"It finally did occur to me that you have every right to be terrified if you were," he said. It occurred to her that there was something studied about his nonchalance. He was deliberately being casual to... to what? To put her at ease? To make her less terrified.
"I..."
"Women are historically afraid of men," he said. "It is not something at which I take offense. It is only natural."
"I do not think it is natural for people to be afraid of each other," Annabel said tartly. "Some caution is order, perhaps, and some wariness may be appropriate, but terror? No."
"Ah, so you are saying that you are not afraid of me?"
I don't know if I could put what I feel for you into words, she thought, but she certainly didn't say it. It felt suddenly as if she were in the middle of a chess game, and the last thing she wanted to do at this early stage was to make a wrong move
"I am saying that you do not inspire fear in me," she said, and she hoped he would not ask her what she in fact did feel for him.
"Oh really."
He set his tablet aside, and the look in his eyes was frankly challenging.
"Why don't you show me, then, that you do not fear me. Ever since that kiss in your kitchen, you have not touched me. Without further evidence, I cannot help but think that you are afraid of me."
"Believe me, fear is the last thing I feel for you," she retorted, and then before she could change her mind, she leaned over the table to kiss him.
It should have been a terrible kiss. She was bent halfway over the hard table, her elbows digging into the solid surface. She was stretched as far as she could reach, and even then she could barely reach his lips.
It was terrible, but the chemistry leaped up between them again, drenching them both in passion. The moment their lips touched, it was there again, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was definitely not fear that she felt for this man. Even the gentlest brushes of their lips together could carry her away, and as their kiss deepened, she could feel herself falling into the passion of it all, not caring about anything else.
With a soft sound that was more than a little similar to a growl, Adil pulled away from her. She was ready to ask him if that was enough, if he was ready to say that she was not afraid just yet, but he came around the table, lifting her out of the chair as if she were a paper doll.
"Adil, what..."
"Shhhh..."
He carried her to the enormous couch at the front of the jet. He sank down on it with her settled in his lap, and then, stroking along her neck with absurdly gentle fingers, he started to kiss her.
"Why do you never wear your hair down?" he asked. "It is always braided and wound around your head... surely that is an old-fashioned style?"
"Well I guess it is a little old-fashioned..." she said, or at least, she started to say that, and then she gasped as his lips feathered over the pulse in her throat, making her whimper a little.
She was certain that she had never felt so alive. She had never felt as if her blood had turned molten in her veins or as if there was a fire in her, centered low in her body, that was crying for more, always more...
"I want you to kiss me as well," Adil growled. "I want to feel your hands on me."
She realized abruptly that she had been taking all the pleasure for herself, simply allowing him to lavish her with sensation. That wasn't right or fair, and so she set herself to making him feel the same things he had made her feel.
"It's been a long time since I've done this," she muttered, but she knew that that was making excuses. No matter what she had done with Iain or what she could have done with other men, there would be nothing that was like this, kissing and touching Adil al Mahsi.
She started slowly and tentatively, ready to draw back in a heartbeat if he laughed at her or gave some sign that he was displeased at what she was doing. His hands stayed lightly on her hips however, and when she set a flurry of small light kisses along his lips, she felt him shiver underneath her. As large and powerful as he was, it felt like an earthquake, and she whimpered with the pleasure of it.
Gaining more confidence, Annabel planted her hands on his shoulders and kissed him more firmly, pressing her chest against his body. Almost shyly, she ran the tip of her tongue along his lower lip, making his hands tense on her hips.
"More," he murmured, and there was a red heat to it that made her groan. Soon he was suckling tenderly on her tongue as she rocked against him. It felt like it wasn't enough, could never be enough. She needed him in a way that her mind didn't understand. Her body insisted it understood, however, and when she trailed her hand down his chest, she suddenly knew what she wanted most.
She wanted this man in a way she had never understood wanting a man before. She thought she knew what passion was. She thought she had understood need before. Now she knew that she had never understood it at all, and her eyes widened.
In shock, Annabel jerked her hand away from him. Her movement was so swift and jerky that she nearly overbalanced, falling backwards off of Adil's lap. She uttered a cry of alarm, but he was there, catching her as handily as if they had rehearsed it.
"There, now, you're fine," he murmured, settling her on his lap again. "I have you..."
She wasn't sure if her rapid breath was for falling or for what they had been doing, but she was grateful that he did not press for them to continue. Instead, he wrapped one arm around her body, holding her close as he looked up at her.
"Now, are you all right?"
"Yes... yes, I think so. I didn't actually hit the ground, you caught me too fast. Thank you for that, by the way."
He chuckled, his eyes crinkling up in a way that she found oddly irresistible.
"You're very welcome. I hope that you are not always so accident prone. I might not always be around to help you up."
"Oh, I'm not usually. This time, it was just..."
She made a vague gesture with her hands, hoping that he would let it go, but he it looked like her luck had run out, because he apparently had no intention of doing so.
"What was it that upset you?" Adil asked, his voice soft. "Was it some memory that looked like something we were doing?"
Actually, it was the direct opposite of that, she could have said, but she only shook her head.
"No, and I'm not even upset at all..."
At his skeptical look, she straightened up a little. She might not want to tell him the entire truth, but she had to tell him something. The last thing she wanted him to think was that she was traumatized or jumpy around something that made her skin sing with need.
"No, really, there's nothing here that I am afraid of. It's just... it's just startled me a little."
"Ah," he said, looking as if he understood. "It was too fast for you."
"Yes, well, sort of," she temporized. If she was going to be entirely honest, the speed wasn't the issue at all. In fact, there was already a part of her that was wondering why they were not already back at it, and she had a sneaking feeling that the only thing that would put that part of her of was a cold shower or thirty.
"We hardly know each other at all," she said finally. "I mean... a month ago, we didn't know that the other person existed. Now we're going to have a child together. Doesn't that seem... a little quick?"
He laughed a little, but it was a rueful thing, not aimed at her at all.
"Well, there are people in my family tree who have been married just moments after meeting, so I suppose i cannot speak to normal."
"Well, all my family is rather poorer, so we had to meet, fall in love and do everything the old fashioned way," she said, making him laugh again.
"We are in a bit of a quandary," he murmured. "I cannot give you much time at all. Our bargain does not allow for us to get to know each other before we begin things, after all."
She swallowed hard, clasping her hands together in her lap.
"I know that," she said softly. "It is something that I am willing to accept."
"But I do believe that I want to get to know you, and I think it will be easier if you get to know me. Very well. Ask me what you like, and I will do the same for you. We will do our best. After all, we have at least another ten hours in the air before we pull into the airport in Sakhi."
She raised her eyebrow at him.
"Twenty questions?"
There was a secret fire in his eyes he looked her up and down. She had to resist the urge to cover herself with her hands. The man had a way of looking at her and making her feel as if she were naked.
"There are still other ways of getting to know each other..." he suggested, and she shook her head.
"No, I think asking each other questions would be great, would be lots of fun... Let's do that..."
Though a part of her cried out at the loss of contact, she scrambled off his lap. This time she didn't fall, but she made it to the other end of the couch, putting some much needed space between the two of them. There was a small hint of relief when she had done so. Suddenly it felt as if she could think again.
The predatory light in his eyes didn't dim, however, and she wondered just what she had gotten herself in to.