Michelle Reid - Exotic Affairs

‘What a damned mess!’ he had rasped at her last night. And just now he had added an apt little rider to that with his, ‘This is only the beginning of it all, not the end of it.’

Without waiting for instruction, Asim quietly bade Evie to follow him into the living room where he sat her down on one of the chairs then squatted in front of her so he could gently unwrap her burned arm.

The skin looked red, but it hadn’t blistered, although when he touched a cool fingertip to it she jumped in pained response. ‘It is still hot?’ he asked.

Evie nodded her head, weak tears suddenly flooding her eyes.

‘Do something about it!’ Raschid grated from behind the older man.

‘Of course.’ As impassive as ever in the face of Raschid’s anger, Asim rose up and moved quietly away.

‘You’re horrible to him,’ Evie snapped out accusingly. ‘Ever speak to me like that and I will slap your face!’

‘Before you burst into tears or after?’ he countered. Then sighed and turned his back on her, his stance taut and angry. ‘I don’t like to see you hurting,’ he tagged on gruffly.

Well, I’m hurting in a whole lot of other places you don’t even know about, Evie thought bleakly.

Asim came back. Raschid looked relieved. Squatting down in front of her again, the older man unscrewed the top off a jar and began gently smearing a clear ointment on her scalded skin.

It was delicious, so cooling. Evie sighed softly and relaxed back in the chair to close her aching eyes. A few minutes later a moist bandage was being carefully wrapped around her arm.

‘The heat is receding?’ Asim asked her.

She nodded. ‘Thank you, Asim.’

‘We will repeat the process again later,’ he said. ‘But for now, Miss Delahaye, I really think you should lie down on the bed and rest. You are looking exceedingly pale…’

‘But—’

‘Good advice.’ Raschid was suddenly standing over her.

‘But…’ she tried again.

‘But nothing. To put it bluntly, Evie, you look dreadful.’

She felt it too—shock, she assumed, the delayed kind of shock that was making her feel ever so slightly woozy. ‘I haven’t had a single thing to eat today,’ she remembered as Raschid helped her get to her feet.

‘Then while we get you comfortable in bed Asim will prepare something—what would you like?’

It was weird, but having felt her stomach growling for want of sustenance, it was suddenly churning for an entirely different reason. ‘Oh, no,’ she choked, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth.

‘What’s the matter?’ Raschid demanded sharply.

But Evie had already broken free from him to run.

A single glass of water drunk at five-thirty that morning was no real problem to bring back up, but Evie remained leaning over the bowl in the bathroom for a long while afterwards, still feeling sick and dizzy enough not to dare to move away.

After a while, she straightened carefully and went in search of the minty mouthwash she knew Raschid kept hidden behind the large mirrored wall cupboard. Finding it, she shut the cupboard door and was just about to unscrew the cap when a reflection in the mirror caught her attention.

And it came as a shock to see that both Raschid and Asim were standing in the bathroom doorway gravely watching her.

‘Oh, go away!’ she cried out on a sudden loss of dignity. ‘Can’t a girl even be sick in private here?’

‘We were concerned,’ Raschid said.

‘Well, don’t be,’ she snapped, then sighed as her stomach made another grasping clutch at her. ‘It happens,’ she added fatalistically.

A baby… she thought dazedly. They had made a baby. Lifting her eyes, she stared at Raschid’s sober face through the mirror then turned her gaze to Asim.

He knew, she realised painfully. It had quickly hit him just what was not being said here. And the horror he was having difficulty in disguising brought the weak spill of tears washing into her eyes.

‘Oh, damn it,’ she choked, and turned away from both the mirror and the two men to tip a small quantity of mouthwash into the plastic cap. But her hand was shaking badly, and she spilled more than she caught in the cap before she had enough to warily swill her mouth with.

‘Come on…’ Raschid’s arm came around her shoulders, his voice deep and heavy as he gently turned her. ‘You may feel better if you lie down for a while.’

Quietly dismissing Asim, Raschid led her through to the bedroom, and Evie found she just didn’t have enough energy to argue with him when he began to undress her. So she simply let him get on with it, lifting a foot when required or an arm, then finally allowed him to slide her between the cool linen sheets.

‘He’s going to hate me now,’ she murmured dully as Raschid straightened away from her. ‘For messing up your life.’

‘Don’t be foolish,’ he admonished, not even pretending to wonder whom it was she was talking about. ‘Asim has great affection for you, and you know it.’

As he moved away from her, Evie let her eyes follow him. He went to touch the button on the wall that would bring the curtains swishing across the windows. The instant transformation from bright sunlight to a mellow half-light helped soothe the ache going on behind her weary eyes.

‘If he seemed upset,’ Raschid continued as he walked back to her, ‘then it is because he sees the problems facing us just as clearly as you and I do.’

‘Your father will hate me.’ Evie was in no mood to be consoled right now. ‘My mother will hate me…’

‘Shut up,’ Raschid said. ‘Or I may just decide to exert other methods to rid you of your melancholy.’

Lavender eyes that he expected to slice him in two at such an audacious threat were instead blunted by a vulnerability even Raschid had never seen in them before.

It moved him to see it, touched a painful chord deep inside him that wrenched free the impassive mask he had been wearing, and replaced it with a complexity of emotions, all of which revolved around several different kinds of frustration.

‘Oh, what the hell?’ he muttered to himself, and with a slick economy of movement his tee shirt came off over his head to reveal that wonderful polished bronze breastplate set between wide, muscled shoulders.

Evie watched him wordlessly as he stripped himself naked, let her eyes feast on every beautiful inch of him as he lifted the sheet and slid into the bed. Her arm lifted in welcome; he coiled himself around her. Their mouths touched briefly, then not so briefly.

‘This really isn’t the time for this.’ Evie made a halfhearted attempt to stem what was already rushing through both of them.

‘I blame you,’ he informed her arrogantly. ‘Seeing you lying here looking so vulnerable and knowing you nurture my child inside you has made me feel most disgustingly macho.’

‘I can tell,’ she drawled in mocking acknowledgement as her hand slid down the flat plane of her stomach to cover the warm, tight evidence of his feelings.

A shiver ripped through him, the kind of shiver that was always his response to her initial touch of him. ‘Then you tell me,’ he murmured in sudden seriousness, ‘how we give this up when we can’t even control it while the world falls in on us.’

‘I don’t know,’ Evie sighed heavily.

‘Well, I do,’ he said as he pushed her on to her back then carefully placed her bandaged arm out of harm’s way before he came to lean over her. ‘We stay together. Somehow, some way, I will make it happen,’ he vowed. ‘You are mine. This child you carry is mine. I will lay claim to you both with pride and with honour. And that, my darling, is my promise to you.’

Fine words, wonderful words. But could he bring them to fruition? And if he could, at what cost to all of those other things in his life he held so dear to him?