Marguerite Kaye - Summer Sheikhs

‘What is there in that moment that still traps us, after so many years?’ he pressed. ‘A few weeks out of a lifetime. Why is it so close?’

The question hung on the air like smoke, symbol of the fire that lurked beneath.

Desi moved her head. Something burned her eyes and the back of her throat. ‘I don’t know.’ The desert at night was like nothing she had ever experienced, and yet there was something about the campfire, the stars and his nearness that brought those island feelings close. Love—the memory of love! she corrected herself—tore at her heart.

A moment later he was beside her on the blanket, his voice hoarse and low.

‘Here there is no time, Desi. You feel it. I feel it. Time has disappeared. Here we can be what we were. Let us make love once more as the innocent children we were. Let us remember the love we felt, just once; let us make love as if ten years had not passed, as if you had come to me then.’

Her heart was caught between melting and breaking. A sob burned her throat. ‘What do you want, Salah?’

She felt the approach of heat, and then his hand was on her breast, cupping it tenderly.

‘Do you remember the first time I touched you, Desi? How my hand trembled. Let me touch you like that again.’

Slowly he drew the loose shirt down her arms and tossed it to one side. Under her T-shirt she was naked, the heat was too much for a bra, and he knew it. Gently he pushed her down onto the blanket, his hand slipping up under the thin cotton to find the silky curve of her breast and encircle it as if coming home.

‘The first time I touched you like this, Desi, how my blood leapt! The magic of your soft breast, the way your flesh answered me—’ He stroked his palm over the shivered, hungry tip that responded to his urgency with aching need, then pushed the cloth up and bent his head.

The firelight shadowed his chiselled face, showed her the tortured passion in his eyes, so that she could almost believe he was again the boy he had been, passionate, loving, accepting, burning with need of her. She melted at the thought, body and soul, and as his lips gently encircled her flesh, she whispered his name, as she had so long ago.

Salah.

Her voice held the surprise of awakening passion, as if he heard it down the years and she were still a virgin, and he closed his eyes as the power of it struck him a blow straight to the heart.

As they had then, his hands became urgent, his tenderness struggling with the need that moved in them both. He pushed the T-shirt over her head and off, and his eyes devoured the beauty of her perfect breasts, her skin’s creamy smoothness caressed by the flickering blaze that stroked her even as his hands did. Then he was jealous, primitively jealous of the fire’s adoration of her, and moved over her, so that she lay in his shadow, as he urged off the shorts that had no right to touch her legs…

But starlight, too, adored her, glowing on her white forehead, her dampened lips. He bent to take possession there, too, his mouth hungry and urgent.

The hunger of years rose to her lips, and she opened her mouth tenderly, willingly, hungrily, and as innocent now as then, for in the desert time disappeared. Her hands wrapped him, fingers clenching on his shoulder, his head, clasping the rich black curls in the newness of that passion she had learned only with him. Each move of his mouth and tongue and lips was answered by hers, and his blood pounded through him and he struggled against the urgent need to take her, consume her, be one with her, now.

He shrugged out of his clothes, and then stretched out beside her, naked and gleaming in firelight. Her hands stroked the length of his chest and flank, and in the darkness and flickering shadow the honing of maturity and even his battle scar somehow were lost, so that his body was as fresh and perfect as at seventeen.

His fingers caressed her cheek, her temple, stroked the silky hair back from her brow as he gazed into eyes that reflected the night sky and all eternity. Stars glinted in her gaze as she smiled fearlessly, trustingly into his face, in a way no woman had done again. It touched him to the depths of his soul, and he gathered her wildly up in his arms, clumsy, inexperienced, like the boy he had been, and crushed her to him, drowned her mouth with his own, drank in the sweetness of her like wine.

His hands were strong, holding her as if he could never let her go, as they pressed her back, her shoulder, her head, desperate to bring her closer and closer, till she was part of him. She melted with yearning, with fulfilment, with need, crying her joy to the night air, to the desert that saw all, knew all.

His mouth drank and drank of the nectar of their kiss. Her body was pressed so tightly against him they were one flesh, and the hands that wrapped and caressed her sent sensation like honey through her, and in her response he felt the honey return and pour into his own flesh.

Still it was not enough for either; the last, the final union was still to come, and she began to plead with him as she had so long ago, soft murmurings in his ear that resonated in his heart, please, Salah, please, please, as she pressed closer and closer, as her body moulded to his and his to her.

He drew away a little then, unable to wait longer, for what they needed was to sink into each other, and remember who they had been.

He drew away, and his flesh fitted to hers with the hungry knowing of the key for the lock, and pushed inside, and they cried out together in surprise and completion, one voice that drenched their nerve ends with sweetness. And then they were locked together, gazing into each other’s star-filled eyes, unmoving with the surprise of passion.

He stroked her face, her hair, she touched his full lips with a questing fingertip, and that moment of wonder and surprise was the same as it had been ten long years ago, that moment of feeling the pulse of an ancient rhythm burn up inside them, the summons of that urgent, age-old necessity that is the heartbeat of life. It began to move in them, through them, and they were helpless on the current of its urgency, the pulsing, pushing beat that took them closer and closer to the place where time is destroyed in eternity.

The fire watched greedily, coating their limbs with light and shadow, as they moved and embedded deeper and deeper into each other’s being, towards the one.

They cried out as they approached it, cried their helpless pleasure, their consuming need, to all who would hear: earth and water and fire and air, and sky and time and nothingness and all, and then they were there, and all need, all urgency, exploded in a blaze of honeyed light that swept out from the tiny space where souls and bodies met, to enrich all creation. And, bathed in its glow, blinded by its brightness, for that place cannot be seen by mortal eyes, for one moment of perfection they cried out their gratitude, and then, slowly, because they must, sank back together into the abode of separation.

The firelight died, and still they lay entangled, unwilling to let the world enter between them again. But soon the desert chill invaded both body and soul.

‘Now we know,’ said Salah, and there was something in his tone that chilled her even further, because it told her nothing had changed.

‘Do we?’

‘It was real,’ he said. ‘It was there. We destroyed it, but it was real.’

‘Is it better to know?’ she asked bitterly, feeling somehow that it was tonight, not ten years ago, that she had created the real heartbreak for herself.

She stiffened to ward off pain, but Salah didn’t answer. He sat up as night insects, drawn by the scent of honey, approached, and threw a few more dried fronds onto the dying blaze before disappearing down towards the pool, now shrouded in darkness.