He ignored his stampeding senses, strolled into the kitchen, started brewing coffee. “According to new evidence your own mother is also a variant of virulent female lifeform.”
She chuckled and recorded her objection to his jaded evaluation by mopping extra hard around his feet. “My mother neither ripped out anyone’s soul nor fed on anyone’s entrails. When I add up my life, where the pros far outweigh the cons, I come out believing she did what she thought was best for me.”
He raised one foot after the other for her to mop beneath, giving her a pitying look. “I’ll believe you believe that Mother’s Day absolutionist crap when we ski on ice in this desert.”
She riddled his vision in the dazzle of her smile. “You still didn’t explain your brothers. Shaheen risked exile and dispossession and Harres defied customs and made many powerful new enemies to be with the women they loved. From all reports they would have happily sacrificed everything.”
He exhaled at the reminder. “Shaheen is a romantic dolt and Harres’s brain is irreversibly fried from a combination of gunshot injury, sunstroke and prolonged fearless-female exposure. We’ll see how they feel after the honeymoon period is over, and what their deified wives will turn into after a few years and kids.”
“You’re certain they’ll turn into succubi, too, huh?”
He nodded. “But even if my brothers deserve it for being such wishful idiots, I hope they don’t get what’s coming to them.”
She gave a semi-snort of delight. “Such an outpouring of oldest brotherly love.”
“I know. I’m a big softie.”
She raised twinkling-with-glee eyes from an imaginary tough spot. “What about Aliyah? With two kids already, she has broken the barrier of the enchanted honeymoon period. I’ve seen it for myself that she and Kamal are more deliriously in love than ever.”
He gave an exaggerated shudder. “Don’t remind me. Seeing Kamal of all men turn into this tail-wagging puppy around Aliyah gives me night sweats. It’s positively creepy.”
“And of course you can’t factor in that she makes him happy and fulfilled, and he finds no reason to turn on his suspicious, ruthless software around her.”
He brooded at her as she turned and her hair suddenly expelled the pencil holding it up. Its coil unraveled, its swish sweeping through his nerves, the settling silk seeming to brush against every one of them. And he had to admit it.
She’d won.
She’d resisted all his indirect attempts to make her broach the one subject he wanted her to tackle. Now the need to hear another story burned a hole in his gut.
He couldn’t hold back anymore, goaded her, directly. “Don’t you think bringing up those examples of matrimonial bliss is too transparent? If I could be, I’d be insulted you think such obvious tactics can aid you in your mission of acquiring me as a husband.”
She turned, eyes acknowledging his capitulation, her triumph.
For heart-pounding moments, he thought she’d ignore his blatant prodding.
Then she rested her chin on both hands on top of the mop, quirked her lips. “Out of the mildest curiosity, where did you get the idea that I want to marry you?”
He almost groaned in relief.
Thanking her inwardly for taking pity on him when her eyes told him he deserved none, he shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe from your constant pursuit ever since that accursed conference.”
She gave him a cheerful glance as she walked away to store the mop. “You got my interest all wrong. You can rest dry at night knowing that marrying you has never crossed my mind.”
“Aih. And your father will fly.”
A laugh trilled from her lips, even as her eyes all but smacked his derriere with that reproach that reminded him that, while she reveled in his caustic humor, it wasn’t fully appreciated when it splattered her father.
“But don’t take it personally,” she mock placated. “In your famous words, been there, done that. Marriage is anathema to me now, just as you consider it up there with contracting a new ‘virulent variant’ of the plague.”
When she didn’t seem about to add more, he handed her her mug of coffee, prodded again, “So you don’t want me as a husband?”
“Definitely and irrevocably not.” She sipped her coffee, gave that tiny, maddening moan of appreciation. Just when he thought she’d leave him hanging with no “story,” her gaze suddenly bathed him in something she’d never exposed him to. The full force of her solemnity. “But I want you.”
It felt like an endless moment before he could retrip the speech fuses blown by the intensity of her words. “As a sex partner?”
Her lashes fluttered down as if the description jarred her. They swept up again, revealing eyes simmering with so many meanings and emotions. “Among other things.”
“What other things? What else could I be to you? A trophy? A sponsor? A watchdog? A bouncer?”
Her lips twitched again. “You’d be superlative at all of the above, but nope, I have no need of any of those. Though if you have to have names for what I have in mind for you, I can come up with dozens, starting with sparring partner and passing by mental stimulator, vitality booster and stress reliever all the way to—” her gaze poured scalding desire down his body to the part she’d visually spanked minutes earlier “—lap dancer.”
He felt his bones vibrate with every role’s impact on his imagination, with the need to haul her off her feet and demonstrate each one’s duties to the full.
She suddenly switched back to seriousness. “I wasn’t bringing up matrimonial examples, but passionate connections that work, that provide the partners with what nothing else could. That those couples chose to put their connection within the socially acceptable frame of marriage is their business. We both tried marriage and know it doesn’t work. Not for us. But I believe we can and would work, in every way that pleases and suits us both. We’re both now in a situation where we can take whatever we want together, with no regard to the demands our culture and status once made on us that spoiled my life and almost ended yours.”
And for the first time he understood. What temptation meant.
It stood before him, made flesh and wit and intellect and desire, making its simple offer of everything, unstoppable and consuming for all its unconditional generosity.
And it shamed him. That even with his past and present convictions, he still considered risking annihilation by grabbing for this land mine.