“God, I must sound so ignorant, assuming all Arabs have the same origins.”
The teasing in his eyes intensified. “Tuaregs can’t be called Arabs. They call themselves Kel Tamajag, or Speakers of Tamasheq, a language that has nothing in common with Arabic. But it’s understandable that you might lump peoples who hail from a general direction into one basket. Back home, a lot of people consider all white people ‘Americans.’”
“I’m sure that’s not true of those above a certain education level. People with my education anywhere in the world have no excuse for being so oblivious and making such generalizations. I’m lamentably ignorant about your part of the world.”
“I will teach you. Everything you want to know.”
And she’d bet he didn’t mean only about the complexities of his region and its various cultures and peoples.
She groped for breath. “OK, you can start now. What do you wear where you come from?”
“Most men wear white taub and ghotrah or red-and-white-checkered shmagh with black eggal headdress. They add a black abaya if it gets cold. I wear modern clothes, except in formal functions. Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t always go around looking like I’ve just stepped out of Arabian Nights.”
“It does disappoint me.” And she had to tell him that? Then she told him more. “Which is weird, really. I’ve never much cared for that kind of getup, or even seen the Arabian Nights connection. But then, I’ve never seen you in one…”
It was hopeless. She was doomed to tell him everything just as it formed in her mind. She just prayed it didn’t put him off.
He seemed anything but put off as his eyes devoured her. “Ya gummari, I have an extensive wardrobe right out of my culture’s rich past and I’ll dress up in whatever takes your fancy. I bet I’ll learn to love these intricate outfits when you’re undressing me, layer by layer…” Then he sighed. “Until then, I must settle for fantasies and anticipation.”
Blood shot to her face before splashing through her body.
He shook his head as he took in her condition. “Hours ago you were ready to let me make love to you, and now you’re blushing to your toes at my mildly erotic innuendoes?”
“Mildly? Yeah, right. But that aside, wouldn’t you be embarrassed out of your skin if it was sinking in that you’d almost done something so out of character with a virtual stranger, and but for his clout, it would have been plastered all over the tabloids for the world to see?”
“Don’t you think ‘out of character’ is too mild a description for anything I’d do if the stranger were of the ‘his’ variety?”
She glared at him. “You’re laughing at me!”
His shook his head again. “With you.”
It didn’t placate her. Her brain felt scrambled, would remain so as long as he kept “…making me make a fool of myself.”
Shehab watched her in rising confusion.
Was she telling him she didn’t go for sex with strangers? Didn’t indulge in one-night stands? Or literally few-minutes stands, as she’d begged him to be?
The last of the ease in her pose, the softness in her lips and the dreaminess in her eyes evaporated. “Sorry I said that out loud. No one makes you do anything you don’t want to. I made a fool of myself and I got caught. And I have to face the music sooner or later. So, listen, when we land, forget about what I said about going to a hotel. I’ll take a taxi home, get it over with.”
For some reason the spell kept being interrupted and this unpredictable woman kept swinging between opposites while he was left reeling. First the uncharted reaction to the paparazzi, then that empathic episode. And now. What was it now? Was she coming to her senses, envisioning possible damages from their liaison?
But if she was, why wasn’t she trying to get away with it? So far there was no incriminating evidence against her.
Had she decided he wasn’t worth the trouble of risking anything further? Was she cutting him off?
“You promised to see me again, and again.”
“Yeah, that was before I remembered I was a paparazzi magnet. And I can’t let you be plastered all over the tabloids.”
Was this just an excuse to get rid of him? Or could it be she was really worried about causing him a scandal? Her words did have the inimitable ring of truth to them. Not that, after tonight, he’d recognize the truth if it punched him in the gut.
“You’re concerned for my privacy?”
“It takes one who has none to know how valuable it is. You’ve been very wise to keep your anonymity. Nothing is worth endangering that.”
“You are. Worth that, and far more.”
She winced. “Don’t exaggerate, please. You barely know me. How do you know what I’m worth? And from the way I behaved with you so far, I know any man would be thinking I’m not worth much. But you of all men…So I believe you want me, but I’d hate to peek inside your head and read what you really think of me.”
“I, of all men? What’s so different about me?”
“What’s not different about you? And then, you come from a culture that glorifies feminine modesty and virtue, and is cruel to women who don’t abide by its strict rules, and I-I…”
“Your mind is taking off on tangents again. You’re punishing yourself for a nonexistent misdemeanor. I don’t believe so-called virtue is required of women any more than it is of men. Do you consider me to be a degenerate for letting our first encounter take an erotic turn that fast?”
“You know I don’t. It was you who stopped, you who had control over yourself, while I-I…”
“You were over your head.”
She nodded, her eyes downcast.
“I was, too. The one thing that made me stop was my fear of this exact situation, after your blood cooled and you couldn’t defend your actions to yourself, driving you to push me away in shame and discomfort at what you consider a lapse.”
“I didn’t say it was a lapse. I said it was out of character. So much so, I don’t know how to handle it, don’t know what to think…”
“Well, I do. I think I’ve never known desire like that existed. But it is so pure, so powerful I don’t know how to handle it, either. The one thing I could think to do was to slow down, savor it…savor you. Though you’re making it almost impossible to do that. Everything you say, every breath you draw is making me want to unwrap you and swallow you whole.”