The Desert Lord's Bride / Wed by Deception. Оливия Гейтс

The sight and aroma hit her senses in unison.

      At her moan he said, “This is matazeez—veal cubes cooked in tomato sauce before adding okra, aubergine and zucchini. The stuff that looks like ravioli is specially prepared dough that’s rolled out and cut and dropped in the mix before it’s fully cooked so that it retains its chewiness. Some people consider this a full meal, some eat it with rice or khobez.”

      “That’s this bread?” He nodded, and as she bent for a closer sniff, his smile grew as hot as the dish simmering on the flames. “Who would have guessed you’d know so much about the preparation of the dishes you love.”

      “You didn’t think it possible for me to know how to cook?”

      “If you do, I’ll know you’re a hallucination.”

      He chuckled as he pushed a button, made a chair retract from the table on rails embedded in the fuselage.

      She flopped into it, groaned. “Don’t describe any more dishes. Just looking at them and smelling them was making my stomach lick its lips, but your descriptions are making it grow forks and knives.” He laughed. She moaned. At the sound. At the scents of food mixed with that of virility.

      He served her a portion, but when she tried to reach for a real fork and knife, he stopped her, sat and maneuvered the opposing chair until it touched hers, picked up a fork and started feeding her, all the time caressing her with his eyes.

      And what could she do but wallow in the incredible experience of being waited on, fed, by this god?

      She demolished the portion in minutes, exclaiming at the taste and texture, participating in his quiz of guessing the elusive seasonings, correctly identifying cinnamon and nutmeg. That very distinctive spice turned out to be something she’d never heard about before, semmaq, a spice unique to his region.

      At some point, he started alternating forkfuls between them, and sharing the meal with him that way surpassed even the intimacy of the frenzied time they’d shared in the gardens.

      When he started feeding her dessert, she moaned. “This I have to ask about. You can resume your recipe description.”

      He chuckled. “That’s maasoob. It’s khobez, cut into small pieces, fried crispy, mashed with banana and brown sugar and caramelized in butter. The sprinkling on top is paprika, saffron and the tasty black seeds are hab el barakah, literally, blessing seeds.”

      She moaned again as the sinful concoction slid on her tongue and down her throat. “Blessing or curse? My hips and thighs are already screaming the latter.”

      “Those are a blessing unto themselves. A little more of them would be a bigger blessing.”

      “Oh, no. I struggled long and hard with my weight as I grew up and I’m never going back there.”

      He put the spoon down, his eyes a heavy caress over her body. “I wanted you to sample the richness of the flavors of my culture, but if this perfection is a result of your hard work, I certainly won’t do anything to sabotage it.”

      A tightness clutched her throat. Whenever she’d made a statement like that in the past, everyone had scoffed at her with reactions ranging from disbelief that she had such concerns, to accusing her of fishing for compliments, to choosing to believe she’d just been blessed with a nuclear metabolism and could gorge herself on junk constantly and not gain an ounce.

      But he understood. And supported. He was just phenomenal.

      And he was on his feet, inviting her to leave the table.

      She let him lead her back to the lounge, where he took her to a different seating area, this time sitting on an armchair across from her. She watched him, obsessing over his every detail.

      He watched her examining his every inch for a long moment, then he suddenly said, “It just came to me, one more thing that I think caused your alarm. The man you trusted and wanted was the man you saw in the Tuareg garb. Seeing me in these clothes must have made you feel as if I were someone else.”

      Her eyes jerked up from watching the ripple of steel muscles below the fine cloth of his pants. “This—uh, Tuareg garb is how you usually dress in your country?”

      “Hardly. Tuaregs come from and still live mostly in the North African desert and are quite proud of the purity of their lineage. My ancestors, who come from all over Asia wouldn’t have been allowed within a mile of marriage into their tribes.”

      “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