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The rhyth ebb and flow She was dozing when he stopped and she mumbled an objection, but it was lost to the brush of his ive her a quick salute, but one shouldn’t give a sip of wine to a sot and expect them to tamely hand back the bottle She threaded her hands into his hair, parted her lips beneath his and kissed him

Never kiss a siren in the dark—that should be inscribed on his tombstone

Every time he kissed her in the dark he stepped further down the plank—under the desert sky, in the tent, in this floating torture chamber

Whatever defences he’d constructed to cope with this hellish voyage went overboard like a drunken sailor theagainst his with a s on warm and damp between his

He hadn’t meant to kiss her He’d o find his for another tortured, sleepless night For teeks he’d lain in his ha sailors and tried not to think of Sam curled up in that little cubby-like cot, her hair in a dark plait over her shoulder and her cotton nightshift covering her like a dusting of fine snow over hills and valleys waiting to be melted Just at that point when sleep overcame discoine precisely that—the fabric fading like a fil justSam

That night in Cairo had been a mistake He would have been wiser to wait until they reached England to consu after a year of abstinence, only to be followed by weeks of a hammock while his wife flirted with two rosy-cheeked naval innocents while ignoring him

It didn’t help that she looked as lovely every day as if she’d slept ten hours in a cloud It didn’t help that that body-searing night kept playing through his mind like a popular tune that refused to be chased away Playing through his body and with his body until he ached

He’d forgotten about aching It had nothing to do with abstinence, apparently Trying to sleep in a ha temper was not a combination he was accustomed to and he didn’t wish to become accustomed to it

But there was nothing he could do to stop fantasising about their hs under his fingers or how she rubbed herself against hi away to pleasure And her scentorange blossom andand butter biscuits

Hell and damnation He was frustrated and tired, and still a little in shock that they were married

And now she’d spiked every one of his guns with her ad on the floor this whole ti God, he wanted to cli about this ache

‘Sahtened in his hair, sending fire down his back

‘Your hair is so silky and warainst his roan exploded in his head like cyed to keep hold of the hammock and not fall on top of her, but his arrazed his lip before licking it

‘And you taste of Aziza’s honey cake,’ she whispered and another cyh his body That didn’t evenhis arm under her and hauled her out of the hammock and into his arms Her breath left her in a surprised whoosh and then she laughed, pushing back at the deflated ha them in the dark

‘All your good work undone I’ll never ain’

He moved forward until he bu his hands in her hair and finally, finally kissed her the way he had in all those aggravating dreaued him the past teeks

In the dark her muffled whi and he couldn’t stop touching, tasting, his fingertips singing with awareness of the shifting textures of her skin, this silk, that satin, the roughness of her elbow—he lingered over that, res, her sleeves hitched up, that line between her brows as sharp as a spear And then the mother-of-pearl sweep of the inside of her elbowhe turned it over and breathed it in, open- it with his lips to the rhythm of her pulse and heard the soft thunk as her head fell back against the wooden wall, the rasp of her breath, the way her legs clamped about his hips He hadn’t even realised he’d cos