He pushed the partially opened door wider and entered the room behind it. It was like an electric lash stung him, momentarily freezing his heart and stinging the blood in his veins.
She stood with her back to him in the corner of the dimly lit, featureless room, her graceful spine slightly bowed, her head lowered in a poignant pose. He couldn’t see her face. Her body was draped in a thin, transparent veil. He could see her naked, feminine curves beneath the thin boundary. Her name burned his lips, but for some reason, he couldn’t voice it.
He came up behind her, grasping her hips, the sensation of her curves and softness, of her lush body rushing him. She remained nameless in his mind, but he’d never known a woman more completely. He dipped his knees and pushed her bottom against his cock, and God it felt good: round and firm. Sweet. Her head fell back, her long, dark, fragrant hair a decadent, sensual blessing spilling across his cheek and lips. She sighed his name, her smooth, resonant voice amplifying his lust. His hands moved across her taut belly, ribs and full, thrusting breasts. Her magnificence overwhelmed him.
He found her throat with his mouth and pulled her against him rhythmically, absorbing her soft moans. He felt his senses opening like a thousand floodgates. His lips traced a graceful shoulder. The thin veil chafed his sensitive skin and hungry mouth, but it didn’t matter. Beneath it, he felt the heat of the woman, the lissome arch of her back and the firm, soft globes of her ass. He raged for her, the sensation of her naked body covered by the veil striking him as painfully erotic. He had to fuse with this woman, to know what it was to burn at the core of her.
The wave that joined them as they pulsed together rhythmically swelled, and his need became reality. His clothing and the veil disappeared, evaporated by pure lust. He sank into her snug, warm flesh—the sensation almost excruciating, it was so sweet. She quaked around him. He grasped a high, firm breast. His world pulsed in a red haze for a desperate moment. He thrust deeper into her, grinding his teeth together in agonized bliss.
“I know your name,” he seethed next to her ear before he bit at the delicate shell and felt her exquisite shudder. “And it isn’t Yesenia.”
He awoke with a start. Sweat slicked his naked body. His cock felt like a huge, heavy ache. For panicked seconds, he didn’t know where he was. The luxurious, mussed bedclothes and the dim room were completely unfamiliar to him, so different from the seven-story walk-up apartment where he’d been living for his last assignment in Cairo. His sex throbbed in agony. He fisted himself, wincing. The tugging sensation of his pumping hand brought back the dream. Even before he understood where he was fully, she took over his brain.
He groaned, thick and harsh, and began to jack himself rigorously. The memory of her had attacked his brain, a forbiddingly sweet, unbearable remembrance. Because with memory of her had come the cruel knowledge that his arms were empty.
He climaxed in a desperate frenzy.
He lay on his side on the bed panting, his large, rigid body releasing the tension packed into his muscles only gradually.
What was this? Why the dream? Why the desperation? Was it some kind of bizarr
e reaction to returning to Chicago? Not only soldiers had trouble assimilating when they returned home to the States. Reporters were known to struggle too.
Or perhaps his odd emotional state related solely to that ugly meeting across the splendidly laid dining room table?
To the fact that he’d disappointed and hurt his parents yet again?
No. It was all about her, plain and simple.
How could that be?
I know your name.
His sweat-slicked skin roughened at the evocative memory from his dream.
He realized he was staring at the bedside clock but hadn’t been really taking in the time. He blinked, propping himself up on his elbow. The clock read five minutes past eight. No light filtered in around the drawn curtains. It was dark out. Amazingly, he’d slept solid for over eight hours.
A feeling of urgency tore through him. He rolled over and picked up his phone off the bedside table. He was supposed to meet Rudy tonight for dinner. He texted a quick excuse, saying he was jet-lagged and not feeling that well. Could they get together for lunch tomorrow, instead?
He lunged off the bed. Until that very moment, he hadn’t been conscious that he’d planned to do it all along.
If he showered quickly and hurried, he could still make her performance at the State Room.
No, he didn’t really believe in his vague, increasingly uneasy suspicion that he knew that singer. But he was irrevocably drawn to her as if he really did recognize her.
Laila.
The forbidden name rolled through him, making his lungs freeze.
Just hearing the word echo in his head made him ache all over again.
• • •
It was Friday, and the club was even more packed than it had been last night. The pretty, model-thin hostess had just walked away with four patrons. A dark, sleek-looking guy approached him, smiling. Asher shook his hand and asked for a prime table. He included two one-hundred-dollar bills inside his palm with the handshake. The tall man’s smile widened, even though he never once glanced at the denomination of the bills he’d just nonchalantly slid into his pocket. Asher found himself seated at a reserved table, just feet away from the stage. How well would she be disguised, from this vantage point? Would he be able to recognize her?
There’s nothing to recognize.
You’re losing it. Do you honestly believe that that beautiful, shy girl would put on such a sexy, compelling show for a roomful of strangers?