Chapter Eight
Cilla
Botswana greets us like a promise wrapped in heat and gold.
The Biney jet touches down on a private strip carved between jackal-berry trees and tall, whispering grasses.
A welcome delegation waits—a quartet of dancers in beaded skirts, a brass band, a photographer who can’t decide whether to aim at Ashon or at me.
Ashon helps me down the mobile stairs. His hand lingers at my waist, steady and sure.
There’s something new in his eyes—resolve, almost fierce.
He’s watching me the way he studies a movie set right before he shouts ‘Action’.
With intent and hunger, ready to rewrite the scene if it doesn’t serve the story.
‘Expecting another red carpet?’ I tease, adjusting my sunhat.
‘Just making sure you don’t run,’ he murmurs, even-toned but with that watchful determination very much present. ‘Botswana’s a long sprint home, wife.’
‘Try me. I’ve been upping my cardio.’
He laughs, that low warm sound that always skims my skin like velvet. We climb into an air-conditioned safari vehicle lined in creamy leather. Champagne appears but is waved away by Ashon before I can refuse and I gratefully accept the chilled mineral water he passes me.
A guide launches into delighted facts about elephants and delta floods. But my attention keeps hooking on Ashon’s profile—the relaxed line of his shoulders at odds with the hard curve of a smile he doesn’t quite hide.
Cap Ferrat feels miles away, but not forgotten, if that heat lurking in his brown eyes is an indication.
My own heat is stirring when the resort finally rises ahead, stilted villas draped in thatch, private plunge pools catching late afternoon sun. Ashon leans close, lips brushing my ear. ‘I’m assured they have a cinema room.’
My pulse flares. ‘And you plan a rerun, do you, or a brand-new screening?’ I ask, a pulse for that daring and power from last night, stealing through my blood.
‘That depends entirely on which seat you take,’ he counters, wicked.
I swallow a laugh and the lump of anticipation and deep, deep longing behind it.
And because that frightens the hell out of me, the second we’re shown into our accommodation I claim jetlag as an excuse to flee to my allocated bedroom.
Very much aware Ashon’s eyes follow me like a tether on a very short leash.
I wake three hours later in gauzy twilight, tangled in linen sheets and a dream so vivid I can still taste him. The movie-dark room, his hands in my hair, my desperate moan swallowed by his kiss. My body remembers every pulse of it, humming like a struck chord.
A knock sounds, then the door opens at my husky response.
The man I’ve just been dreaming about enters with a silver tray, his eyes immediately locking on me. He’s ditched the linen suit for a charcoal T-shirt and soft slacks that cling where memory says my palms belong.
When I manage to drag my gaze away, I see what’s on the tray. Ginger tea, grilled tilapia, papaya slices. As if my body lives to please him and betray me, my belly growls in mouthwatering response.
‘You didn’t eat on the plane. Couldn’t risk you fainting again,’ he says, voice gentle but implacable. ‘Tea first. Then you can yell at me for waking you.’
I sit up, hair a mess, heart wilder than the delta beyond the deck. ‘No yelling,’ I manage, sucking in a deep breath. ‘I was just…’
‘Dreaming interesting dreams?’ His brow lifts, like he already knows.
Heat rushes up my neck but I don’t answer. In silence, he cuts up the fish and I let him feed me bites, followed by the juicy papaya.
When I reach for the cup, my fingers brush his instead. Electric, inevitable. I don’t pull away.
His gaze drops to our hands, then climbs slowly to my mouth. He raises the cup himself and I take a sip. Then…as he lowers it, something inside me gives, the last flimsy barricade.
I release the cup and I tug. At him. At something that my body screams harder for.
He comes, the look in his eyes saying he’s known this was as inevitable as I’ve feared.
The tray clinks onto the bedside table—forgotten—and suddenly his weight is sinking into the mattress, his lips finding mine, soft but unyielding.
The kiss starts careful, but caution burns faster than a blaze on the savannah.
His tongue teases mine and the taste of sweet ginger flickers between us. His palm skims under the loose sleep shirt I’d thrown on, finding skin, finding the new curve at my waist that shelters our child.
He pauses there, thumb stroking once, reverent. My breath hitches at the tenderness of it.
‘You keep daring me,’ he whispers against my throat. ‘Dare me not to want every single part of you.’
‘Do you?’ I challenge.
He smiles. That arrogant, intensely smug and partly sardonic look. ‘You need me to convince you, again?’ he mutters.
My reply is a sigh that melts into a yes.
A fierce blaze consumes his expression, then he cups my face, kisses me again, longer, deeper, then trails open-mouthed caresses down the column of my neck.
Each one is a question. Can you deny this? Does this feel false to you?
And each time my hands, mouth and legs answer, wrapping around him, tasting him in return, fisting in his shirt, tugging. When he lifts it over his head, I rake hungry eyes over the chiselled planes of his chest.
In Cap Ferrat I worshipped him, now I want him imprinting every inch of me.
Clothing becomes an inconvenience, peeled away in breathless pauses.
No rush, yet everything urgent. The air smells of hibiscus carried on the evening breeze, of sandalwood from his skin.
He settles me back onto pillows, mouths the swell of my breast with aching slowness until I arch, and the dream is reality.
Several flicks of his tongue then a tortuous suckle erupt moans that blend into the sultry air.
‘Cilla,’ he murmurs, voice low and raw. ‘Now’s the time to tell me to stop if—’
‘Don’t,’ I whisper—plea, command, confession. ‘Please, don’t.’
He moves between my thighs, his eyes still locked on me as if I’m the only thing he wants to see, to experience. That’s the thing about this man, his unwavering focus to the thing he desires.
Knowing…in this moment…that thing is me?
My breath shudders as he grips his large girth, poses it at my entrance. And he looks at me. Desire is very much present, intensely so. But there’s that calculation too. That resolve that says every move, every act from here on out will bear great significance.
But I want him too much to parse through what’s happening now, to catalogue later consequences. Or maybe I’ve already fallen, been conquered by them.
So I reach for him.
And he comes to me.
He slides inside with a thick groan that vibrates through my bones. ‘Fuck. Cilla.’
I feel full, perfect, as though my body was waiting only for this. For him.
Eerily in tune, he stills, his grip tightening on my hips, one hand catching my chin with the kind of possessive reverence that makes me forget how to breathe.
His eyes bore into mine, dark and unrelenting.
‘Why do you make me feel like this?’ he demands, voice low and jagged, as if the words cost him.
My breath trembles. ‘Like what?’
His jaw clenches, the muscle ticking. ‘Like losing control would be worth it. Like I’d burn down my empire just to keep you looking at me like that.’
I flinch because I know he means it. And because I want to believe it. But I can’t afford to.
‘Maybe you’re just drunk on the power,’ I say, tilting my chin even as my voice shakes. ‘You like the idea of owning the one woman who dared to walk away.’
His eyes flash, hard with something raw. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. This was never about ownership.’
‘No?’ I whisper. ‘Then what is it?’
He leans in, voice a whisper against my lips. ‘It’s the way you challenge me. The way you never make it easy. And the way, God help me, you fit against me like you were carved to.’
The words hit somewhere deep, somewhere I’ve tried so hard to bury.
I want to tell him he terrifies me. That this—whatever this is—is starting to mean too much. But I can’t.
Because if I speak, I might never be able to take it back.
So instead, I kiss him like a coward and a seductress, slow and fierce, because it’s safer than the truth.
And neither of us says the thing we both came dangerously close to whispering into the silence.
We move together in languid waves in a slow claiming that feels dangerously close to the kind of emotional connection that should terrify.
Probably does terrify.
But the undiluted pleasure thickening my blood and fogging my brain allows no room for fear, as he thrusts and I scream for more.
And as we hurtle towards that sublime peak, I watch his face change—arrogance stripped, every emotion vivid in the dark: awe, hunger, something that looks like plans solidifying. Maybe even hope?
The sight part fractures my defenses because dreams want to become reality.
My hips rise, matching his rhythm, chasing heat that coils deeper each time he thrusts. He braces one hand above my head, the other clasping our entwined fingers beside my pillow, anchoring us.
Pleasure builds, a tide pulling me under. When it crests, I cry out his name, unguarded, and feel him shudder, spill, bury his face at my shoulder.
Silence after is half-taut, half-tender, humming with shared heartbeat. He slips from my body but not my embrace, rolling so I lie half-atop him, cheek on his chest. The evening wraps us warm, the rustle of reeds outside the only witness.
I could speak about fear, about the emotions clawing at the edges of my resolve, but words feel fragile, far too exposing and explosive. Instead, I trace idle circles over his heart.
He catches my hand, presses a kiss to my palm, and in the hush I think I hear him whisper, almost too softly, arrogantly, ‘This plot twist I saw coming from far away.’
I close my eyes, undecided whether to laugh or cry, and drift in the sweet aftermath. Knowing dawn will bring its own iteration, but tonight we’ve written this scene together, one that doesn’t include fleeing because I sense this time I won’t get very far.