His grip was hard, instant, right on the edge of painful, but it was a good pain that only he could assuage, and she moved her hips in counterpoint. He was long and thick, and her body welcomed the invasion. Isis pressed her damp face into his neck as her internal muscles pulsed and clenched around him.
They came together in a spectacular light show that left them both limp and panting.
“Christ. I think I just flew into the sun,” Thorne said against her sweaty throat. He was heavy, and their skin was glued together. “Am I squashing you?”
“Yes.” Isis held him in place with a weak grip on his buns. “But don’t move. I can’t take the excitement.”
Thorne smiled against her throat, then flexed his hips.
ELEVEN
I will procure two men to go with y—” Husani’s gaze flickered over Isis’s shoulder. His face hardened. “Brengard approaches on your right. He is already schooling his features as if surprised to encounter you.”
They’d accompanied her friend to the souk the next morning so they could pick up a new car. Isis half turned, moving closer to Thorne. She saw herself reflected in his sunglasses. Once again the humidity had turned her hair into a dark cloud of out-of-control curls around her shoulders. Husani plopped a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head, and she twisted the unruly mass into a knot, stuffing it beneath the crown to bare her neck to any stray breeze. There wasn’t one, but she lived in hope.
Even the hours of delicious lovemaking the night before couldn’t compensate for her lack of sleep. She felt sweaty and disheveled and decidedly grumpy. Thorne looked cool, calm, and annoyingly affable.
They’d stopped only long enough to buy more new clothes—something not in Isis’s budget. At least Thorne was a cheap date. Thank God he was happy in jeans and a navy blue T-shirt, which did lovely things stretched over his broad chest. She grabbed jeans and a purple T-shirt with her namesake Isis, wings spread across her boobs.
Everything she owned in the world was slung across her chest in her camera bag.
“Do you believe in coincidences?” Through her darkened glasses she watched Dylan’s approach. Thorne, too, tracked him as he wove his way through the throng of people, heading directly for Husani’s shop.
“Never.”
She looked up at Thorne. His features had turned grim, dark, and immovable. A different man than the tender lover she’d discovered the night before. “Neither do—”
“Isis? My God. Is that you?”
She turned to face her father’s protégé. “Dylan. What a… surprise.” Just seeing him pissed her off, and she deliberately kept her tone borderline rude. He was no more surprised to see her than she was to see him, and she hated that they were playing this fake social game. Was he the moron who’d shot at them last night and tried to run them off the road?
“It’s great to see you!” When he looked as though he was going to pull her in for a hug, Thorne blocked him, taking Isis’s hand and tugging her against him. She liked feeling his hard body against hers, even if they were in the middle of the souk with Dylan blocking the way. Husani came to stand on her other side. It was sweet of the two men to want to protect her, but Dylan wasn’t likely to do anything in a public market. Thorne gave the other man a cool nod. “Thorne, Isis’s fiancé. You must be Brengard.”
Dylan’s gaze flickered from him back to Isis. “This is a surprise. This is the last place I’d expect to see you, what with your father…”
Isis liked that Thorne didn’t pretend he didn’t know who Dylan was, or mangle the other man’s name just to prove a point. She, however, wasn’t quite as evolved. She pushed her glasses up her nose with her giving-the-bird finger. “He’s doing much better, thanks for asking.”
Dylan flinched at her sarcasm. “If you’d give me a minute, I was just about to. How is the professor?”
“Fighting fit, and in top form,” Thorne inserted smoothly.
Dylan looked momentarily nonplussed, but regrouped quickly. He was like a damned cat, always landing on his feet. Isis had known he was a little too smooth, but she hadn’t realized until this very second that he wasn’t smooth, he was slick.
“That’s… That’s good to know. Is he here with you?” He glanced around somewhat nervously, as if expecting her father to jump out of one of the nearby baskets.