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Her confident sexuality, her overt sensuality, these things covered the very real pain she felt. These traits were masks and he had bought into them.
His gut ached with guilt.
“For me, I think it was when I moved to London.” Her smile was wistful, her eyes trained beyond him.
“Why?” He asked the question purely so that she would keep talking.
Cassie’s lip lifted in a half-hearted impersonation of a smile. “Australian rain is very different to this. Rain in London is meek and mild; an expression of contrition rather than a burst of passion.” She reached her fingers to the window and traced the path of a slowly dribbling droplet. “I was used to thunderstorms that brewed for a whole afternoon and finally burst with all the force of the elements. Clouds that soaked and storme
d with bleak ill-humour and lightning that thrashed the sea.” She sighed and removed her finger from the window. “Some children hide from thunderstorms, you know.”
“But not you?”
“No.” She lifted her eyes to his, and they were amused in a subdued way. “I danced in them.” Her eyes sparkled with the mischievous power she harnessed.
“You did?”
“Oh, all the time.” She stood and held her hands out to him. “Like this.”
He stood, because he would have done anything she asked of him in that moment.
Her fingers laced with his; they shook slightly. She held their arms wide, and then turned in large, luxurious circles. As they spun, Cassie tilted her head back and breathed in deeply.
She was free.
What had happened to her was a long way in her past.
And her future was different now. Layth had changed her. He wouldn’t be in her future, but he would always have a hand in how she lived. Because he’d made her see that she could want more than just sex. That she could want it all, and still be herself.
Cassie had her eyes closed, but Layth was watching her. He watched her until she stopped spinning, and blinked up at him. “What about you?” She murmured, dropping their arms without relinquishing her grip on his hands.
“I also loved these storms you speak of.”
“Did you dance in them?”
His laugh was soft. “No.”
“Shame,” she murmured, shaking her head. “Soon you’ll be Emir, and you will be the picture of decorum itself.”
His expression was briefly hard.
“I’m sorry.”
Layth frowned. “What for?”
“Because you’ll inherit your title from a man you love. Losing him will be hard.”
Layth hated how perceptive she was; not because it felt invasive, but because every astute observation she made simply served to highlight how little his closest friends and family really knew him. How had Cassie come to understand him so well after such a short time?
“Yes,” he ground out after a reflective pause.
“What’s wrong with your Uncle?”
Layth’s eyes were heavy with pain. “He has a rare neurological condition. He was born with it, but it only became apparent in recent times.”
“That’s terrible,” Cassie murmured sympathetically.
“Yes. To see a once great man reduced to my uncle’s current condition is humbling.”
