Desert Jewels & Rising Stars

by Sharon Kendrick

  A finger below her chin tilted her face up to him, to pore into those eyes he felt he’d fallen into whole.

  Then he whispered, “You know me?”

  Two

  He didn’t recognize her?

  Johara gaped at Shaheen as the realization sank through her, splashed like a rock into her gut.

  She should have known that he wouldn’t.

  Why should he? He’d probably forgotten she existed.

  Even if he hadn’t, she looked nothing like the fourteen-year-old he’d known.

  That was due in part to her own late blooming and in part to her mother’s influence. In Zohayd, Jacqueline Nazaryan had always downplayed Johara’s looks. Her mother had later told her she’d known that Johara, having inherited her height and luminescent coloring and her father’s bone structure and eyes, would become a tall, curvaceous blonde who possessed a paradoxical brand of beauty. And in the brunette, petite-woman–dominated Zohayd, a woman like Johara would be both a prized jewel and a source of endless trouble. If she’d learned to emphasize her looks, she would have become the target of dangerous desires and illicit offers, heaping trouble on her and her father’s head. Her mother had left her in Zohayd secure that Johara had no desire and no means of achieving her potential and would continue looking nondescript.

  Once she’d joined her mother in France, Jacqueline had encouraged her to showcase her beauty and had done everything she and her fashion-industry colleagues could to help Johara blossom into a woman who knew how to wield what she was told were considerable assets.

  As Johara became a successful designer and businesswoman herself, she learned her mother had been right. Most men saw little beyond the face and body they coveted. Several rich and influential men had tried to acquire her as another trophy to bolster their image, another check on their status report. She’d been fully capable of turning them down, without incident so far. Without the repercussions her mother had feared would have accompanied the same rejections in Zohyad.

  So yes. She’d been crazy to think Shaheen would recognize her when the lanky, reed-thin duckling he’d known had become a confident, elegant swan.

  And here he was. Looking at her without the slightest flicker of recognition. That instant awareness, that flare of delight at the sight of her hadn’t been that. It had been …

  What had it been? What was that she saw playing on his lips, blazing in his eyes as he inclined his awesome head at her? What was it she felt electrocuting her from his fingers, still caressing her chin? Was it possible he …?

  “Of course you know who I am.” Shaheen cut through her feverish contemplations, shook his head in self-deprecation. The flashes from the mirror balls and revolving disco lights shot sparks of copper off the luxury of his mane and into the fathomless translucence of his eyes, zapping her into ever-deepening paralysis. “You’re attending my farewell party, after all.”

  She remained mute. He thought she recognized him only because he was a celebrity in whose name he thought she was here having free drinks and an unrepeatable networking opportunity.

  He relinquished her chin only to let the back of his fingers travel in a gossamer up-down stroke over her almost combusting cheek. “So to whom should I offer my unending thanks for inviting you here?”

  Her heart constricted as the reality of the situation crystallized.

  She hadn’t even factored in that he might not know her on sight. But she’d conceded she shouldn’t have expected it. But that there was nothing about her that jogged any sense of familiarity in him—that she couldn’t rationalize. Or accept.

  Her insides compacted in a tight tangle of disappointment.

  His words and actions so far had had nothing to do with happiness at seeing her after all these years. There was only one reason he could have approached her, was talking to her, looking at her this way. It seemed absurd, unthinkable. But she could find no other explanation.

  Shaheen was coming on to her.

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, he seemed to tighten all of his virility and influence around her, dropping his voice an octave, sinking it right through to her core. “This will sound like the oldest line in the book, but even though you haven’t said one complete sentence to me yet and we met just minutes ago, I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

  The music chose that second to blare again, as if accentuating his announcement, cutting off any possibility of her blurting out that he felt that way because he had.

  At the deafening intrusion, he dropped his hand from her cheek, raised his head, his eyes releasing hers from their snare as he cast an annoyed look at the whole scene. He caught her again with the full force of his focus a moment later. “This place is incompatible with human sanity.” His eyes forged another path of fire down her body to where her purse was hanging limply from her hand. “I see you’ve got your bag with you. Shall we go?”

  She gasped as currents forked through her from where his hand curved around her upper arm in courteous yet compelling invitation. “B-but it’s your party.”

  His eyes crinkled at her as his lips spread, revealing the even power of his teeth. “Aih, and I’ll leave if I want to.” His thumb swept the naked flesh of her arm, causing a firestorm to ripple through her as though through a wheat field in a storm. “And how I want to.”

  Her free fist came up, pressing against a heart that seemed to be trying to ram out of her chest cavity.

  The world had always transformed into a wonderland when he smiled. But this was … ridiculous. There should be a law against his indulging in the practice in inhabited areas!

  She blinked, her sluggish gaze drifting from his at the pull of something vague. And she blinked again. In disbelief.

  She was no longer in the middle of the party. She was in a spacious marble hall, walking on jellified legs toward what she judged to be McCormick’s private elevator.

  Had she really walked here? Or had he teleported them?

  Suddenly it was all too much. His every move and glance stripping her of basic coherence, his very nearness inching her to the verge of collapse as she and the situation spiraled out of control. He didn’t have the slightest memory of her, was enacting this aggressive seduction based on her anonymity, confident of her availability.

  Still, only when they stopped in front of the elevator did she manage to attempt to extract herself smoothly from his loose yet incapacitating grip. Her spinning senses made her stumble back instead, wrenching her arm away.

  She could see astonishment reverberate through him as the spectacular wings of his eyebrows snapped together and his lips lost the fullness of intimacy, chiseling into harsher lines that accentuated their perfection. And showed her yet another side of him that she’d never been exposed to—the ruthless royal he could become when provoked or displeased.

  So he couldn’t comprehend that a female would have the temerity to not fall all over herself to obey his decrees? Maybe this encounter would end in closure, after all. Just in a different way than she’d imagined.

  She glared her disillusion up into his eyes. “You’re so certain I want to leave with you, aren’t you?”

  Bitterness hardened her voice. She knew he heard it loud and clear, too.

  The last of the heat in his gaze drained as stillness descended. “Yes, I am. As certain of my desire to leave with you.”

  She huffed her fury. “You’re right. You are spouting the oldest lines in the book.”

  His pupils expanded, almost engulfed his vivid irises. “I realize they sound like that, but they happen to be true.”

  Her lips twisted, mimicking a fiercer contortion of her heart. “Sure they are.”

  “You think I’m so lacking in imagination or finesse that I’d use something so hackneyed to express myself if it wasn’t the simple truth, and no other words would do?”

  “Maybe you’re just too lazy, too jaded to think of something new. Or you can’t even fathom the possibility that you might need a new line. Or maybe you didn�
�t think I warranted the effort of coming up with something a tad more original, since you thought I’d fall flat on my back at the idea of your interest.”

  He seemed more taken aback at every word firing from her lips, his scowl dissolving into a flabbergasted look.

  She was as shocked as he was. Where had all that come from? It was as if pressure had been building up inside her, and disappointment was a blade that had slashed across the thin membrane holding it in, her feelings bursting out of containment.

  She’d just loved him for so long!

  She’d fantasized about how it would be if they met again, and reality had demolished every comforting scenario. His indiscriminating carnal purpose made a mockery of the soul-deep connection she’d been convinced they’d resurrect on sight. A connection, it seemed, that existed only inside her lovesick mind.

  The insupportable deduction squeezed more resentment from her depths. “And didn’t it occur to you that the person you felt you owed unending thanks to for bringing me here might be my boyfriend, or even my fiancé or husband?”

  All expression evaporated, leaving his face a hard mask. “No. It didn’t.”

  “It didn’t, or the possibility of my being committed to another man didn’t seem relevant to you?”

  “You can’t be. I would have felt something, from you, a connection with someone else, a disconnection from me. But—”

  He stopped abruptly. That limitless energy that had radiated from him from the moment he’d caught her eye flickered, wavered. Then it blinked out. The gloom she’d thought she’d seen tainting his aura before he’d noticed her descended on him again like a roiling thundercloud, seeming to slump his formidable shoulders under its weight.

  He closed his eyes, swept a palm over his eyes and forehead. His other hand joined in, raking up through his hair before rubbing down his face.

  Then he let his hands drop to his sides, leveled his eyes at hers. The bleakness there shriveled her insides.

  “I don’t know what came over me. I saw you across the room and I thought … No, I didn’t think. I knew. I was certain you looked at me with the same … recognition. That sense I’ve heard people experience when they meet someone who’s … right. It must have been a trick of the lights. Your recognition was of the literal variety, and I saw what I subconsciously wanted to see. I must be in worse shape than even I thought, imagining I’d found an undeniable connection at such a party. Or at all. I apologize. To you, and to your man. I should have known you’d be taken.”

  His fists clenched and unclenched as he spoke, as if they itched with the same sick electricity discharging inside her limbs. Then with a shake of his head and an indecipherable imprecation, he turned away.

  She stood feeling as if she’d been struck by lightning, watching his long strides take him away from her. All she could think was that he didn’t seem callous or indiscriminating, only hurt, and that the last thing she’d ever see of him was that look of despondency on his face.

  “It was a hypothetical question.”

  At her squeaking statement, he stopped. But didn’t turn. He only inclined his face so that she saw his profile, eyes cast downward, tension emanating from him in shockwaves.

  She forced the explanation he was waiting for between barely working lips. “When I mentioned a boyfriend or fiancé or husband, it was only in a ‘what if’ scenario. I don’t have anyone.”

  “You’re not taken.” His hoarse whisper shuddered through her as he turned toward her, animation creeping back into his face. She shook her head, had locks snaring in her trembling mouth. “You objected to me sweeping you away because—” he accentuated every other word with a leisurely step back to her side, each hitting her like a seismic wave “—you mistook me for a lazy, jaded oaf who doesn’t possess an original bone in his body to express his inability to wait to be alone with you, or a poetic cell with which to do justice to the wonder of our meeting.”

  She was panting as he fell silent. “Okay, I hereby revise my opinion. You have nothing but original bones and poetic cells.”

  The elation reclaiming his expression spiked on a guffaw. Her knees almost buckled. And that was before a hunger-laden step obliterated the last of the distance between them. Every hair on her body stood on end as if with a giant static charge.

  Then he whispered, “Tell me you feel it, too. Tell me the almost tangible entity I sense between us exists, that I’m not having a breakdown and imagining things.”

  This was the second time he’d alluded to his condition. The idea of his suffering spread thorns in her chest. She bit her lip on the pain. “The … entity exists.”

  “I am going to touch you now. Will you shake me off again, or do you want me to?” She shook her head, nodded, groaned. Her teeth would start clattering any moment now with needing his touch.

  He took both her arms in the warm gentleness of his hands. Then he pulled her to him. She stumbled forward, ended up with her head where she’d dreamed of having it since she’d been old enough to form memories. Where it had rested once before, during that moment that had changed her destiny. On the endlessness of his chest. He pressed it there with a hand that smoothed her hair, his rumbling purr of enjoyment echoing her own.

  He finally sighed. “This is unprecedented. We’ve had our first fight and reconciliation before you’ve even told me your name.”

  “It wasn’t really a fight,” she whispered as she pulled back a bit, so she could breathe, so her heart wouldn’t stop.

  He smiled down at her, his eyes telling her she delighted him. “Not on my end, but you were about to claw my eyes out. And I would have gladly let you. But I’m not putting it off any longer. Your name, ya ajaml makhloogah fel kone. Bless me with its gift.”

  He’d just called her the most beautiful creature in the universe. He probably didn’t realize he had spoken in his native tongue, or he would have tagged it with a translation.

  “J …” Her voice vanished on a convulsive swallow as he drew nearer still, as if to inhale her name when she uttered it like the most pleasurable fragrance, like life-sustaining air.

  And she realized she couldn’t tell him who she was.

  If she did, he’d pull back. There would be embarrassment, consternation followed by distance and decorum. And she couldn’t bear to lose this moment of spontaneity with him.

  It would be the last thing she had of him.

  “Gemma.”

  She almost slapped herself upside the head. Gemma? Did she have to go for a literal translation? How obvious could she get?

  But then, she’d started to say her name, and he would have thought it suspicious if she’d gone on to say Dana or Sara or something. Gemma had been the only name that had come to her that started with a J sound.

  Before she made it worse, she had to tell him how nice it was to meet him and walk away. Run away. Without looking back. She had the rest of her life to look back on this magical encounter.

  He thwarted her feverish plans, pressed her head closer as he sighed his contentment. “Gemma. Perfect, ya joharti.” She lurched at hearing her real name. Before she could have a heart attack, he loosened his embrace, smiled his pleasure. “That’s ‘my jewel’ in my mother tongue. So, my precious Gemma, will you come with me?”

  “Where?” she choked.

  “As long as you’re with me, does it matter?”

  It was clear by now that nothing mattered.

  Not to Johara. Not when measured against wringing this opportunity to be with Shaheen of its last possible glance and smile, touch and comeback. Of the sheer unbridled joy of being the object of his interest, the target of his appreciation, the instigator of his desire.

  Another breaker of pleasure frothed inside her as she beheld him, a vision made man, sitting across from her in the exclusive restaurant he’d made literally so for their dinner.

  They’d been talking nonstop since they’d left McCormick’s penthouse. She’d answered his questions about herself without specifying names o
r places, and nothing she told him had rung any bells. That still rankled, but her thankfulness for this time out of time his unawareness afforded her with him surpassed any disappointment.

  “Do you want to know what the maitre d’ told me after emptying the restaurant?” His eyes glittered at her as his hand covered her upturned palm with hypnotic strokes. “That such heavy-handed tactics wouldn’t work on a lady of such refinement as you.”

  She giggled, surrendered her hand to his possession. “A very astute gentleman.”

  He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I wish you had told me that before he emptied half of my supposed no-limit credit card.”

  She giggled again at his mock woe. Even in her upheaval, the thrill rose. Her fantasies throughout the years had gotten it right. Their connection was there. And he was showering her with the delighted, delighting banter that had always textured and colored her life.

  He remained the man she’d loved since she could remember. No, he was better than that man. Much, much better.

  She sighed at the bittersweetness of it all. “But seriously, you shouldn’t have gone to any expense. I thought we’d agreed it didn’t matter where we were.”

  “I wanted to be alone with you.”

  “We could have been alone walking down the pier.”

  “That did occur to me, but you’re not dressed for the cold night.” He lowered his gaze as if pondering the pattern he was painting with his fingers on her palm. He raised his eyes a moment later and she gasped. Gentleness and humor were gone, that grim god of the desert back. She shuddered with the fierceness of her response. “You know where I really want to be alone with you, Gemma. In my place. In my bed.”

  She squeezed her eyelids shut as emotion tore through her.

  She couldn’t handle this. She shouldn’t have sought him out …

  His tough rider’s fingers smoothed over her eyes, making her open them, so that there was no escaping his fierceness, his intention. “I want you, Gemma. I never knew wanting like this existed, that I could feel anything of this intensity and purity.”