by Heidi Rice
He grunted again, the sound trailing off into a moan, but strangely the panic from earlier didn’t return.
He was big and clearly very strong, having ridden for miles to escape the storm, but the way he was holding her didn’t feel threatening. It felt protective.
Unless that was just her cockeyed optimism taking another trip to Stockholm.
But he’d made no move to hurt her. So she clung onto her optimism—cockeyed or not—and repeated her promise of riches again in Narabian, but still got no response.
They sat together on the horse in silence, her whole body brutally aware of each subtle shift in his.
She could feel the thigh muscles that cupped her hips flex, sending a shaft of something hot and fluid through her. The wave of arousal shocked her. How could she be turned on? When she didn’t even know if this man was a good guy or not?
He shifted again, his moan shivering down her spine. But then the arm around her waist loosened. And his body began to slide to one side.
What the...? Was he dismounting?
She squeezed the horse’s sides with her knees and grasped the saddle horn. The rush of air at her back as his hot weight slid away was followed by a loud thud.
She gazed down to see the man lying on the ground beneath the horse.
‘Whoa, boy,’ she whispered frantically, scared the horse might bolt. But after stamping its hooves far too close to the man’s head, it settled, its tail swishing.
How could he have fallen off the horse? Was he asleep? Was that why he hadn’t replied? He had to be even more exhausted than she was after their ride.
The questions whipped around her brain. Relief and confusion tangled in her belly.
Leaning over the horse’s neck, she grasped the dangling reins. She hadn’t ridden a horse since leaving Narabia for the UK, and certainly never one this enormous, but as she went to kick the horse with her heels, she glanced down at the man again. He hadn’t moved, the lump of his body just lying there on the ground. Her legs relaxed and, instead of spurring the horse on, she found herself scrambling down from the huge beast.
Perhaps she was nuts—a cockeyed optimist with a side order of starry-eyed romantic—but she just couldn’t bring herself to ride away and leave him lying there. Not after spending what had to have been several hours sleeping in his arms while he’d ridden them both to safety.
Landing on the other side, she grasped the reins and drew the animal further away from the rider’s inert form.
She tried to lead the horse to the tent in the trees, but it wouldn’t budge, simply snuffling and lifting its muzzle. ‘You don’t want to leave him, is that it?’
The horse bounced its head as if it was nodding.
Oh, for... Get a grip, Kasia. Horses don’t speak English—especially not Narabian bandit horses.
Eventually she gave up trying to coax the horse away. And stepped closer to the man’s prone figure. He hadn’t moved, but still she approached him with caution. He’d looked enormous on the horse, and being flat on his back didn’t seem to diminish his stature much.
A shooting star lit up the dark sky, and she gasped as bright light exploded above her, shedding its glow over the man at her feet. The black headdress covering his head and his nose and mouth had fallen off. He had wavy, dark hair, which stood up in sweaty tufts, but it was his strikingly handsome face that stole her breath.
The sight was imprinted on her retinas as the light died and the shadows returned. High slashing cheekbones, black brows, and sun-burnished skin pulled tight over the perfect symmetry of his features. He had several days’ worth of stubble covering the bottom half of his face, but even with the disguising beard, she’d never seen a man as gorgeous. Even Sheikh Zane couldn’t hold a candle to him, his features less refined than the Sheikh’s but so much more compelling.
So not the point, Kaz. Who cares if he looks like a movie star? He’s still a bandit.
But he was the movie star bandit who had saved her, so there was that.
Gathering every ounce of purpose and determination she possessed, she knelt beside him, close enough to make out his features in the dying light. Why did he look familiar?
Another meteor trailed across the night sky, illuminating his face. Shock combined with the heat burning low in her belly as recognition struck.
She gasped. ‘Prince Kasim?’
Ruler of the Kholadi. He had attended Zane and Cat’s wedding five and a half years ago. She knew all the rumours and gossip about this man—that he was the illegitimate son of one of the old Sheikh’s concubines, thrown out of the palace as a boy when Zane, the Sheikh’s legitimate heir, had been kidnapped from his American mother in LA and brought to Narabia as a teenager. The story went that Kasim had crawled through the desert only to be treated with equal contempt by his mother’s nomadic tribe—until he had forced his way to the top of the Kholadi using the fighting skills he’d honed as he’d grown to manhood.
She’d adored all those stories, they’d been so compelling, so dramatic, and had made him seem even more mythic and dangerously exciting, not that she’d needed to put him on any more of a pedestal after setting eyes on him as a nineteen-year-old at Zane and Cat’s wedding.
Clothed in black ceremonial wear, he’d strode into the palace at the head of a heavily armed honour guard of Kholadi tribesman, and stolen her breath, like that of every other girl and woman there. He’d been tall and arrogant and magnificent—part warrior, all chieftain, all man—and much younger than she’d expected. He must have been in his mid-twenties at that wedding because he’d only been seventeen when he had become the Kholadi Chief. After years of battling with his own father’s army, he had negotiated a truce with Narabia when Zane had come to the throne.
Observing him from afar during the wedding and a few other official visits before she’d left for Cambridge, Kasia had become a little obsessed with the warrior prince. His prowess with women was almost as legendary as his skill in combat and his political agility. She’d adored all the stories that had trickled down into the palace’s women’s quarters after every visit—about how manly his physique was unclothed, how impressive his ‘assets’, how he could make a woman climax with a single glance. Like every other piece of gossip in the quarters, those salacious stories had been embellished and enhanced, but every time she’d had a chance to assess his broad, muscular physique or that rakish, devil-may-care smile from afar, she would fantasise that every word was true—and want to be the next woman on whom he bestowed that smile, and so much more.
He’d been a myth to her then, an object of her febrile adolescent desires, who had been larger than life in every respect. But he was just a man now.
The ripple of heat that she had been trying and failing to ignore sank deeper into her sex.
They didn’t call him the Bad-Boy Sheikh for nothing.
She stared at him, unable to believe she’d pointed a gun at him. Thank goodness she hadn’t actually shot him. Despite his wicked ways, he was a powerful prince. Plus, he’d rescued her. From a sandstorm.
As she pondered that far too romantic thought his eyelids fluttered.
The dark chocolate gaze fixed on her face and the heat in her sex blossomed like a mushroom cloud.
‘Prince Kasim, are you okay?’ she asked, the question popping out in English. She repeated it in Narabian. Did he even speak English?
He grunted again and she noticed for the first time the sheen of sweat on his forehead, and that his gaze, so intense earlier, now looked dazed. Then he replied in accented English.
‘My name is Raif. Only my brother calls me by my Narabian name.’ The husky rasp was expelled on a breath of outrage. ‘And, no I’m not okay, you little witch. You shot me.’
The bullet had hit him?
‘I’m so sorry,’ she yelped. But before she could say more, his eyes closed.
The darkne
ss was descending fast, but gripping his robe she tugged it away to reveal bare skin beneath. Scars—so many scars—and a tattoo marred the smooth skin, making the bunch of muscle and sinew look all the more magnificent.
She ignored the well of heat pulsing at her core.
So, so not the point, Kaz.
She pressed trembling fingers to his chest, felt the muscles tense as she frantically ran them over his ribs up to his shoulder to locate the wound. Her fingertips encountered sticky moisture. She drew her hand away, her eyes widening in horror at the stain of fresh blood. The metallic smell invaded the silent night.
She swore again, the same word that had made her feel empowered several hours ago when she’d found herself alone in the desert with a broken-down Jeep.
Now she was alone in the desert with a bleeding man. A bleeding, unconscious warrior prince, who had saved her from a sandstorm and whom she’d shot for his pains.
She’d never felt less empowered in her life.
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU’RE NOT MY SON—you’re not anyone’s son. You’re nothing more than vermin—a rat, born by mistake.’
The angry memory ripped through Raif’s body, his heart pounding so hard it felt as if it would gag him. His father’s face reared up, the cruel slant of his lips, the contempt in his flat black eyes, the cold echo of the only words he’d ever spoken to him cutting through the familiar nightmare like a rusting blade.
‘I clothed and fed you for ten years. You are a man now—any responsibility I had is paid. Now, get out.’
‘No...’ The desperate cry came out of his mouth, shaming, pathetic, pleading.
The crack of his father’s hand sounded like a rifle shot, although the ache wasn’t in his cheekbone this time but his arm. He shifted, trying to escape the cruel words, the bitter memories. The echo of remembered pain, too real and so vivid.
‘Shh... Prince Raif, you’re having a bad dream. Everything is okay, really, it was just a flesh wound.’
Soft words in English drifted to him through the cloaking agony. Something cool and soft fluttered over his brow. Like the wings of an angel.
‘Not a prince...a rat,’ he whispered back in the same language.
An exotic fragrance—jasmine, spice and female sweat—floated through the night on a cooling breeze. His nostrils flared like those of a stallion scenting its mate. The warmth of the night settled into his groin, swelling his shaft. He concentrated his mind on the pulse of pleasure, let it flow through him, to dull the aching pain always left by the nightmare in his heart.
Not a rat. You’re a prince... And a man now, not an unloved boy.
He thought the words but swallowed them, remembering even through his exhaustion that he should never admit to a weakness. Not to anyone.
Soft fingers touched his chin, then something cold pressed against his lips.
The urgent female voice spoke again but he couldn’t hear what it said because of the blood rushing in his ears. And the heat hurtling beneath his belt.
The taste of fresh water invaded his senses. He opened his mouth, gulping as the liquid soothed his dry throat.
‘Slow down or you’ll choke.’ The voice was less gentle, firm, demanding—he liked it even more. But then it took the refreshing water away.
He dragged open his eyelids, which had rocks attached to them.
The pleasure swelled and throbbed in his groin.
‘Who are you?’ he whispered in Kholadi.
The hazy vision was exquisite, like an angel, or a temptress—flushed skin, wild midnight hair, and large eyes the same colour as precious amber, the shade only made more intense by the bruised shadows under them and the wary glow of embarrassment and knowledge.
I want you.
Had he said that aloud?
‘I can’t understand you, Prince Raif. I don’t speak Kholadi.’ The lush lips moved, but the address confused him. Why was she mixing his Narabian title with his tribal name?
‘Beautiful,’ he whispered in English, his fatigued brain not able to engage with the vagaries of his cultural heritage. He wanted to touch her skin and see if it was as soft as it looked, to capture that pointed chin and bring her mouth down to his, trace the cupid’s bow on the top lip with his tongue, but as he lifted his hand, the twinge of pain in his arm made him flinch.
‘Lie still and go back to sleep, it’s not morning yet, Prince Raif.’
Prince Raif? Who is that? I am not Prince to the Kholadi. I am their Chief.
He gritted his teeth as her cool fingers brushed his chest, an oasis in the midst of the warm night.
‘Not an angel...’ he said, trying to cling to consciousness, wanting to cling to her, so the nightmare would not return. ‘A witch.’ Then the sweet, hazy vision faded as the rocks rolled back over his eyes and he plunged back into sleep.
* * *
Beautiful.
Kasia stared down at the man she’d been lying beside for several hours now.
Lifting the cloth out of the bowl of warming water beside the bed, she squeezed out the excess liquid with cramping fingers. Placing it on his chest, she brushed it over the contours of muscle and bone shiny with sweat. The now familiar prickle of awareness sped up her arm as she glided the cooling cloth over the taut inked skin of his shoulder.
The red and black serpent tattoo that curled around his collar bone and covered his shoulder blade shimmered in the flicker of light from the kerosene lamps she’d lit as night fell.
She blinked, forcing herself to remain upright and focused. His cheeks above the line of his beard were a little flushed but he didn’t have a fever, thank goodness. Surely the rambling that had woken him up had just been a nightmare.
As he sank back into sleep, his breathing deepened.
He’d managed to swallow a fair portion of the water this time.
She re-dipped the cloth and continued to sweep it over the broad expanse of his chest, her gaze drawn to the scars that had made her wince after wrestling him out of his bloodstained robe the night before.
How could one man have sustained so much damage in his life? And survived?
Heat flushed through her as she followed the white puckered mark of an old wound into the sprinkle of masculine hair that tapered into a fine line and arrowed beneath his pants.
Her gaze connected with the prominent ridge pressing against the loose black cloth—the only piece of clothing she hadn’t been brave enough to take off him.
Soaked with sweat, his pants didn’t leave much to her imagination as they clung to the long muscles of his flanks and outlined the huge ridge she’d noticed several times during the last few hours.
A sight that managed to both relieve and disturb her in equal measure. Surely he couldn’t be badly hurt if he could sport such an impressive erection? But what kind of man could be aroused after getting shot, however superficial the wound had turned out to be?
Look away from the erection. Maybe it’s a natural state for a man suffering from exhaustion? How would you know? You’ve never slept with a man before, and you’ve certainly never shot one.
The blush burned as she dipped the cloth once more and concentrated on wiping the new film of sweat from his skin. And not getting absorbed again in his aroused state.
She ought to be used to that mammoth erection by now. After all she’d spent rather a lot of time trying to gauge its size.
Seriously? Look away! And stop objectifying a stranger.
She forced her wayward gaze back to his upper torso.
The bandage she’d applied several hours ago remained unstained.
Thank goodness the bullet had only grazed his upper arm. Her first-aid skills did not extend to conducting emergency surgery in a tent. She’d lost her own phone when he’d rescued her. And she hadn’t been able to find anything resembling a satellite phone or communication equipm
ent in the tent.
Although tent was far too ordinary a word for the lavish construction where they had been cocooned since nightfall.
She glanced around the structure, astonished all over again by the luxurious interior she’d discovered after managing to rouse her patient to get him off the desert floor and into his dwelling.
A dwelling more than fit for a desert prince.
Rich silks covered the walls of the chamber that held the large bed pallet and an impressive array of hunting equipment, chests full of tinned and dried goods, clothing and even a battery-powered icebox packed with meat and perishable food. Thankfully she had also discovered medical supplies, which she’d used to clean and bandage his wound. She had even found a goat tethered at the back of the encampment where there was a corral and a shelter for his horse and a smaller pack pony.
How long had Prince Raif, or Prince Kasim, as she had always heard him addressed before he had corrected her, been living here, and why was he living here alone? Or was this simply an emergency shelter the Kholadi kept stocked for tribespeople caught alone in the desert?
Stop asking questions you can’t answer.
She dumped the cloth in the bowl and sat on her haunches, a wave of exhaustion making her feel light-headed.
She examined her patient, and pressed the back of her hand to his brow. She released a breath. Still normal, no sign of any adverse effects from his wound.
After several hours of getting intimately acquainted with this man’s face and body, hearing the strange plea she couldn’t understand in his nightmares, she had no desire to hurt him more than she already had.
The guilt had crippled her at first. But as the minutes had stretched into hours, her vigil had morphed into something strangely cathartic.
Prince Raif fascinated her, he always had even from afar. But he fascinated her even more now, bandaged and virtually naked, flushed with what she suspected was a mild case of heatstroke from their exhausting escape and with the evidence of his own mortality—and the harsh reality of his life—visible in those scars and that striking tattoo. Awareness prickled and glowed, making her skin tighten over her bones and her heart thump against her ribs.
