by Olivia Gates
She giggled. “Maybe you should call it Talia’s Eyes.”
“Since it’s only one, better yet Talia’s Eye. So which will it be, ya nadda jannati? Talia’s Left or Right Eye? I can foresee the myths that would one day be woven around such a name.”
“Hmm, if I were a Cyclops, we wouldn’t have this dilemma.”
“If you were a Cyclops, they’d be the sexiest creatures to ever dominate men’s fantasies.”
She snorted. “And among all your skills, you acquired a black belt in far-fetched flirting?”
“You’re right. I should have stuck with the truth. That it would dominate this man’s fantasies. The two-eyed, sexy bundle of cuteness I’m wrapped around right now already does.”
“I bet you wouldn’t say that if you saw me in bloodstained scrubs with my hair spiked like a porcupine. Yeah, that ‘atrocious’ haircut wasn’t for my disguise’s sake. That’s how I keep my hair out of my way and off my mind.”
“You’re talking to the man who found you overwhelmingly arousing when you were sporting a beard. I’d find you sexy if you were covered in mud. Oh, wait…now there’s an idea.”
“Mud-wrestling fantasies, huh? How mundanely male of you.”
“I don’t have those, no. But if it involves you and me, I’ll definitely add them to my inventory of fantasies.” She twisted around to glare up at him and he only whistled. “Whoa. Maybe I’ll call it Talia’s Glare.”
“Since it’s harsh and cold, huh?”
“Far from being either, this star, like your glare, is compelling, hypnotic, resolute, indomitable.”
She almost did something stupid. Like kiss the aftertaste of those delicious words off his lips, or swirl her tongue in that solitary dimple that winked in his left cheek when he grinned.
She gave him a pseudo-self-important glance instead. “I’ll have you know this glare has my interns and junior residents in the E.R. jumping and remaining in the air until I say down.”
“I believe it.” Suddenly he gathered her tighter. “Would you consider doing that here?”
Her heart veered in her chest. She struggled to spin around further in his arms, came to lie sideways over him so she could more easily look into his eyes. “You mean work in an E.R. in Zohayd?”
“Actually, I’d love for you to consider training my men and women in field and emergency medicine.”
“Oh…” The idea of remaining in Zohayd after they got through this, the fact that he esteemed her enough to offer her a responsibility like that, and elation at the thought of being where she could see him regularly erupted inside her.
Without thinking of the feasibility of such a scenario, she grinned up at him. “That sounds incredible!” It was only when his eyes blazed in return that she faltered. “I mean, we’ll have to, y’know, talk this through when this is over…see if it’s even plausible given why I’m here and all and—wait…women? You have women in your special forces?”
Impatience spurted in his eyes, probably since she’d changed the subject without giving him an answer. Then they softened again, perhaps in acknowledgment of the difficulties of their situation beyond the real and present danger. “Not many, since it doesn’t seem to be one of the career options Zohaydan women prefer.”
“I’m staggered that it is an option in Zohayd. That you have any.”
His smile turned whimsical. “There is a difference between being a pigheaded, mulish ox and being a male chauvinist pig.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll never hear the end of that, will I?”
“Do you want to hear it?” he teased.
She thought for a moment. Then grinned impishly. “Nah.”
With that, they both fell silent and snuggled deeper into each other as if by agreement.
After an hour of being melded together in deepening companionship, during which she’d simultaneously managed to remain molten and he to remain hard, they set off again.
The third day came. And passed.
At the end of the fourth day, their supplies had been all but exhausted. And there was no sign of the oasis.
On the fifth day, after sunset, as they’d set out on their cycle of hikes and rests, Harres had done something that had dread and desperation taking hold of her.
He’d dumped all their gear.
When she’d protested, he’d fallen silent for a long moment. Then he’d looked at her solemnly.
He’d said that she had no reason to believe he knew what he was doing anymore. But he could no longer afford to go at that pace. Would she trust him to know what they needed to survive, to reach the oasis?
And she’d trusted him.
But they hadn’t reached the oasis.
Ten hours later, she’d been unable to go on.
She’d collapsed. Harres had managed to catch her before she hit the ground. He’d laid her down with utmost gentleness, held her in his solid embrace, raining on her soothing kisses and pleas for forgiveness.
She’d succumbed to unconsciousness thinking those would be the last things she felt and heard in her life.
But she woke up to find herself wrapped in the two blankets left with them. And Harres’s jacket. She was parched and frying alive in the blistering heat of midday. Emphasis on alive.
And she realized another thing.
She was alone.
She struggled out of the tight cocoon, sat up. Harres was nowhere in sight.
He’d left her?
No. She knew he never would.
But what if something had happened to him? What if their enemies had found them? Would the prince of Zohayd be a bigger hand to gamble with in their quest for the throne? How would they use him? What would they do to him?
She sobbed. No tears came from her dehydrated eyes. She drifted in and out of consciousness. And even in waking moments, nightmares preyed on her. Showed her Harres, abused and worse, and all because he’d come for her….
Oh, God, Harres…please…
Then, as if in answer to her plea, he was there. She knew he wasn’t really there. She was hallucinating with dehydration.
For this Harres was not the sand-car-and-helicopter-riding modern desert knight, but one on a white horse. Galloping her way as if he rode the wind, as one with the magnificent animal, made of the same energy, the same nobleness and fierceness and determination. Her knight coming to save her.
But there was no saving her. This was the end.
Not that it was too bad. She had only two regrets. That she hadn’t saved Todd, and that she had let everything stand in the way between her and Harres.
If she had her time with him to live again, if she had more time with him, she would disregard it all and just be with him, experience all she could of him, while she could.
Now it was too late, and she would never know his passion for real.
What a waste.
Her dream Harres leaped off his horse before it came to a halt, spraying sand in a wide arc with the sudden abortion of its manic momentum. Harres descended on her, the wings of his white shroud spread like a great eagle’s, enveloping her in peace and contentment. She was so thankful her intense desire had given her such a tangible last manifestation of the man she loved…yes, loved….
She could barely whisper her bliss to the apparition. “Harres…you feel so good…”
“Talia, nadda jannati, forgive me for leaving you.”
“S’okay…I just wish…you didn’t have…to leave, too.”
His regal head, covered in a sun-reflecting white ghotrah, descended to protect her from the glare, his magical eyes emitting rays of pure-gold anxiety.
She sighed again. “You make…an incredible…angel, Harres. My guardian angel. Too bad you’re here now…as that other angel guy…the death guy…”
“What?”
Talia winced. She’d been floating in the layers of Harres’s voice, so deliciously deep and emotional. Now it boomed with sharpness and alarm.
“You’re alive and you’ll be well. Just
drink, ya talyeti.” She found nectar on her lips, gulped it without will or question, felt life surging into her as she sank in the delight of his crooning praise and encouragement to her, pouring hoarse explanations. “If I’d carried you, I wouldn’t have been able to reach the oasis. So I left you, ran there. It took me six more hours, and two to ride back. I died of dread each second away from you. But I’m back, and you’re alive, Talia.”
“Y-you’re sure?”
His face convulsed in her wavering focus. “Sure I’m sure. Now please drink, my precious dew droplet. Soon you’ll be as good as ever.”
“Don’t you mean a-as bad?”
She felt herself gathered into arms that trembled, pressed against a chest that heaved, her depletion probably shaking up her perceptions. “There you are. My snarky gift from Ullah.”
“You say…the most wonderful things. You are the most w-wonderful thing…that ever happened…to me…”
Then she surrendered to oblivion in the safety of his arms.
In the dreamscape that claimed her at once, she thought she heard him say, “It’s you who are the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, ya habibati.”
Eight
Harres ignored pain, smothered exhaustion.
He had to last until he got Talia back to the oasis.
Those who’d ridden with him offered again to take care of her, of both of them.
He couldn’t let them. Wouldn’t. He had to be the one to carry her to safety. As he’d promised.
He asked a few of them to go back in his and Talia’s tracks before they were wiped away by the incoming sandstorm, to retrieve what he’d ditched. The medical supplies most of all. He let those who stayed with him help secure Talia astride the horse, ensconced in his arms like he’d had her during their rests between the punishing hikes.
The ride back to the oasis took longer. Too long. Each moment seemed to expand, to refuse to let the next replace it, bound on prolonging his ordeal, on giving him more time to relive the hell of being forced to leave her behind.
He’d gone further out of his mind with each bounding step away from her. He’d struggled to force himself to focus so he could see his path to the oasis, their ticket to survival. But the sight of her bundled up in blankets and ensconced in the barricade of a steep dune had been branded on his brain. He’d lost chunks of sanity with each hour, knowing the blankets’ protection would turn to suffocation once the desert turned from an arctic wasteland to a blazing inferno. He’d prayed the message he’d left her in the sand wouldn’t be wiped away by the ruthless winds, that she’d heard his plea before he’d left, to please, please wake up soon, read it, unwrap herself and use the blankets as shelter with the tent prop he’d kept.
But the message had been obliterated. And she’d unwrapped herself but hadn’t taken refuge from the baking sun. After more than five days of ordeals almost beyond human tolerance, it had been a miracle she’d lasted that long. The only reason he had was because he was bound on saving her.
He gathered her tighter to his body, his heart draining of blood all over again as he imagined her waking up alone and finding no explanation for his disappearance.
It had been his miscalculations that had led to this situation. The terrain had changed beyond recognition from the last time he’d been there, and fearing the lethality of the quicksand areas that were the major factor behind the segregation of the oasis, he’d taken a much wider safety margin around their now obscured boundaries. He’d ditched their supplies too late, when doing so no longer meant quickening their progress, with irreversible exhaustion setting in.
He’d stumbled into the oasis’s outer limits a few stages beyond depleted. He’d seen how he’d looked in the horrified expressions of those who’d run to him with water and efforts to spare him another step. Their horror had only risen when they’d realized he was bleeding. In his mad dash, he’d torn Talia’s meticulous sutures.
He’d let the oasis people bandage and clothe him in weather-appropriate clothes, gulped down reviving drinks only because he knew he’d be no good to Talia if he didn’t get repaired and refueled. He’d still given it all only minutes before he’d jumped on their most powerful endurance horse and exploded out of the oasis with their best riders struggling to keep up with him.
It had been another eternity until he’d gotten back to her.
He groaned. Even in the face of death, his Talia had been the essence of composure and grace. And wit. A chuckle sliced through him as her words echoed inside him again. Until he replayed her last ones before she’d surrendered to oblivion in his arms.
You are the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me….
He shuddered, pressed her closer as if to absorb her into him, where he’d always protect her with his very life.
She might have meant those words for her savior. But he’d reciprocated them, had meant them, for her.
After one more interminable hour, he brought his horse to a stumbling stop at the door of the cottage that had been prepared for them.
He only let others support Talia’s weight for the moment it took him to sway off the horse. Then he reclaimed her, folded her into him as if he feared she’d evaporate if he loosened his hold.
Once inside the dwelling that he couldn’t register beyond it being a roof over their head and a door cutting them off from the rest of the oasis, he coaxed the mostly unconscious Talia to drink again, glassfuls of both water and a high-calorie, vitamin and mineral drink the locals had concocted for conditions of extreme dehydration and sunstroke.
With utmost care, crooning encouragement and praise, he undressed her down to those ridiculous men’s underwear, bathed her in cool water, fanned her dry and then sponged her down again, cooling her raging heat. When he finally judged her temperature within normal, he dressed her in one of the crisply clean, vibrantly colorful nightdresses the oasis women had provided.
Throughout, though her consciousness rose and fell like waves in a tranquil sea, she surrendered to his ministrations, unquestioning, unresisting.
He finally laid her down on the soft kettan linen sheets freshly spread on a firm mattress on top of a wide, low platform bed. As he withdrew, a distressed sound spilled from her suddenly working lips, her brow knotting as if in pain.
She couldn’t bear separation from him. As he couldn’t from her.
He came down beside her, cocooned her with his body. She burrowed deeper into him with each ragged breath until he felt she’d slid between the layers of his being, making him realize again that he’d had so many vacant places inside of him, ones she’d exposed. Ones only she could fill.
He stilled, savoring the imprint of each inch of her, vibrating to her every tremor, his rumbles harmonizing with her unintelligible purrs of fatigue and pure contentment.
Then she went limp and silent, her breath steadying, indicating her descent into replenishing sleep.
But he couldn’t take that for granted.
At the tattered periphery of his awareness he thought he should seek the oasis elder and ask if there was still time before the sandstorm to have envoys sent to his brothers. Maybe if they moved fast enough, they’d get ahead of it.
But he couldn’t bring himself to leave Talia. His only concern was to see to her health and comfort. Until she opened her eyes and her beloved personality shone at him through her heavenly gaze, he could think of nothing but her. Even the fate of Zohayd came second.
He’d do nothing but watch over her until she woke up….
Talia woke up.
For long moments after her eyelids scraped back over grit, she couldn’t credit the images falling on her retinas.
She was ensconced in gossamer off-whiteness, drenched nerve-tingling spiciness and sourceless light.
Her surroundings came into sharper focus. She was actually surrounded by a fine mosquito net, lying in a gigantic bed on the smoothest linens she’d ever touched. She’d smelled the scents more than once since she’d come to Zohayd
, seemingly a lifetime ago, incense of musk and amber and ood. The light was seeping from openings below a low ceiling blocked by arabesque work so delicate it must be almost as effective as the net.
She hadn’t turned her head yet. She couldn’t. But she saw enough to fascinate her on the side she could see. A wall of whitewashed mud-brick, a palm-wood door and window with shutters, cobblestone floors, two reed couches spread with wool cushions handwoven in a conflagration of color and pattern, with the same distinct Bedouin design gracing a rug and wall hangings. Oil lamps and incense burners hung on the wall, made of hand-worked bronze, simple, exquisite and polished to a dazzling sheen.
Was this another world? Another era?
She should know where she was. The knowledge just evaded her. She also knew she’d woken up many times before. If she could call the hazy episodes waking up. Now fragments of recollection clinked and bounced around like a rain of beads on the ground of her awareness.
Then as moments of wakefulness accumulated, the jittery particles settled, coalesced, stringing together to form a timeline. And she realized what had happened.
Harres had come back for her. Her desert knight had ridden back on a white horse, leading the cavalry. But not before she’d compounded dehydration and heat prostration with sunstroke.
No wonder distortions and abridgments stuffed her head. Yet one thing possessed hyperreality in the jigsaw of the haziness. Harres. Caring for and healing her. Looking so worn-out, so anxious, she would have wept had she been able to.
“Are you awake for real this time, ya habibati?”
His voice was as dark and haggard as she remembered from her delirium.
She twisted around, homing in on it. She found him two feet away on her other side, sitting on the floor with one knee bent, primed, slightly above her level with being so tall and her bed so low. He was wearing a white abaya.
So she hadn’t imagined it.
She closed her eyes to savor the sight of him in his land’s traditional garb. He looked regal in anything, but in this, he looked…whoa. Yeah. Whoa should become a sanctioned adjective to describe the indescribable. Him. The ultimate in mind-blowing virility. Especially adorned in what he was born to wear.
