by Olivia Gates
He stood in one of those fluid moves that never ceased to amaze her, considering his size and bulk. Before her eyes could travel up to his, he swept the net surrounding her away and his abaya fell open.
Her gaze snagged on his chest. But for his bandages it was bare, a bronzed expanse of perfection and potency.
This was where she’d sought refuge from jeopardy and exhaustion, the haven that had turned their nightmare into a dream she’d cherish for the rest of her life.
His bandages were now narrower than she’d made them, exposing more of the ebony silk that accentuated each slope and bulge of sheer maleness. If that wasn’t bad enough—or good enough—the tantalizing layer arrowed down over an abdomen hewn from living granite, guiding her eyes to where it began to flare…before it disappeared beneath string-tied white pants straight out of Arabian Nights. Those hung low, dangerously so, on those muscled hips, their looseness doing nothing to hide the power, the shape and size of his formidable thighs and manhood.
She couldn’t breathe. Her insides contracted with a blow of longing so hard, she moaned with it.
Which was good news. If she could go from zero to one thousand in seconds at the mere sight of him, all her systems were functioning at optimum. “Don’t, ya talyeti. I beg you, don’t close your eyes again.”
She hadn’t realized she’d squeezed them shut. His ragged plea and the dipping of the mattress jerked them open and up to his. And she moaned again.
The urgency in his eyes, in his pose, doused the heat spiraling through her. Even though his expression made him look more imposing, intimidating even, and even more arousing….
Enough. Say something!
She tried. Her throat was sore and as dry as the desert from disuse and the aftereffects of dehydration and exhaustion.
Her voice finally worked in a thready whisper. “I’m a-awake. For r-real.”
He loomed over her, his eyes singeing her with the intensity of his examination and skepticism. “You said that before. Too many times. My sanity can’t take much more false hope.” He looked heavenward, stabbed his fingers through his hair. “What am I saying? If you’re still sleep-talking, this won’t make you snap out of it.”
She struggled to sit up, managing only to turn fully toward him. “I a-am awake this time. I sort o-of remember the false starts. But I’m not only awake, I feel as good as new.” His eyes darkened. “No, really. I’ve self-diagnosed since coming around, and I’m back to normal. I’m just woozy, which is to be expected, and sore from the exercise of my life and lying in bed too long….”
Her words petered out as she tried to sit up again and took her first look down her body.
She was in a low-cut, sleeveless satin nightdress in dazzling blues and greens and oranges, echoing the exuberance of the room’s furnishings.
Heat rose as she imagined him taking her out of her clothes and dressing her in it. Her imaginings scorched her as they veered into vivid, languorous enactment of him taking her out of it again….
To make it worse, he was coming nearer, his anxiousness to ascertain her claim trapping her breath into suddenly full lungs, making the nightdress feel as if it had come alive, sliding over her nipples, slithering between her legs with knowing, tormenting skims, intensifying the heavy throb within.
She wriggled, trying to relieve her stinging breasts, squeezed her legs together to contain the ache building between them. She looked up at him with eyes barely open with the weight of desire. “Say…h-how long have I been out?”
He snapped a look at his watch, before looking back at her, his eyes losing their bleak look. “Fifty hours, forty-two minutes.”
“Whoa!” she exclaimed, her voice regaining power and clarity with each syllable. “But that’s a very acceptable time frame to get over a combo of dehydration and sunstroke. Good thing I’m a tough nut, eh?”
Elation dawned in his eyes, intensifying their vividness and beauty. “That you are, along with being an in-evaporable dew droplet. And shokrun lel’lah—thank God into infinity for that.”
Her lips managed a tremulous smile. “So what have you been doing while I was sleep-talking?”
His lips quirked, the old devilry she knew and adored reigniting his eyes. “I took care of you, sent envoys out to my brothers, took more care of you. Then, oh, I took care of you.”
She slapped his forearm playfully in response to his teasing then patted it in thanks for his effort to paint his grim vigil in lightness. “Did you take care of you at all? Did you get any sleep?”
He gave her a delicious look of mock contrition. “Not intentionally, I assure you.”
She now saw the strain and exhaustion traversing his face in lines that hadn’t been there even during their worst times. Her heart compressed even as it poured out a surplus of gratitude and admiration. “Oh, Harres, you’re such an intractable protector.” She caressed his forearm, basking in mixing their smiles. Then she gasped. “What about your wound? Did you get someone to look at it? How is it?”
He gave a perfect impression of a boy mollifying his teacher before he revealed something that would send her screaming. “Uh—I have good news and bad news.”
Her eyes flew over him, feverishly assessing his condition. No. Whatever his news was, it couldn’t be terrible. Apart from the evident fatigue, he looked fine.
Her heart still quivered in her chest as she said, “Hit me with the bad.”
He gave a pseudograve look. “Your sutures were very good.”
“Past tense?” she squeaked. “You busted them!”
He nodded, holding his hands up. “Good news is, there’s no sign of infection. See?” He moved his left arm up with minimal effort and no apparent discomfort. “What’s more, the oasis people retrieved our medical kit, so you can sew me up again.”
“You bet I will!” She subsided in relief at the proof that he was okay. Her eyes darted away from him for the first time and took in the whole room. She could see the rest of the place through the open door behind him. “This place is incredible.”
“It is a very special place,” he agreed. “It was the previous oasis-elder’s dwelling. He died two years ago. Elders’ houses remain uninhabited, as a tribute to their lives and leadership. It is an honor to be given this place during our stay.”
Her smile trembled again. “Only the best for Zohayd’s Guardian Prince.”
He shook his head, his eyes bathing her in warmth. “It’s not that. Any refugees they claimed back from the desert would have been given the same treatment. I also have a relationship with the people here that has nothing to do with me being their prince. I’m not sure they consider the Aal Shalaans their ruling family, or if they do, that they give the fact much significance.”
“Why not?”
“The oasis and its people are considered off-limits to the outside world they live independent of. They are…revered by the rest of Zohayd and all the region, almost feared as a mystic nation who will always exist outside others’ time and dominion.”
She digested this, the feeling of being in another world and time intensifying, validated. “A nation? How many are they?”
“Around thirty thousand. Yet their refusal to join the modern world in any way makes them unique. Uniqueness is power beyond any secured by numbers.”
“Not if they lack the modern methods of defending themselves against intruders, it isn’t.”
His face closed. “There will never be intruders. Not on the Aal Shalaans’ watch. Not on mine.”
She believed him. Harres the knight whose honor dictated he protect the helpless against the bullies of the world.
Suddenly, she felt she’d suffocate if she didn’t feel him against her.
She held out trembling arms. “So, do I get a welcome back to the land of the awake?”
His face clenched with what looked like pain. For a heart-bursting moment, she feared he’d been placating her about his wound. Then his eyes filled with such turmoil, she thought she’d imposed on him.
Just before mortification caused her arms to slump to her sides, he groaned and sank into them.
The enormity of the reprieve, after thinking she’d lost her chance of having him like that, of everything, had her hands quaking as they slid over the breadth of his back, the leashed power of his arms. Her fingers caressed his vitality, his reality, committed every detail of him to tactile memory, felt him being integrated into her perceptions and senses.
Then she reached his face and translated into awareness what she’d been looking at and not fully registering.
“You shaved.”
He smiled into her nuzzling, letting her singe her lips with the pleasure of coasting them over his perfect smoothness. “It was the first thing I did the moment a blade and disposable water were available.”
She rubbed her lips over the underside of his jaw. “You know…I’ve never seen you clean shaven. When I first saw your face in that bathroom, you were already sporting a mighty ten-o’clock shadow.”
He rubbed his chin over her cheek, giving her further demonstration of his silkiness. “So you approve?”
“I far, far more than approve.”
Her lips traveled up until they glided hesitantly over his, her tongue tentatively laving them in tiny licks, still disbelieving the reality of experiencing this, of their texture and taste.
A rumble poured into her mouth, lancing into her heart just as it spiked her arousal to pain with its unadulterated passion.
Then he broke away from her quaking arms.
She had no power to drag him back into them. And no right, if this wasn’t where he wanted to be.
He sat up, severing their connection. Then he rose off the bed altogether.
He stood above her, his heavy-lidded eyes obscuring his expression for the first time since…ever.
Then he drew both hands through his hair and exhaled. “You might be awake, but you’re not really all there yet. And you are—fragile, in every way.” His shoulders rose and fell on another exhalation. “So now we get you back to fighting form.”
Was that why he’d pulled back? He wanted her back to full health, physically and mentally, before he’d consider changing their status quo?
It made sense. And made her even more grateful to him, if that was possible.
She was a cauldron of seething emotions and needs right now, had no control over any of them. And she needed to know if what she felt melting all resistance was the ordeal talking, the days of inseparable proximity and total dependence, or if the feelings originated from her.
Now that stress and danger were over, would the physical and emotional pull remain this overwhelming? Would he remain the same man who’d done everything to keep their spirits up? It had niggled that he might have exaggerated his attraction to her for many worthwhile ends. Survival, smoothing over a bumpy beginning. And maybe not so worth while ones. Gaining his objective—the secret to secure his family and their throne.
So many things hung like a sun-obliterating cloud over the whole situation. Todd’s ordeal, the Aal Shalaans’ role in it and their current danger, the info she’d stumbled on, Harres’s duty as guardian of his family and people.
So he’d done the right thing by drawing away. She’d follow his lead, recover her health and clarity. Until she figured out what was real. Inside her, around her, about him, between them. Or until this mess, this assortment of messes, was sorted out.
If they possibly could be.
Nine
A string of eruptions reverberated in Talia’s bones.
She would have taken instinctive cover if Harres’s arm hadn’t been around her shoulder.
He gave her a reassuring squeeze, chuckled in her ear. “No, that’s not a firing squad.”
Gulping down her heart, she let him resume leading her through the hurrying crowd, still not sure where their destination was, where the feast was being held. “A gun salute for the Guardian Prince of Zohayd, then?”
His grin widened. “That’s just how they announce the beginning of their entertainment.”
“With an aerial blitz?”
He threw his magnificent head back and laughed before looking his pleasure and merriment down on her. “The extra zeal is in honor of your recovery and your gracing of their feast tonight.”
She raised him a wider grin, her heart zooming again with elation, with anticipation. But mostly, with his nearness.
She’d been up and about for three days now, had recovered fully. But what relieved her was the condition of his wound. Her sutures had been very good. And had remained mostly intact, with only a few needing reapplication. The healing had been spectacular. She’d never known humans could heal that fast. She kept teasing that he must have mutants or local gods in his ancestry. Which wouldn’t surprise her.
And during the idyll of recuperation and recreation, they’d remained in the cottage or its garden, with the oasis people coming periodically to check their needs and replenish their supplies. She hadn’t wanted to go out, to see more.
She’d had Harres with her.
She now knew that the bonds of harmony and sufficiency they’d forged during their desert trek hadn’t just been crisis induced. It hadn’t been the isolation or the desperation. It all originated from their unpressured choices, their innate inclinations, their essential selves, and flowed between them in a closed circuit of synergy and affinity.
Being with him was enough. Felt like everything.
Tonight was the first night they would join the oasis people. She felt so grateful to them, so humbled by their hospitality. But earlier she’d felt embarrassed, too.
The oasis-elder’s wife and daughters had come, bringing her an exceptionally intricate and stunningly vivacious outfit to wear to the feast. As Harres had stood beside her translating their felicity at her recovery and her thrill over their magnificent gift, the ladies had eaten him up with their eyes. She’d wanted to jump to their side and indulge in the pleasure of oohing and aahing over the wonders of him with those born equipped to appreciate them. Which was every female with a pulse.
But it had been when their eyes had turned to her with knowing tinged with envy that she’d realized. With her and Harres’s living arrangement, they must think they were…intimate. And if she was truthful, and she was, they hadn’t been only because of his consideration and restraint.
Not one to let misgivings go unvoiced, she’d asked. Was their situation compromising him, a prince in an ultra-conservative kingdom? Now that her staying with him was no longer necessary, couldn’t she move elsewhere until his brothers came for them?
He’d said that the oasis people didn’t follow any rules but their own. Being one with nature, living outside the reach of politics or material interests, they didn’t police others’ morality and conduct, lived and let live. But even if they hadn’t, he cared nothing for what the world thought. He cared only about what she wanted. Did she want to move out?
Her heart thudded all over again at the memory. He’d been so intense, yet indulgent, not taking it for granted that she didn’t want to. And she didn’t. She couldn’t even think how fast the day was approaching when she would move out of his orbit, return to a life that didn’t have him in it.
She couldn’t think, so she didn’t. Plenty of time later to. Her lifetime’s worth.
Now with her heart thudding, she investigated the external source of pounding.
In the dual illumination of a waxing moon and raging fires, she saw it was coming from the direction of the biggest construction she’d seen so far in the oasis.
Silvered by moonbeams and gilded by flickering flames, a one-story circular building rose among a huge clearing within the congregation of dwellings. It was made of the same materials but could accommodate probably a few thousand. It had more windows than walls, and flanking its single door, older women in long-sleeved flowing dresses with tattoos covering their temples and chins were squatting on the ground, each with a large wooden urn held between bent legs,
pounding it with a two-foot pestle.
He smiled into her eyes. “When it’s not used as a percussion instrument, the mihbaj doubles as a seed grinder, mainly coffee, and…” A storm of new drumming drowned out his voice, coming from inside the building, making him put his lips to her ears. “The whole rhythm section has joined in. Let’s go in.”
As they did, she felt as if she’d stepped centuries back into the ancient orient with its special brand of excesses.
The ambiance was overpowering in richness and depth and purity with an edge of mystic decadence to it. Heavy sweet-spicy ood incense blended with the distinctive smell of fruit-mixed tobacco that many smoked in their water-filled sheeshas. The fumes undulated like scented ghosts, twining through the warm, hypnotic light flickering from hundreds of polished, handcrafted copper lanterns.
The huge circle of the floor was covered in handwoven rugs, the whitewashed walls scattered in arabesque windows, most thrown open to let in the desert-night breeze and the rising moon rays.
All around, multitudes of exuberant cushions were laid on the floor and against the walls, with tableyahs—foot-high, unpolished wooden tables—set before them for the banquet.
On the unfurnished side, a three-foot-high platform hosted the dozens of drummers producing that blood-seething rhythm.
“The tambourine-like instrument is the reg. The doff, the large one with no jangles, acts as the bass drum.” She followed Harres’s pointing finger, eagerly imbibing the info. “But it’s the darabukkah, the inverted vaselike drums, whose players keep up the hot rhythm. Usually they wow the crowd with some impossibly complex and long routines before the other instruments join in.”
They sure wowed her. She felt the rhythm boiling her blood, seeping into her nervous pathways, taking hold of her impulses.
She let Harres guide her to the seating arrangement. But with every step she swayed more to the rhythm, her every cell feeling like popcorn, ricocheting inside her with the need to expend the surplus energy gathering in them in unbridled motion.
