Questions, he thought, questions that had no answers. Where was Asaad? Had he found their trail yet? And then there was the most important question of all.
How would he save his Salome?
She didn’t need to hear any of that. They’d found a peaceful oasis and there was no need to give it up just yet.
“I was thirsty,” he said. “I got up for a drink of water. What woke you?”
Color rose in her cheeks but her eyes stayed on his. “I missed you.”
He drew her to him and kissed her. Then he enfolded her in his arms again and rested his chin on the top of her head. Maybe he was wrong. This might be the time to tell her a little of what was on his mind.
“I figured, as long as I was awake, I’d go out and take a look around.”
“Outside? You should have taken me with you. Suppose something had happened?”
“Nothing did,” he said, loving the courage of her response. “We’re safe enough here.”
“For a while.”
Part of him wanted to lie, but lies wouldn’t protect her.
“Yes,” he said. “For a while. I wanted to look around while the rest of the place slept. I figured, the fewer eyes watching, the better.”
“And? What did you find?”
He hesitated. His dancer deserved the truth.
“This place is like that mystical kingdom. Shangri-La. I don’t think it’s been touched by the world in at least a hundred years.”
She leaned back in his arms. “Why do I get the feeling that isn’t good?”
“Because there’s nothing here we can use,” he said bluntly. “No cars, no trucks, no telephone. Not even a radio.”
“You have a cell phone. And we found that GPS.”
He’d already tried the freaking cell phone in the desert, on the mountain, outside the palace a little while ago, right after he’d taken a reading with the GPS. One lonely transmission bar had appeared on the cell’s screen. He’d punched the speed dial button for his office, rattled off the coordinates from the GPS to the office voice mail, but the solitary bar had vanished before he’d finished.
Yes, but his Salome’s eyes were full of hope. Was a lie by omission really a lie?
“Sure. We can try them in the morning.”
“Good,” she said, and smiled at him.
Cam was lying. Leanna could hear the deceit in his too-cheerful tone, but she’d go along with it. He was lying to protect her. That was the kind of man he was.
He was the man she’d waited for, saved herself for, though she hadn’t known it.
It wasn’t as if she’d made a conscious effort to keep her virginity. It was just that between school and ballet, there hadn’t been much time for boys. Now there was even less. Rehearsals and performances took all her energy and time.
Plus, the men she’d met throughout her career were complete turnoffs.
In Vegas, where she’d danced to earn enough quick money to finance a move to New York, the men had mostly been sharpies, accustomed to buying whatever they wanted.
In Manhattan, she met men in love with their own images.
The city was what had won her heart. It was where classical ballet lived and breathed, where she’d failed an audition for the New York Ballet but won a coveted spot with Ballet Manhattan.
She was too busy for men anyway. Still, there’d been times she’d wondered if she were normal. If her hormones were okay because sex just didn’t seem a priority item.
Then she’d fallen into a nightmare, been rescued by a tough-talking stranger and discovered she not only wanted him to teach her about sex, but she wanted him to look into her eyes and say that he loved her.
Such foolishness.
She was too old to believe in miracles.
Cam didn’t love her. He wouldn’t love her…but that didn’t mean she couldn’t love him. Now. Tomorrow. Forever.
“Hey.”
She blinked and looked up at him.
“Such a long face, sweetheart.” He put his finger under her chin and tilted her face to his. “There’s nothing to worry about. Come morning, we’ll check things out.” He forced a smile. “You know that old saying. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“You don’t have to protect me from the truth, Cam. I know we’re in a tough spot.”
“We are, but I’ll come up with something.”
“You already did. You saved my life.”
“I told you, you’re the one who did the lifesaving. If you hadn’t let out that blood-curdling shriek, I’d still be standing in that bathroom.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” she said, smiling. “What I said before is the truth. You’d have escaped, but with a plan.”
“What I said is the truth, too. I wouldn’t have had you with me.”
“Meaning, your chances would be lots better.”
“Wrong. One hundred percent wrong. How’d you come up with that?”
“You’d have made better time alone.”
“Not true. You kept to a pace would have made most guys drop.”
A smile tilted across her lips. “You mean it?”
“Damned right, I mean it.” He bent his head and brushed a kiss on her lips. “I should know, Salome. I do this for a living.”
“This?” Her eyes widened. “You mean, you risk your life all the time?”
“No. Well, I used to. Now, I just—I take on jobs nobody else wants. My brothers and I—”
“You have brothers?”
“Two. We’re close. Matt, Alex and I were in the service together. Then we—we worked for a government agency.”
She was right, he was a warrior. “The FBI?”
“Nothing that aboveboard. Nothing with initials you’d recognize.” His tone roughened. “I did things… We all did.”
“Dangerous things.”
“Yes, but—”
“For your country.”
“Well, sure, but—”
“Someone has to do those things,” she said softly. “For the rest of us, Cameron.”
He looked down into her eyes. She meant every word. It was what he had believed, too, at first. Hell, he still believed it; in his heart, he knew it was true.
It was just that you grew tired of it all. The deceit. The tricks. The house of cards you built and tried to live in until it fell down around your ears.
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “But after a while, you start to forget that. We all did, Matt and Alex and me. That was when we knew it was time to get out. So we went home—”
“To Dallas.”
“Right. And we formed Knight, Knight and Knight. Risk Management Specialists.”
Leanna smiled. “Meaning, you’re still in love with excitement.”
He always had been. Now, all the excitement he’d ever need was right here, in his arms.
“My very own knight in shining armor,” she said, laughing up at him. She caught his face between her palms, stood on her toes and kissed him. “How did I get lucky enough to find you in Baslaam?”
Cam caught her hands and brought them to his chest. “Long story,” he said. “The bottom line is that I was there on business, for my father.”
“Then, why did Asaad want me to—to distract you? Why did he want to hurt you?”
“What he wanted was my signature on a contract, but he knew I wouldn’t sign. Maybe he figured if he grabbed me when I was—” He managed a quick smile. “When I was distracted, I’d have been easier to handle. His men would have worked me over, then made it clear they were going to—to do things to you, unless I cooperated.”
Leanna didn’t have to ask what things they’d have done. Instead she concentrated on what Cam had said about cooperation.
“And, once you did… He’d have killed you. And amused himself with me.”
Her voice trailed away. Cam shut his eyes, trying to block out the rage that swept through him, knowing she needed words of reassurance and not crazed vows to kill Asaad with his bare hands.
“Don’t be afraid,
Salome. He’ll never touch you. I swear it.”
Leanna lifted her face to his. In the darkness, his torso naked, he looked like the fierce, proud soldier that he was.
“How can I be afraid of anything,” she said softly, “when I’m in your arms?”
Her words were like a knife to his heart. He’d made her a vow that was less a promise than a prayer. Lots could go wrong and if they did, he had only one way of saving her from the sultan.
He didn’t want to think about that.
What he wanted was to carry her back to the bed, make love to her until she forgot everything but him. Because what he felt for her was—it was—
“Cam? I want to—to thank you for what you did before.” She blushed. “In the bath. It was—it was very generous.”
Generous? She made it sound like a charity contribution.
“It was gallant.”
The last thing he felt was gallant. His body was on fire.
“That’s why I’ve decided to sleep on the sofa.”
He blinked. “You what?”
“The sofa in the sitting room. I’m going to sleep on—”
“You are not.”
“Of course I am. I know why you left the bed. I’m not a fool.”
“I left it because I woke up and wanted a drink of water.”
“You left because of me. That’s the reason I’m going to sleep on—”
“What are you talking about?” First she talked about wanting him, then she called him gallant. Now she was hinting that he lacked self-control. It wasn’t true. He had loads of self-control, damn it. Buckets of it. “You’re sleeping in that bed, with me.”
“I am not. You need your rest.”
“I’ll decide what I need. And watch how you speak to me, Salome. I’m only going to take just so much before I lose my patience.”
“Good night, Cameron.”
Each time she called him that, his temperature went up another five degrees.
“My name,” he said testily, “is Cam.”
“Sleep well.”
“Salome. Salome, don’t you dare turn your back and walk away.”
He watched, openmouthed, as she marched away from him, the robe swinging loose on her shoulders, her posture that of a queen who’d just dismissed one of her subjects. What in hell had just happened? One minute, she was in his arms, sweet and sexy as a man could want; the next, she was all but patting him on the head and telling him to be sure and take his vitamins.
“Damn it,” he shouted, “you think you’re the only one having trouble with this?”
“I’m not having trouble with anything. You did that generous thing for me when we were in the tub, and—”
Taut with anger, he went after her, clamped a hand on her shoulder and spun her toward him.
“Do not walk away from me, woman!”
“Please. Calm down, Cameron.”
“Do I look like a generous man to you? Do I?”
“It was a compliment.”
“Well, I don’t want that kind of compliment,” he snarled, even though a little voice inside was assuring him he was behaving like a fool. “Compliments are the last thing I want from you.”
“Really?”
“You’re damned right, really.”
Her smile was as old as Eve. “Then, what do you want from me, Cameron?” she said.
And he knew that he’d been scammed.
“Witch,” he said softly.
She smiled. Rose on her toes. Laced her arms around his neck and opened her mouth to the wicked thrust of his tongue as he lifted her from the floor and carried her through the dark rooms, to their bed.
“I’m not going to stop this time,” he whispered.
“Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop. Don’t—”
Cam tugged at his jeans, kicked them aside. He gathered his golden dancer into his arms and kissed her again and again, one kiss merging into the next.
This, he thought, this was what a man searched for his entire life, what he’d searched for without knowing it.
Leanna clasped his face, brought his mouth to hers. She was parched for his kisses. How had she lived without them all these years?
“Touch me,” she whispered, arching toward him, wrapping her long legs around his hips. Her mons brushed against his erection and he groaned, gritted his teeth, felt the electric shock of that whispered caress shoot through his blood.
Hold on, he told himself, hold back.
This was her first time. He was ready. God, he was more than ready, but he had some control left. Not much, but enough to know he wanted it to be right. To be everything for her.
She sighed. Arched against him again, and he was lost.
A growl rumbled in his throat. He bent his head, sucked first one sweet nipple and then the other into his mouth. Rolled his tongue around them until she cried out and bucked with passion.
Then he moved lower, kissed and nipped his way down her rib cage, dipped his tongue into her navel.
Brushed his mouth over the golden curls at the junction of her thighs.
“No,” she said, “Cam—”
“Yes,” he said, catching her hands as she tried to push him away, lifting her arms, pinning her hands above her head. “Yes,” he said thickly, and nuzzled against those soft curls, parting her labia, exposing the heart of her desire to his eyes and mouth.
Slowly he tongued her clitoris. Inhaled her woman’s scent. Tongued her again and again until a wild cry burst from her throat.
He looked up, saw her head thrashing against the silken pillows. He let go of her wrists, slid his hands under her buttocks, lifted her to him and tasted her again.
“Please,” she sobbed, her eyes blind with need, her hands clutching at his shoulders, “oh, please…”
He entered her. Slowly. God, yes. Slowly, even though his heart was pounding. Her lips formed his name and he leaned down, kissed her mouth, let her taste her own passion on her lips.
He wasn’t going to be able to hang on much longer. The tightness of her vaginal muscles adjusting to his size, the little cries of pleasure rising from her throat, the taste of her mouth…
She whispered his name as he pressed forward.
“Am I hurting you?” he said. “I don’t want to hurt—”
She moved. Moved again, and he knew there was no turning back.
In one quick motion, Cam broke through the fragile barrier that had protected his Salome’s innocence. She gasped; her eyes widened and he forced himself to hold still, waiting, watching until he saw what he’d longed to see in her face.
Radiance.
Joy.
Everything that was unfolding in his own heart.
“Salome. My Salome…”
“Yes,” she said, “oh, yes.”
He could feel the rush of pure energy building inside him.
“Now,” he said, and as she cried out in ecstasy, Cam threw back his head and exploded deep, deep within her golden heat.
CHAPTER TEN
AT THE first pale light of dawn, Leanna opened her eyes and found Cam watching her, his expression so tender it made her heart skip a beat.
“Good morning, sweetheart.” He gave her a gentle kiss. “Did you sleep well?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She cupped his cheek with her hand; he turned his face against it and kissed her palm. “You?”
He had hardly closed his eyes, trying to come up with a way to save them. Still, to his surprise, he felt rested.
Maybe it had to do with holding Salome in his arms as she slept.
“I’m fine.” Carefully he drew her close. “Are you all right? I mean… Did I hurt you? I tried not to, but—”
Smiling, she laid her fingers across his lips. “It was wonderful, Cam. I never dreamed making love would be so—so—”
“Incredible,” he said softly. “I know. For me, too.” He drew her closer and buried his face against her throat. After a minute, he lifted his head and looked at her. “I’m glad we had that quarrel.
”
“What quarrel?” she asked, but the pink flush that rose in her cheeks told him she knew exactly what he meant.
“The one you provoked that was bound to lead to trouble.”
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