Her Royal Protector (a Johari Crown Novel) (Entangled Indulgence)

by Alexandra Sellers

  The wind whipped her hair against her face and head with vicious cracks. If she opened her mouth, it tried to tear off her cheeks. The hideous howling deafened her. The boat rocked and bucked, and the spray smashed over her, as if some living thing, some conscious enemy, wanted to knock her flat. Her arms ached, her legs shook with the effort, her back was in spasm. She wouldn’t be able to do it. She would not be strong enough. He would die, they would all die, because she was weak.

  The two men still struggled overhead. Once the pulley moved forward a couple of inches, but her relief was premature, and it only jammed again.

  “Turn the switch.” How she heard Arif’s shout above the wild storm she could not tell; it was as if he spoke into her inner ear. She gripped as hard as she could on the wheel with her left hand and reached out to flip the switch with a quick snap of her right. The mainsail whacked with a noise like thunder, Farhad slipped but caught himself, and Aly grabbed the wheel again and struggled to pull it back into the heading. Above her head the sail pulley moved two inches, then another inch.

  “Back again,” Arif shouted, and again she could not hold the yacht’s heading as she used one hand to move the toggle back to the retract position. She heard the thump of a body meeting the deck and looked up in horror, her eyes narrowed to slits against wind and the salt spray. Arif had jumped down and was beating his way to the foot of the mast. He was going to try to climb it.

  “Arif, no!” Aly shrieked, but the wind whipped away her words. She was in a nightmare, trying to scream and nothing coming out. The horror drove into her bones now, aching and cold, as she watched Arif climb up. The wind battered him as the mast rocked from side to side; it was an insane attempt, he would die. The lean body swung out dangerously into empty space, first on one side and then the other, and each time she felt a scream in her throat. Her heart beat in sickening bursts. She turned her head and spat out the taste of bile. The wind snatched it away.

  A wave slapped hard over her, but she dare not lift a hand to wipe her face. She was almost numb now, her eyes flicking between her heading and Arif as he climbed higher and higher on the shifting, rocking mast, watching him almost lose his grip as the elements conspired to tear him out of life. At last he reached the top, looking so vulnerable and alone she wanted to weep. Clinging on with one arm, he pounded and hammered at the stuck sail.

  He was completely at the storm’s mercy now. Her own weakness, any false move, would bring him smashing down to be broken on the deck. His life was in her hands. Aly stopped glancing up at him and focused on her heading, her whole body juddering with the effort to keep the head into the wind. She would not give in. She must not fail.

  Then somehow she touched a tiny point of inner calm, a peace that told her that they might survive or they might perish, but that whatever the outcome they would have done their best, their utmost, all three of them, and that nothing gave them better odds than having Arif in command. His strength seemed to embrace her, to power her own blood and muscles. If they survived it would be through his skill. If they perished, there was no one in the world who would have survived this. It was in the lap of the gods. As mortals they were doing all that was possible to them.

  Time disappeared, self disappeared, there was only the moment. She reached a pitch of focus, as if boat and storm were one, and she and Arif and Farhad were part of the one, a small part of a massive drama. Her arms and legs and back were locked in ferocious effort, her eyes burned down to see her course heading, she made her course adjustments on a kind of high instinct, without conscious thought. There was no room for thought.

  Dimly she was aware of Farhad staggering to a locker, pulling out a tool, going up the mast to give it to Arif. Coming down to swing up onto the boom again and work at the pulley. Over the cacophony of the storm she heard the rhythmic whack, whack, whack of human intent.

  After a time she could not measure she sensed a change. Slowly, slowly, shoved and pulled and hammered by Arif and Farhad at both ends, the mainsail was at last furling into the mast. The wind, too, was abating. Inch by inch the yacht became easier to hold on course. And at last Arif came down the mast and leapt down beside Aly to take the wheel from her suddenly trembling hands. With one hand he pulled her tight against him, and she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face against his chest, where the strong, steady beat of his heart set her world to rights again.

  …

  They motored into the embrace of the Black Goddess’s arms, not surprised to find another boat, a small motor cruiser, moored on one side of the perfect, natural harbor. Arif steered to the opposite side before dropping anchor. The first thing he did was call the other boat to make sure all was well with them, but the man who answered said, amidst painful ear-bursting radio squawking, that their only problem was a broken radio.

  Aly was aching in every muscle, and the storm had passed and the sea inside their safe harbor was inviting in the evening sun. “I’m going in for a swim,” she announced.

  “I want to take a look at that sail before dark,” Arif said. “Can you wait?”

  “You know it’ll be dark in less than an hour. Arif, every one of my muscles is screaming.”

  “All right. Be sure to stay near the boat, and come aboard before it gets dark.”

  “Yes,” Aly said. It was risky to swim after dark, because if any member of the shark coterie came swimming by, she wouldn’t see it. That meant time was short. She dashed into her cabin, ripped off her wet clothes, put on her swimsuit, and within three minutes was going down the swim ladder.

  The water was soothing on her strained muscles, and swimming gently helped to relieve the awful cramping. She turned and floated on her back, gazing up at a still blue sky, letting the water take away the ache. Not thinking about anything. Not about the storm, nor what she had learned about her own strength during it. Not even about the look in Arif’s eyes when the storm had passed and the first thing he had done was hold her. It would be weakness to let herself dream it meant anything more than human relief.

  The sky was changing color and she was swimming in shadow now, so it was time to get aboard again. Aly rolled over to discover she hadn’t been travelling in the direction she’d imagined: she was, in fact, quite close to shore.

  Very close, if she thought about it.

  It was still light enough to look for turtle nests. She could just do it. There had already been a fierce wind, and the tide was coming in. High tide tonight. Any turtle signs that had been left behind by the wind would in all probability be lost to her by tomorrow.

  She didn’t need her equipment for a simple eyeball check. She could just make a quick pass and be back in the water in no time. If she saw a nest she could set a stone and then mark it properly in the morning.

  Arif might stop her if he knew, but they had dropped anchor on the western side of the bay, shadowed now by the high wall of rock in the setting sun, and she was in shadow. Her black swimsuit was good camouflage against the rocks. And once on the beach the trees and scrub would hide her.

  She glided up onto the sand in the shadows of the long rocky arm of the Goddess that formed the natural breakwater, stood and slipped up to where the trees began. The little forest gave her some cover, and Aly walked quickly, scrolling over the sand with her eyes, looking for those telltale signs that a turtle female had returned to the place of her birth to lay eggs for a new generation. She would not be seen while in shadow, but where the shadows stopped trees and sand were still bathed in bright gold.

  She stopped just inside the edge of the shadow, debating whether it was worth the risk to keep going into sunlight, where Arif would see her if he glanced shore-wards, or whether she should be satisfied with having covered half the beach, when she saw something odd. The cruiser’s dinghy was coming slowly towards the beach—so slowly that the engine noise was inaudible. Simultaneously she saw something else—a little cairn of stones a few meters away, just above a long line of sea-weed. Human footprints obliterated all o
ther marks in the sand immediately around the cairn, but leading up from the water she saw several meters of the markings she knew better than her own palm.

  Someone had already found a recent nest. Found it but not sabotaged it yet—stopped by the storm, perhaps. And were they coming now to finish what they’d started? Because now she could see that there were two figures in the dinghy, and they did not want to attract attention. What other reason could they have for coming in at a snail’s pace?

  Aly froze. It was them. She was sure of it. These men were saboteurs. And they had a motor cruiser capable of unknown speed, and Janahine was crippled. If they saw her they might get spooked, abandon their attempt, up anchor and make their getaway. She would never know who they were. Even if she caught the name or number of the boat, impossible without binoculars—it might have been rented for cash. The registration number might be fake.

  She could scream for Arif—but would he hear her shriek over the noise he was making himself? She could hear the banging from here. And even if he did hear, what could he do? Only roar over in the dinghy to try and confront two men who, if they weren’t actually armed, would soon be long gone.

  Her best option was to maroon the men on the beach. Then Arif would have time to call for reinforcements. While they were sabotaging the nest, she might have time to get to their dinghy. She had no knife, but she could set it adrift, then swim to Janahine.

  It wasn’t perfect, but it was doable. And it was the only chance she had.

  Slowly, slowly Aly backed into the shadows till she was deep in gloom against the arm of rock, then turned and ran for the water, lightly, her toes hardly making a mark in the sand. Only when she was in the water did she let herself turn to look at the two men.

  They had beached now. Thirties, dark-haired, wearing loose black swim trunks and each carrying something they took care to keep hidden against their bodies as they walked. They walked in the last rays of the sun, moving up the beach with the kind of innocent swagger that children bent on mischief adopt to throw off suspicion. Aly dived under and swam hard till her lungs were desperate, then lifted her face to the surface and breathed. She was still in shadow, and the shadows were getting darker by the minute. The dinghy was half in shadow now.

  The men were digging.

  The water stank of diesel. She swam until she had the dinghy between herself and the men, blocking their view of her, and then with a few strokes she was crouched on the sand in a few inches of water, and her hands gripped the flat back of the dinghy. She gave an experimental tug, and her heart sank. It was too heavy, they had pulled it too far ashore. She would have to stand up to get real purchase, or abandon the idea and just swim to Janahine and hope for the best.

  She heard a shout, looked to her right, and there in the shallows stood one of the men, half bent over to fill a plastic bucket with water, staring at her with his mouth hanging open. Younger than she had thought—no more than early twenties.

  Everything happened at once. In a do or die effort, Aly stood up and tried to drag the dinghy into the water, the man dropped his bucket and started towards her, the second man, on the beach digging, hefted his spade and approached from the other direction, to trap her in a pincer movement.

  And into all this, there erupted the deep, throaty roar of Janahine’s dinghy.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Get into the water,” Arif shouted. “Get out of range.”

  Aly whirled and belly-flopped into shallow water, hand-walked out till she was in water deep enough to swim, then dived down and swam hard. She heard the sound of a gunshot and prayed that her ears didn’t deceive her when they told her it had come from the direction of the sea.

  She swam till she was starving for oxygen, then surfaced, impatiently wiped the saltwater from her eyes and looked shoreward.

  It seemed to be game over. The little dinghy, probably holed by a bullet, was half collapsed on the sand, where the incoming tide pushed and pulled at the limp plastic. The dinghy’s spotlight showed the two men standing on the beach with their arms up. As she watched, Arif approached them, taking care to stay out of the spotlight’s glare, casting no shadow to cover any sudden moves.

  Farhad remained in the dinghy, its engine quietly turning over. She thought he held a gun, but in the darkness it was hard to be sure.

  Arif was approaching the men from behind now. He patted them down, one after the other, took something from the pocket of one of them, and patted them both down again more thoroughly. When he was satisfied, he shouted, “Are you there, Aly?”

  His voice rang across the water, bringing with it the certain truth that if she had a choice, that voice would be her compass for all the rest of her life.

  “I’m here.”

  “Go back and call Fouad on the satellite. Tell him to send a police helicopter—he can raise one with the harbor police at Ausa.”

  “Got it,” she cried, already taking her bearings, and put her head down and worked her aching muscles without even feeling the pain.

  She was glad that he hadn’t asked if she could or was willing to swim in a dark sea, he took it for granted that she must and would do her part, and her heart swelled with gratitude. If nothing else, he considered her an equal partner in crime. The lights of Janahine were her guide, and when she got to the ladder she leapt up on deck and paused for a moment gazing shoreward. The scene hadn’t changed. Arif was in shadow, the two men in bright light, Farhad invisible in the darkness.

  She shouted, “All okay?”

  “We’re good.”

  She waited no longer, but dashed down the hatch and reached for the satellite. Fouad’s number was the first one listed, and he answered on the second ring.

  When she ran back up on deck, she saw Jamila standing at the rail staring toward shore, wringing her hands and moaning helplessly. “It’s okay,” she told the other woman soothingly. What was the Arabic for “all is well,” dammit, why could she remember nothing? “Bo-khair, bo-khair,” she said, smiling and miming a lack of need to worry. “Farhad bo-khair.” What was the good of studying a language if in the heat of the moment it all escaped you?

  Her hair was dripping down her back, and the breeze was cool on her wet skin, but Aly couldn’t bear to go below. Jamila noticed her shivering, and with an exclamation of horror rushed below, returning a moment later with Arif’s bathrobe. She slipped her arms into it gratefully, inhaling the scent of him, and let the memory of his lovemaking warm her. Then the two women stood together, watching until the police helicopter had arrived and departed, and Arif and Farhad were in the dinghy and heading back to the yacht. Jamila then remembered some duty, but Aly stood waiting till the little boat was tethered and the men came aboard.

  Then without any conscious decision, she rushed to him and wrapped her arms around him. “Thank God, thank God,” she cried.

  Arif wrapped her tight in his arms, and said, “How could you take such a dangerous risk?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t—I was only going ashore to look for nests, but then the men came.”

  “Ah, I see. I thought you saw them and went ashore to challenge them.”

  “No. Who are they? Is it Big Pharma, or—”

  “They are Kaljuks. Whether they are agents for global corporations or for the Kaljuk government remains to be seen, but they are undoubtedly Kaljuks.”

  …

  After they had eaten the quick meal Jamila set in front of them, they were all too exhausted to think of anything but sleep. But the need for human comfort after such terrors was too much for Aly, and at the door to her cabin she paused. “Arif, could I…could we be together for awhile? I don’t mean—”

  He held the door of his cabin open for her. “Come,” he said softly. And so Aly fell asleep on Arif’s chest, wrapped in his arms and a comfort unlike anything she could remember ever feeling before.

  In the morning, Aly walked the beach alone while Arif and Farhad struggled one last time with the sail. The police had taken away the cr
uiser, but the deflated dinghy was still there, flapping lazily in the waves. She covered up the hole over the nest where the men had been digging, measured and then false marked it before returning to the yacht. Then they limped back to Ausa Town, where they would be stuck at least two days while Janahine was being repaired.

  Arif booked a suite in the Glen Eden Resort, though she heard him abandon his incognito and pull rank as a Cup Companion before he could get the booking. By the time they had packed their things, been picked up by the hotel limo and deposited into the kind of shimmering elegance Aly hadn’t seen since her father’s arrest, it was nearly noon. It was a two-bedroom suite, and her duffel bag and working backpack had been put into one of them, along with two large packages that were Princess Shakira’s gift to her.

  Aly immediately went out to walk the beach, leaving Arif at work.

  …

  He sat at a massive desk in the suite’s great room, which looked out over the gardens down to the sea. From this height he could see the tiny figure moving along the white sand through the umbrellas and the sun-worshippers, steady and purposeful. He worked quickly until his phone rang. He picked it up without looking at the caller ID and said, “I’ll call you back in five minutes, Fouad.”

  “This is not Fouad, and I hope you can spare a few minutes for your mother even though you are so busy,” said his mother, with a smile in her voice.

  He closed his laptop, leaned back in his chair, rubbed his scalp, and smiled. “And when has a few minutes ever sufficed you, Ummi?”

  “You are right. And especially today I may need a little extra time,” she said.