The little smile vanished. ‘We are what we are. You can run away from your life all you want, and tell people to call you Alim, but you’re still the sheikh of Abbas al-Din. And no matter how many times you call me a dawn star, I’m the daughter of a miner.’
Burning fury filled him, but, tempered by long training, he was able to speak with careful restraint. ‘Why is my brave saviour making excuses, hiding behind birth and titles?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s what people do. King or sheikh, policeman or lawyer, rich or poor, imam or priest, father, mother, man and woman; it’s who we are. They’re roles assigned to us by the titles we bear, what we do with our lives.’
‘What we do, yes—and what you do saves lives. So why are you putting yourself in chains, limiting yourself by birth? I don’t expect you to be anything but who you are. I hope for the same from you.’
She sighed and kept her face averted, her eyes closed. ‘It’s not the same.’
‘No, you’re right, it isn’t. You’re protecting yourself from getting too close to me,’ he said slowly, not knowing what he was going to say until he heard the words. ‘We both chose to run from our reality and live this half-life, pretending that by saving others we can justify our past choices. If I am what I am, the same principle applies to you. No matter how far you run, you can’t deny whatever it is that made you leave your family behind.’ He gathered her hands into his and looked into her eyes. ‘And no matter your status in life, to me, you’ll always be a queen in my eyes, my Sahar Thurayya who saved my life, and made me a man again.’
For a moment she stared at him, and though he couldn’t see it, he felt the blood pounding in her veins and her pupils dilating with the desire too intense and glowing to leave room for doubt. He was only holding her hands, and she wanted him…
So her words shocked him. ‘My delusions might be thin, my lord, but they’re all I have, and I’m not ready to let go of them. So please leave me to mine, and I’ll leave you to yours.’
Simple words, yet they cut to his heart like the sharpest of scimitars, tearing at their desire and leaving it slashed and bloodied on the ground.
She turned back to cleaning the rubbish without a word. The shining, impish dawn star who’d made this hell of a journey the happiest time he’d known in years had withdrawn again, replaced by the quiet, uncommunicative woman of the first day.
Would he never learn to keep his thoughts to himself?
Coward, coward. The word rang in her head like a shrieking alarm, awakening her from this half-life, as he’d called it. Pretending what we do justifies our past choices.
Did he have any idea how much he’d hurt her?
He’d taken her hands so sweetly, arousing her as much as he terrified her; then he’d dissected her life choices like an emotional surgeon. Tearing her soul to shreds without knowing the reason why she’d run in the first place…and realisation hit her with the thought.
She wasn’t falling in love with him; she was in love with him. God help her for the world’s biggest idiot, she’d let her guard down and fallen for a man she could never have. A beautiful stranger whose soul she’d recognised in moments; a smile from her dreams. At the worst time she’d met her soulmate, all her fantasies come to life in one man…
You can never have him. You’ll always be alone, she reminded herself in fierce pain, and huddled a little further away from the warm, living temptation just a touch away.
Hana tried her best to keep that distance every night as they travelled, but, oh, he made it so hard by staying only a step from her at all times, kept talking to her as if she were answering…and he kept smiling, making her want to step right into his arms…
Three interminable days later, when the thin crescent moon was high in the night sky, the creek bed that had served as their cover had widened and flattened to half-marshy ground and the worst of the desert had given way to thin, straggling bush, they finally reached the elusive water source.
She moved forward, out of the cover of the trees, but, too close as usual, he pulled her back. ‘Wait.’
She frowned, then nodded as she saw the barbed wire stretching around the waterhole. A warlord had control, and someone was bound to be watching.
‘We’re out of water!’ She’d been hoping for one miracle in their quest: an unguarded water source. ‘What do we do now?’
Alim’s grin was startling in the deep night. ‘We rely on the trained ecological engineer to find water.’
She blinked. ‘I thought you were a research chemist?’
‘I took geology and environmental studies to balance the knowledge.’ He moved back into the shadows of the trees. ‘Look for the tallest tree here, where the shrubs are bunched closest together.’
With new respect for this ruler of her ancestral home who hadn’t once complained on their desperate journey, who’d given help as much as he’d needed it, and who cared about the planet as well as fame and his country, she did as he asked.
‘Quick and quiet as you can,’ he whispered. ‘I doubt the forest will be left unchecked all night. It’s too tempting for enemies to hide in.’ He grinned at her with dogged determination.
He was being strong for her; he knew she was falling down into despair. She nodded in shame and turned away, searching the foliage for where it was thickest.
She gasped when she almost tripped over him some minutes later. He was on the ground, digging hard and fast with his fingers beside a thick tree surrounded by bushy scrub. He shook his head when she was about to speak, and tipped his head in a western direction.
There were lights, and movement.
She fell to her knees and dug beside him in silence. The ground was damp, growing wetter by the moment.
‘We don’t have time for the dirt to settle. It’ll be muddy, but drinkable,’ he murmured against her ear as he filled a canteen with a cupped hand.
She shivered with the feel of his breath inside her skin. How could the tentative touches they’d shared feel so incredibly intimate? How did she want him so much all the time?
‘Any water’s good water,’ she murmured. All urge to celebrate their find had been smothered by the danger so close. And she kept digging.
‘Move,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘They’re coming. The bole of the tree over the other side’s been emptied by honey-gatherers, and the bees are long gone.’
‘The hole in the ground,’ she whispered frantically. ‘They’ll know—’
‘Go.’
Obeying the imperative command, she slipped into the tree. She watched as he covered the hole with all the branches and leaves scattered about, used a branch with leaves to clean off what footprints he could. She ached to help, but knew she’d only ruin his handiwork.
The lights and voices came closer. Go, Alim, run!
As if he heard her heart’s cry he lifted his head, listening for a moment; then he stood on the branch and, with a mighty leap, he landed three feet up the nearest tree.
‘What was that?’ a voice cried in Swahili from not far away. ‘I heard something.’
Alim shinned his way up the trunk of the tree, fast and quiet, his knees gripping the bole as his hands reached for a thick branch, the backpack slung across his shoulders. He moved so fast he was almost a blur in the night. As he jumped for the branch, he hung in the air for a moment; then he swung his legs up like a gymnast, and landed face down. He lay along the branch, making himself as flat as possible. He reached for the backpack and did something with it, what she couldn’t see; but now the men wouldn’t find him unless they shone a light on that particular branch of that one tree.
But they probably knew about the hole she crouched in. She held her breath, pushed her back hard against the hollowed-out wood, and waited.
The light seemed shockingly bright as half a dozen torches filled the small copse at once. ‘It came from somewhere around here.’
Then a laugh came, followed by others, and she almost gasped in relief. She let the air out, taking in f
resh and held it again before one of the men spoke. ‘A branch fell, that’s all.’
The others made fun of the man who’d called the noise, and after a quick sweep of the area they all moved off.
Soon, Hana heard the sound of a Jeep revving up and driving away—but as they’d done the day before, she stayed still, her thighs and calves cramping and shooting pains darting from her hips to shoulders. For long minutes she heard only the sound of a locust as it whirred from place to place in search of food.
‘Hana, I’ve got the water. We need to leave.’
The whisper was startling in the silence. Hana jumped, and groaned with the pain it induced. Everything felt frozen.
‘Hana,’ he said again, and even in the hushed voice, she could hear his impatience.
‘I can’t move,’ she whispered back in misery she couldn’t hide. She was so tired.
She heard him mutter something, and then his head and shoulders appeared before her. ‘You’re cramped?’
She nodded, feeling ridiculous, a burden at the time she had to be strongest. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t blame yourself. It was inevitable given the restricted diet we’ve been on, all the walking and running and where we’ve been sleeping.’ His hands reached for her feet. ‘Let me help.’ He removed her shoes and socks, and, from their awkward positions, he used his fingers to massage her soles, her heels, her ankles.
And up…up, calves and knees and—oh…slowly he pulled her legs straight as he released her muscles from their bondage.
It was bliss. It was an angel’s touch, soothing, freeing…arousing. It was symmetry and beauty beyond his poetic words, magic beyond anything the Arabian Nights could conjure, and not because he was a prince, a leader, but because he was Alim…because it was Alim’s touch. Because it was Alim, who enjoyed both her teasing and her imperiousness, her laughter and her silence…Alim, who wanted her only to be herself in his presence.
The ache replacing her pain was languorous, and again she felt more feminine, more alive than she’d ever been. How ironic that a sheikh was the only man who’d ever made her feel glad to be a woman…
He’d half pulled her out of the hole before her back spasmed and she cried out in pain.
‘Hush, Sahar Thurayya, I have you.’ And his hands pulled her the rest of the way out of the hole. He turned her around so tenderly the pain was bearable, and his fingers worked their enchantment on her hip joints, her spine…
She leaned back, falling until her head rested against his chest. She wept in joy with the exquisite relief. ‘Alim…ah, it’s wonderful…’ She heard herself moaning his name over and over. The uncoiling of her muscles was almost as incredible as the more sensual awakening. She felt as if she could fly, yet she was chained, chained to him, and it wasn’t frightening, it was perfect.
It was Alim, and she’d never felt so alive as when she was with him.
‘Yes, my dawn star, it is…wonderful,’ he murmured huskily in her ear. He was moving to her shoulders, his thumbs rubbing the rock-hard muscles beneath her shoulder blades. ‘Lean on me. Trust me. I’ll never hurt you.’
Something in the words made her heart stutter—but then those marvellous fingers moved to her neck, soothing, relaxing, arousing her anew. ‘I love the way you talk to me,’ she whispered as her head rolled around, luxurious freedom once more.
‘I’ve never spoken to any woman this way before,’ he murmured roughly, sounding surprised by the words. ‘You inspire me.’
She turned her face, smiling at him, half drunk on the physical release of her singing muscles; intoxicated by his touch, by the way he made her feel. ‘What a beautiful thing to say…especially to a woman who smells so bad she offends herself.’ Her eyes twinkled.
He chuckled. ‘I think I lost my olfactories with the cigarette-mud infusion.’ As if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, he kissed her forehead. ‘And I must have lost my taste buds to those energy bars. I can’t even taste the mud on your skin, just oats and raisins.’
She was asleep; she had to be. She was on the hot sands dreaming of her perfect man in a strange oasis. Alim couldn’t be real, this incredible man who seemed to need her.
She’d always been a late bloomer. She’d waited until she was twenty-five to dream of her teen idol, The Racing Sheikh, and make him hers. Any moment now she’d wake up in Shellah-Akbar, with Malika shaking her awake, and the rounds of the day would face her, caring for the babies and children, cooking the foods their little stomachs could handle, treating the men and women whose hunger made their teeth weak…
Not ready to let go of her dream, she moaned and lifted her face to his. ‘Alim…’
The lovely ache sitting low in her belly intensified when he whispered her name and lowered his mouth, hovering just above hers—
‘Hana, we have to go now,’ he murmured, his breath brushing her mouth like a caress.
Lost in desire and joy and hope, she took a few moments for his words to sink in. ‘What?’
Then she noticed the light at the edge of the bush.
‘There’s a light over there. I think someone’s left their Jeep unattended. We have one shot to get it.’ He put her shoes on fast, shoving the socks in her pocket; then he helped her to her feet, hands beneath her armpits, holding her up. ‘You okay?’
Feeling ashamed by her stupidity—how ridiculous was it to want him to kiss her and he was thinking of their welfare?—she nodded, and in silence bent to shoulder her backpack while he used a branch to eradicate all traces of their presence here.
She set off after him as fast and quiet as possible. He indicated for her to follow his steps. She saw the broken branches, the crackling-dry leaves on the path, and put her feet where his had been every time.
Alim was going faster, circling the edge of the copse away from the waterhole and back to where the light had been. Surrounded by enemies, night bordering on daylight, there was only one chance for them to get out of here: the biggest risk of all.
CHAPTER SIX
ALIM didn’t have to tell Hana what to do. She followed him without argument when he took over for the sake of their safety, as she’d jokingly said she would.
A woman who could lead when necessary, yet handed over the reins without question when she knew someone had greater knowledge? Hana was a rare and strong woman…she was everything that his wife Elira had never been, despite Elira’s high birth.
Hana was everything he didn’t deserve—the happiness, the joy in living he’d taken from Fadi with a stupid dare of a bachelor party…
Don’t blame yourself, had been Fadi’s last whisper. But how could he not?
He stopped when they came to the thin end of the protecting little maze of bush. Hana, watching his every step, stopped behind him. ‘What’s the plan?’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Do we check for keys, or hot-wire it?’
‘Both if necessary,’ he whispered back, his gaze scanning the area. He scented danger like the changing scent of the wind.
‘If it’s me you’re worried about, don’t. I know how to run to the target. I was the naughty child in the family, and learned to bolt to the broken paling in the back fence to escape when my mother came at me with the wooden spoon.’
He turned his face, smiling at her. ‘Somehow I can imagine that.’
She grinned, the mercurial imp that lifted his spirits smiling from her eyes, and he rejoiced. ‘Which part? That I’m fast?’
‘No, that you were the family rebel,’ he retorted.
‘Why would you think that about me? I’ve been so obedient to your every command.’
‘Right,’ he snorted softly. ‘Stop making me laugh when we’re in danger.’
‘Let us joke and laugh, for this morning we could die,’ she misquoted, her eyes twinkling like the morning star he called her.
It made him ache to kiss her—but that was his constant companion, had been from the moment he’d first seen her eyes. Whether that craving was friend or enemy he no longer ca
red. His feelings for Hana grew hour by hour, minute by minute, and he knew she desired him…
What? You find one woman who wants you, and it makes you forget everything you aren’t?
She desired him after seeing his deformed body. It was a miracle in itself; he could barely get his mind around it. But when she looked at him like that, every other thought, even the self-hate, flew out of his mind, replaced only with the fast-beating heart, the aching body, the hope…
Can it, you fool; you need to save Hana. Having scanned the area as much as possible, he put out his hand. ‘Give me your backpack.’
She handed it over, and drew deep breaths. ‘Ready.’
There was no way to protect her now. He threw up a prayer for her—Allah’s will be done with him, he didn’t matter—and muttered, ‘Keep as low as you can and zigzag.’
She nodded. ‘On your count.’
On three he took off at a dead run for the Jeep, jumping from side to side in case of enemy fire. Let it be open let it be open…
He felt Hana beside him all the way as if she were his shadow, running and jumping left, right, left, right. She split from him at the Jeep’s front, heading for the passenger side, accepting his driving skills could save their lives.
The driver’s door was locked, and he cursed helplessly—but Hana yanked her side open and dived in, unlocking his door. ‘No keys, can you hot-wire it?’
‘I can try,’ he muttered, wishing his training included less princely duties and more modern-day Aladdin techniques. ‘Leave the doors open.’
Within two minutes the wires he was crossing had created no spark. He growled in frustration as he returned each wire to its place. ‘I can’t do any more. The wires I’ve taken out might not be in correctly. I can’t risk the car not starting or they’ll come looking for the cause.’
‘Wait.’ Hana was feeling inside the glove compartment, and beneath the console. ‘Look for a spare key. In these dangerous times they’d need to keep one hidden.’
It was precious moments they didn’t have, but there was no alternative. ‘You look inside, I’ll do the outside.’ At least she’d be less exposed in there. He dived back out of the car, crawling beneath the engine, searching frantically.
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