by Jennie Lucas
“And if you win, you’ll get a prize.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Your own private tent,” he said recklessly. “For the rest of the time we’re in the Sahara.”
Her lips parted. Somehow that prize didn’t excite her as much as it once would have. “And what about if you win?”
Kasimir looked down at her, and something in his glance made her hold her breath.
“You’ll share my bed,” he said softly, “and let me make love to you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHARE HIS BED?
Josie’s lips parted, her heart beating frantically as she looked up at him.
Let him make love to her?
She’d been trying to build up enough courage to kiss him. What would it be like to have him make love to her?
With a shuddering breath, she looked up at him. “I thought you said our marriage was in n-name only.”
“I changed my mind,” Kasimir said huskily. “You know I want you. And I’ve come to enjoy your company. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be… friends.”
“Friends who will divorce in a few weeks.”
“We could still see each other.” He looked at her. “If you want.”
Her lips parted. “If I want?”
“I would very much like to still see you, after we are divorced.” His blue eyes seared through her soul. “For as long as you are still interested in seeing me.”
Josie sucked in her breath. For as long as she wished to see him? That would be forever!
She looked back over the edge of the dune. It didn’t look so frightening anymore. Not with this new challenge. Not with her very virginity on the line.
But…
What about saving herself for love, for commitment, for a lifetime?
She looked back at him. Was Kasimir the man? Was this the time? Was this how she wanted to remember her first night, for the rest of her life?
Her heart pounded in her throat.
Should she let her husband take her virginity?
“Just so you know,” she said hesitantly, “my babysitter taught me to snowboard.”
“Even better.” He gave her a cheeky grin. “So with your head start, you have pretty good odds.”
She couldn’t help but smile at his smug masculine confidence. “Bree’s the gambler, not me.”
He gave her a long look beneath the blazing white sun.
“Are you sure about that?” he said softly.
On the other end of the dune, with a loud shout, the boys pushed off again, going straight down, good-naturedly roughhousing and cutting in front of each other as they skidded down the sand.
Josie closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and made her choice.
“I’ll do it.”
“Excellent.”
His blue eyes were beaming. He clearly expected that this would be no contest and that he would easily overtake her. He didn’t know that the entirety of the choice was still hers. Would she let him beat her? Or not?
Before her courage could fail her, she breathed, “Just tell me when to go.”
“One… two… three… go!”
Hastily, Josie tilted her snowboard and went off the edge, plummeting down the dune. Her body remembered the sport, even though her brain had forgotten, and her board picked up speed. For a glorious instant, she flew, and wild joy filled her heart—joy she hadn’t felt for ten years.
Then she remembered: if she won, she would sleep alone.
And if she lost, he would seduce her.
Slow down, she ordered her feet, and though they protested, she made them turn, her body leaning to drag the board against sand as hard and glassy as ice. It was hard to slow down, when her body yearned to barrel down the dune, like the reckless child she’d once been.
“You’ll never win that way,” Kasimir called from the top, sounding amused. “Turn your feet to aim straight down.”
Josie choked back a wry laugh. He had no idea how hard she was trying not to do that. A bead of sweat formed on her forehead from the effort of fighting her body’s desire to aim the snowboard straight down and plummet at the speed of flight. Couldn’t he tell? Couldn’t he see she was actually forcing herself not to win?
“Ready or not…”
Behind her, he pushed off the top of the dune. Smiling, she looked up at him as he glided past her on his snowboard. She saw the joy in his face—the same as when they’d galloped together across the desert that morning.
“You are mine now, kroshka!” he shouted, and flew past her.
Let me fly fast, half her heart begged.
Let him seduce you, the other half cried.
Then Josie turned her head when she heard a scream at the bottom of the hill. One of the roughhousing boys had lost control and crashed into the other, sending the smaller one skidding down the hard sand in panicked yells. The smaller boy, perhaps twelve years old, had a streak of blood across his tanned face and a trail of red followed him across the pale sand.
Josie didn’t think, she just acted. Her knees turned, she leaned forward and she flew down the hill. She had a single glimpse of Kasimir’s shocked face as she flew right past him. But she didn’t think about that, or anything but the boy’s face—the boy who moments before had seemed like a reckless, rambunctious teenager, but who now she saw was barely more than a child.
She reached the bottom of the dune in seconds. Ten feet away from the boy, she twisted hard on her snowboard, digging in for a sharp stop, causing sand to scatter in a wide fan around the boy’s friends, who were struggling up towards him. Josie kicked off her snowboard in a single fluid movement and leapt barefoot across the hot sand.
“Are you all right?” she said to the boy in English. His black eyes were anguished, and he answered in sobbing words she didn’t understand.
Then she saw his leg.
Beneath the boy’s white pants, now covered with blood, she saw the freakish-looking angle of his shin.
She blinked, feeling as though she was going to faint. Careful not to look back at his leg, she reached her arm around the boy’s shoulders. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered, forcing her voice to offer comfort and reassurance. “It’ll be all right.”
“It’s a compound fracture,” Kasimir said behind her. She turned and got one vision of his strangely calm face, before he twisted around and spoke sharply in Berber to the other two boys. They scattered, shouting as they ran for the encampment.
Kasimir knelt in the sand beside her. He looked down at the injury. As Josie cuddled the crying boy, Kasimir spoke to him with incredible gentleness in his voice. The boy answered him with a sob.
Carefully, Kasimir ripped the fabric up to the knee to get a closer look at the break. Tearing off a corner of his own shirt, he pushed it into Josie’s hand. “Press this just below the knee to slow down the blood.”
His voice was calm. Clearly he was good in a crisis. She was not. She swallowed, feeling wobbly. “I can’t—”
“You can.”
He had such faith in her. She couldn’t let him down. Still feeling a bit green, she took a deep breath and pressed the cloth to a point above the wound as firmly as she could.
Rising to his feet, Kasimir crossed back across the sand and returned a moment later with his snowboard. Turning it over to the flat side, he dug sand out from beneath the boy and gently nudged the board beneath the injured leg. He ripped more long bits of fabric from his shirt, giving Josie a flash of his hard, taut abs before he bent to use the board as a splint.
The boy’s parents arrived at a run, his mother crying, his father looking blank with fear as he reached out to hold his son’s hand. Behind them another man, dark-skinned, with an indigo-colored turban, gave quick brusque orders that all of them obeyed, including Kasimir. Five minutes later, they were lifting the boy onto a makeshift stretcher.
Josie’s knees shook beneath her as she started to follow. Kasimir stopped her.
“Go back to the tent,” he sa
id. “There’s nothing more you can do.” His lips twitched. “Can’t have you fainting on us.”
She swallowed, remembering how she’d nearly fainted at the sight of the boy’s injury. “But I want to help—”
“You have,” he said softly. He glanced behind him. “Ahmed’s uncle is a doctor. He will take good care of him until the helicopter arrives.” He pushed her gently in the other direction. “He’ll be all right. Go back to the tent. And pack.”
Josie watched anxiously as the boy was carried to the other side of the encampment. He disappeared into a tent, with Kasimir and the others beside him, and she finally turned away. Dazed, she looked down at her clenched hands and saw they were covered in blood.
Slowly, she walked back to the tent she shared with Kasimir. She went to the basin of water and used rose-scented soap to wash the blood off her hands. Drying her hands on a towel, she sank to the bed.
Go back to the tent. And pack.
She gasped as the meaning of those words sank in. She covered her mouth with her hand.
She’d won. By pure mischance, she’d won their race.
There would be no seduction. Instead, from this night forward, she’d be sleeping alone in a separate tent.
Once, Josie would have been relieved.
But now…
Numbly, she rose from their bed. Grabbing her backpack, she started to gather her clothes. Then she stopped, looking around the tent. Kasimir always dumped everything on the floor, in that careless masculine way, knowing it was someone else’s job to follow after him and tidy up. Looking across the luxurious carpets piled thickly across the sand, Josie’s eyes could see the entirety of her husband’s day: the empty water bucket of solid silver. The hand-crafted sandalwood soap. His crumpled pajama pants. And in a corner, his black leather briefcase, so stuffed with papers that it could no longer be closed, none of which he’d glanced at even once since the day they’d arrived here.
In the distance, she heard a sound like rolling thunder.
Tears rose to her eyes, and she wiped them away fiercely. She didn’t want to leave him. This was the place where they whispered secrets to each other in the middle of the night. The bed where, if she woke up in the middle of the night, she’d hear the soft sound of his breathing and go back to sleep, comforted that he was beside her.
No more.
When she was finished packing, she grabbed her mother’s tattered copy of North and South. For the next hour as she waited, sitting on the bed, Josie tried to concentrate on the love story, though she found herself reading the same paragraph over and over.
Kasimir’s footstep was heavy as he pushed aside the heavy cotton flap of the door. She looked up from her book, her heart fluttering, as it always did at the breathtaking masculine beauty of his face, the hard edge of his jawline, dark with five o’clock shadow, and the curved edge of his cheekbones. His blue eyes looked tired.
Setting down the book on the bed, Josie asked anxiously, “Is he going to be all right?”
“Yes.” He went to the basin and poured clear, fresh water over his dirty hands. “His uncle put a proper splint on his leg. The helicopter just left to take them all to the hospital in Marrakech.”
“Thank heaven,” Josie whispered.
Kasimir didn’t answer. But as he dried his hands, she saw the shadows beneath his eyes, the tightness of his shoulders.
Without a word, she came up behind him. Closing her eyes, she wrapped her arms around his body, pressing her cheek against his back until she felt his tension slowly relax into her embrace.
A moment later, with a shudder, he finally turned around in her arms to face her.
“You were the first to reach him,” he said in a low voice. “Thank you.”
Her eyes glistened with tears. “It was nothing.”
Kasimir gave her a ghost of a smile. “You were much faster than I thought.”
“I told you my father and Bree were gone a lot,” she said in a small voice. “My babysitter was a former championship snowboarder from the Lower Forty-Eight.”
“You grew up in Anchorage, didn’t you?” He gave a low, humorless laugh. “Had a season pass at Alyeska?”
“Since I was four years old.” She gave him a trembling smile. “If it’s any consolation, I’m faster than Bree, too. She’s horrible on the mountain. Strap skis or a snowboard on her feet and she’ll plow nose-first into the snow.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“But you and I,” she said quickly, “it was a close race…”
“Not even.” He bared his teeth in a smile. “You won by a mile.”
With an intake of breath, Josie searched his gaze. “Kasimir, you have to know that I never meant to—”
“And I see you’ve packed. Good.” He glanced down at her backpack. “I’ll show you to your new tent.”
“Fantastic,” she said, crestfallen. Against her will, she hungrily searched his handsome face, his deep blue eyes, his sensual lips. She didn’t want to be away from him. She didn’t. “If not for the accident,” she said, glancing at him sideways, “the race could have ended very differently…”
“Josie, please,” Kasimir growled. “Do not attempt to assuage my masculine pride. That would just add insult to injury.” Picking up her backpack, he tossed it over his shoulder. “I’ll send over your trunk of new clothes later. You’ll likely only be here at the camp for another week or two.”
“Just me? Not you?”
He set his jaw. “I’m going to go look for your sister.”
“I thought you said it was too soon,” Josie said faintly.
He gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ll leave you and go get her. Both the things you wanted. It’s your lucky day.”
It was ending. He was leaving her. She thought of the time she’d wasted, longing for him to kiss her and doing nothing. Waiting—always waiting—with a timid heart!
“But you said you couldn’t trust me. That if you brought back my sister early, I might demand a hundred million dollars for my land.”
He gave a hard laugh. “You’re more trustworthy than anyone in this crazy, savage world. Including me.” Grabbing her upper arms, he looked down at her. “Serves me right,” he muttered. “I never should have tried to get around my promise.”
“Take me with you.”
His eyes widened, then he slowly shook his head. “It’ll be better… for your sake… for both of us… it’s best that we separate.”
“Separate,” she echoed, feeling hollow.
“Until the land comes through.”
She swallowed. “Until we divorce.”
His lips curved into a humorless smile. “You know what, I’m almost glad I lost.” He tucked a loose tendril of her brown hair behind her ear, then looked straight into her eyes. “Save yourself, Josie. For your next husband. For a man who can deserve you. Who can love you,” he added softly.
Turning away, Kasimir started to walk towards the door.
“I intended to lose the race,” she blurted out.
She heard his intake of breath. He slowly turned to face her.
“Why?” he asked in a low voice.
She gulped. She had to be brave. To tell the truth. And do it now. Now, without thinking about the risk or cost. Now.
Josie crossed the tent to him. Standing up on her tiptoes, she put her hands on his shoulders and looked straight into his startled blue eyes. “Because I wanted you to seduce me,” she whispered.
And leaning forward, she kissed his lips.
So much for his brilliant intelligence. Kasimir had thought he was so smart, finding a loophole around his promise. Passing her in their race down the dune, he’d felt triumphant, his body tight, knowing he all but had her in his arms.
Then there was a scream, and she’d flown past him. She was such an accomplished snowboarder that she’d had no problem handling the textural differences between snow and sand. And she’d seen the source of the scream, the injured boy, hal
f a second faster than he had. It was enough to make any man feel slow. Stupid and slow.
Which was exactly how Kasimir had felt pacing the tent of the boy’s family as his uncle, a doctor trained in Marrakech, worked on the boy’s ugly compound fracture with his limited instruments at hand. Kasimir had looked down at the sobbing boy, wishing he could do more than order a helicopter on his satellite phone, wishing they didn’t have to wait so long, and most of all, dreading the long, jarring journey the boy would face traveling to the hospital in Marrakech.
After Ahmed was loaded on the helicopter with a stretcher, Kasimir had evaded the tearful thanks of Ahmed’s family. Shoulders tight, he returned to the tent where Josie waited—not for his seduction, but for her freedom.
The whole afternoon, from start to finish, had left the acrid sourness of failure in his mouth.
And then—Kasimir had tasted the sweetness of Josie’s lips against his.
She’d reached her hands around his shoulders, lifting up on her tiptoes, and he’d just stared down at her in shock, telling himself he was completely misreading the situation. Josie, the inexperienced virgin, wouldn’t make the first move.
Why would she kiss him? He was a man who stood for nothing and no one. She was an angel who knew how to fly.
I intended to lose the race. Because I wanted you to seduce me.
He heard a soft sigh from the back of her throat. Saw her close her eyes. And she pressed her soft, trembling lips to his.
He didn’t immediately respond. He was too amazed. But when she grew shy, and started to draw away, a growl came from the back of his throat. Closing his eyes, he roughly pulled her back against his body and returned her kiss with force, with all the passion and longing he’d tried so hard not to feel. He let himself feel it—all of it—and desire overwhelmed him as it never had before.
Her lips parted as he deepened the kiss. She returned his embrace awkwardly, hungrily. And it was the best kiss of his life.
Outside the tent, he heard the rising wind flapping and rattling against the heavy waxed canvas. But he was lost in her. Her lips were so soft, her body so womanly, her soul so pure. As he ran his hands down her back, over her loose cotton shirt, he felt the press of her breasts against his muscled chest. Her brown hair now tumbled down her back in waves, tangling in his fingers.
