The Sheikh's Disobedient Bride

This is why she couldn’t stay. This is why she had to go. She was losing her mind, losing perspective. She couldn’t allow a desert barbarian to confuse her. And she was confused. Very.

Just before dawn, Tally left her bed. She’d leave while everyone still slept. She’d go on foot, but she’d take the dried fruit she’d been saving from her meals, and the dried bread, and the jug of water from her bedside chest and go before camp woke.

The sun was just breaking on the horizon when she left her tent. The camp’s three-legged dog stirred from his place by the now cold fire and bounded toward her. Before he could bark, Tally broke off a piece of bread, tossed it at him, and the mutt, pouncing on the bread, was quite happy to eat not bark, allowing Tally to leave camp undisturbed.

“She’s left, sir. Again.” It was Tair’s elderly Berber servant standing at the entrance of Tair’s tent, his head bowed.

“I’m sorry,” the servant added apologetically, his head drooping even lower in disgrace. “She must have left early, when the camp was still sleeping.”

Tair briefly closed his eyes and pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Footprints?”

“Yes. West, toward the wadi, sir.”

Tair bit back his oath of impatience and irritation. This Tally was proving to be a great deal of trouble for just one woman. “Thank you,” he said, remaining at his desk where he’d been drafting a document that would eventually be sent to the royal palace in Atiq, to the attention of Malik Nuri, the Sultan of Baraka.

The servant hesitated. “Do you want me to send someone after her?”

“No.”

And the elderly man hesitated even longer—a testament to his inherent goodness. “It wouldn’t be any trouble. We have men to spare at the moment—”

“Not necessary. But thank you.” Tair didn’t even look up.

His man murmured acknowledgment and exited, letting the tent flap fall behind him and it wasn’t until Tair was alone that he glanced up, forehead furrowing with aggravation.

Tally lacked sense even a child would have. Rushing blindly into the desert. Running off with no chance of escape. She must have a death wish. She had to know she couldn’t—wouldn’t—survive even twenty-four hours in the desert unprotected.

Sighing, he leaned back in his chair and stared across the tent to the cushions scattered on the floor.

The whole point of kidnapping a woman and making her yours was that one had effectively bypassed pretense and any ridiculous notions of romance.

Tair didn’t do romance. He didn’t woo or court. He didn’t have time, and even if he did, he wouldn’t anyway. Wooing was for men who lacked confidence in their ability to make a woman adapt, conform, behave. And that had never been Tair’s problem. Women—for better or worse—liked him. Loved him. He didn’t always love back but that was his fault. He didn’t love, didn’t know how to love, not the way women wanted to be loved and yet he’d accepted this flaw in his personality, realizing he had strengths that compensated for his deficiencies.

He was loyal. He was strong. He understood and respected commitment.

He was also wealthy enough, and although scarred—he’d fought in just one too many battles—he wasn’t completely deformed and women so far hadn’t minded the wounds. In fact, women—who would ever understand them?—seemed to like the scars. Made them protective.

Tair snorted to himself. Women made no sense but that was nothing new.

Maybe he’d just have to tie Tally up. She’d hate it but maybe that’s what he needed to do. Tie her to the pole in the center of his tent, keep her tethered like one of the baby goats that tended to wander off if not kept safely roped.

And then picking up his pen, Tair returned to his work, determined to finish his letter before setting off in search of the woman he had decided would be his. Even if she hadn’t accepted it yet.

So this was how she was going to die. An awful, horrible death. Suffocation by sand.

Tally had always feared drowning in the ocean but this would be just as bad. Sliding beneath the surface, buried in a sea of sand. Sand in her eyes, her nose, her mouth. Sand filling her lungs.

Tortured by the thought, Tally struggled, grappling upward but the movement worked against her and she dropped lower, sliding down instead of up. She’d heard that fighting quicksand was a death sentence, but this wasn’t real quicksand, was it? She’d never heard of desert quicksand but one moment she’d been walking and the next the world beneath her gave away.