His future would be the same as his past. Nothing significant enough to hold his attention.
Boredom.
Yet he hadn’t been bored with Annalisa. The feral thought lodged in his brain.
Despite the pain and the infuriating slowness of his recovery, he’d enjoyed being here.
The realisation sideswiped him.
Talking with an inexperienced girl who’d never left Qusay about astronomy, the need for local schools, the latest plans for irrigating the edge of the desert. About customs he remembered from another life and people he’d never met, about the small communities that made up her world. Even about the care and feeding of an orphan goat. And he’d been content!
For days the bounds of this oasis had circumscribed his world and he hadn’t hankered for more.
An image of Annalisa’s smile appeared: the way her eyes softened when she laughed, the way the sun brought out gold and bronze highlights in her rich brown hair. The way her slim fingers felt as she tended his wounds. The scent of cinnamon and honey that haunted his sleep.
She was the reason he’d been content.
More than content. He’d been happy!
A sound interrupted his thoughts. Soft humming, off-key yet delightful.
He slitted open his eyes, seeing daylight. He’d slept late. He might even have been unconscious after the sheer stupidity of having sex despite cracked ribs and head wounds.
Ripping off his shirt last night had almost killed him. But he’d have died for sure if he hadn’t felt Annalisa’s hands on him, her sweet body against his.
His erection was instantaneous and achingly powerful, just at the memory of her.
The humming ceased and the tent flap lifted. His heart banged painfully against his ribs as she entered, wearing her hair down for the first time. Tendrils curled invitingly around her full breasts. She turned and a shaft of sunlight caught her back. Her hair rippled like finest silk, spun with threads of mahogany and gold.
She bent and retrieved something from the ground and his gaze fixed ravenously on the perfect peach shape of her bottom. His mouth dried.
Yet her movements weren’t as graceful as usual. When she stepped across to tie up the tent flap he was sure of it.
She moved as if it hurt to walk.
As a woman might walk after a stranger had stolen her virginity. Then followed it up with a second bout of sex that had been far less restrained and even more desperate.
He’d been so needy. Despite his pain and her exhaustion he hadn’t been able to resist kissing her awake and taking his fill of her again. He’d ensured she’d climaxed again, not once but twice. Yet he should have controlled himself. He should have known.
Hell! What did he know about virgins?
And, frankly, what did he care? Once he’d had Annalisa under him he hadn’t been able to wait to have her again.
She turned and sunlight fell across her face.
What he saw there made his pulse thump out of kilter.
The cold feeling at his spine crept through his body, turning his organs to leaden lumps of ice.
Her once flawless skin was marred by angry reddened rashes. Around her mouth, on her cheeks and neck.
Whisker-burn.
More, there was a purpling mark on her throat. Another just visible at her neckline.
Where his teeth had grazed her.
Tahir’s stomach swooped as it had the day his chopper crashed. But this time it didn’t stop falling.
He shut his eyes against nausea as a vision from the past rose. His father staggering from a banquet with his closest, must corrupt cronies, his newest mistress tucked close beside him. Except his mistress had been a scared teenager who’d cringed at Yazan Al’Ramiz’s touch.
His father had swatted him away like a fly when he’d tried to intervene, a skinny thirteen-year-old without the skill to tackle a full-grown man who knew every dirty trick. Tahir had gone down hard, cracking his head and coming to far too late to intervene again.
But he’d seen her the next day. Pale, with a livid bruise along her cheek. She hadn’t seen him. She’d been too absorbed in misery to notice anyone.
The sound of Annalisa’s off-key humming broke across the memory.
Last night hadn’t been the same.
Annalisa had wanted him. Pleaded with him.
Except he’d used his sexual expertise to make her beg for something she didn’t fully understand. He’d wanted her and set out to get her, even to the extent of having her admit it was she who wanted him.
As if that exonerated him.
Nothing changed the fact that he’d stolen her innocence.
Now she looked at him with stars in her eyes. Even through barely opened lids he saw her innocent wonder.
As if he was some fairytale hero.
As if he was the answer to a maiden’s prayers.
The knot of glacial ice in his belly had sharp edges. It ripped his guts when he tried to breathe. It cut through his self-satisfaction and his excuses about last night.