‘Put me down. I have work to do.’
‘Work?’ He stared down into her exhausted face, terrified at the intensity of what he felt.
‘I’m helping the wounded. You have to let me go.’
‘You’re injured.’ He shouldered through the crowded space towards a couple of doctors bent over a patient.
‘It’s not my blood, Tahir. Tahir?’
But he was already talking to a white-haired medic who explained Annalisa had been here all night, helping.
Even then Tahir couldn’t release her. He listened as if from a distance as the doctor reassured him that she was unharmed, heard praise for her efforts. But he couldn’t trust himself to believe.
Blind instinct urged him to ignore the expert’s words and Annalisa’s urgings. He needed her close.
‘You need rest,’ he said as her voice grew strident. ‘You’re pregnant, remember?’
His words fell into a pool of silence. The emergency staff, patients, even his staff who’d followed him seemed to still.
Then the doctor was agreeing, saying she’d done enough and urging Annalisa to go. They were closing this centre anyway and moving to the hospital.
Tahir instructed his staff to help pack up. He’d be back soon. His stride lengthened as he passed into the wider streets of the new city.
‘Tahir?’ She didn’t sound angry now. ‘You can put me down. I’m fit and healthy. Honestly.’
But he walked on, arms tight as steel as he cradled her close.
He didn’t want to let her go. He wouldn’t let her go.
He looked into worried dark eyes, saw a flush stain her lovely face, the pout of concern on her lush mouth.
Tahir remembered the terror of losing her. The sense of loss. The fear he’d never find her. Horror still trickled through his belly at the recollection.
Realisation struck him with the force of an act of a divine power.
He couldn’t let her go.
The man who’d turned independence into an art form, self-reliance into a way of life, had met his match.
He needed her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT WAS late in the day when Annalisa woke. She’d fallen exhausted into bed. Yet she hadn’t slept for hours. Instead she’d replayed events in her mind. The quake, her work to help the wounded.
And Tahir, appearing out of nowhere and sweeping her into his arms. Her heart fluttered at the memory.
He’d been a stranger: intent, focused, all hard-muscled strength and determination. No hint of the playboy, just one hundred percent powerful, commanding male. One look at the set of his jaw had told her she hadn’t a hope of escaping his hold. Even if she’d wanted to.
In his embrace was exactly where she’d wanted to be.
She’d been so worried for him, but had found herself in the thick of disaster and hadn’t been able to turn her back on the pitifully wounded victims.
Tahir had barely heard her as he’d marched through the dark streets. Nor had he relinquished his hold when he’d reached his vehicle. He’d held her tight all the way, then carried her through the palace to her rooms.
Ignoring propriety, he’d only released her when he reached her bed. Even then he’d loomed close as servants scurried to provide food and run her a bath.
He’d looked immovable, his features a study in potent masculinity as he stared silently down at her.
Something had stretched taut between them. A tension she hadn’t been able to name but had felt with every slow breath, every tingle of awareness across her burning hot skin and in the deep, slow, coiling excitement in her belly.
When a maid had announced the bath was ready he’d abruptly disappeared, leaving her to ponder what had just happened.
When Tahir looked at her that way her doubts melted into nothing. It was like the sizzle in the air the night they’d made love. But more. Something stronger still.
Was she a fool, reading too much into his actions? Had he just been protecting his unborn baby?
And yet…she found herself hoping it was more.
She turned from her view of the sun setting in a blaze of colour. It was time to—
Annalisa’s footsteps faltered as she spied the figure just inside her room. His hand clenched high on the filmy curtains that separated the entry foyer from her chamber.
‘Tahir?’ Her husky voice betrayed her longing.
Need rose. It had gnawed at her so long. A need that had escalated last night as he’d carried her with the stern certainty of a man claiming his woman.
She wanted him to claim her. She wanted to be his.
Every warning, every doubt, ebbed in the face of her feelings for Tahir. She’d tried to focus on the negative, to tell herself she shouldn’t care for a man who didn’t love her. But stern logic didn’t work any more.