To Tempt a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 2)

His eyes went dark. He just nodded for her to go on.

“I didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t what I found.” She shuddered again with the memory of the explosive emotions the letter had elicited. “The writer said he knew who was involved in framing Todd, that he could expose them, exonerate him. He asked that Todd come to Zohayd, where he’d supply him with the information. He had a huge stake in exposing them, too, but he needed it to be at a stranger’s hand. And who better than someone they’d so deeply wronged?

“I realized only after I’d read the letter a dozen times that the writer didn’t know Todd was in no position to fulfill his demand. There was an email included, so they could drum out details of the ‘mission,’ as he called it. I wrote an email explaining the situation, but accepting their mission in Todd’s place. Then, right before I hit Send, I reconsidered. If the writer knew Todd was already convicted, he might give up on the whole thing. And from Todd’s reports on the region, I thought he would balk at doing business with a woman. Not to mention that a female foreigner on her own would draw too much attention, all of the unwanted variety. And my plan formed.

“If this person didn’t know Todd was in prison, then I could go as him. I had his passport, and I could pass for him with some disguise. I created a new email with Todd’s name, emailed him with my acceptance. I got a response within an hour. All I had to do was buy a plane ticket to anywhere in the world to get into the airport’s departure gates. Someone would meet me with a pass to a private-jet flight, so I could slip into the region without record of my entry. That worried me, about my departure, but I rationalized they would want me to leave, to carry out their exposé for them. I thought I could also run to the American Embassy if I got into trouble.

“They brought me here. I demanded the info I came for, and my contact told me it was bigger than I thought, that ‘my’ problems were a part of something that could not only exonerate ‘me’ but that would destroy the Aal Shalaans, as they deserved to be. Then he called on the cell phone they’d given me. He used one of those electronic voice distorters, said he couldn’t afford to ever be linked to what he was about to reveal, wouldn’t leave anything to be tracked back to him. And he told me about the stolen and counterfeited Pride of Zohayd jewels, and the consequences that would have for the Aal Shalaans and their regime. I asked how that would help ‘me’ and he only said I was a bright lad, would work out how to use that info to my benefit. When I started to protest, he said he was in a very sensitive position, had to go now or risk exposure, but that he’d call me later with more info.

“I emailed Mark Gibson, Todd’s lawyer and our childhood friend, to ask his opinion. I didn’t specify what my contact had told me, just that I possessed info that could bring the royal house of Zohayd down. Two hours later, I was snatched from my rented condo. The next thing I remember was waking up in that hole in the desert. The rest you know.”

Then she felt silent. And realized that tears were streaming down her face. Reliving those past events and anticipating even more anguish and hopelessness, not only for Todd but for her and Harres in the future, broke her heart.

Harres’s bleak eyes were eloquent with his acknowledgment of the validity of her trepidation. He said nothing, just pulled her back into his arms. Soon, he was kissing her, inflaming her, taking her with a new edge of recklessness, of desperation.

The dread that their time together was counting down to a crushing end made their hunger explosive, their mating almost violent, their ecstasy almost damaging.

Afterward, she lay curved into his body, quivering with the enormity of it all. He pretended to be asleep. She knew he wasn’t.

She couldn’t sleep, either.

She wondered, once she lost him, if she’d ever sleep again.

As night deepened, the oasis’s unique environment somehow warded off the bitter cold of the desert. Even if it had been as bone-chilling as it had been during their trek, Harres wouldn’t have felt a thing. He was burning up, from the inside out.

She’d finally fallen asleep. He’d left her side, gone out to try to find air to breathe.

He couldn’t find any in the vastness around him.

He stumbled to a stop at the far edge of the cottage’s garden, stared up at the preternaturally clear and steady stars. They blurred, swam. The heat seething inside him was filling his eyes with the moisture of frustration and despondence. Just as he’d seen in hers. It had hurt, still did, like a knife in his gut.

What hurt more was that he couldn’t wipe those feelings away. He couldn’t promise her what he wasn’t certain he could deliver. Promises now would torment her with hope. That was even more agonizing than resignation, and if for any reason he failed to keep them, the crash to despair would be far more devastating. He would do whatever it took to secure her happiness. But until he did, he had to keep silent, had to suffer her suffering. And love her with all of his being.

He only prayed it wouldn’t come down to a choice between him and her brother.

He couldn’t afford to lose her. He wouldn’t survive it.

Eleven

Talia lurched awake, the ferocity and satisfaction of Harres’s last possession humming in her blood, in her bones.

She stretched, moaning at the delicious frisson of soreness zigzagging through her. He had kept his promise of driving her to insanity and beyond. She now thought sanity, like the soul she felt he’d claimed, was a highly overrated and mostly inconsequential trimming.

He wasn’t there. But he would be any second.

She rose, freshened up. Just as she finished, she heard the steady clatter of Reeh’s hooves at the back of the cottage.

She rushed to the door. The moment she stepped out, gazing up into the twilight of the skies she’d come to depend on seeing, a meteor flashed bright then faded, as if it had never been.

It felt like their time together.

But they didn’t behave as if it would ever fade. They both pretended this was forever.

He rode around the cottage, approached her with the smile that was everything worth living for. She rushed to him and he pulled her up on Reeh’s back, molded her back to his front, enveloped her within his hot, hard body.

After a while of trotting leisurely in their daily excursion to al ain, Talia sighed, snuggled back into the cherishing heat and protection.

“I’ve come to a conclusion,” she announced. He kissed the top of her head, held her more securely, waiting for her revelation. “Getting kidnapped was the best thing that ever happened to me.”