To Touch a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 3)

Not that it mattered what it was. They’d made it.

He had. Gotten them to safety. Like he’d promised.

He was carrying her like she’d told him to ages ago, across the threshold of a refuge. In seconds he slammed a foot-thick door shut behind him, isolating them in the sudden safety and relative silence of a blessedly cool, dark interior.

He held her with one arm for the moment it took to snatch off his goggles. Their shape was imprinted into his flesh, and he looked haggard. But as he hastily removed the coverings off her face, the sight of his eyes sent her sluggish heart revving. Although bloodshot, they glowed an eerie green, smoldered down at her with anxiety and…guilt?

Why guilt, when he’d saved her? Perhaps he was blaming himself for not anticipating the storm and exposing her to the ordeal.

Or maybe, moron, with you slumped like a dead fish in his arms, he thinks you’re dying or something.

She savored his unguarded—and no doubt never to be repeated—expression a moment more before forcing life back into her muscles. She stirred, struggled to pull off her own goggles, half believing she’d tear her skin away with them. They left her face with a pop.

She groaned at having air instead of a semi-vacuum around her eyes. Her sight blurred and adjusted like a lens struggling to find focus. She saw his expression shift back to that projection of indifference he wore like an impenetrable shield.

Then a corner of his now-colorless lips lifted in that world-renowned smirk and he rasped out a bass, “Welcome to my lair.”

Her stinging gaze clung to his until he looked ahead to navigate through a corridor that made her feel as if he were taking her deeper into the arcane sanctum of a wizard.

Which he was. He’d always practiced magic. At least on her.

They entered a spacious rectangular hall with adobe walls and stone floors strewn with hand-woven kilims. Their same combination of bold, dark colors imbued cushions of every size covering one long, low, wooden settee resting against the wall with a huge square oak table in front of it. Flanking the corridor, the hall continued into two more areas. One had a fireplace of yet another mix of rocks and stones, huge cushions on the floor and a tableyah, a foot-high circular table of palm wood that looked handmade, with the anachronism of a sleek silver laptop on top making it look more primal. The remaining area was a kitchen with a brick oven built into the wall, a sink and a cooktop in a huge island with a countertop of unpolished quartz. The rest of the walls were covered by an extensive pantry.

Leading from the hall, she could see another corridor extending to what she assumed were two more rooms. If you could call them that, when neither had a door, just walls forming the corridor and separating them from each other.

Four large, arched windows flanked the open areas, the eerie illumination of the sandstorm seeping through their shutters. They buzzed in their frames with its bombardment. The resoluteness of their seal allowed nothing to penetrate their defenses, or the place would have been knee-deep in sand. Everything looked pristine.

It could have been a dump, and it still would have been the best place she’d ever been for saving them from the death screeching for their souls outside. But even had that not influenced her opinion, it was more evocative and enthralling than all the imposing edifices she’d seen in the region. Being composed of the elements of Zohayd’s nature, reflecting its origins, faithful to its essence, it was real, unpolished and unpretentious. It made her feel as though she’d stepped into the atmospheric setting of one of the One Thousand and One tales with which Shahrazad had assuaged her king and husband Shahrayar’s madness.

Now that she was there, she could imagine Amjad building nothing else as his hideaway from the world. It possessed the rawness of his aura, the unadorned impact of his power…

Her musings came to a halt as his hands changed pressure on her body. She almost cried out when he lowered her to her feet. She swayed, looked up into eyes that had turned golden green in the unearthly light, and quivered with the need to nestle into him again.

Not that he had been letting her “nestle” into him to begin with. He would have carried anyone the same way. So it was hands—and everything else—off until he sanctioned it, invited it. Invited her.

She struggled to step away, to do without his support, quirked her lips at him. “So your lair is from another era. You didn’t tell me you have time travel among your limitless powers.”

He flicked a glance around the place, looked back at her in mocking reassurance. “The place only looks primitive. It’s got every modern amenity, never fear.”

“It isn’t primitive. It’s…authentic.”

“Authentic is a cover word for backward.”

“You think I’d go for a cover word to express an unfavorable opinion?”

“Come to think of it, no. You’d probably ‘smack out’ said opinion.”

“Maybe not as you would. But this place is enchanting. And not only because it’s a sight for my sore eyes after the nothingness we’ve been engulfed in for an eternity.”

“So now we know what eternity is. The four hours it took to get here.”

She groaned, remembering the endlessness. “It felt like four days.”

He removed his abaya, tossed it on the nearest cushion. Sweat had plastered his loose shirt to his formidable torso, a testament to his exertion. The blow-torching dryness had evaporated every drop of her sweat, then dug its tentacles into her body to draw any remaining moisture from its depths. Good thing, too, or she would have drooled at the sight he made right now.

He strode to the kitchen, flicked switches. Droning started, a generator, then a pump. He turned on the tap. After a few coughs and spurts, water flowed. Her parched insides tingled at the sight. She teetered over to him, took the glass he’d filled for her.

“I’ve had the well water tested…” He paused as she gulped it down in one go, continued the assurance she hadn’t needed. “And it passes through filters and purifiers.” He downed his own glass. “And for the record, this place is about forty miles from where we were. We could have covered the distance in less time under better conditions, but as it was, it was a damn good rate. So sorry my efforts didn’t meet Your Royal Grumpiness’s timetable.”

She felt her lips would split if she smiled. She gulped down her third glass of water, settled for twitching them at him. “I wasn’t complaining, Your Royal Snarkiness.”

“Why not? It isn’t as if I can send you back now.”