Desert Orchid: The Desert Princes: Book 1 (31 page)

Charisse had disappeared into thin air.

The Monroes hadn't come alone, they'd brought a hand-picked team of twenty men and now one of their men drew close. He moved like a ghost. Khalid hadn't heard him approach and he looked at the soldier's feet. He wore some sort of black crepe soled boots that didn't make a sound. All of them wore the same basic uniform. Black combats, matching long sleeved muscle shirts under a black armoured vest with pockets jam packed with ammunition and devices. They all wore earpieces.

The soldier was grinning as he held out his hand. "Look what I found twenty feet down the main tunnel."

Bruce Monroe picked up a couple of sparkling tiny glass beads.

When Khalid made a sound in his throat, he looked at him.

"Recognise these?"

"Yes, it's from my wife's bracelet. Some school kids gifted her with it a few days ago. She wouldn't take it off."

"Sir, there's a trail of them taking the fork to the left further down the tunnel."

Khalid made to move, but Bruce stopped him.

"We won't go running after her without a plan. The maps of the tunnel routes are old but accurate. There are huge cave formations down there. A man with a grenade or explosives could do a lot of damage. My goal is to recover the women, alive. Hopefully, without losing any of my men or any of you. If Omar has them then we need to be careful. He's managed to give your guys the run-around for weeks. He's had time to familiarise himself with all the routes in and out of the palace. He'll have a safe place to hide, maybe more than one. We need to be prepared for anything he might throw at us."

Khalid knew the man was right, but dammit, he wanted Charisse in his arms.

How the hell had this happened?

Now Wallace Monroe spoke in a soft voice.

"If it is Omar who has them, then remember that he is the monkey, not the organ grinder. Someone is giving him instructions. My team are monitoring all satellite phone frequencies and radio frequencies. We'll find them because he will need to inform his master that he has the prize. And he can't do that from within the mountain. He'll need to break cover to send the signal. And once he does we'll get him."

"Unless he uses a radio, or torch at night, or a mirror during the day to send a signal," Sarif inserted. "This is the desert. We use basic means of communication."

Wallace nodded and his teeth flashed white.

"We will find them, Your Highness."

Charisse was shivering and hurting.

God, her shoulder joints screamed.

Nausea roiled in her belly as reality crashed into her brain.

There was a foul smelling gag in her mouth and her wrists were bound too tightly behind her back.

It was dark, but there was a dim light from a candle burning on a ledge carved out of rock. She tried to roll to her knees and a fresh wave of nausea washed through her leaving her feeling wretchedly sick and weak.

Slumping against the rock, and desperately battling terror, the deep breaths she took through her nose stung.

The smell of ammonia made her eyes water.

Taking a careful inhale, Charisse tried to work out where she was.

She could hear the trickle of running water. And she was cold. Very cold.

The underground caverns deep beneath the palace.

Her eyes flew around the cave, but there was no sign of Omar.

She shivered.

And then went utterly still as a winged creature fluttered towards the ceiling.

A ceiling that appeared to move.

Her eyes went wide.

Oh, God, bats.

Thousands of them.

A single shudder convulsed her body.

She hated bats.

Telling herself not to freak out, Charisse tried again to roll to her knees and this time she made it.

The earth was packed hard. Somewhere along the line she'd lost a ballet shoe. And that seriously pissed her off. It took her three attempts but she managed to stagger to her feet.

Leaning her aching shoulder against the damp wall of the cave, she tried to get her bearings. She'd never ventured into the cave network alone. Asim had drummed it into her that some of the deepest tunnels, and the caves were unstable. Before his illness had taken away his ability to walk, he'd taken her into the tunnels to show her a couple of escape routes, should the worst happen. Asim was a great believer in having a disaster recovery plan. Just thinking of him now gave her the strength to channel her thoughts into escaping rather than giving in to the self-indulgence of an emotional meltdown.

However, her sense of direction was skewed. She had no idea which way was north or south. Panic again bubbled and brewed in her mind, in her gut. And then she remembered that if a tunnel was going uphill then she would be going west and downhill she was going east.

With hope in her heart she staggered towards a tunnel entrance. It took her seconds to realise the route ahead was pitch black. Then she turned in a circle and spotted four more tunnel entrances. Which one would she choose? If she took the wrong path, perhaps fell and was injured, no one would ever find her because she couldn't call for help.

Then the truth hit her.

She was trapped.

Tears burned her throat, made the cave blur and this time terror gripped her lungs and squeezed too hard. Her breath came in horrible little pants.

She staggered back to the thin blanket Omar had left on the ground.

Defeated, she dropped to her knees.

Then in her mind she heard Amir's voice tell her,
'If you are lost in the caves or the desert. It is crucial to remain in the one spot. That way you will be found. Trust that the people who love you will find you.'

Closing her eyes she sent a prayer that Khalid would find her.

And now her heart was filled with regret that she'd helped Arabella to leave today. Because if there was one person who had the expertise in these caves and would move a mountain to find her, it was her Arabella.

Then the sound of the shuffle of feet brought her head up as she listened hard.

The light of a torch came from a tunnel to her right.

Her eyes went wide as a big robed figure appeared.

He stepped into the cave and pulled back his hood.

The bald head was shiny, the skin stretched taut, but the black beard below his full lips took her by surprise.

But those eyes were the same. Small and mean. Beady eyes, black as jet, slid over her from her head to her toes and back again. She read something that looked like desire and an evil that made her blood chill.

"You are awake. Good," Omar said in a high voice that simply did not match the sheer physicality of his body.

He switched off the torch, placed it on a flat ledge. For such a large man he was very light on his feet. Then he rummaged in a box in the corner and brought out more candles. One by one he took great care to light them and place them around her as if setting a scene. The way he moved, like a dancer, and the way he hummed in his throat gave her the creeps.

He clapped his hands twice before whirling around to face her.

Charisse pressed her body back against the rock face.

In a smooth move, he whipped the robe over his head.

He was naked except for a loose pair of cotton boxers that once upon a time had been white.

The torso was solid. No flab. But it wasn't honed and toned either. His limbs were like tree trunks. His wrists were thick as were his ankles. And he had no neck. The picture that flashed into her mind was one from her childhood books of fairytales, of a troll. His toenails were too long and absolutely filthy.

But it was the thick bulge of his arousal between his legs that made her eyes go wide.

Danger had found her again, the grotesque reality no longer the stuff of nightmares but a wail deep in her psyche. The trembling began in her knees and spread up her torso.

He whirled around and did a strange little skip as he danced towards the box. He poked around again, and this time found a small bottle of blue glass with a corked stopper.

Again he did a freaky little dance as he placed the bottle next to a couple of lit candles on the ledge.

He lifted her up as if she weighed nothing and turned her around.

With deft fingers he untied her wrists.

She cried out with the agony in her shoulders, at the sting of blood flowing back into her fingers.

"Oops, tied your hands too tight. Not to worry."

The heady scent of halitosis and a body that hadn't seen soap and water for weeks made her dizzy. But what snapped her back to reality was the squeal of duct-tape. Then his tongue was licking his full bottom lip as he was binding her wrists again, this time in front of her.

Everything happened so fast.

She was sprawled on her belly on top of a flat rock.

And now his heavy body lay on top of hers, his weight pressing her delicate hip bones into solid rock.

It hurt.

His breath hissed in her ear.

And it took everything she had not to scream in her throat.

"I was well on my way to destroying the house of El Haribe, until
you
came into the great Khalid's life. The man was weak. Easy to manipulate. Until he married you. And what I am going to do to you will finally, finally, break him.

He pulled her legs over the edge until her toes touched the floor. The position left her bottom in the air. And Charisse knew exactly what was going to happen to her.

A single heavy swat on her backside made her sob in her throat.

"I was told to bring you alive. He mentioned nothing about you being unharmed. I like young, virgin, ass. And I bet lover boy hasn't touched your fine little ass, has he? No, ass is not the great Khalid's style."

His thick fingers didn't fumble as they unbuttoned her jeans, slid down the zip.

Her heart was beating so fast and so hard against her ribs, in her throat, Charisse was sure it might burst. She'd felt terror like this before. And the feel of the heavy body at her back, the way his thick and rock hard erection was pressing down on her, had that dark place come alive in her mind again.

Fluid leaked from her eyes and her nose.

She told herself to be brave, that she'd survived worse.

Now thick fingers hooked into her panties at her hips.

And Charisse closed her eyes tight and braced herself.

The Monroe brothers took the lead through the tunnels.

They moved fast, with grace and stealth, like big black cats.

Their men followed, with Khalid and Sarif bringing up the rear. The smell of dank earth, and a darkness relieved only by the torches lighting the way, plus it was ice cold, all conspired to make Khalid feel he was entering a tomb. A place where the dead reigned supreme. A couple of times he was sure he'd felt a ghostly fingertip slide down his cheek before realising it was a spider's web. His fertile imagination was torturing him with thoughts of what Charisse was going through, down here all alone, in the clutches of a monster.

The too loud explosion of a single gunshot made him jolt before the Monroes and their team sprinted ahead.

Khalid was right on their heels with Sarif at his shoulder as they ran into scene of utter chaos.

Bats, thousands of them, were whirling in the air. Their too high cries were ringing in his ears. And the smell of their guano made his eyes water. But then he saw Arabella untying Charisse. Her face was filthy and streaked by tears. She was wearing one shoe, and why that made him sob in his throat he had no fucking idea.

Within seconds she was in his arms, her body plastered against his, and he just held on tight.

"See you haven't lost your eye. Nice shot, Bella." Bruce Monroe squatted over a very dead Omar studying the hole between his eyes, then moved out of the way of the blood pooling at the back of the bastard's head. "But I could have done with him alive, darling."

Since there was no response, he glanced up to find a very tense and flustered Arabella being held too close by a Prince who was inspecting her face.

"What happened? Are you unhurt?" Sarif asked her in a gruff voice.

"I'm fine," she told him. Sliding out of his arms, she then turned to Bruce. "I had no choice. He was about to rape Charisse. The man is built like a tank, if I'd injured him, he would have killed her. I couldn't take the chance."

Khalid searched his wife's face, and Charisse read alarm mixed with a furious outrage that burned as hot as the sun. "Did he touch you?"

She shook her head, her eyes never leaving his. "He was about to sodomise me." The shudder that rocked her made her teeth rattle. "Arabella shot him, thank God."

A whoop of glee from the other side of the cave made them turn.