Sheikh's Castaway (4 page)

Noor shivered. She had never been so close to the elements, so profoundly at their mercy.

And in this mood, that included Bari himself.

“How long do you think it will be before they find us?” she asked nervously.

Bari lifted an eyebrow and looked up from what he was reading.

“Who do you imagine will be looking?”

T
here was a heartbeat of shocked silence. Thunder cracked and rolled again, but now,
Alhamdolillah,
it was moving off.

“What?”
she whispered.

“Who knows we were on the plane? Who knows it went down?”

“But—radar!”

Bari shook his head. “We were probably flying underneath radar most of the time.”

He began to unravel the sea anchor rope. “Even when people do discover that we went off in the plane, will there be any reason to assume that we have not arrived safely at our destination, whatever that might be?”

She stared at him. Did he really mean this might go on?

“Unless, of course, someone is expecting
you
somewhere.” His eyes were hard as he spoke.

She didn't know what that meant. “What about our
hotel booking? Won't they ask questions when we don't turn up?”

A crack of laughter escaped him. “Who will be expecting us to take a honeymoon when we didn't get married?”

He went on with his task, as if he could forget from moment to moment that she was there. She hated that. Bari had never ignored her before, and although now she knew his intense interest had been an act, still she missed it.

She suddenly began to wonder what had happened after she ran. When had the alarm been raised? The guards at the gate must have noticed as she went roaring past in the bridal limousine, but what had they actually seen?

“Did people know what happened? Did they…” She faded off.

“Did they know my bride had changed her mind?” Bari supplied in harsh mockery, and abruptly the cool veneer dropped and his raw anger surged up again. “I don't know what they knew,” he growled. “What does it matter? Insulting our families, our friends and all our guests! No reason on God's earth could justify such behaviour!”

No one ever criticized Noor, and in her current fragile state the stinging rebuke hit her hard.

“
You
were my reason!” she flared. “Easy for you to feel you should be allowed to walk all over me, but it's a bit much to expect me to agree!”

She was all the angrier, perhaps, because now that events had overtaken her, she was suddenly feeling very guilty. In countries like Bagestan and Barakat, hospitality was taken very seriously. It was practically a religious duty. And she had grown up in a family of exiles determined to maintain such traditions. It was in her blood almost as much as his.

“Walk all over you? Easier to walk over a bed of nails!” he snorted.

“With a soul as calloused as yours, no problem!”

“Not so calloused that I don't know when I've been lucky.”

“Oh, I don't think so!” Noor snapped furiously. “A few minutes ago you were all for forcing me to the altar! Anyway, you weren't marrying me for my sweetness and light in the first place, were you? You had other mo—”

“Not even for your self-control under stress,” he agreed. “Do you never consider pulling your own weight, Noor? Whatever
you
want is right?”

That was so outrageously unfair she gasped. “What do you know about it?” she demanded. “You've only known me for a few weeks! Ask my real friends if you want to know!”

Bari only shook his head and opened the hatch again. As more rain drove inside, he pushed something down into the water, then began playing out a line. Noor watched in silence. Not even for ready money would she now have offered her help. It would seem like giving in to his opinion of her, trying to win his favour. Not for a world!

But it irked her that he seemed not to have any expectation that she would be of help in what he was doing. Maybe he really did believe that she couldn't pull her weight; in any case, it seemed he could dismiss her completely from his field of consciousness.

She wished she could return the insult. She could probably have shared the raft with anyone else without feeling so claustrophobic; it was Bari's presence that made her feel so stifled.

The raft slowed and steadied somewhat as the little sea anchor took hold, and Bari closed the entrance again.

“Is there a first aid kit?” Noor asked, and Bari's piercing gaze fixed her.

“Where are you injured?”

“I only want the scissors.”

“What for?” he demanded suspiciously.

“Life's not exciting enough, Bari. I'm going to punch a hole in the raft and add a bit of drama!” she snapped sarcastically, then held up one hand. “I broke my nails.”

“The manicure will have to wait.”

“I need to cut them off! They'll catch on everything!”

“You haven't lifted a finger so far, so what are they catching on?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Other things have priority right now,” he said with cold precision.

“Like what! Rowing to Australia?”

“You can start bailing.” He tossed her yet another implement made of red plastic. “Use the observation hatch to get rid of the water.”

Anything was better than sitting in sloshing water getting chilled, she supposed, but the bailer wasn't easy to use, and every time she put an arm out the hatch, water trickled down into her armpit, something that quickly became a form of Chinese torture.

Bari began to attach a plastic pouch to a narrow sleeve in the canopy above his head.

“What's that?” she asked warily, because she thought she knew.

“It collects rainwater.”

Noor shook her head. “You're worried about conserving water?”

“The storm will pass. What then?”

Noor bit her lip and went on bailing.

When it was a little more than half full, Bari removed
the bag and tied the neck, setting it down. Then he picked up a plastic cup and began to help her bail. They worked together in silence for a time, bailing out as much as they could. Then they began sponging the floor dry.

“Do you think a boat or a plane will see us when the storm clears?”

“Not necessarily immediately.”

“How long?”

He looked up from his task, as if exasperated that she insisted on forcing herself on his notice.

“You are not a fool, Noor! You know as well as I do that it is possible to be lost at sea for a very long time.”

“But this is the Gulf of Barakat, not the Pacific!”

He apparently didn't consider that worth answering. She wondered whether they risked being carried out of the gulf and into the broader sea.

Abruptly she began to shiver. Her teeth chattered, and she realized how cold she had become. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop the convulsions as shock suddenly began to make itself felt in her.

“I'm scared,” she admitted in a whisper. “I'm so cold. Bari, would you—hold me?”

She despised herself for this show of weakness even as she asked.

Bari turned. His eyes fell on her bare foot, her ankle, then moved slowly up her brown calf to her bent knee. Then to the thin silk clinging to her body as snugly as a bathing suit. The teddy was made almost transparent by the wet, so that the nest of hair between her thighs was sharply revealed.

Just for a moment his eyes registered something very different than the bored irritation he had been treating her to. For one electric second they flashed with the familiar black fire that had so seduced her, and with an
immediacy that was almost physical, Noor was remembering that other time they had been enclosed together in a storm….

 

They had sailed down the coast one morning and dropped anchor in a ruggedly scenic turquoise bay just before lunch. They swam in the crystal sea, over the submerged ruins of an ancient settlement that was now no more than a few squares outlined in raised earth and some scattered potsherds in the serene white sand, evidence of their kinship with those who had been drawn to this pleasant bay aeons ago.

Overlooking the bay, above on the rocky finger that marked the last reach of the Noor mountain range, was a more recent house in traditional Bagestani style. Its once-white paint was grey and peeling, its domed roof badly weather-damaged. A wooden door sagged on its hinges.

There were many such estates in Bagestan, she knew—abandoned by those who had fled the country under Ghasib's rule—including her family's own. Closer to the cities, such properties had mostly been expropriated by the government, but in remote areas often they had been left to the elements.

Noor had gazed up at the house as she swam in the jewelled water.

“So tragic,” she said, for the house fired her imagination. “It must have been so beautiful, and now it looks—lonely. I wonder who it belongs to, and whether they intend to come back now and restore it.”

Bari hadn't answered. Their bodies gleaming, they climbed back aboard and rinsed the salt off under the freshwater shower hose at the stern. Bari, the nozzle held above his head, suddenly pointed up at the sky. Dark clouds were moving out from behind the mountains.

“More rain,” he said, with deeply felt satisfaction.

Then they sat under the yacht's shady awning, opened the picnic and spread out the little dishes of
bulghur
salad,
imam bayaldi, houmous
and a dozen other enticing concoctions.

The scent of richly spiced succulence rose delicately on the soft wind that blew over them, bringing the welcome rain clouds closer. Noor sighed luxuriously. She felt a sense of perfect physical well-being, bathed in a sensual glow that was the product of the heat, the sea, the food…and Bari's long muscled body, Bari's eyes.

He wanted her.

He had wanted her from the moment they met; he'd never tried to conceal that. That was why she had told him she was a virgin right at the beginning. She always told the men she dated, sooner or later, but with Bari it had to be sooner.
Only with my husband, or my future husband,
she'd said, the very first time he kissed her.

He had nodded, but she'd seen the muscle clench in his cheek, and his black eyes had burned hot enough to scorch her. And for the first time in such a situation she had felt the coil of something that might have been regret. For the first time she considered whether her friends—who talked about sex as if it were a great adventure to be undertaken with any man who looked like a promising travel companion—might be right.

Maybe he'd seen that momentary doubt. Something had flickered in his eyes then, as if he'd known he was the man who had the power to change her mind. Noor steeled herself to resist an onslaught, but in the days that followed Bari had never tried to wear her down, verbally or physically.

Other men had tried to undermine her, taking her to the brink and then insisting on her passion and their
rights, but that treatment only fuelled her determination. Bari kissed her once, the kiss that so shifted her inner certainty that it had provoked her instant declaration of her status. After that, he hadn't kissed her, hadn't caressed her, hadn't complained…only his gaze had been given the freedom of her body. His eyes, not his mouth, had tasted the curving lips that had been made for kissing; his eyes had pierced her, as intimately as any thrust of his body, leaving her melting for more. His eyes, not his voice, told her what desire was in his blood.

She couldn't argue with a smile that faded and turned to a look of almost angry possession. She couldn't argue with the tightening of the generous mouth, the clenching of his strong, dark fist as he struggled against passion. And she couldn't resist when he insisted on seeing her, day after day, though it was an unnamed torment to them both.

She told herself his self-control was a relief to her, that she was glad his powerful desire didn't lead him to try to undermine her resolve. But in the long, hot Eastern nights, when she awoke in her solitary bed remembering Bari's eyes in lamplight, or the touch of his hand as it guided her and then lifted from her skin, slowly, weighted by deep reluctance, when her body was filled with yearning and a betraying wish that he had not lifted his hand, but had tightened his hold, had insisted on possession, was here beside her in the bed, to reach for and embrace—then what she felt was something that was almost regret.

The breeze grew stronger under the shadow of the awning, and brushed her forehead with the cool promise of rain.

“Do you think the drought is really over?” she asked. It had already rained twice in two days, and the whole
country was rejoicing as if this relief, too, could be laid at the new Sultan's door.

He looked at her. “Yes,” he said, his voice creating another sensation on her skin. “The drought is over. It has been long, yes? Too long.”

There was a silence as she pretended not to understand him.

“Are you hungry, Noor?”

Noor nodded wordlessly and reached out at random to spoon something luscious onto her plate. Bari tore a piece of bread from the small, tender loaf in front of him, dipped it in spiced olive oil, lifted his chin and slipped the melting morsel between his lips.

Hunger, not for food, whipped her with a ferocity born of the long days and nights of unsatisfied desire. Days and nights when he had given her everything to build her hunger, and nothing against which to sharpen her resistance.

A smudge of oil glazed his lower lip. His upper lip pressed down to suck it off, and his eyes caught her gaze as his lips relaxed again into sensual fullness.

He lowered his lids and reached for the bread. His palm cupped and accommodated to the breastlike roundness of the loaf with deeply sensual appreciation, his long, square fingers dark against the whiteness of the loaf, sure and competent. He offered Noor a torn chunk of bread.

Her fingertips brushed his knuckles, and she winced as her wrist went weak. The little chunk of bread fell on the table between them. Noor breathed in, her eyes rising irresistibly to meet his gaze. He knew. Of course he knew. She swallowed, licked her dry lips.

“Thank you,” she murmured, reaching for the bread again.