To Tempt a Sheikh (10 page)

She could barely whisper her bliss to the apparition. “Harres…you feel so good…”

“Talia,
nadda jannati,
forgive me for leaving you.”

“S'okay…I just wish…you didn't have…to leave, too.”

His regal head, covered in a sun-reflecting white
ghotrah,
descended to protect her from the glare, his magical eyes emitting rays of pure-gold anxiety.

She sighed again. “You make…an incredible…angel, Harres. My guardian angel. Too bad you're here now…as that other angel guy…the death guy…”

“What?”

Talia winced. She'd been floating in the layers of Harres's voice, so deliciously deep and emotional. Now it boomed with sharpness and alarm.

“You're alive and you'll be well. Just drink,
ya talyeti
.” She found nectar on her lips, gulped it without will or question, felt life surging into her as she sank in the delight of his crooning praise and encouragement to her, pouring hoarse explanations. “If I'd carried you, I wouldn't have been able to reach the oasis. So I left you, ran there. It took me six more hours, and two to ride back. I died of dread each second away from you. But I'm back, and you're alive, Talia.”

“Y-you're sure?”

His face convulsed in her wavering focus. “Sure I'm sure. Now please drink, my precious dew droplet. Soon you'll be as good as ever.”

“Don't you mean a-as bad?”

She felt herself gathered into arms that trembled, pressed against a chest that heaved, her depletion probably shaking up her perceptions. “There you are. My snarky gift from
Ullah
.”

“You say…the most wonderful things. You are the most w-wonderful thing…that ever happened…to me…”

Then she surrendered to oblivion in the safety of his arms.

In the dreamscape that claimed her at once, she thought she heard him say, “It's you who are the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me,
ya habibati
.”

H
arres ignored pain, smothered exhaustion.

He had to last until he got Talia back to the oasis.

Those who'd ridden with him offered again to take care of her, of both of them.

He couldn't let them. Wouldn't. He had to be the one to carry her to safety. As he'd promised.

He asked a few of them to go back in his and Talia's tracks before they were wiped away by the incoming sandstorm, to retrieve what he'd ditched. The medical supplies most of all. He let those who stayed with him help secure Talia astride the horse, ensconced in his arms like he'd had her during their rests between the punishing hikes.

The ride back to the oasis took longer. Too long. Each moment seemed to expand, to refuse to let the next replace it, bound on prolonging his ordeal, on giving him more time to relive the hell of being forced to leave her behind.

He'd gone further out of his mind with each bounding
step away from her. He'd struggled to force himself to focus so he could see his path to the oasis, their ticket to survival. But the sight of her bundled up in blankets and ensconced in the barricade of a steep dune had been branded on his brain. He'd lost chunks of sanity with each hour, knowing the blankets' protection would turn to suffocation once the desert turned from an arctic wasteland to a blazing inferno. He'd prayed the message he'd left her in the sand wouldn't be wiped away by the ruthless winds, that she'd heard his plea before he'd left, to please, please wake up soon, read it, unwrap herself and use the blankets as shelter with the tent prop he'd kept.

But the message had been obliterated. And she'd unwrapped herself but hadn't taken refuge from the baking sun. After more than five days of ordeals almost beyond human tolerance, it had been a miracle she'd lasted that long. The only reason he had was because he was bound on saving her.

He gathered her tighter to his body, his heart draining of blood all over again as he imagined her waking up alone and finding no explanation for his disappearance.

It had been his miscalculations that had led to this situation. The terrain had changed beyond recognition from the last time he'd been there, and fearing the lethality of the quicksand areas that were the major factor behind the segregation of the oasis, he'd taken a much wider safety margin around their now obscured boundaries. He'd ditched their supplies too late, when doing so no longer meant quickening their progress, with irreversible exhaustion setting in.

He'd stumbled into the oasis's outer limits a few stages beyond depleted. He'd seen how he'd looked in the horrified expressions of those who'd run to him with water and efforts to spare him another step. Their horror had only risen when
they'd realized he was bleeding. In his mad dash, he'd torn Talia's meticulous sutures.

He'd let the oasis people bandage and clothe him in weather-appropriate clothes, gulped down reviving drinks only because he knew he'd be no good to Talia if he didn't get repaired and refueled. He'd still given it all only minutes before he'd jumped on their most powerful endurance horse and exploded out of the oasis with their best riders struggling to keep up with him.

It had been another eternity until he'd gotten back to her.

He groaned. Even in the face of death, his Talia had been the essence of composure and grace. And wit. A chuckle sliced through him as her words echoed inside him again. Until he replayed her last ones before she'd surrendered to oblivion in his arms.

You are the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me
…
.

He shuddered, pressed her closer as if to absorb her into him, where he'd always protect her with his very life.

She might have meant those words for her savior. But he'd reciprocated them, had meant them, for her.

After one more interminable hour, he brought his horse to a stumbling stop at the door of the cottage that had been prepared for them.

He only let others support Talia's weight for the moment it took him to sway off the horse. Then he reclaimed her, folded her into him as if he feared she'd evaporate if he loosened his hold.

Once inside the dwelling that he couldn't register beyond it being a roof over their head and a door cutting them off from the rest of the oasis, he coaxed the mostly unconscious Talia to drink again, glassfuls of both water and a high-
calorie, vitamin and mineral drink the locals had concocted for conditions of extreme dehydration and sunstroke.

With utmost care, crooning encouragement and praise, he undressed her down to those ridiculous men's underwear, bathed her in cool water, fanned her dry and then sponged her down again, cooling her raging heat. When he finally judged her temperature within normal, he dressed her in one of the crisply clean, vibrantly colorful nightdresses the oasis women had provided.

Throughout, though her consciousness rose and fell like waves in a tranquil sea, she surrendered to his ministrations, unquestioning, unresisting.

He finally laid her down on the soft
kettan
linen sheets freshly spread on a firm mattress on top of a wide, low platform bed. As he withdrew, a distressed sound spilled from her suddenly working lips, her brow knotting as if in pain.

She couldn't bear separation from him. As he couldn't from her.

He came down beside her, cocooned her with his body. She burrowed deeper into him with each ragged breath until he felt she'd slid between the layers of his being, making him realize again that he'd had so many vacant places inside of him, ones she'd exposed. Ones only she could fill.

He stilled, savoring the imprint of each inch of her, vibrating to her every tremor, his rumbles harmonizing with her unintelligible purrs of fatigue and pure contentment.

Then she went limp and silent, her breath steadying, indicating her descent into replenishing sleep.

But he couldn't take that for granted.

At the tattered periphery of his awareness he thought he should seek the oasis elder and ask if there was still time before the sandstorm to have envoys sent to his brothers. Maybe if they moved fast enough, they'd get ahead of it.

But he couldn't bring himself to leave Talia. His only concern was to see to her health and comfort. Until she opened her eyes and her beloved personality shone at him through her heavenly gaze, he could think of nothing but her. Even the fate of Zohayd came second.

He'd do nothing but watch over her until she woke up….

 

Talia woke up.

For long moments after her eyelids scraped back over grit, she couldn't credit the images falling on her retinas.

She was ensconced in gossamer off-whiteness, drenched nerve-tingling spiciness and sourceless light.

Her surroundings came into sharper focus. She was actually surrounded by a fine mosquito net, lying in a gigantic bed on the smoothest linens she'd ever touched. She'd smelled the scents more than once since she'd come to Zohayd, seemingly a lifetime ago, incense of musk and amber and
ood
. The light was seeping from openings below a low ceiling blocked by arabesque work so delicate it must be almost as effective as the net.

She hadn't turned her head yet. She couldn't. But she saw enough to fascinate her on the side she could see. A wall of whitewashed mud-brick, a palm-wood door and window with shutters, cobblestone floors, two reed couches spread with wool cushions handwoven in a conflagration of color and pattern, with the same distinct Bedouin design gracing a rug and wall hangings. Oil lamps and incense burners hung on the wall, made of hand-worked bronze, simple, exquisite and polished to a dazzling sheen.

Was this another world? Another era?

She should know where she was. The knowledge just evaded her. She also knew she'd woken up many times before. If she could call the hazy episodes waking up. Now
fragments of recollection clinked and bounced around like a rain of beads on the ground of her awareness.

Then as moments of wakefulness accumulated, the jittery particles settled, coalesced, stringing together to form a timeline. And she realized what had happened.

Harres had come back for her. Her desert knight had ridden back on a white horse, leading the cavalry. But not before she'd compounded dehydration and heat prostration with sunstroke.

No wonder distortions and abridgments stuffed her head. Yet one thing possessed hyperreality in the jigsaw of the haziness. Harres. Caring for and healing her. Looking so worn-out, so anxious, she would have wept had she been able to.

“Are you awake for real this time,
ya habibati?
”

His voice was as dark and haggard as she remembered from her delirium.

She twisted around, homing in on it. She found him two feet away on her other side, sitting on the floor with one knee bent, primed, slightly above her level with being so tall and her bed so low. He was wearing a white
abaya
.

So she hadn't imagined it.

She closed her eyes to savor the sight of him in his land's traditional garb. He looked regal in anything, but in this, he looked…
whoa
. Yeah.
Whoa
should become a sanctioned adjective to describe the indescribable. Him. The ultimate in mind-blowing virility. Especially adorned in what he was born to wear.

He stood in one of those fluid moves that never ceased to amaze her, considering his size and bulk. Before her eyes could travel up to his, he swept the net surrounding her away and his
abaya
fell open.

Her gaze snagged on his chest. But for his bandages it was bare, a bronzed expanse of perfection and potency.

This was where she'd sought refuge from jeopardy and exhaustion, the haven that had turned their nightmare into a dream she'd cherish for the rest of her life.

His bandages were now narrower than she'd made them, exposing more of the ebony silk that accentuated each slope and bulge of sheer maleness. If that wasn't bad enough—or good enough—the tantalizing layer arrowed down over an abdomen hewn from living granite, guiding her eyes to where it began to flare…before it disappeared beneath string-tied white pants straight out of
Arabian Nights.
Those hung low, dangerously so, on those muscled hips, their looseness doing nothing to hide the power, the shape and size of his formidable thighs and manhood.

She couldn't breathe. Her insides contracted with a blow of longing so hard, she moaned with it.

Which was good news. If she could go from zero to one thousand in seconds at the mere sight of him, all her systems were functioning at optimum. “Don't,
ya talyeti
. I beg you, don't close your eyes again.”

She hadn't realized she'd squeezed them shut. His ragged plea and the dipping of the mattress jerked them open and up to his. And she moaned again.

The urgency in his eyes, in his pose, doused the heat spiraling through her. Even though his expression made him look more imposing, intimidating even, and even more arousing….

Enough. Say something!

She tried. Her throat was sore and as dry as the desert from disuse and the aftereffects of dehydration and exhaustion.

Her voice finally worked in a thready whisper. “I'm a-awake. For r-real.”

He loomed over her, his eyes singeing her with the intensity of his examination and skepticism. “You said that before. Too many times. My sanity can't take much more false hope.” He looked heavenward, stabbed his fingers through his hair. “What am I saying? If you're still sleep-talking, this won't make you snap out of it.”

She struggled to sit up, managing only to turn fully toward him. “I a-am awake this time. I sort o-of remember the false starts. But I'm not only awake, I feel as good as new.” His eyes darkened. “No, really. I've self-diagnosed since coming around, and I'm back to normal. I'm just woozy, which is to be expected, and sore from the exercise of my life and lying in bed too long….”

Her words petered out as she tried to sit up again and took her first look down her body.

She was in a low-cut, sleeveless satin nightdress in dazzling blues and greens and oranges, echoing the exuberance of the room's furnishings.

Heat rose as she imagined him taking her out of her clothes and dressing her in it. Her imaginings scorched her as they veered into vivid, languorous enactment of him taking her out of it again….

To make it worse, he was coming nearer, his anxiousness to ascertain her claim trapping her breath into suddenly full lungs, making the nightdress feel as if it had come alive, sliding over her nipples, slithering between her legs with knowing, tormenting skims, intensifying the heavy throb within.

She wriggled, trying to relieve her stinging breasts, squeezed her legs together to contain the ache building between them. She looked up at him with eyes barely open
with the weight of desire. “Say…h-how long have I been out?”

He snapped a look at his watch, before looking back at her, his eyes losing their bleak look. “Fifty hours, forty-two minutes.”

“Whoa!” she exclaimed, her voice regaining power and clarity with each syllable. “But that's a very acceptable time frame to get over a combo of dehydration and sunstroke. Good thing I'm a tough nut, eh?”

Elation dawned in his eyes, intensifying their vividness and beauty. “That you are, along with being an in-evaporable dew droplet. And
shokrun lel'lah
—thank God into infinity for that.”

Her lips managed a tremulous smile. “So what have you been doing while I was sleep-talking?”

His lips quirked, the old devilry she knew and adored reigniting his eyes. “I took care of you, sent envoys out to my brothers, took more care of you. Then, oh, I took care of you.”

She slapped his forearm playfully in response to his teasing then patted it in thanks for his effort to paint his grim vigil in lightness. “Did you take care of
you
at all? Did you get any sleep?”