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To Touch a Sheikh
Olivia Gates


When Princess Maram destroys Prince Amjad’s plans to reclaim what was stolen from his family, he sees red and uses a sandstorm to make her his prisoner of passion. Saved by the man she loves, Maram knows she has to make Amjad see her as a woman. His woman. But when prince and princess shelter from the storm, neither is prepared for the aftermath of their desire…










“You should fear me.”

Her heart quivered to a standstill.

This was the moment she’d waited and worked for since she’d laid eyes on him. The full disclosure. The final negotiation before he surrendered. Before he let her give him herself, let her have him.

She rose to her knees, shaking. “I would fear anything and anyone but you.”

“How did you come by this certainty?”

His bass rasp shivered down each quailing nerve. She had to be very, very careful. The wild, wounded tiger was giving her one chance to reach out and pet him. If she got it right, he’d be hers for life, she knew it.

But if she didn’t get it right …

“Do you have a few years? I’ll tell you, show you.”

“What if I told you I don’t deserve your trust?”

Her lips trembled on a smile at the ferocity of his final struggle. “Don’t bother. You have it. So if you think you don’t deserve it, how about doing all you can from now on so that you do.”


Dear Reader,

As soon as Amjad Aal Shalaan made an appearance in the first book of the PRIDE OF ZOHAYD trilogy, I knew. He would be my favourite of all my heroes so far. For not only is Amjad a man who has barely survived treachery and sworn to never think the best of anyone ever again, he’s a man who’s hidden for so long behind an impenetrable barrier of cynicism, he now believes he’s indifferent as well as invulnerable.

So it was easily the most fun I’ve ever had writing, penning his every wickedly irreverent word and thought. The fun escalated when I gave him the only heroine who could … undo him, in every way, and sat back and watched them spar and parry and fall irrevocably, absolutely in love.

With this book, the PRIDE OF ZOHAYD trilogy comes to an end. For me, it has been an exhilarating journey that concluded on a high note. I hope you enjoy this book, and the other two in the trilogy, as much as I delighted in writing them.

I love to hear from readers, so please contact me at oliviagates@gmail.com. Also please visit my website www.oliviagates.com for my latest news and contests. I would also love it if you like me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading!

Olivia




About the Author


OLIVIA GATES has always pursued creative passions like singing and handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career—writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.


To Touch

a Sheikh





Olivia Gates
























www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To Marialina Tota, the first one who loved Amjad. For

all your support. Wish I could have ‘dedicated’ him

to you for real! ;-)




Prologue


“Will you forgive, Amjad?”

Amjad Aal Shalaan could barely raise his gaze to the man whose voice boomed out the question.

His father and king loomed over him in full regalia, his responsibility-carved face frozen in a mask of control. His eyes blazed with an amalgam of regret and wrath, agony and outrage.

Amjad’s unfocused gaze panned to his brothers, who flanked his father, then to the sea of tribal representatives who crowded the expansive glory of Dar Al Adl—Zohayd’s Hall of Justice. Their faces blurred into a homogenous mass of anticipation as his father’s question reverberated off the arches and domes of the venerable place in a taunting echo.

Will you forgive?

But he’d already forgiven what no other man would have.

He’d forgiven his bride for not coming to their marriage bed a virgin. He’d soothed her fear, assured her he wouldn’t hold against her what he couldn’t provide himself. What mattered were her life choices after she became his wife.

Then he’d forgiven her when he’d discovered that she carried a baby. From her previous lover.

People made mistakes. No sense in destroying a life, or even a relationship, over one.

He couldn’t feel betrayed. She’d been a stranger he’d picked—or rather had had pointed out to him with a … strong recommendation—from a list of convenient brides a week before the wedding. As crown prince of a kingdom ruled by tribal pacts, his own considerations hadn’t come into play.

But she’d become his wife, was going to be his one woman. And because he couldn’t live the rest of his life for the cold convenience of everyone else, he’d determined to see only the best in her, to give her the best of himself. He’d focused on what he appreciated in her, dismissed what he didn’t.

And she’d repaid his clemency and compassion with deceit and destruction.

“Amjad?” His father’s gruff whisper prodded him to answer.

He’d had many answers. To his worries when loss of appetite had been followed by pins and needles in his palms and cramps in his calves. Overwork, stress, exhaustion.

When the burning in his gut, the gnawing in his throat and that terrible taste in his mouth joined in, he’d suspected another cause. Soul sickness.

His mind might have accepted his situation, but his spirit was seared that they were starting the marriage with a lie to protect his wife’s and her family’s honor, to maintain the peace their marriage had sealed. That he might not love her baby as every innocent child deserved to be loved.

It was only when the real sickness began, purging every bite of food and drop of water from his body, when restlessness started dismantling his psyche and crippling headaches his sanity, that he’d sought out the royal physicians in secret.

They’d been baffled. His symptoms defied their tests, their prescriptions did nothing to mitigate them. He’d felt relieved when apathy descended on him, sparing him the constant torment.

But when delirium followed dizziness and drowsiness, doubts became certainty.

Something malignant was eating through his body. Because tests could find nothing within, it had to be something from without.

He’d doubted everything, and almost everyone. But not her.

How could he doubt the wife who showered him with tokens of her gratitude and blossoming love?

His focus wavered on the hands lying limply on his knees. They bore the marks of her treachery. White crescent markings on the fingernails, dark mottling of the skin.

He shuddered with the blow of recollection. When realization had crushed him. Of how he’d been poisoned.

The poison had been slipped into the most solicitous of gestures and sweetest of gifts. Clothes, towels, delicacies, bath salts, scented oils and far more. All emerald green, the color she’d said she adored for being that of his eyes.

All laced with arsenic.

His wife had been killing him. Slowly. Almost untraceably.

She almost had. He’d barely gasped his conviction to his brothers before he’d descended into a coma. Finally knowing what to treat him for, the doctors had been able to drag him out of it. Their treatments had made him wish they hadn’t.

Now there stood his father, asking for what his attempted murderess’s family couldn’t ask themselves. His forgiveness.

His gaze blurred back to the crowd.

To one side, segregated, supplicant, stood Salmah. Beside her was her lover. Her accomplice.

Their eyes, beneath the dread and shame, were eloquent. With hope. No. More. With certainty. That he’d forgive. As he’d forgiven so many unforgivable things before.

If he forgave, rescinded his right to mete out punishment, the law would decide it, mitigating it. Enforcing his right meant he could demand satisfaction in any way he deemed sufficient, from not only those who’d perpetrated the crime, but also anyone who had the misfortune to be of their blood.

His gaze steadied on Salmah. Now that he wasn’t blinding himself to what disturbed him, her act of trembling repentance was as superficial as that of her budding love had been. She considered him a weak fool to be manipulated, then dispatched. She was sorry only that she hadn’t succeeded.

A shard of clarity traversed his being. She had.

He was dead, inside.

He closed his eyes, accepting the feeling, welcoming it.

“Amjad?”

The anxiety in his father’s voice made him open them.

Amjad imagined what raged inside his father at the sight of him. His brothers had had to help him into his clothes, had wheeled him in here. He’d seen the horror of his condition twisting every face in his path. The emaciated remains of the man he’d been before six months of accumulated poison had ravaged him in flesh and spirit.

But his father had to advocate peace even when he writhed for vengeance for his firstborn. His brothers seethed to avenge him, too, but had to abide by his verdict.

He pushed the deadweight of his body up on shaking arms, fought the weakness pulling at him, demanding his defeat. He gestured feebly, aborting his family’s dash to help him. They stood back, his father looking as if he’d already lost a son; Harres, Shaheen, Haidar and Jalal, a brother.

They still might.

But if he survived, he’d never again give compassion dominion over his decisions, never blind himself to disturbing truths.

He’d never think the best again.

He dredged reserves of power into his poisoned nerves, straightened on wasting legs, faced the crowd.

“I will not forgive.”

His gravelly whisper was met with stunned silence.

Everyone had expected him to play the chivalrous prince who’d waive his rights for everyone’s benefit.

Salmah burst into tears. Her mother swooned. Her father begged his mercy in his righteousness.

Irony trembled on Amjad’s lips as he ignored their theatrics, turned his gaze to those whose power plays he’d almost died for. They weren’t here to show him support and regret, but to make sure their interests would be served, their convenience undisturbed.

He swept his hand in a wide arc, his forefinger pointing at all of them. “I will never forgive any of you. I will never forget. What you all did, what you all are. You’d better pray I don’t survive this. If I do, I’ll live to make you pay. And don’t bother trying to get rid of me. You had your chance and you blew it. No one’s ever getting another one.”




One


Eight years later

Maram Aal Waaked was finally getting her chance at the Mad Prince.

At least, Amjad Aal Shalaan was known that way to the world.

To her, he was the best thing since chocolate fudge.

He’d been tantalizing her with his dark, rich lusciousness for four years now and leaving her starving for more. But this time she had him cornered.

Yeah, right. Cornered among dozens of nosy male royals in the open desert. The man who was so slippery, he could pull a Houdini in a heavily guarded one-exit room.

He had once, during closed negotiations she’d attended representing her emirate. When others had begun to rant, he’d given that worthy-of-sonnets smirk of his, said, “Bored now.” Then he’d disappeared. Poof.

Her friends called her crazy for even thinking about him.

Sure, they said, he was a phenomenal male who made women within a one-mile radius swoon. But he also made them cringe, because he was a madman who would pulverize any woman in his power.

She said if he were, he would have collected women to abuse. Not letting anyone get close to him proved that he was actually merciful and sane.

They dismissed the reasons for his paranoia, said he should have gotten over his past already. She thought that no one could come back from something so terrible except through something equally wonderful. Or at least through someone who appreciated his ruthlessness, cared nothing for his wealth and power and saw the wounded soul, the noble, heroic man underneath.

She lived for the chance to prove she was that someone.

But before she could achieve such ambitious aspirations, she had to make him stay put long enough to have a real conversation.

Apart from one epic incident, he’d spared her nothing but a few acerbic-wit-filled moments before leaving her to deliver her volleys to his departing back.

But she was going to soothe that magnificent beast if it was the last thing she did. All the pleasures she’d experience when she could finally … pet him were worth any battle scars.

The first skirmish was about to begin.

Her GPS said she was minutes from the battleground, a five-mile solid-earth flat track among the dunes. Amjad’s location of choice for the region’s royal horse race. Zohayd hosted the race annually on the last day of fall. This year, due to unchangeable commitments, Amjad had brought the date forward.

Everyone had been horrified at his proposal to hold the race midsummer. In response, Amjad had sent taunting letters, something only he could get away with, considering the recipients were hard-hitting royals with egos to complement their lofty status.

She’d seen his letter to her father, could hear his lazy, lethal voice in her head as she’d read his elegant, forceful handwriting.

Was her father afraid of roughing it in the sun, outside his rarefied cocoon of luxury? Was the big, tough man afraid of some sweat, when he wasn’t even racing?

He must have tailored his missives to each recipient’s idiosyncrasies. Her father was too wary physically, too fastidious about his neatness. Not that anyone knew this. Her father recognized these characteristics as a potential source of ridicule, projected the opposite. But Amjad Aal Shalaan was infallible in deciphering people. That was just one among the endless weapons that made him unstoppable in the worlds of highest-level finance and politics.

Needless to say, everyone had succumbed to his wishes. He’d specified three o’clock for arrival.

It was noon. She’d just called her father to tell him she’d arrived. He’d exclaimed his anxiety that she’d gone alone, had left behind the entourage he’d tried to saddle her with. She’d told him they could catch up, that she had no problem going back with them. But she was getting some one-on-one time with Amjad first, before the desert became a forest of people for him to fade among.

She eased her foot off the accelerator to savor the last moments of approach. The sight warranted the most leisurely of zooms, to savor its every smidge of magnificence.

And no, she didn’t mean the majestic desert with its undulating dunes surrounding the naturally flat land. That and the canopy of bleached-blue sky, painted in wisps of incandescent white, were indeed glorious. But it was the sight of him that spread firecrackers of pleasure through her system, had flutters of anticipation accumulating in her rib cage.

He stood in front of one of the huge tents. Dozens of his men flitted around him. She saw only him. Standing half a foot taller than anyone else, broad, lean and loaded with inborn grace and inimitable power, uncaring of the mercilessness of the sun beating down on his raven head, indifferent to existence in its whole.

The man was so aptly named “most glorious.”

And that was before you took into account the difference in him today. She’d only ever seen him in hand-sculpted suits that looked to be made of living silk, designed and delighted to worship his body. She’d thought that nothing could look better than that.

He did now. All in white, his billowy shirt tucked into skintight pants and those into tan boots, he was … description-defying.

She parked beside the other cars, grabbed her bag and hat and hopped down from the steel behemoth her father had bequeathed her for the trip. She slung her bag across her torso and hid from the sun’s pummeling rays beneath the hat, willing the necessities to cool down her urge to run to him.

Not that Amjad was in any rush to acknowledge her. It was only when she slammed the door that he glanced sideways at her in that maddeningly delicious, delightfully nonchalant way of his.

From beneath the arch of world-famous eyebrows, legendary emerald eyes documented her approach with ponderous detachment. She felt them drilling into her recesses, taking her apart one cell at a time. His ruthlessly sensuous mouth was set, every hollow and slash of his masterpiece bone structure showcased by the almost-perpendicular sunrays. While the harsh shadows they cast turned others into grotesque caricatures of themselves, they made him into the god of vengeance that he was. The ultimate yum that he was.

As she closed the last feet between them, he sort of faced her, looked at her in his patented insignificance-inducing way.

Undeterred as usual, she waved a salute to all present, then focused on him, gave him her brightest smile and said, “I’m here!”

She is here.

The words reverberated inside Amjad’s mind.

B’haggej’ jaheem! What, in hell’s name, was Princess Aal Waaked doing here? He’d invited Prince Aal Waaked.

Yet Maram Aal Waaked was here. As she’d so triumphantly announced after walking up to him with all the mesmerizing intent of a stalking, starving tigress.

Amjad forced every muscle in his body into neutral as Maram’s every detail surged through his awareness.

Lushness encased in a loose beige pantsuit that still did nothing to obscure each long limb and ripe curve, each undulation of feminine assurance and fluid grace. A ponytail that would cascade into a waterfall of gold-shot butterscotch when released. Eyes as hot as the sun, as fathomless as the desert, deep-set in mystery and self-possession. Features sculpted from cream flawlessness by a higher god of beauty. A bearing of one who knew her worth, wielded it like a weapon, cast it like a spell.

His lungs burned.

It was seconds before he realized why and breathed again.

Seemed being male was incurable.

Problem was, his maleness only manifested around this manifestation of brazen womanliness.

There was no mistaking it. Maram Aal Waaked was a hazard wherever creatures of the XY persuasion trod.

And that wasn’t his “paranoia” talking.

At thirty, Maram had already gone through two men. Officially. A prince and a business-empire heir. One older than her father, the other young enough to be her kid brother. Off the record, dozens were no doubt scattered on either side of the swath she’d cut through the male population.

She now had her eye on him. Both of her dipped-in-molten-gold-and-captured-sunshine eyes.

Before that implied he was anything special, he had to amend the statement. She had her eye on him and his brother.

Whichever fell into her honey trap would do. She probably wouldn’t mind and could handle it just fine if they both did.

She’d sooner entrap the devil than him. But his half brother, Haidar, while a wily, temperamental fiend in his own right, wasn’t as impervious. He’d shared some syrupy friendship with her since they’d been young, and she might penetrate his defenses through nostalgia. Not that he could see any man other than himself even considering resisting her if she made her desire evident.

She was her name, after all. The aspired to. The coveted.

But never by him. And she was now more off-limits than ever before.

If he’d once put her on his most-abhorred list due to her own actions, he now put her on the list of his most-bitter enemies due to her father.

Yusuf Aal Waaked, ruling prince of the neighboring emirate of Ossaylan, was behind the theft of the Pride of Zohayd jewels, the master conspirator behind the plot to dethrone the Aal Shalaans.

Now, the serpent’s daughter—a boa constrictor herself who’d squeezed the reason and life out of many a man—was looking up at him with that excitement that always threatened to devour him.

He inclined his head at her, injected his voice with its maximum level of scorn. “Princess Haram.”

Maram blinked. Had he just called her Haram?

The glint in those unique eyes said he had!

Sinful. Wicked. Evil. Taboo.

The word encompassed all that. And more.

And he’d made sure everyone had heard it.

So. How did he expect her to react? Get flustered? Defensive? Outraged?

No. The Amjad she knew would expect her to engage him. And boy, would she.

She gave him a curtsy, fluttered her lashes. “Prince Abghad!”

Amjad’s eyes snapped a fraction wider before danger slithered across his heart-stoppingly gorgeous face, his hand flattening over his heart in mock hurt. “And here I thought you … liked me.”

“I far more than … like you. And you know it.” She grinned up at him. “But a Haram deserves at least an Abghad.”

“Princess Sinful and Prince Hateful,” Amjad said slowly, as if tasting the slurs, his darkest-chocolate voice making them as delicious as the sweetest compliments. “Those do have a far better ring to them than the trite names our pompous parents saddled us with.”

She nodded, enjoyment rising. “They’d sure make for better protagonists in a fantasy novel or D&D video game.”

“They’d also spawn far better descriptions than the ones we’ve earned so far. Instead of the Half-Blood Princess you’d be the Blonde Taboo and instead of the Mad Prince I’d be Bad, Mad and Loathsome. We’d sell millions.”

She grabbed her ponytail, wagged it at him. “I’m not blonde, Your Horrid Highness.”

“Technicalities, Your Venerable Vileness.”

Her grin widened as she noticed that everyone had left their prince to his sparring match.

“Where’s Prince Ass-ef?” he said offhandedly. “Couldn’t wake up early after a nightlong taxing game of solitaire?”

A chuckle burst out of her at his double pun. In Arabic Prince Ass-ef meant the Sorry Prince. In English …

She giggled again. “He is Ass-ef, that he can’t come.”

Everything about him seemed to hit pause. She felt as if the whole desert froze, bating its breath for his reaction.

When it came, it sent a frisson sliding through her spine. His narrowed eyes became laserlike slits. “He isn’t coming at all?”

Weird. That his annoyance would be so great that it would show.

“He recently had pneumonia and his doctors feared a relapse with exposure to unfavorable weather conditions.” She smiled coaxingly. “But isn’t it your lucky day he sent me in his place?”

His spectacularly sculpted lips twisted with disdain. “It feels like every unwanted present I’ve been cursed to receive has burst open in my face at once.”

Relieved that he’d gotten back to searing sarcasm, she chuckled. “Oh, I love it when you try to be mean.”

“I assure you, when I do try, you won’t love it that much.”

“Take your best shot, Prince Abrad.”

At her taunt, another pun meaning meanest or coldest, those obsidian pupils that seemed to respond to his whims overpowered the sun’s constriction, almost obliterating his irises. “You wouldn’t survive it … Princess Kalam.”

She hooted. “I’d thrive on it. Go ahead, see if I’m ‘All Talk.’”

“Where’s the fun if you’re impervious, Princess Rokham?”

She struggled with the urge to reach up to grab his raven mane, drag his witty venom-dripping lips down to hers.

She sighed her frustration. “It won’t be because I’m made of marble that your barbs won’t penetrate me.”

At her last two words, his pupils almost vanished, leaving his eyes blazing emerald.

She hadn’t meant it that way! But she wasn’t babbling a qualification.

“And the pathetic thing is, your tactics work spectacularly with men.” He shook his head. “I’m deeply ashamed of my gender.”

“Don’t be a boor, Amjad,” she chided, fighting another urge to pinch his chiseled cheeks.

“But Mo-om! I am a boor.” His whiney-boy impersonation tickled her. “But chin up, no one has died of my boor-dom. Yet.”

She couldn’t help it. She stuck her tongue out at him.

That stopped him in his tracks.

She pressed her advantage. “You’re delightful when you’re boor-ing, but I’m not as genetically equipped as you are to handle the desert.”

He jerked one formidable shoulder. “You’re standing four paces away from a climate-controlled cocoon. Put one foot in front of the other and take your genetically deficient self into its protection.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Okay, let’s try this again. Do pretend host-dom this time.”

He tsked. “What? You expect me to carry you across the threshold?”

“I drove two hundred miles to come here, after an hour’s flight. It would be the least you could do.”

“First, I’m not this little do’s host, I’m its warden. Second, I don’t lug gate-crashers around.”

“God forbid your reputation be tarnished by an act of chivalry, eh?”

“You got it.”

She grinned. “Oh, well, I guess I can take four more steps under my own power.”

With that she brushed past him, opened the tent’s door and stepped into a shock of blessed dimness and fragrant coolness.

She took in the twenty-foot-high interior with its sumptuous, bedouin-inspired decor and furnishings, heard the almost-inaudible burr of the AC and electricity generators. She swung around, afraid Amjad had let her enter alone. She breathed in relief to find him standing at the tent’s now-closed entrance, thumbs hooked at his waistband, eyes crackling a more intense emerald in the dimness.

Her shiver had nothing to do with the drop in temperature.

She couldn’t fight the urge to counter one of his previous statements/accusations. “By the way, I don’t have tactics.”

His gaze didn’t waver on a change of expression. “You do. They are unique to you, making them even more dangerous—and devious.”

“I’m the farthest thing from either,” she said patiently. “And what would I need tactics for? They don’t work on the only one of your ‘gender’ I’m interested in. You.”

Her straightforwardness gained her a grimace. “And the only one of your gender I’m interested in is—wait! I’m not interested in any of you.”

She nodded vigorously. “With good reason.”

One eyebrow rose in mockery. “Ah, so kind of you to sanction it. It is the best, isn’t it?”

“Ingeniously evil, yes.”

“Indeed. But you don’t think I’m so pathetic that I’d hang on to my ‘complex’ for this long, hold one woman’s crimes against the whole sex, do you?”

She advanced on him, secure that he wouldn’t step back to keep his distance. “No. You’re too penetr … uh … discerning, too cerebral to turn your deservedly atrocious opinion of one into a generalization you know is bound to be faulty.”

He didn’t need to back off. The look in his eyes was enough to keep her paces away. “Problem is, I only stumble across women who reinforce my ‘deservedly atrocious opinion.’ Not that they’re cold-blooded criminals. Seems I’m not about to get that lucky twice in one nearly aborted lifetime. But I draw only those with a toxic level of self-serving cunning and hunger for power. So my generalization has yet to be proven faulty.”

“You mean women—other than me—were brave enough to come near you?”

“Some, under the compulsion of my status and holdings, were as foolhardy. Very briefly, though. Their survival instinct kicked in, overwhelming even their avarice.”

“Doesn’t one exception prove the generalization wrong?”

He barked a denigrating laugh. “You being said exception?”

She smiled into his eyes, unfazed by the expected ridicule. “I certainly don’t have a toxic level of anything, and I have levels in the negative when it comes to avarice and power hunger.”

“Says the woman who married a ruling prince and then an heir to a shipping empire. Killed one off and divorced the other after getting him disinherited.”

That made her smile falter. “Uh … we’re still in the zone of obnoxious one-upmanship, right?”

“We’re in the zone of stating facts.”

She raised both eyebrows in answering challenge. “My killing off Uncle Ziad and getting Brad disinherited are ‘facts’? On the M-class Planet Paranoia, where you make up a population of one?”

He put a hand to his left shoulder, gave a bow of mock contrition. “My apologies. You had nothing to do with either’s literal or financial demise. Both were stupid enough to marry you and cause their own destruction. An ill man older than your father, trying to keep up with a sexual ego-crushing bride, and a barely out-of-diapers babe who destroyed his future to impress a seductress a hundred years his senior in maturity.”

Her mouth dropped open. She closed it. It dropped open again.

Then she burst out laughing. “Oh, boy, you’re good. Do you even think of the things that stampede out of your lips, or do you just open your mouth and they lash out into existence?”

He inclined his head. “Thanks for sparing me the hackneyed act of indignation and sanctioning the truth.”

“You’re so far from the truth you could be in another nebula. But you’re still so good, you’d be a global success in scripting satires, too. You entertain me to no end even while you try to insult me.”

“Meaning I’m failing to? I must be losing my powers. Do you have arsenic on you?”

Another chuckle burst out of her, even as the reminder of his ordeal sent empathy shearing through her. “Your kryptonite, eh? Nah. I’m as nontoxic as it gets. But insults are insulting only when they contain painful truth. Yours don’t have even a trace of it, are so far-fetched, they’re purely hilarious.”

He suddenly took a step forward. She almost fell flat on her back in surprise.

“You know what’s hilarious?” His drawl was laced with danger. “Your calling your deceased husband ‘uncle.’ Was that his fetish?”

She waited, not breathing, to see if he’d close the remaining gap between them. He didn’t.

She let out a shaky exhalation. “He was my uncle, although not by blood, as you know. You of all people should know that political marriages are not what they seem.”

The cruelty and calculation in his eyes spiked, and with them her temperature. “I wasn’t my political wife’s uncle, so I wouldn’t know. But then it seems you succeeded where she failed. You offed your hapless spouse without a hitch.”

She pulled herself up to her full five-foot-eight height. “If you call him dying six years after the wedding ‘without a hitch,’ I’d like to look through that warped lens you hold up to the world.”

He shrugged. “Aih, that wasn’t an efficient rate. I started my marriage as healthy as an ox and was almost dead in six months. But in your defense, you started yours too young, were still learning the ropes of femme fatalism. But you’ve made up for lost time and then some.”

The man was unmovable. Or so he thought. She had two full days to launch on her campaign of getting him to budge.

The intention spread across her lips. “And you might have started your marriage a trusting pushover, but you’ve mastered the tropes of male chauvinism since. But don’t despair. Your condition, according to the best of authorities, isn’t incurable.”

He answered her smile with one that could eat through metal. “Aih, so I’ve heard. All a man needs to revert to being a gullible mark is a woman who’ll imprison him in her loving servitude for life.”

She guffawed. “You’re just too delicious. So delicious you make me hungry.” She waited until a scowl started to dawn across his face, chalked a point up for herself and swung around. “You have anything to eat around here?”

Amjad stared after the chuckling Maram, trying to figure out what had just happened here.

She’d had the last, and totally unexpected, word?

Worse, she’d dragged him through this compulsive confrontation, volleyed his salvos—which seemed only to whet her … appetite for him even more—with a huge grin …

What was he thinking?

None of that mattered. Only one thing did. That she was here in her father’s stead. That messed up all his plans.

No. This was his only opportunity to see them through.

But his plans had hinged on her father’s presence.

He had to improvise.

His gut tightened. He never took a step without calculating the minutest consequence. The only time he had, it had almost cost him his life. Now the fate of Zohayd itself hung in the balance.

But he had no choice.

If he couldn’t have her father, he’d kidnap Maram instead.




Two


How do you kidnap the willing?

The answer: Easily.

Or that should be the answer.

It remained to be seen how this kidnapping would turn out.

Amjad brooded after Maram’s lithe figure, his mind racing to adjust his original plan.

Her father had said he’d come early, after Amjad had hinted he was willing to negotiate the terms for the dealership he’d been coveting. That Yusuf had agreed to come at all had made Amjad certain he had no idea the Aal Shalaan brothers had discovered his leading role in stealing and counterfeiting the Pride of Zohayd jewels.

Due to an inane tribal law, the jewels were necessary for the Aal Shalaans to remain rulers of Zohayd. The law sprouted from equally lame legends that said that King Ezzat—Amjad’s ancestor and supposed doppelganger, or as the harebrained public liked to tell it, Amjad was Ezzat reincarnated—had united the tribes under his rule and founded Zohayd through their power.

The dimwitted story became more established the more the world around them advanced. It didn’t matter to Zohaydans that the Aal Shalaans had made their country one of the most prosperous nations in the world. All they cared about was that the royal family make good treasure keepers. The kingdom’s most important event was Exhibition Day, when imbecile representatives of the moronic public came to ascertain the jewels’ safety. The legends claimed the demon-spawn jewelry wouldn’t remain in the hands of anyone who no longer deserved the throne.

Yusuf Aal Waaked and his cohorts were using that entrenched superstition, biding their time until Exhibition Day to expose the jewels currently in the Aal Shalaans’ possession as fakes. When Yusuf produced the real ones, no one in the brainless herd would accuse him of theft but would hail him as the new ruler the jewels had “chosen.”

Idiots. All of them. Including his own family.

He was tempted to leave the whole region to muck around in its Dark Ages rot. His father could be better off retiring, and he would prefer to never again have to endure being around some of the world’s sleaziest creatures—without ripping them apart—to serve trivial things like world peace.

He’d always found this royalty gig a pain anyway. Sure, he did his job because he did nothing if not to the best of his abilities, and his father needed him more since his heart attack. But being first in line to the throne was synonymous with being the same in front of a stampeding herd or a firing squad. He’d gotten nothing for it but slaughter attempts in the boardroom and murder schemes in the bedroom, interspersed with persistent conspiracies to trap, bankrupt or implicate him in crimes he’d never be stupid enough to contemplate. Not to mention the infringing fascination of the public.

But he and his brothers had made their fortunes unaided by their status. None of them would lose anything but boatloads of burdens if they woke up tomorrow a royal family no more. And it would serve the ingrate nation right if, after all the royal family had done for the kingdom, they chose criminals over the Aal Shalaans because of some trinkets.

But—and it was a gigantic but—it wasn’t as simple as that.

Even if the people were stupid enough to bow to the rule of legend, they wouldn’t find an outside force easy to accept. Yusuf, a man who ruled only a tiny emirate, couldn’t hope to control a kingdom of Zohayd’s size and complexity. He’d be overthrown, and the true catastrophe would begin.

None of the tribes had enough clout to claim the throne alone. They could all get a piece of the action only through a democracy. He needed no foresight to know how that would turn out. A look at the so-called democracies in the region said it all.

So, like it or not, the Pride of Zohayd jewels were vital, making his mission unavoidable. He had to get them back.

He’d intended to make Yusuf ransom himself with them.

But the weasel had sent his daughter in his stead.

Yusuf didn’t suspect exposure, or he wouldn’t have sent his only offspring, the daughter he called “the heart outside my body.” But Amjad knew why he had.

Yusuf knew Amjad opposed a union between Maram and Haidar. Yusuf must think Maram could sway Amjad if she got him alone, facilitating her acquisition of Haidar while having him eating out of her hand, too, hitting two princes with one seduction spell.

She was no innocent. Even had she been, children often paid for their parents’ sins. It was her father who’d conspired against his family, then dared to stay home sick.

Yusuf had better not surprise him again. He wouldn’t appreciate finding out that Yusuf didn’t value his daughter enough to ransom her with the jewels that could secure him a throne ten times the size of his current one.

“So where are you keeping the food?”

Maram swirled back to him, her ponytail swishing like that of a spirited mare.

Amjad gritted his teeth at the jolt of hated response that lashed through him, spread his lips in a smile he knew mirrored his vicious thoughts. “Something finally defeated Your Nosiness?”

Her smile was one of elation. She was invulnerable to his put-downs, wasn’t she? She truly did thrive on them. If he wanted to thwart her, he should deprive her of them.

“Since you must be keeping it in airtight containers, I doubt a hound dog could smell it out.” She stopped before him again, deluging his lungs with the uniqueness of her scent, a distillation of desire and delicacy, of freshness, femininity and fragrant flesh. Her. Her eyes gleamed up at him. “I’ll settle for coffee. Just set me on the trail and I’ll fix myself a cup. I’ll fix you one, too, if you’re … not too nasty.”

It was no use. He was incapable of thwarting her. “Guess you’ll never fix me one, then.”

She let out one of those laughs that tinkled through his nerves with harmonies of sensation and vitality. He had to exert extra effort not to groan, not to crowd her and hiss for her to stop trying to ensnare him.

“Nah, I’ll fix you one. Bad boys are just misunderstood and shouldn’t be left out.”

Merriment radiated from her, tugged on his own humor.

This Maram was dangerous in ways no one had ever been.

She evidently thought his considering look meant that he was trying to make up his mind whether to let her drag him through the camaraderie of coffee making. He was actually thinking he should get her something to eat and drink. Before the ordeal.

He took out his phone, called Ameen, murmured for him to bring in refreshments.

He paused mid-order, looked at Maram. “Which side of your heritage do you drink? Arabian or American?”

She twinkled up at him. “Both, of course.”

Aih. That was her M.O.

“Why choose when you can have it all, eh?” He completed his instructions, almost drove his finger through the screen turning off the phone.

In minutes, his men had spread a table with cheeses, breads, chilled fruits and cold and hot drinks. He’d planned for this gathering to look on the up and up so that Yusuf and his men would relax, giving Amjad a chance to kidnap him without any trouble for either side.

Maram rushed to the table and turned to him, pointing to the coffeemaker and then the carafe filled with Arabian cardamom coffee. He flicked a finger at the first.

She busied herself brewing. In minutes, she brought back a mug. She licked her lips as she handed it to him, the look in her eyes saying it was his own lips she was imagining under her glistening tongue. He congratulated himself on his choice of pants today. No space in them to betray any hormone-driven stupidity.

“Black and bitter.” Her voice was velvet fire along each nerve she managed to expose just standing near. “Just like you … like it.”

“You remembered.” He gave her a mock touched look, even as he wondered how she knew. He never accepted food or drink anywhere where his trusted people weren’t in charge. Aih, he was paranoid that way. He had eaten in her presence, but she couldn’t have observed this particular preference.

She answered his unspoken curiosity. “I asked Aliyah. In fact, I gave her an extensive questionnaire about you.”

“And she filled it in.” He shook his head. “I always said having a family is like living your life surrounded by a bunch of busybodies and blabbermouths. I wouldn’t be surprised if she and Laylah are tweeting and updating their Facebook statuses with anecdotes about my paranoid preferences.”

Her eyes told him his every word tickled her that mouthwatering peach color. “I assure you, they aren’t spreading your specs to the world. Aliyah was just delighted with my interest because she despaired of any female being ‘foolhardy’ enough to even admit being curious about you. She also thought if her Kamal could be approached, then approaching you—whom she admits are an even more … advanced case—might not be in the realm of the impossible.”

“Kamal hasn’t been ‘approached,’ he’s been breached, poor sap. I almost feel sorry for him. But he certainly deserves what he got—Aliyah, my questionnaire-completing half sister. But how fanciful of you both to lump me in the same species as him. Even if you placed me far higher on its evolutionary scale.”

She made a cartoonish expression of soothing seriousness. “Don’t worry. To me, you’re a species of one.”

The contrast between her overpowering beauty and that ridiculous look was so funny that he almost laughed.

He pressed down hard on the urge, smirked. “How reassuring. Here’s hoping Aliyah isn’t dispensing more completed forms to ‘interested’ females. I already had one use knowledge of my specs to systematically eliminate me.”

“Yeah, Aliyah told me you came to hate the color green after … after …”

He huffed his disbelief that she seemed so moved, recalling what had been done to him. “After it became associated with arsenic and an excruciating near-death in my mind? Nah, I always did. My mother dressed me in nothing but green till I was six, to go with my damn eyes. The moment she died I swore to never let that hue near me again. Then my loving ex-wannabe murderess started showering me with items in shades of it, looking as if she’d die if I didn’t accept them. Little knowing that my life was the one in danger, I swallowed my aversion, along with the poison.”

Seemingly over her poignancy, she was back in teasing mode. “Great to know aversion is no longer a thing you swallow.”

He gave her a scathing look, what she’d seen freezing heads of state. “Aih, I prefer to swallow my opposition and chew out anyone foolhardy enough to approach me.”

“Oh, chew away.” She sighed as if he’d whispered some over-the-top endearment. “And speaking of chewing …” She twirled around, filled herself a plate of sliced fruits. “In case you’re wondering how I got Aliyah to disclose your classified info, we go way back, from the time when we both lived in the States. It was inevitable that we became best buddies, with both of us being half-Arabian, half-American and belonging to royal families in neighboring kingdoms.”

“Your country isn’t a kingdom. It’s a speck of an emirate with delusions of grandeur.”

She hooted. “My father would have a fit if he heard his beloved Ossaylan described like that. But compared to the kingdoms surrounding it, that is what it is.” She bit into a plum slice, transmitting the mental image into his brain. Of her biting into his lips. Of his teeth sinking into her ripe ones. “I love how you smack out painful truths. So refreshing after the stifling decorum and protocol I have to bate my breath through.”

“So glad I’m acting as your social inhaler and royal oxygen mask.” He was rewarded—or rather, from the twisting ache in his gut, punished—by that melodic laugh of hers. “You don’t consider it your ‘beloved Ossaylan’?”

“With myself and my life divided between the U.S. and Ossaylan, I never attained the unbridled allegiance of a pure native of either. I do love a lot about Ossaylan, but I dislike a lot, too. It’s hard to know what to feel about the place that has seen your best and worst days.”

“The latter being your married days, of course.”

She sighed, still smiling, but as if through—if it could be believed, and it sure couldn’t be—a mist of melancholy. “If you promise not to interrupt with alternate versions in which I’m a succubus, I’ll tell you the whole story.”

“I’ll pass. I’m not into reruns. I know the whole story.”

“Trust me, about this particular story, you know zip.”

“Trust you? Farther than I can throw you, you mean?”

“That would be farther than I hoped because with muscles like those—” her gaze melted gold-hot appreciation down his arms and chest, stopping short of where he was resigned he’d be perpetually distorted in her presence, traveled lazily back up to his eyes “—I bet you could throw me quite far.”

He drank a mouthful of coffee, hoping to scald himself out of his idiocy. His eyebrows rose as the taste hit his tongue. The exact strength he preferred. Which he got only when he brewed his own.

“You like?”

The hesitancy in her soft question baffled him more.

Since he’d stopped being a bleeding heart, no one had come close to fooling him. But even knowing all about her, and setting his renowned duplicity-detection powers to maximum, he couldn’t detect any falseness. How was she doing it?

Not that it mattered. He had to get his plan under way. If he was going to go ahead with it.

Which he had to.

He raised his mug to her. While he hated with a passion having no choice but to proceed with his plan, he did like her offering. “Don’t tell me Aliyah gave you the exact titration of what constitutes perfect coffee for me.”

A flush spread across her sculpted cheekbones. Of pleasure over doing something that had pleased him?

No way. That woman must have the ability to blush on command among her arsenal of seduction weapons.

For good measure, breathlessness entered her voice. “It’s how I like it. I hoped we’d have this in common, too.”

And she’d said he was good? She was superlative. “You mean, before this momentous discovery of our identical taste in coffee strength, we had something else in common? Beside being bipeds?”

She spluttered in laughter. “Ah, I knew it!”

He cocked his head at her. “It’s comforting to know you agree on the bipedal commonality. The world insists I’m octopoid.”

“Would that be four more legs, or two more of each set of limbs?” She started to choke, put her plate down, turned back with mischievousness lighting up her beauty. “I knew if I could just get you talking, you’d be a delight to spar with.”

“Aih, I’m a laugh a second.”

“You certainly are.”

“God forbid I be the source of such entertainment to you. I’ll stop.”

Her crestfallen pout made her a disappointed little girl and an irresistible siren. “Don’t! We were just getting warmed up!”

“Just step outside to get as warm as you can handle.”

“Inside here with you is just fine with me. You can’t beat the combo of cool surroundings and red-hot debate.”

“Since you’re so fond of said combo, I’ll leave you to cool your heels and send one of my men to debate with. You can red-hot his ears off while I go scout the location for the spectator and banquet tents.”

He turned, counting down … three, two, one …

Right on cue, she grabbed his arm. “You wait right here.” She hurriedly unzipped her bag, produced an SPF 50 sunscreen and applied it liberally to her face, neck and hands then smiled up at him triumphantly. “My dermally deficient self can now go ten rounds with Your Hereditarily Impervious Highness.”

He sighed. “On one condition.”

She didn’t hesitate. “Anything!”

At the look of absolute trust in her eyes, a heavy sensation spread through his gut.

What, now he believed what he was seeing in her? Trust didn’t factor into this situation, in her reaction. She must think going with him was a perfectly safe opportunity to work on him some more.

But … there had been that incident when she’d risked her life to help him, to be there for others. An instance that contradicted all his understanding of her, that proved she was no self-preserving coward, was capable of stunning courage.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t also a man-eater. Which made her an even more dangerous one for being impossible to categorize, to predict, to despise.

He huffed his disgust with himself. “Anything? And you’re supposedly a phenomenal political and financial law consultant. I thought when your father stopped making the dimwitted state and financial decisions he was famous for and started making choices far above his minuscule IQ, that you were behind it. Now I have to revise that belief, if you, too, go around giving carte blanche to conditions you haven’t heard yet.”

“Anything for you,” she amended indulgently, not bothering to counter his assessment, as only someone secure in her abilities wouldn’t. “I know you won’t make it anything bad.”

“And you know that because I’m the Gandhi of the region? Are you already suffering from sunstroke? Your judgment is evidently impaired.”

She made a hurry-up gesture with those elegant, trim-nailed hands. “Spit out your condition, and let’s be on our way.”

He sighed again. “No complaints. If I hear one, you’re back here.”

She fluttered those thick-enough-to-sleep-on lashes, gave him a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”

He almost groaned. She was making kidnapping her too easy. Anything that started out that way invariably ended in catastrophe. What would that entail in this situation?

He had no choice but to find out.

He looked down at her, exhaled, nodded. To himself. To committing to this path. Wherever it took him.

He only hoped that when catastrophe struck, he’d at least have accomplished his mission.

Maram looked down into those eyes Amjad had damned earlier.

And damn summed them up all right.

She’d had a good-to-great life on the whole. But it was only when she looked into his eyes that she felt aware of every spark of her being, every iota of her potential.

And that was before he’d taken her riding on his horse.

She’d expected him to ride a black stallion. Or a white one. She’d been delighted to find his favorite was a glorious light chestnut mare. Dahabeyah, literally “golden,” would be her twin if she were a horse. She’d held her ponytail next to the mare’s and exclaimed how they were almost the same color. She’d asked if he’d chosen the mare for the animal’s similarity to her, knowing he’d never admit it even at gunpoint.

His answer had been a mere snort before he turned to tacking up the mare, then donned a billowy white abaya and traditional head cover.

Then he’d mounted the mare in a demonstration of power and grace and all she could think of was him mounting her, riding her …

She’d been combusting even before he’d pulled her up behind him. She’d declined to ride a horse of her own, wasn’t such an assured horsewoman that she’d risk it in this terrain. His eyes had said she just wanted to be as close to him as possible. She hadn’t denied the accusation. The truth consisted of both his version and hers.

They’d ridden uphill for twenty minutes at a trot. Every second brought a new level of awareness of the hot, living rock she enveloped, the powerful heart that boomed beneath her ear, the scent that induced a hormonal surge with each inhalation.

By the time they’d reached their destination, she thought she’d melted around him, could never be extricated from his flesh again.

He swung down, leaving her jangling from the loss of him. She wondered if he’d help her down—but he’d already given her too many concessions. He wasn’t about to act the gallant knight.

She didn’t want him to. Not out of, gasp, gentlemanliness. In time, she’d make him wish to offer those gestures out of the consideration he’d come to feel for her.

She was getting down from the horse when she saw his eyes flood with a somberness she’d never seen there before.

It shook her to see into the depths she knew he kept hidden beneath his irreverence and indifference.

Before she could probe, he turned away, went to the edge of the towering dune overlooking the whole area.

She followed him on shaky legs, every wobbling step melting the fraught moment away. The view mesmerized her, a landscape that had been molded by the elements in the crucible of time, powdering mountains into frozen-in-turbulence oceans of gold dust.

“Wow,” she breathed in wonder. “I’ve seen almost nothing but desert vistas since coming to the region. But this beats them all hands down. How did you discover this place?”

“It’s called exploring.”

She smiled at his chiseled profile. “What a novel concept! Would you take me next time you’re scouting new territories?”

He turned his eyes sideways to her, looked down the ten inches between them, his lips twisting. “I don’t do luxury tours. What you see today is for swooning princes’ benefit. When I go out on my own, I don’t lug mock palaces with me.”

“You’re talking to the girl who spent her first twelve years camping in temperatures in the minus, who picked her own food and washed her one change of clothes in freezing streams. I lived out of a backpack for months when I went back to the States, too.”

Another enigmatic layer painted his eyes before he shrugged. “We’ll see how you fare on this mini-excursion before we talk big treks.”

Her heart pirouetted in her chest.

He was not turning her down flat.

Next moment, her heart slowed its spin, wobbled as a sound she’d never heard … felt before, yawned from nonexistence into her ears, through her marrow.

She swung around … and her heart crashed.

On the horizon, a … a … a mountain was charging their way.

It looked like what she imagined a nuclear shockwave would look like. A tidal wave of roiling, pulverized earth.

At the rate it was advancing, it would reach them—bury them—in minutes.




Three


“Sandstorm!”

Maram whirled around to Amjad, her heart bombarding her throat for a way out.

She found him gazing at the horizon, looking tranquil.

Tranquil? He must be frozen in alarm!

She pounced on him. He let her drag him to Dahabeyah, only to start emptying what he’d packed in the horse’s saddlebags.

“What are you doing?” she exclaimed. “We have to rush back!”

He shook his head, extracting folded cloth and goggles. “No. We’d only meet the storm and get blasted. If by some miracle we don’t, anything standing still on that low ground—aka our cars—will be buried in minutes, judging by the size and intensity of that haboob. The others won’t wait for us.”

She looked around in panic. In the distance, everyone was sealing the horse trailers, leaping into their cars and flooring it out of the camp.

They were leaving.

“But they … they can’t leave!”

“They have to.” He produced a sacklike thing, draped it over the jittery Dahabeyah’s muzzle and eyes before securing it over her neck, which the mare surprisingly accepted. A similar cover for her body followed. “By the time they reach us, they’d have zero visibility and would probably get lost and be buried in the sand after their fuel runs out. They have to go back and hope the fuel lasts driving against eighty-mile-an-hour winds before they exit the storm.”

“But you’re their crown prince! They can’t leave you behind!”

“Coming after me would mean certain death for them.”

“Not coming after you will mean certain death for you. For us.”

“No. They know I can handle myself.”

“How do you handle yourself against—” a bubble of hysteria expanded below her diaphragm as she flung her arms wide toward the cloud that had now consumed the horizon, like a planet-eating monster “—that!”

“Oh, that.” He handed her a pair of goggles. “Been there, done that. I’m actually thinking it’s a way out of being cooped up for two days with those yawn-inducing royals.”

“Okay, who’s suffering from sunstroke now? Are you out of your mind? This is the freaking mother of all sandstorms.”

He swung over Dahabeyah’s back, grimaced at the incoming destruction. “Aih, it’s a nasty one, isn’t it?”

And she shrieked her frustration and fright. “Amjad!”

He only started wrapping his head and face with the yards of cloth. He was done in moments, left only his eyes exposed. Then he extended his hand to her.

She looked at it, her mind seizing, dread as huge as the menace advancing on them clogging her throat.

“Maram.” She lurched. He’d never said her name. Never sounded so … soft. “Do you trust me?”

Her eyes jerked up, saw him as he was born to be, a desert raider fortified against the elements, calm in his ability to withstand them after many battles where they’d called it a draw. She snatched a look over her shoulder, quailed. That cloud hurtling toward them looked like the end of both their lives.

But if she’d trust anyone to survive this attack of nature, it was him. And she did trust him. With the life he’d saved once before.

“You know I do,” she choked.

His eyes snapped narrower, as if with a stab of pain.

Before she could think, he said, voice solemn, “Then trust me when I say this. I won’t let anything harm you.”

She nodded, accepting his pledge as fact, reached out. The moment the warmth and power of his calloused rider’s hand closed on her clammy, trembling one she felt she was sealing her fate.

But then it had been sealed from the moment she’d laid eyes on him. Then again during that bomb scare. She was choosing his path again, would always choose it, come what may.

She surged up, boosting his tug as he swept her in front of him.

In blinding succession, he removed her hat, wrapped her head and face like he had his and fitted her with the goggles. Before he lowered them over her eyes, he half turned her toward him.

“I’ll enfold you in my abaya, hold you secure, so don’t worry about holding on.” His voice poured in her ear through the layers between them, earnest and fortifying. She shuddered, nodded as he secured her as he’d said. “We’ll descend the dune, which will give us time before the haboob clears it. But it will catch up with us. I want you to be ready for the force of the wind and the sand hitting us even through our protection and with us traveling in its trajectory. But it’s all bark and no bite. I’m proof it’s survivable with no ill effects. I have a nearby shelter. We’ll go there and wait it out.”

She again nodded, noticed that his watch had GPS. He consulted it before he nudged Dahabeyah. Without hesitation, the mare stumbled down the steep slope.

She felt her heart plummet with each footfall. If it weren’t for Amjad’s steel arm and thighs melding her to him, she would have fallen off.

When they reached flat land, he again urged Dahabeyah and the mare broke into a bone-jarring gallop. Maram would have been hammered apart without Amjad raising and lowering her with him to the rhythm of the horse.

Then the sandstorm caught up with them.

She heard its roar like a monster opening its jaws wide to swallow them, felt it snatching her heart out. Then it hit them with the force of a train, engulfed them, overtook them as the roar turned into a soul-splitting wail. The desert disappeared in a limbo of solid yellow dust.

At one point she thought she heard Amjad’s voice, sounding … amused? The sandstorm’s brain-liquefying screeching must have damaged her ear drums.

Then she deciphered his words and knew he was. “One good thing about haboobs, you no longer need your SPF 50 sunscreen.”

She pressed into him, her screaming tension easing gradually. Even if this felt like the end of the world, it couldn’t be too serious, could it? He couldn’t be so devil-may-care in the face of death, could he?

Apparently, Amjad could.

Ride endlessly, endure the harrowing bombardment of the sand and wind, the suffocation of breathing scorching, dry-as-tinder air through cloth and intersperse it all with caustic comments on anything his brilliantly twisted mind could come up with, delivered into her ringing ear. Favorite targets in descending order were her father, Ossaylan, Zohayd, the region, women, men, politics, business and pretty much everything that made the world go round.

Problem was, she couldn’t.

She could only hold herself up, refusing to be the deadweight he invited her to be. She held herself up steadier every time he consulted his illuminated GPS and forged on with total assurance, thinking he believed their destination was drawing nearer.

But their destination seemed to be receding.

She’d weathered the first half-century of the ride relatively well. The next quarter started to take its toll. This last one was becoming unbearable. And she had no idea how many more centuries it would take before they reached his “nearby shelter.”

Couldn’t she just faint? He was doing fine riding and holding her up all without her input. He had told her to nap, as if they were on a long, uneventful journey in the tranquil luxury of one of his limos. He might have had a point.

Might as well let the rest of the ordeal fade away …

Maram came to with a jerk.

Yellowish nothingness greeted her scratching-open eyes.

She thought she was suspended in the limbo between sleep and wakefulness, where everything was a blank sheet waiting for awareness to fill it with the details and depth of perceptions.

Then those flooded in. She hadn’t been caught in a nightmare. She had been in a sandstorm, with Amjad. Still was.

So she’d fainted. Or surrendered to the exhausting-cum-lulling ride and taken the nap Amjad had advised her to. Amjad, who was forging through the brutality of the sandstorm, carrying her like a weightless rag doll as he ascended barely visible steps leading to a columned patio of what looked like a single-story construction. It might be the only visible part of a castle for all she knew. She couldn’t see beyond a few feet.

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.”

“Nope.” She chuckled and watched his strong throat work as he drank, wondered how it would feel beneath her lips, if his skin would taste as intoxicating as he smelled. She sighed, knowing it wouldn’t be soon enough before she could find out. “But I would have appreciated it if, among your prolific commentary on the human condition, you’d told me how long you expected our ride to be. Not knowing made it feel like it would never end, made it harder to take.”

“And what would you have done if I’d estimated four hours and those became five or six? You would have spent that extra time going nuts thinking we were lost.”

“Not if you told me we weren’t.”

“As if you would have believed me.”

“I absolutely would have.”

That seemed to do the impossible—had him stymied for a comeback. Those spectacular eyebrows swooped down as if he, too, couldn’t believe it. As if he couldn’t believe she’d trust his word that undeniably. He’d soon learn otherwise.

She saw right through his masterfully off-putting facade to the core of valor inside. She more than trusted him. She believed in him.

She decided to put him out of his sarcasmless misery. “But you wanted to spare me anxiety, so your intentions were good.”

“And we all know where those lead.” He flicked a mocking look around. “Even though there wouldn’t be much worse than here.”

“Stop insulting this wonderful place. If you no longer want it for a lair, I’ll take it off your hands. Just name your price.”

A moment stretched as he brooded at her. “You’re barely standing upright and I’m not carrying you again if you collapse. Do so inside while I take care of business. Help yourself to the jet-powered shower.”

“And you dare badmouth this place. I would have been ecstatic with rudimentary indoor plumbing. A jet shower is nirvana.”

“It’s nothing like you’re used to …” She opened her mouth to remind him that she hadn’t always been a prince’s daughter. He overrode her. “And don’t expect anything fancy to eat. Provisions are all dried, powdered and canned.”

“It comes with food, too? A veritable five-star hotel, then.”

“Go.”

“Why do I get the feeling you want to get rid of me?” He rumbled something dangerous in his gut. She raised her hands in teasing placation. “I’ll go, but only because what you’re offering is irresistible. Rest, cleanliness, anything edible—” and being alone with you, she added inwardly “—constitutes heaven to me.”

With a last impish glance, she did her best not to wobble to the “inside” his stern finger had pointed to.

She entered a shock of a futuristic bathroom encased in pearly black marble, with a white onyx tub and toilet, a tempered-glass sink and a shower cubicle and brushed-steel fixtures and accents. It felt constructed to suit another facet of him, the ultramodern desert knight, where he—

Worry detonated inside her, aborting her fantasies.

She rushed back out. “Where’s Dahabeya?”

Amjad had been standing where she’d left him, staring at the ceiling. Nonchalance descended at her reappearance, masking what she’d seen on his face. But she had seen it. A terrible bleakness.

He shrugged. “In her stable, fed and watered. I’ll go wash her down and treat any injuries she sustained.”

With that he started fortifying himself again. She walked back slowly to the bathroom, her nerves rattling.

What could have warranted such an expression?

He’s exhausted, she answered herself. She’d just caught him not hiding it. She should stop gorging on his every breath and overanalyzing his every expression.

She exited a stinging, reviving shower, was drying herself with towels she’d found bagged and smelling of freshness when another scent hit her. Ambrosia, by the smell of it.

She scooped up her clothes, and the scent of fear and exhaustion rising from them made her groan in disgust. And she’d been clinging to him smelling like that.

She peeked around the wall. Amjad had his back to her in the kitchen. She bolted across the corridor.

She raided his closet, picked a shirt that fell to her knees. She didn’t find any underwear, put her own, washed and wet, on.

She pattered out over the warm, wonderful stone texture of the floor on bare feet, almost dizzy with hunger as the scent intensified on approaching the kitchen.

Her return was rewarded by a look of disinterest.

She smiled. She was on to him. He was anything but disinterested. In anything. From beneath that lazy, bored facade, he watched everything like a hawk, avid, analyzing. And he was anything but uninterested in her. She’d prove it.

“I’ve changed my mind.” She craned her neck around him to get a closer whiff of the edible delight he was stirring. “This place is a hundred-star hotel. It’s got its own crown-prince chef.”

He peered down his sculpted nose at her. “Don’t be so quick to promote me to chefdom. You haven’t tasted this mess yet.”

“Nothing that smells that good can taste bad. What is it?”

“You mean you’ve never seen lentils before? Your diet consists solely of carnivorous delicacies and men?”

He wouldn’t stop goading her about her supposed man-devouring activities, would he? He’d learn different. Until then, nothing he said could touch her. Even if it always tickled her.

“I’ll have you know I’m a vegetarian.” She served generous portions into the bowls he’d put out. “And lentils are one of my favorite foods. I’m asking about the spices that give it that heavenly aroma.”

“You’re asking me to reveal my secrets? Tsk. If you must know, it’s a protective concoction. For XY-chromosome bearers.”

She giggled. “Protecting huge, power-laden you from XX me, now that I got you stranded in the middle of the desert?”

She laughed again at the notion, before a heady sensation spread inside her. She would have been the one fearing for her safety, or at least feeling uncomfortable, with any other man. But with Amjad she felt totally safe, totally at ease.

She blew into her simmering spoon, licked at its surface. She groaned as the complex flavor hit her taste buds. She hoovered the rest, yelping as it scalded her, then did the same thing again and again.

After a moment of watching her ravenous demonstration, he said, “It’s nutmeg, chives, garlic, lime shavings and sumac. But you’ll understand if I don’t reveal the exact ratio.”

“What good would that be, if I don’t know the counter-concoction?”

He gave her a mock-conceding nod, began to eat.

She’d attended banquets he’d organized in the past, forgetting to eat as she lost herself in the pleasure of watching his feline focus and fastidiousness. She suspected he used the absorption in his meal to discourage interaction.




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