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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.”
