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With a shuddering intake of breath, he looked down at her hand on his arm, fighting to control himself when all he wanted to do was seize her in his arms and crush her lips against his own.
But after all his time living unselfishly to serve others, could he really allow himself to take what he needed, what he wanted most?
What would it cost her if he did?
Kareef heard the intake of Jasmine’s breath, felt her body move against his, and he knew she’d just seen the riding school on the other side of the road. He put his arm around her. He felt her body tremble. She stared out at the school as they passed, her face stricken, her brown eyes swimming with tears like an ocean of memories.
And in that instant he forgot about his own needs.
He forgot the heat of his own desire.
All he knew was that it was Jasmine in his arms, Jasmine who was afraid—and that he had to protect her. Holding her against his chest, he leaned forward urgently and barked out an order to his chauffeur. “Drive faster.”
The man nodded and pressed on the gas.
The riding school passed by in a blur of color. He saw the place where they’d first whispered words of love. The place where he’d drawn her into a quiet glade of trees behind the farthest paddock, and on a soft blanket beside a cool brook—the place he’d first made love to her, virgins both, pledging hushed, breathless, eternal devotion.
“I marry you,” she’d whispered three times.
“I marry you,” he’d answered once, holding her hands tightly between his own.
Kareef took a deep breath.
He would be unselfish—one last time.
In the old days, the king’s will in Qusay had been absolute. No one could deny the king the woman he wanted, under pain of death. He would have taken possession of Jasmine like a barbarian. He would have thrown her into his harem, locked the door behind them and not come out again until he was satisfied. He would have taken her on a bed, against a wall, on the soft carpets in front of the fire. He would have lifted her against him, the firelight gleaming off the sweat of her silken skin, until he made her gasp and scream his name.
But Kareef was not that barbarian king. He couldn’t be. Not when Jasmine trembled with fear in his arms.
“The memories can’t hurt us anymore,” he murmured, holding her tight as he stroked her hair. “It all happened long ago.”
“I know that. In my mind,” she whispered, her voice barely loud enough to hear. “But in my heart, it happened yesterday.”
They stared out the window as the motorcade flew past the humble outbuildings of the riding school, its paddocks and fields and stables.
The intimacy of being so physically close as they shared the same exact memories made him taut with an emotion he didn’t want to feel. His muscles shook from the effort of just holding her, of just offering comfort—thirteen years too late.
Then they were past it. The school disappeared behind them. Their limousine flew down the bumpy old road through the red rock canyon toward Qais.
He felt Jasmine relax in his arms. Closing his eyes, he breathed in the scent of her hair. She leaned against his chest. For long moments of silence, he held her. Just the two of them. Like long ago.
Then Kareef heard the cough of his bodyguard in the front seat, heard his chauffeur shift position. And he forced himself to pull away from their compromising position.
He looked down at her, gently lifting her chin.
“You’re all right then?” he said softly, offering her a smile.
Her eyes shone back at him with unshed tears.
“I was wrong,” she whispered. Her dark eyelashes trembled against her pale cheeks. “I see that now. I was wrong to hate you,” she said softly, reaching out to hold his hand. “Thank you for holding me. I couldn’t have faced that alone.”
He stared at her incredulously.
She was forgiving him? For one brief moment of sympathy, the kind any stranger might have offered to a grieving woman, she was willing to overlook what he’d done?
He looked away, his jaw tense. “Forget it.”
“But you—”
“It was nothing,” he bit out, ripping his hand from her grasp.
He would let her go, he told himself fiercely. His only way of making amends. Honor and duty were all he had left. He would not seduce her. He wouldn’t even touch her. As soon as they arrived at his home, he would immediately divorce her and send her on her way. He would leave her to her happiness.
His jaw clenched as he stared out at the sun.
For thirteen years, he’d buried himself so deeply in duty that he couldn’t breathe or think. He’d immolated himself like some mad desert hermit buried neck-deep in hot sand. But being near Jasmine had brought his body and soul alive in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. In a way he’d never thought he’d feel again.
But he would let her go. No matter how he wanted her. He owed her. He would let her disappear from his life, and this time it would be forever. Umar Hajjar would guard her covetously, like the treasure she was.
Kareef would be unselfish one last time. Even if it killed him. He almost hoped it would.
The shadows of the red rock mountains moved in mottled patterns over their motorcade as they passed out of the canyon. As they went through the mountains into the wide sweep of the desert of Qais, he saw the wind picking up, swirling little spirals of sand, twisting them up into the sky.
Kareef felt the same way every time he looked at her. Tangled up in her.
He felt her dark head nestle on his shoulder. Looking down at her in surprise, he saw her eyes were closed. She was sleeping against him. His gaze roamed her face.
God, he wanted to kiss her.
More than kiss. He wanted to strip her naked and feast on every inch of her supple flesh. He wanted to explore the mountains of her breasts and valley between. The low flat plain of her belly and hot citadel between her thighs. He wanted to devour her like a conqueror seizing a kingdom for his own use, beneath his hands, beneath his control.
But the old days were over.
He was king of Qusay, yet unable to have the one thing he most desired. No strength could take her. No brutality could force her. He couldn’t act on his desire. Not at the expense of her happiness.
His muscles hurt with the effort it took to feel her against him, but not touch her. Clenching his jaw, he turned back out the window. He could see his house in the distance. In just a few minutes, they would be done. He would go inside, find the emerald and speak the simple words to set her free. And after today, he would make sure he never saw Jasmine again—
His thoughts were interrupted when he heard a sudden squeal, the sickening sound of metal grating against the road.
As if in a dream, he looked up to see the SUV at the front of the motorcade slam hard to the right, then smash against the rock wall along the road.
He heard his own bodyguard shout, saw his chauffeur frantically try to turn the wheel. But it was too late. Kareef barely had time to think before he felt the Rolls-Royce hit against the SUV, felt his body jackknife forward.
As their limousine flew up, rolling violently through the air, he looked down at Jasmine. His last image was her wide-open, terrified eyes—his last sound, her scream.
CHAPTER FIVE
JASMINE opened her eyes.
She was lying on a blanket, amid the cool shadows of green trees. Nearby, she heard a burbling brook and horses racing in the paddocks of the riding school. She felt the soft desert wind against her face. And the greatest miracle of all: the boy she loved was beside her, smiling with his whole face, love shining from his electric blue eyes.
He pulled her down against him on the blanket, reaching to tuck her hair behind her ear. Dappled golden light caressed his black hair as he rolled over her body with sudden urgency, his eyes gazing fiercely down into hers.
“I have no right to ask you this,” he whispered. “But I will regret it forever if I do not.” He cupped her face in his hands. “Marry me, Jasmine. Marry me.”
“Yes,” she gasped. He smiled, then with agonizing slowness he lowered his lips toward hers. He kissed her. Then, for the first time, they did far more than just kiss…
“Jasmine!”
His sudden harsh shout was jarring. She heard the panic in his voice, but couldn’t answer. Something was choking her. Slowly, blearily she opened her eyes.
And realized she wasn’t on the blanket by the stream.
She was strapped into a car upside down. Her knees were hanging against her chest and she could see the blue sky through the window at her feet. The seat belt felt so tight that she couldn’t breathe. Something warm and liquid dripped across her lashes.
“I’m bleeding,” she whispered aloud.
She heard Kareef’s curse and suddenly the passenger door was wrenched open, causing scattered pieces of broken glass to clatter from the window to the road. Suddenly, the seat belt was gone and she was in Kareef’s arms, sitting on his knees in the dusty road.
She felt his hands move over her head, her arms, her body. “Nothing’s broken,” he breathed. He held her tightly against his chest, kissing her hair, whispering, “You’re safe. You’re safe.”
She closed her eyes in the shelter of his arms. She pressed her cheek against the warmth of his neck.
Time felt as mixed and confused as the smashed, upside-down cars in the road. For the space of a dream, she’d been sixteen again, with her whole life ahead of her, certain of Kareef’s devotion and his strong arms around her.
Those same arms were around her now, even more powerful and muscled than they’d been before. What had happened?
“Get a doctor!” Kareef turned and thundered.
She was dimly aware of bodyguards rushing around them, shouting into cell phones, but they all seemed far away. She and Kareef were at the eye of the storm.
She looked at him and saw the blood on his clothes, the tears in the white fabric of his shirt, and a chill went through her. Trembling, she reached her hand toward his face, toward the thin lines of red streaking his chiseled cheekbone. “You’re bleeding.”
He jerked his head away. “It’s nothing.”
He didn’t want her to touch him. That much was absolutely clear. She felt her cheeks go hot as she put her hand down. She pressed her lips together, wanting to cry. So much had changed since the time of her beautiful dream. “But—you should see a doctor.”
He rose to his feet, holding her. “Unnecessary. But for you…” He looked down at Jasmine. “Can you stand alone?”
“Yes.” Her head was pounding, but she would not try to lean against him. She would not make him push her away. If he did not want her to touch him, she would stand alone on her own two feet if it killed her.
Releasing her hand, he brushed dirt off the shoulders of her pink blouson minidress. “Your hat is gone,” he muttered.
She looked up at him in a daze. “It doesn’t matter.”
“We’ll have someone find it.” Taking a damp towel from a bodyguard, Kareef wiped her forehead, then paused. “You’ve got a small cut on your scalp,” he said matter-of-factly, his voice calm, as if trying not to scare her. He turned back to his bodyguard. “We must take Miss Kouri back to the hospital.”
Miss Kouri. So he’d reverted to that. He was already keeping his distance, as if he’d already divorced her.
The bodyguard shook his head at Kareef. “The cars are totaled, your highness.” His voice grew bitter, angry. “That mare escaped into the road again. Youssef had to swerve to avoid her.”
Kareef looked past the smashed, upside-down Rolls-Royce toward the black horse still standing in the road. “Ah, Bara’ah. Even put out to pasture,” he murmured softly, “you’re up to your old tricks.”
Jasmine followed his gaze. The slender black mare, chewing lone wisps of grass that had grown through the cracks of the pavement, looked back with placid amusement.
“Get her back in her paddock,” Kareef said. “Get a new car from my garage.”
His garage?
Jasmine looked down the road and saw a wide, lowslung ranch house of brown wood, surrounded by paddocks and palm trees.
Comfortable and peaceful, without any of Umar’s gilded, lavish ostentatiousness, Kareef’s home was a green oasis in the vast wasteland of the desert.
He’d done it. He’d created the house he’d once promised her. But he’d done it alone…
Her hands tightened. And Kareef wanted to take her away. He wanted to take her back to the city, to leave her in some sterile, beeping hospital room—alone. Perhaps he intended to run inside and get the emerald, and divorce her on the way?
It was what she’d thought she wanted—a quick divorce without seduction, without entanglements. But now, she suddenly felt like crying.
“I don’t want to go to the hospital.”
At the sound of her voice, Kareef and the bodyguard turned to her in surprise, as if they’d forgotten she was there.
“But Jasmine,” Kareef replied gently and slowly, as if speaking to a recalcitrant child, “you need to see a doctor.”
“No hospital.” Dark hair blew in her eyes from her collapsing chignon. Pushing back her hair, she saw blood on her hands. Looking down, she saw drops of blood on the pink silk of her dress.
Just like the last time she’d been in an accident. The last time she’d seen her own blood. After the accident—before the scandal…
She suddenly couldn’t get enough air.
She couldn’t breathe.
Panicking, she put her hands on her head as she tried to get air in her lungs. More dark tendrils tumbled from her chignon as the world started to spin around her.
Kareef’s eyes narrowed. “Jasmine?”
Her breath came in short, shallow gasps as she backed away from him. Everything was a blur, going in circles faster and faster. No matter which way she looked, she saw something that trapped her. The home of her dreams. The man of her dreams. The blood on her dress…
Kareef grabbed her before she could fall. His intense blue eyes stared down at her. She dimly heard him shouting. She saw his men rushing to obey.
She saw Kareef’s lips moving, saw the concern in his blue eyes, but couldn’t hear what he was saying. She could only hear the ragged pant of her own breathing, the frantic pounding of her own heart.
Colors continued to spin around her as her knees started to slide. In the distance she saw the black mare staring back at her. Black like the horse who’d thrown her long ago. Black like the accident that had caused her to lose everything.
Black.
Black.
