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Then she saw something—a blot on the horizon—emerge from the cloud like a bullet. It took a while for the shimmering blot to solidify into a silhouette. It was a person, on a horse, galloping fast.
Panic and anxiety tightened around her throat.
Black flowing robes lifted in the wind behind the charging figure, like the wings of a giant predatory bird, as the horse’s hooves became audible over the roar of the sand.
The rider was a man. A very big man. His outline broad and strong, the fluid graceful movements powerful and overwhelming as he seemed to become one with the stallion as it galloped at full speed. He wore a headdress, masking most of his face.
The panic wrapped around her heart, the thundering beat matching the clump-clump-clump of the approaching hooves—as she saw the horse and rider change course and veer straight towards her.
Then she noticed the rifle strap crossing his broad chest.
A bandit. What else could he be, miles from civilisation?
Run, Kasia, run.
The silent scream echoed inside her head. The howling winds lifted the sand around her. Then in her grandmother’s voice—a voice she had always associated with salvation—Stay calm. Don’t panic. He’s just a man.
But even as she tried to rationalise the fear, liberate herself from the panic—reminding her of the sight of her mother walking away for the last time—a strange melting sensation at her core plunged into her abdomen.
A shout rang out, muffled by his scarf, in a dialect she didn’t recognise.
He was almost upon her.
For goodness’ sake, Kasia, stop standing there like a ninny and move.
The call to action helped drown out the fear of being alone and defenceless, a fear she had spent years conquering in childhood.
You’re not that little girl who wasn’t good enough. You’re brave and smart and accomplished.
She scrambled round the Jeep, wrenched open the passenger door, and dived into the stuffy interior. The sand peppering the windows sounded like rifle shots as her hand landed on the pistol in the passenger seat.
Zane had insisted she learn to shoot before he would allow her to go into the desert alone. But as her fingers closed over the metal, her heart butted her tonsils.
She knew how to shoot at a target with some degree of accuracy, but she had never shot a living thing.
The charging horse came to an abrupt stop only inches from the SUV’s bumper. Scrambling out, the sand slicing her cheeks like a whip, Kasia lifted the pistol in both hands and pressed a trembling finger to the trigger.
‘Stop there or I’ll shoot,’ she shouted in English, because it had become her first language after five years in the UK.
Chocolate eyes narrowed above the mask—glittering with intent and fury. The warmth in her abdomen became hot and heavy. And all the more terrifying.
The bandit swung a leg over the horse’s neck and jumped down in one fluid movement without speaking, those dark eyes burning into her soul.
She jerked back a step and the pistol went off. The pop was barely audible in the storm, but the recoil threw her down hard on her backside and she saw the man jerk back.
Had she hit him?
Before the thought had a chance to register, the stallion reared, its hooves pawing the air above her head. The bandit caught the horse’s reins before the animal could trample her into the desert floor, and she felt a rush of relief. Within seconds, though, he loomed over her again and the relief that she hadn’t killed him turned to panic. She scrambled back on her bottom, kicked out with her feet.
‘Get away from me.’
Where was the gun?
She searched for it frantically, but her vision was all but obscured by the swirling sands. He had become the only focus, the ominous outline bearing down on her.
Long fingers shot from the storm and gripped her arm. He hauled her up, bent down and hefted her onto his shoulder with such speed and strength she could barely grasp what was happening before she found herself straddling the huge black horse’s sweat-soaked back.
She lifted her leg, trying to dismount, but before she could get her knee over the pommel, he had mounted behind her.
He grasped the reins with one hand and banded his other arm around her midriff, pulling her into the unyielding strength of his body.
She let out an ‘Oomph…’ as the air was expelled from her lungs. The iron band of his forearm pressed into her breasts. Then suddenly they were flying, her bottom bouncing on the saddle—abandoning the Jeep, which was already half-buried in sand. Her body was forced to succumb to the will of his much bigger, much stronger one as he bent forward, his robes shielding her from the sand stinging her eyes. She tried to cry out, to fight the lethargy wrought by terror, the visceral heat coursing through her body making her too aware of every place their bodies touched.
He’s kidnapping you. You must fight. You must survive.
The words screamed in her head, but her breathing was so rapid now it was painful, her whole body confined, subdued, overwhelmed by his and the storm of sand and dust and darkness raging around them.
They seemed to ride for ever through the swirl of sand—until eventually her fear and panic stopped crushing her ribs and her body melted into exhaustion. The rhythm of the horse’s movements seeped into her bones, the man’s unyielding strength cocooning her against the elements.
Was this Stockholm syndrome? she wondered vaguely, her tired mind no longer capable of engaging with the terror as her body succumbed to the impenetrable darkness, the controlled purpose of her captor’s movements and the stultifying heat coursing through her.
As her eyes drifted shut and her bones turned to water, she dropped down through the years, until she became that little girl again. But this time she was no longer alone and defenceless, her mother gone without a backward glance, but sheltered in strong arms against the storm.
CHAPTER TWO (#u97093d80-abb7-53fa-adde-057f842e2a39)
KASIA WOKE AGAIN in fits and starts. First the bristle of cold on her face, and the heavy weight at her back, both suffocating and warming her. As Kasia opened her eyes, her heart swelled into her throat.
Red light glowed on the horizon, starlight was sprinkled overhead. Shooting stars shot across the sky, illuminating the desert dunes. Her thighs trembled and she became aware of the large warm bulk between them.
A horse. She was on a horse.
His horse.
Memory flooded back.
Kidnapped!
She’d been kidnapped by the man whose muscular forearm banded around her waist. And whose body radiated heat as it cocooned hers.
All the inappropriate dreams she’d had about him returned, too. She shoved them to one side and tried to free her arms.
You’re not in Stockholm any more!
A grunt sounded next to her ear, making her aware of the unearthly quiet of the night, the chill of the evening breeze. The storm had passed.
And she was alone, in the middle of the desert, with the bandit who had captured her. And saved her. But why?
Whatever. Now it was time to save herself. From him.
The horse’s hooves thudded patiently against the rocky dunes as they rose over a hill. An oasis came into view in the valley below. The horse picked its way down the slope as sure-footed as a cat. The mirrored expanse of water reflected the dying red of the sunset, palm trees and plants grew in profusion around the water’s edge. The rasp of her kidnapper’s breathing echoed in her ears, making her heart thunder against her ribs.
Was that arousal she could hear in his rough breathing? How would she know? She’d never been in a man’s arms before when he was aroused.
Not the point, Kasia. Focus. For goodness’ sake.
The numbness in her fingers as she gripped the saddle horn tingled, her thighs quivered and burned, sore from what had to have been several hours on horseback. She became aware of the stinging pain where the sandstorm had abraded her exposed skin and got into her eyes.
She gulped, trying to force her tired mind to come up with a plan.
If he’d saved her from the storm, maybe he wasn’t planning to hurt her, now would be a good time to start talking to him.
‘Thank you for saving me from the sandstorm,’ she said, with as much authority as she could muster with her throat raw and her body brutally aware of the solid chest imprinted on her back. ‘I’m a close friend of the Queen. She will pay you handsomely for returning me to the palace now.’ The words flowed out, sounding impossibly loud in the quiet night.
But he didn’t reply, his body pressing heavily against her as the horse approached the water. She spotted a large tent erected in a copse of palm trees. The horse loped to a stop in front of the tent, and her heartbeat careered into her throat.
The scent of fresh water dispelled the fetid odour of horse and the salty scent of the man. She pushed his chest with her shoulder, freeing her arms from their confinement.
He grunted again, the sound trailing off into a moan, but strangely the panic from earlier didn’t return.
He was big and clearly very strong, having ridden for miles to escape the storm, but the way he was holding her didn’t feel threatening. It felt protective.
Unless that was just her cockeyed optimism taking another trip to Stockholm.
But he’d made no move to hurt her. So she clung onto her optimism—cockeyed or not—and repeated her promise of riches again in Narabian, but still got no response.
They sat together on the horse in silence, her whole body brutally aware of each subtle shift in his.
She could feel the thigh muscles that cupped her hips flex, sending a shaft of something hot and fluid through her. The wave of arousal shocked her. How could she be turned on? When she didn’t even know if this man was a good guy or not?
He shifted again, his moan shivering down her spine. But then the arm around her waist loosened. And his body began to slide to one side.
What the…? Was he dismounting?
She squeezed the horse’s sides with her knees and grasped the saddle horn. The rush of air at her back as his hot weight slid away was followed by a loud thud.
She gazed down to see the man lying on the ground beneath the horse.
‘Whoa, boy,’ she whispered frantically, scared the horse might bolt. But after stamping its hooves far too close to the man’s head, it settled, its tail swishing.
How could he have fallen off the horse? Was he asleep? Was that why he hadn’t replied? He had to be even more exhausted than she was after their ride.
The questions whipped around her brain. Relief and confusion tangled in her belly.
Leaning over the horse’s neck, she grasped the dangling reins. She hadn’t ridden a horse since leaving Narabia for the UK, and certainly never one this enormous, but as she went to kick the horse with her heels, she glanced down at the man again. He hadn’t moved, the lump of his body just lying there on the ground. Her legs relaxed and, instead of spurring the horse on, she found herself scrambling down from the huge beast.
Perhaps she was nuts—a cockeyed optimist with a side order of starry-eyed romantic—but she just couldn’t bring herself to ride away and leave him lying there. Not after spending what had to have been several hours sleeping in his arms while he’d ridden them both to safety.
Landing on the other side, she grasped the reins and drew the animal further away from the rider’s inert form.
She tried to lead the horse to the tent in the trees, but it wouldn’t budge, simply snuffling and lifting its muzzle. ‘You don’t want to leave him, is that it?’
The horse bounced its head as if it was nodding.
Oh, for… Get a grip, Kasia. Horses don’t speak English—especially not Narabian bandit horses.
Eventually she gave up trying to coax the horse away. And stepped closer to the man’s prone figure. He hadn’t moved, but still she approached him with caution. He’d looked enormous on the horse, and being flat on his back didn’t seem to diminish his stature much.
A shooting star lit up the dark sky, and she gasped as bright light exploded above her, shedding its glow over the man at her feet. The black headdress covering his head and his nose and mouth had fallen off. He had wavy, dark hair, which stood up in sweaty tufts, but it was his strikingly handsome face that stole her breath.
The sight was imprinted on her retinas as the light died and the shadows returned. High slashing cheekbones, black brows, and sun-burnished skin pulled tight over the perfect symmetry of his features. He had several days’ worth of stubble covering the bottom half of his face, but even with the disguising beard, she’d never seen a man as gorgeous. Even Sheikh Zane couldn’t hold a candle to him, his features less refined than the Sheikh’s but so much more compelling.
So not the point, Kaz. Who cares if he looks like a movie star? He’s still a bandit.
But he was the movie star bandit who had saved her, so there was that.
Gathering every ounce of purpose and determination she possessed, she knelt beside him, close enough to make out his features in the dying light. Why did he look familiar?
Another meteor trailed across the night sky, illuminating his face. Shock combined with the heat burning low in her belly as recognition struck.
She gasped. ‘Prince Kasim?’
Ruler of the Kholadi. He had attended Zane and Cat’s wedding five and a half years ago. She knew all the rumours and gossip about this man—that he was the illegitimate son of one of the old Sheikh’s concubines, thrown out of the palace as a boy when Zane, the Sheikh’s legitimate heir, had been kidnapped from his American mother in LA and brought to Narabia as a teenager. The story went that Kasim had crawled through the desert only to be treated with equal contempt by his mother’s nomadic tribe—until he had forced his way to the top of the Kholadi using the fighting skills he’d honed as he’d grown to manhood.
She’d adored all those stories, they’d been so compelling, so dramatic, and had made him seem even more mythic and dangerously exciting, not that she’d needed to put him on any more of a pedestal after setting eyes on him as a nineteen-year-old at Zane and Cat’s wedding.
Clothed in black ceremonial wear, he’d strode into the palace at the head of a heavily armed honour guard of Kholadi tribesman, and stolen her breath, like that of every other girl and woman there. He’d been tall and arrogant and magnificent—part warrior, all chieftain, all man—and much younger than she’d expected. He must have been in his mid-twenties at that wedding because he’d only been seventeen when he had become the Kholadi Chief. After years of battling with his own father’s army, he had negotiated a truce with Narabia when Zane had come to the throne.
Observing him from afar during the wedding and a few other official visits before she’d left for Cambridge, Kasia had become a little obsessed with the warrior prince. His prowess with women was almost as legendary as his skill in combat and his political agility. She’d adored all the stories that had trickled down into the palace’s women’s quarters after every visit—about how manly his physique was unclothed, how impressive his ‘assets’, how he could make a woman climax with a single glance. Like every other piece of gossip in the quarters, those salacious stories had been embellished and enhanced, but every time she’d had a chance to assess his broad, muscular physique or that rakish, devil-may-care smile from afar, she would fantasise that every word was true—and want to be the next woman on whom he bestowed that smile, and so much more.
He’d been a myth to her then, an object of her febrile adolescent desires, who had been larger than life in every respect. But he was just a man now.
The ripple of heat that she had been trying and failing to ignore sank deeper into her sex.
They didn’t call him the Bad-Boy Sheikh for nothing.
She stared at him, unable to believe she’d pointed a gun at him. Thank goodness she hadn’t actually shot him. Despite his wicked ways, he was a powerful prince. Plus, he’d rescued her. From a sandstorm.
As she pondered that far too romantic thought his eyelids fluttered.
The dark chocolate gaze fixed on her face and the heat in her sex blossomed like a mushroom cloud.
‘Prince Kasim, are you okay?’ she asked, the question popping out in English. She repeated it in Narabian. Did he even speak English?
He grunted again and she noticed for the first time the sheen of sweat on his forehead, and that his gaze, so intense earlier, now looked dazed. Then he replied in accented English.
‘My name is Raif. Only my brother calls me by my Narabian name.’ The husky rasp was expelled on a breath of outrage. ‘And, no I’m not okay, you little witch. You shot me.’
The bullet had hit him?
