To Touch a Sheikh

“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

“S andstorm!”

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.”