Desire In The Desert: Sheikh's Rule

“Saffiya thinks I should mind my own business. But...” Yuften hesitated. “You have come for information and I have promised you that.”

Saffiya shook her head, as if contradicting him, and leaned over to whisper something to him.

“She says that it could be one of our daughters, and that is true. Despite being Berber, he and the others are up to no good. There were rumors later that some of them had killed. Who or what, I don’t know. But I fear for the girl.”

“What are you saying?” Kate leaned forward, her shoulder brushing Emir’s and heat seemed to radiate between them as neither moved, neither pulled away.

“They had a woman with them. Her head and face were covered by a veil.”

He stopped and no one said anything, for a veil was not unusual.

“I didn’t get close but she didn’t seem to belong with them. Her clothes were different. She wasn’t one of us. She—” he said with a nod over his shoulder to Saffiya who, despite having stood, hovered by his side, as if to ensure that everything he said met with her approval “—has an eye for clothes. ‘City clothes’ she called them.”

It was clear that while Yuften was acting as if he was in charge of the household, Saffiya was the silent voice of command in this house. She nodded, her eyes gleaming with approval.

Kate leaned forward, her attention on their host. “How did they act toward her?”

Yuften frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.” He turned to Emir. “They left almost immediately. I didn’t have a good feeling about it, but there was nothing illegal, nothing...”

“Did the woman with them seem upset or distressed?” Kate asked.

Yuften shook his head and was about to speak when Saffiya interrupted him.

“This. Here.” Her English was fractured and unsure. “She said nothing but...” Saffiya pulled a colorful, beaded bracelet from her pocket. The bracelet was thin, the beads small, a combination of yellow, emerald-green and red, delicate and obviously old. “She dropped.” She whispered something to Yuften, who nodded.

“The woman tossed the bracelet to her.”

The expression on Emir’s face would have frightened Kate if she hadn’t come to know him in the intense hours they’d been together. His lips were tight and his dark eyes seemed to gleam with anger.

Yuften’s wife nodded as she clasped her hands and moved closer to him.

“It belonged to Tara,” Emir said, his lips tightening and his dark eyes pools of pain as he sat still for a minute. No one spoke. Finally he reached to take the bracelet. “She’s worn that bracelet since the day she received it. It was our mother’s and Tara took it after she died. It was small enough, the strand of beads, to go with any other piece of jewelry. She never took it off. I normally wouldn’t remember such a thing but Tara spoke of it often. She always said how it reminded her of Mother. It was as if in doing so she was making sure not just we, but she, never forgot.” He shook his head. “As if I ever could.”

“Do you know what direction they went?” Kate stepped in, purposely changing the subject as she sensed that what Emir had just heard and then revealed had been emotionally overwhelming.

“South. I heard one of them mention Ajeddig as a place they were going to. They did not know I was close,” Yuften said.

Saffiya nodded.

“It means nothing to me. I know no one and nothing of that name.” He shrugged. “Flower. What is that?”

A place name again was the first thought that ran through Kate’s mind for the word was the same one that Tara’s guard, Ahmed, had spoken the last time he’d been able to reveal anything. And yet the map in the plane had revealed nothing. She needed to look at it again. There had to have been something she missed.

“We need the map,” she said.

“Come—” Saffiya gestured “—we have books.”

Kate followed her as she moved into a smaller room behind the cooking area. Her slim hands lifted the edge of her traditional robe that flowed elegantly around her but threatened to dust the rough cobbles as she walked. Her yellow flip-flops snapped against the stone floor, seeming to keep time as she led Kate up a number of stairs at the back of the room and into another small room. This room seemed to be apart from the rest of the house and held two shelves, each filled with rows of books.

Kate looked around. She hadn’t been expecting this. Of the few Berber homes she’d visited, none had had a room dedicated to books. But then, none had been as isolated as this. And even though there were only two shelves that were half the length of the wall they were attached to, it was still unique. In one corner was a wooden school desk similar to any that might be seen in a grade-school classroom in early twentieth-century America. On top of the desk was a metal can full of pens and pencils.

“You teach your children?”

Saffiya nodded with a smile and then pointed to the shelf. “Map,” she said as she pulled out an oversize book with no dust jacket and a faded red cover.

“Thank you.” Kate took the atlas but continued to scan the shelf. Like the atlas, the remaining books were mainly dust-jacket free with faded red and brown covers, each with a film of dust, despite the claims of homeschooling.

Saffiya backed up then turned and went out the door.

Kate glanced over the titles and realized that the majority of the books weren’t in English and that the few that were, were history books. As she took a step back, she instinctively felt like she was no longer alone. She turned to see Emir regarding her solemnly from the doorway.

“Old schoolbooks will get us nowhere,” he said.

“I’m not so sure,” she said.

She opened the atlas, hoping she could find something, that the promise of a direction would somehow ease his worry, and knowing that nothing short of finding his sister ever could.

“Nineteen-oh-one,” she murmured. She flipped the pages slowly and then stopped. “Africa.” She walked over to the desk, where she put the open atlas down. She gingerly turned a page, exposing another seemingly frail, yellowed page to the flickering light of the candle Saffiya had left for her.

“Kate, the light is bad, the book is old, there’s nothing.”

Emir’s hands were on her shoulders as he turned her around. She held back a shiver of pleasure as his touch evoked a memory of the earlier kiss and the truth that she wanted so much more.

“And we have nothing but time, at least tonight,” she said, her voice low and husky. “Bear with me.”

“I’ve never seen anyone so resolved,” he said as his thumb skimmed along her cheek, his touch like a caress.

“Haven’t you?” she replied as she met his ebony eyes with all the resolve she was feeling. Time’s short but...” Her gaze went around the room. “We have no time to waste.”

Chapter Twelve

Despite her earlier words, minutes passed.

Kate had taken a seat at the small desk while Emir had taken a position leaning against the wall. Her long legs were stretched out sideways, her body twisted as she bent over the book. The smell of pipe smoke wove into the room from the room below. The low murmur of voices and the high-pitched laugh of a child broke the quiet.

Another minute went by and then two before Kate turned and smiled at him and something caught in his chest. The sight of her dogged persistence made him think that anything was possible, that between the two of them they would find Tara.

Now she looked up with a troubled expression. “I think I’ve found it.” She stood, the atlas in her hands.

He came over to her. His hands covered hers as he reached to take the atlas from her. The heat from her hands reminded him of how she’d felt in his arms, how he wanted her there again.

“No,” she said, pulling the book back. “Let me show you.”

His gaze followed her finger as she pointed to the oasis she was talking about.

She looked at him with the excitement of discovery in her eyes and something else he couldn’t name. And the scent of her, coconut and something unidentifiable but equally enticing, would be his undoing as it seemed to call to him. He needed to focus.

“Emir?”

Her voice brought him back, for it was soft and husky, and oddly commanding.

“I think my hunch was right. Ajeddig is the name of an oasis in 1901. I don’t remember seeing any such place on the current map, but here it’s clear.”

“An extinct oasis?” His gaze clashed with hers. It wasn’t unheard of—water disappeared and, with it, the plants, animals and the people.

“What if there was still water left, not enough for a community but for a few people?” The question she posed hung for a moment between them. Outside the room, they could hear the low voices of their hosts.

“Wouldn’t others know of it?”

“Not necessarily, not if it was obscure, hidden.” She ran a finger over the area she’d been studying as if mapping their route. “Or maybe so small as to be of little interest.”

He thought of the possibility she’d raised, but there were still so many unknowns. “We could drive miles out of our way in order to find out there’s nothing. We could...”

“It used to be a good-size community from the looks of it. A village, anyway—a hundred people, roughly, on a guess.” She spoke quickly, clearly excited by the discovery. “What better place to hide than an oasis that everyone believes no longer exists?”

She looked up at him and he leaned down and met her halfway. His lips roved over hers as he drew her into his arms. Her softness pressed against him, making him want so much more. Her mouth opened, inviting more. She was sweet and hot and... He pulled back. The last thing they needed was to be discovered, an unmarried couple making out in their host’s library.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he moved away from her.

“You’d better not be,” she whispered huskily.

“Come here,” she said, the atlas in her hands, and when he was again beside her she showed him something else that excited them both. “Two hundred miles east of here, but in the same direction as our extinct oasis. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“El Dewar,” he said with a frown, trying not to notice the smell of her or the feel of her shoulder rubbing against his arm. It was as though fear and anger had merged with passion and become an unstoppable comet. He wanted to find his sister, kill her kidnappers and make love to Kate, and not necessarily in that order. He took her hand with his as he met her eyes. “Straight through the Sahara. There are no roads.”

“Emir,” she said in a soft tone, lower than normal, and one that hinted at other things. But what she had to say was all business. “Looking at this map, where the oasis is situated, if you wanted to go there, you’d have to drive through El Dewar or, at the least, near it. It’s a tough drive, but we knew this wasn’t going to be easy. I think we stop at El Dewar tomorrow, ask a few questions.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “Maybe someone knows something.”

Emir’s pulse leaped at the possibilities.

But as he looked more closely at the landscape revealed on the old atlas, his heart sank. If this was where they had Tara, they were well defended. “If this is right—they’d be backing an almost-impermeable approach.” His thumb traced the way the map outlined rises of rock and cliff that wound in a horseshoe around what had once been a desert paradise. “It would be almost impossible to get to them, sneak in, without climbing the hills behind them.”

“Difficult,” Kate corrected, “not impossible. I’m betting we could work our way in through the rock, over the hills—whatever. There’s got to be a way. If, of course, this theory is even right.”

Emir put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her. As his tongue met hers and her breasts pressed against him, it seemed like time stood still. But it was only seconds before he released her and before they took the atlas to show their host to ask him about the existence of the oasis.

“It has been uninhabited since before the days of my grandfather. Many of them moved here when it dried up. They hoped to get away from the desert,” Yuften said solemnly. “I did not remember the name but the location is unforgettable.”

Hours later they tried to get some sleep.

For Emir, it was impossible, for he was more aware of Kate with every second he spent in her presence. He’d kissed her one too many times when he shouldn’t have kissed her at all. Maybe if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t want her like he’d never wanted another woman. Her mat was feet from his and a curtain divider away, and it didn’t matter.

The sound of her soft breathing through the remaining hours of the night had driven him crazy. Each toss and turn, every sound, alerted him to her nearness. The cool desert air had chilled him. He’d wondered if she was cold. But there was nothing he could offer her, nothing except his own body heat, and that was unacceptable, but only because of their host. She was too near and yet too far. Worry for Tara, desire for Kate—the torrent of emotion caused the earlier headache to return, but again even the usual two aspirins were unable to stop the pounding as sunlight began to threaten the night.

They were up and preparing to leave as the sun streaked pink across the eastern sky.

* * *

TARA SHIFTED. She had to use the facilities in the worst way. She never thought an everyday necessity that one usually didn’t pay much attention to would become her Achilles’ heel. She squirmed, shifting onto her side, taking the pressure off her full bladder. She couldn’t risk drawing attention to herself. She’d seen how her captors had looked at her as the sun rose. She’d been in this hell for over twenty-four hours.

“Find me Emir, please,” she whispered to the brother who, of all of them, had been her ultimate protector, even against the gentle teasing of her other brothers. He had always stood up for her. All her brothers were her heroes, but Emir stood out among even them. Maybe because he was the eldest. It didn’t matter why. What mattered was that she needed him. She’d been wrong and she’d do anything to undo what she’d done, but that was impossible, she knew that. She prayed her repentance would be enough.

She pulled her knees up tight and took a deep breath, but it didn’t help. Her tormentor was heading her way. His advances had become more and more intimate and she knew that the last time she’d been lucky.

She knew him and yet he was like a stranger, a frightening stranger. The man she remembered had been an average-size man with a glint to his dark eyes that indicated he loved a joke. And she’d told him many, at least when she’d been younger, before tragedy had struck.

Now he was lean to the point of skinny and the planes of his face were rough, wrinkled and almost feral. And then there was the scar. It wasn’t the horrid scar that disturbed her the most, but more the way those dark eyes skimmed over her in an almost hungry way that made her draw back and pull her knees even closer to her chest as if that would somehow protect her.

“What do you want?” she asked and realized that she might know exactly what he wanted. She could see the lust in his eyes. There was a time when she couldn’t imagine him looking at her like that and, in fact, in all her life he never had. But he didn’t always see her as Tara anymore. There were times when he had, briefly, in the beginning. She’d pointed out who she was once, but she now had a bruise on her cheekbone that ached when she touched it, to remind her to not do that again.

“I’ve wanted you for so long and yet you only looked at him.” He frowned as his knuckle skimmed her cheek.

Who? she thought. She tried to think clearly through the confusion of his words.

“Who?” she whispered. She was both scared to engage and scared to not know what he was speaking of.

He cursed and raised his clenched fist.

She couldn’t back down. She fought not to do just that.

“Your husband, of course. Who else?” He relaxed his fist and ran his hand through his grizzled, uncombed hair. He looked away from her and then turned back, a hard look in his eyes. “How did this happen?” he asked. His eyes were now, seconds later, reflecting genuine concern as he looked at the bruise on her cheekbone. It was as if he could not remember his actions from one moment to the next.

Tara fought with her control but it was so difficult to not pull away. She couldn’t, not yet.

“I would have given you everything,” he said, his voice soft and yet oddly hoarse. There was an edge to it that hadn’t been there before. “But, no, you wanted Ruhul.”

Was it possible? Ruhul Al-Nassar? Her father? Who did he think she was? Her heart was pounding so hard that she could barely think. But she knew in her gut it was critical that she was amiable and went along with whatever insane belief he had.

“Why do you shrink from me?”

She looked up at him with every ounce of willpower she had and smiled, hoping it was sweet and innocent, as her insides clenched so tight they hurt.

“I’ve wanted you for so long, Raja,” he said gently, as if repetition would somehow get him what he wanted.

It didn’t matter who she was. In the last few hours a new horror had been foisted on her. It was clear he was confused, at best. At worst, insane. She only wanted to curl up at the horror of it all. But she knew that wouldn’t save her. She had to act out his obvious delusion. If he believed her to be her mother, then that was who she would be. Tara knew it was a survival tactic on her part. She’d learned that and more in a number of psychology classes.

It was a horrible role to play, a terrible thing to contemplate. She wasn’t her mother.

Tara tried not to show her disgust or fear as his hand continued to stroke her cheek. She had to stop this before it was unstoppable, for he was quick this time and his hand had dropped from her cheek and was inside her blouse, under her bra. It was clear what he wanted and that this time he might not be ready to wait.

Fear combined with her full bladder and suddenly she couldn’t control either. She peed her pants.

She saw his eyes look downward to the stream of urine pooling around her and saw the look of disgust on his face. He stood, took two steps back and strode back to the others.

For the first time since her horror began, Tara had the upper hand.

Hopefully her brothers would find her before her time ran out.

Chapter Thirteen

Tuesday, September 15, 10:00 a.m.

They were heading south and east with a slight wind that was causing the unseasonal light rain to lash against the windshield, turning the sand hitting the glass into a paste that slid along the window, obscuring the view. The Jeep’s wipers beat a losing rhythm that wasn’t enough to keep the window clear. They’d had to stop frequently to clear the clogged wipers.

The charts Kate had checked on her flight to Morocco had indicated the local weather had been unpredictable for the last few weeks. Now, that same unpredictability, the unseasonal and unusual rain, was making for slow going, and the abnormally cool daytime temperature wasn’t helping.

“You’re okay?” he asked. His hand ran along her wrist and the heat that ran through her at his touch made her shiver.

“Fine.” She nodded, pulling her hand free and pushing a strand of hair back. It didn’t help. Her nerves were on edge—and not because of the assignment but because of his nearness, because of what he made her feel. It wasn’t how it was supposed to be and yet that awareness had been between them from the beginning.

The Jeep rocked as Emir made a slight turn to the right, adjusting for the ridges in the sand and the breeze that was now a buffeting wind. The vehicle slid as the tires kicked up sand chewed out of the ruts it was creating.

Her finger was on the map, marking where they were and where they were going. The journey had been slow. They’d had to adjust their direction a number of times. She reached for the grab bar with her right hand as the Jeep’s back tires spun and for a moment it seemed like they might get stuck in the middle of nowhere.

She looked at the compass. They were going by latitude and longitude. It was a get-back-to-basics way to travel. Even the Jeep was basic, built for this type of expedition without tracking or mapping. It reminded her how easy Google Maps had made everything.

She glanced at Emir and saw the brutal way he clasped the vehicle’s steering wheel, as if it were someone’s neck.

They drove in silence and yet with the promise of hope between them.

The landscape began to change as another hour ticked by. Now the flat sand and occasional rolling dunes had become steeper and were framed by larger ridges that signaled imminent foothills. The rain was gone and the desert looked like it always had—clearly, like there’d been no rain in months.

“We’re getting close,” Kate said. “Maybe twenty miles from El Dewar.” So far they’d made poor time, a combination of both the terrain and the weather. “No one knows the desert like the Berbers,” she added as Emir navigated a small dune. “Hopefully they know something more at El Dewar that can add to what we learned at Kaher.”

“I’m betting that it won’t be so much a matter of them knowing but of them telling us,” he said.

The side windows were closed but still the sand seemed to seep in. She pulled a tissue from the packet on the dash and wiped the corners of her eyes.

His hands tightened on the wheel as the front tires began to dig into the sand. He turned to the right and she knew he was hoping to veer out of the rut before they got stuck.

The consistency of the sand was subject to change and dependent on so many things. In an odd way, like snow. It would take all his focus to drive and navigate the unstable conditions. The desert was a challenge to drive at any time and now, with worry, little sleep and what might be a brewing storm, it was even more so.

She was relieved as the vehicle again gained traction, but ahead of them was a new difficulty. A tall bank of sand dunes stretched out on either side, with no end in sight, and blocked much of the horizon.

“In my youth we used to drive the dunes for fun,” he said, looking at her with concern. “We were lucky.” Minutes later his mouth tightened as he looked ahead.

“What’s wrong?” Kate asked and frowned at the dunes. “Can we go around?”

“Possibly,” he said. “But that could set us back hours.”

“Not an option.”

“I agree, but these dunes aren’t going to be a cakewalk,” he said. “They’re whaleback dunes.”

They both knew what that meant. Whaleback dunes were dunes whose front incline was hard from being buffeted by the wind. It was the back half that could pose a problem. Depending on the direction of the wind, the sand could be crumbly and difficult to navigate.

He glanced at her. “You ready to do this?”

“I’ve been in since the beginning,” she said simply.

And with a slight smile that was more a tightening of his full lips, he slowed the Jeep. “When we reach them, watch the horizon, if it seems quite sharp at the top, then we have problems on the other side,” he said.

And she knew he meant there was the possibility of soft sand, softer than they had traveled through, and the type that could easily cause a rollover. The hope was that the sand on the other side of the dune was hard. Based on the way the wind had been buffeting them, she was sure they had a good chance of getting the latter.

He squeezed her hand and she looked down, aware of how large his hands were and, despite the gentle touch, how strong.

She pulled her hand from beneath his when all she wanted to do was to fold into his arms. There was no time for such thoughts. She forced her mind to the moment, to the challenge ahead of them.

“Let’s do this,” she said as if there was some chance that he wouldn’t. “I’m fine,” she added at the look of concern he gave her.

“You’re more than fine,” he said, turning his attention to the bank of dunes.