Forged in the Desert Heat

by Maisey Yates

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “Though I still question the necessity.”

  “You’ll take a wife one day, won’t you?”

  He tried to imagine it. He had lovers, he had women that shared his bed for a couple of hours in an evening. Women he shared his body with. But that wasn’t a wife. It wasn’t sharing his life.

  And he seriously doubted he had it in him to open himself up that much. To share all of himself. And he had to wonder what sort of life it would be for a wife. Being here in this castle, wandering around alone, going to sleep alone.

  He would not share a bed with a woman, not after he slept. Because that was when the darkness crept in, unfiltered. In sleep, he had no purpose but to dream. And so he had no defense against the insidious, grasping claws of memory, guilt and unending shame.

  Things he shut out in the day. Things he lived forever in the dark. His own private hell. Endless blackness. Weeping, wailing, suffering. Always.

  He didn’t know what he did during those dreams. If all of the screaming was in his head, or if he let it out. None of his men would have ever dared say. The desert kept secrets well.

  But here? Yes, here he might truly find out the depth of the damage done. And he could very well not be able to hide it from his people.

  If he let it, the enormity of everything would crash in on him. Breach the walls that he’d built up so strong, and swallow him whole.

  “Yes,” he said. “I will have to take a wife.”

  “Then you should learn how to dance. So that when you see her...across the crowded ballroom, and your eyes meet, and you make your way to her...you have something better to do than talk about the weather.”

  “I thought I wanted bland.”

  “Not with someone you’re trying to know.”

  “Who says I need to know a wife? I simply need to marry her.”

  “Oh...Zafar. I only have a week left to civilize you?”

  “Only a week until my unveiling. You could stay after. You might very well have to. I had thirty days, if you recall.”

  “I recall,” she said. “Now, give me your hand.”

  He extended his hand to her and she wrapped her slender fingers around it, drawing him into her body. “Hand on my waist,” she said, reaching down and grasping him with her other hand, putting his palm against her lower back. “And this one out.”

  “Music?” he asked.

  “We’ll count. A waltz is a three-count dance.”

  “A waltz? What the hell is this? A Jane Austen fantasy?”

  “You know Jane Austen?”

  “I have been out in the desert for fifteen years. I may have missed popular culture, but not classics.”

  “And you even consider her works to be classics?”

  “I am a barbarian, but I’m not entirely without culture.” He pulled her more tightly against him. “And anyway, one has to amuse themselves somehow.” He paused, looking down at his feet. “Books were a luxury not often affordable. I came upon one, a gift from a merchant I aided. Pride and Prejudice in English. It is the only book I owned.”

  “I never...I never considered that. Not having access to books.”

  He shrugged. “Elizabeth Bennet is nice company. She has a sharp wit. Reminds me a bit of you.”

  “Oh, Zafar, you should have no trouble finding a wife.”

  “Although, I’m not exactly Mr. Darcy.”

  “Not so much.”

  “One, two, three,” she began, her voice in staccato rhythm. “Follow my lead, one, two, three.”

  “I thought men were meant to lead.”

  “Not when they don’t know how to dance. You can lead when you get this down. One, two, three.”

  He followed her steps, but everything in him was focused on where his hand rested, just on the rounded curve of her hip, on the brush of her breasts against his chest.

  “One two three,” she continued, but he could hardly hear. His eyes were focused on her lips, on the movement they made when she said the words. Numbers, an endless repetition. Something that shouldn’t make a man feel anything, much less a fire in his blood that might reduce him to ash on the spot.

  Blazing, hotter than the desert sun. He’d thought he’d withstood the most destructive heat in existence. In the wilderness. In his nightmares.

  But this was a different kind of heat altogether. One that burned but didn’t consume. Endlessly going on and on. Just when he thought the peak had been reached, it only went up higher.

  Hotter.

  What magic did this woman possess? Living out as he did, he could not discount the presence of the supernatural, and part of him wondered if she had some sort of power. Something to snare him.

  Like a Jinn, made of smokeless, scorching fire. Whispering to his soul and telling him to commit sins he knew well he could not.

  And when he looked in her eyes, he saw nothing but clear blue. It made him wonder if the desire for sin came, not from her, but from the depths of his own soul. It shouldn’t be able to speak to him. It should have been choked out, dried and left to rot on the sand, along with his heart.

  Both his heart and soul were so deceitfully wicked. That was why he tried to shut them down. To keep them from having a say in his actions.

  When a man didn’t have a trustworthy conscience he had to learn his purpose in his head and stick to it.

  No matter how soft a woman felt beneath his hand. No matter how enticing the brush of her breasts, the promise of pleasure on her lips.

  “Tell me something bland,” he whispered, trying to ignore the burn beneath his skin. Trying to ignore the rush of blood to his groin. The ache that was building there.

  “I’m counting. Isn’t that bland?”

  He looked at her pale pink lips. “It is not.”

  “I don’t know how I could be more boring.” She kept moving him to soundless music that must be playing in her mind, never losing the beat.

  “It is your mouth,” he said. “I find it distracting.”

  “That isn’t my intent.”

  “Intent doesn’t matter. It’s the result. And the result is that I find myself unable to look away. And when I look at your lips, all I can think of is how it felt for them to touch mine.”

  “I’m engaged,” she said, her tone firm. “Engaged and in love and...”

  He pressed his lips against hers and the dancing stopped. She froze beneath his mouth, her body rigid for a second, and then it softened. Her fingers went to the lapels of his suit jacket, curling in tightly as she rose up on her tiptoes, deepening the kiss.

  If there had been fire before, this was the introduction of oil. A burst of flame that threatened to destroy everything in its wake.

  Her tongue slid against his, and he was pulled into the darkness. There was nothing else, nothing but the slick friction, nothing but her soft, perfect lips.

  Until her, it had been a long time since he’d been kissed. Longer still since a kiss had been simply a kiss. And that simplicity gave it the power to be so much more.

  He wrapped his arms more tightly around her and pulled her flush against his body, bringing those full, gorgeous breasts against his chest as he’d fantasized about doing for...had there ever been a time when he hadn’t? Had there truly been a moment when he hadn’t wanted her?

  When he’d seen her as nothing more than a pale, fragile creature diminishing beneath the Al Sabahan sun? How had he ever seen her that way? In this woman lay the power to bring kingdoms crashing down. To bring a sheikh to his knees.

  He wrenched his mouth from hers and kissed the curve of her neck, his teeth grazing the delicate skin at her throat. He pressed his thumb to the hollow there, felt her pulse pounding wildly. Felt each raw catch of breath.

  He growled, his re
sponse feral, beyond thought or reason. Quite beyond civility.

  She moved her hands to his shoulders, her fingers digging into his skin through the layers of his coat and dress shirt. Not enough. It would never be enough. He pulled away for a moment, shrugging his coat off and letting it fall to the floor.

  Her fingers were fumbling with the knot of his tie. Of all the times, why the hell had he chosen to wear a suit now? A linen tunic was easily cast aside, robes quickly dispensed with. This Western style of dress gave no concession to lust-tinged urgency.

  He struggled with the tie, and the collar of his shirt, tearing something, the tie or his collar, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t care. He was a sheikh. More clothes could be bought. Passion like this...it could only be taken in the moment.

  “Oh...Zafar.”

  That, his name, seemed to suddenly knock her back to reality and she pulled away from him, struggling in his embrace. “Stop,” she said, “stop.”

  He released his hold on her immediately, his hands at his side, his heart thundering so hard he feared it would simply stop before the next beat.

  “What?” he asked, knowing he sounded angry, shocked. But he had felt, for a blissful moment in her arms, as if the blistered, hardened shell that covered him had been rolled back and he’d been exposed, new and tender, but feeling. And it had been incredible.

  It had been beyond anything he’d ever before experienced, even with Fatin, who he’d believed he loved, who—damn his foolish, romantic soul—he had loved.

  Ana’s kiss made him feel like a new man.

  Ana’s kiss was more than he deserved.

  And then the horror of it dawned on him, as the blood receded, as it went back to his brain, he realized what he had done.

  Once is carelessness, twice is the measure of a man.

  Or rather the foolishness of a man’s measure. His body betraying him yet again. His cock controlling him.

  He straightened. “Of course we have to stop.”

  “I’m engaged to Tariq.”

  An animal in him raged, wounded and seeking to lash out. “I don’t give a damn about your engagement!” he roared. “The fate of a nation rests on me. Whether or not you’re faithful to your fiancé is none of my concern. But war is. And I would never compromise the lives of my people, the future of my country to spread your legs. You are not so valuable as that.”

  His head pounding, heart threatening to burst through his chest, he turned and walked away, leaving her standing there, staring after him.

  He had hurt her. He didn’t care.

  It was better he hurt her now. Better he hurt her this way.

  Images flashed before his mind, images that were curled and burned around the edges, tinged in red. Blood soaked and inserted so deep into his mind it could never be removed.

  It was this palace. These walls. That woman.

  He wanted to vomit. He stopped walking and pressed his head to the wall, the cold stone cooling his blood. He stood for a moment, breathing through the nausea, through the pain that seemed to be everywhere. His mind, his treacherous member and his heart, as events from the past wove their way into the present and tangled themselves into an indecipherable mass in his mind’s eye.

  Violence was the only thing that stood out clearly. The reminder of why he must resist her. Of what he must spare her and all of his people from.

  He pulled himself away from the wall and headed toward the gym. Simply walking away wouldn’t be enough. There had to be a consequence. His body had betrayed him. And he would have to mete out punishment.

  * * *

  That was how she found him, two hours later. In the gym, soaked in sweat, knuckles raw, split and bleeding from punching the bag repeatedly.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, standing there, feeling numb.

  She was still dizzy and hot and ashamed from that kiss, and after sulking in her room for a while she’d decided she had to go and find him and...something. Explain herself. Scream at him. Tell him he didn’t know her life and he couldn’t judge her.

  And then she’d walked into his gym and seen him like this. Like a man possessed.

  “Zafar,” she said, “what are you doing?”

  He looked at her this time, eyes black, soulless. He turned away, rolled his shoulders forward, sweat rolling down his back, running over sharp, defined muscles, down to the dip at his spine, just before the curve of his butt, barely covered by his descending suit pants.

  He punched the bag again, a spray of pink sweat spreading through the air on contact.

  “Stop!” she said, the shout torn from deep inside of her. She didn’t care if she was loud. She didn’t care if she was a nuisance. She didn’t care if she made him angry or made herself seem less useful, or more of a burden.

  She shouted it, let it fill the silence of the space.

  It seemed to jolt him out of whatever world he was lost in. “What do you want?”

  “Maybe you should tape your knuckles before you do that.”

  He looked down at his hands and lifted one shoulder. “Why?”

  “So you don’t turn your fists into hamburger.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean it doesn’t matter? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I deserve it,” he spat.

  “Why? For kissing me?”

  “For endangering my entire country, yet again, because I can’t seem to think with my brain.” The implication was crude, and to Ana, it felt like a slap in the face.

  “It only endangers things if I tell. I won’t.”

  “It doesn’t change my actions, you telling or not. It doesn’t change the fact that I haven’t.”

  “Were you kissing me because you love me?”

  Those dark eyes swept her up and down. “No.”

  She nodded slowly. “I think you’ve changed. Granted, I didn’t know the boy you used to be, but the man standing in front of me would never sacrifice anything for love. I doubt he could even feel it.”

  “I thank you.”

  “It wasn’t a compliment.”

  “It can be nothing else to me. I have a country to defend, to take into the modern era, and I can’t waste surplus energy on abstract emotions that don’t matter.”

  “How can love not matter?”

  “Why would it?”

  “Because what drives you if not love? Don’t you love your people?”

  “I am loyal to them. I can hardly love them.”

  “Love is the fuel that keeps loyalty burning,” she said, not sure where she’d found the strength to argue with the man standing in front of her. Because this wasn’t her civilized dinner companion, or her dance partner. This was a wholly different beast. A man with scars on his skin and his soul, both cracked and bleeding. A man who radiated barely contained rage and violence.

  “Is that right? Is that what keeps your engagement to your precious Tariq so strong? Loyalty fueled by love.”

  “No,” she said, the realization creeping over her slowly. “That’s not it. It’s...my dad. I...I have to do this, Zafar, because he loves me. Because when everything in his life crumbled, when everything in my life crumbled, we were all each other had, and I feel like if I don’t do this, I run the risk of losing the one person who was always there for me. The person who gave so much for my happiness.”

  “What did he give you, Ana? What did your precious father ever give to you? You said yourself, you were the one who organized his life. You were the one who held it together. He sent you to school, used you as a party planner when you were home.”

  “He didn’t leave me!” she shouted. “And you wouldn’t think that would be too spectacular for a parent, but my mother did. So something must be difficult about me. Something must make people want to be a
way from me. But he stuck it out. He stayed. He gave me a home, and a place to come back to. I owe him for that.”

  “And you don’t want to lose him.”

  “No. I don’t. Does that make me sad and pathetic? If so then fine. But I’ve proven that I’m easy to walk away from, so I think I have just cause to feel paranoid.”

  “You are not easy to walk away from. Even a man with ice in his chest can see that.”

  “You walked away, too. So I think basically it’s all a bunch of crap.”

  “I saved you. I ransomed you.”

  “So now you want a medal for not leaving me out in the desert with a bunch of criminals?”

  “I spent the last cent I had on you. I thought it might mean something. That’s all. Of course I wouldn’t have left you there. I have many faults, and I am heartless, make no mistake, but I also know what is right. And right is not leaving an innocent out there like that.”

  She shook her head. “And when there’s no emotion behind that kind of sentiment, it means very little. Hard to have my heart warmed when I know that moment was as fraught for you as the moment you have to choose what color underwear to put on in the morning.”

  He advanced on her, and she fought the urge to shrink back. She never considered herself brave. She’d never considered herself outspoken, or a fighter, but Zafar made her feel just strong enough to take on the world, somehow. Even when he was the main part of the world she was taking on.

  He made her feel loud.

  “Intent is irrelevant, as is emotion. Action is all that matters. Result, is all that matters. I poured my heart out to the woman I loved, because of love, and that love didn’t stop her from relaying that information to the enemies of my family. It didn’t stop them from brutally killing my mother and father. In front of me.”

  That stopped her short, cold dread making her fingers tingle. “Zafar...”

  “Intentions mean nothing,” he ground out. “Not when everyone is dead and you’re sent out to the desert to rot. Tell me then, what did love mean? What did it fuel?”

  “Zafar...”

  “You can think what you want, what you need. But love is a trap, Ana. A lie. It is being used, in this case, to keep you in line. To manipulate you as it was used to manipulate me. That’s the purpose of love.”