Desert Jewels & Rising Stars

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘We need to go back to sleep.’ She heard the choked note in her voice, and cursed it. But desire was too new to her to fight; she didn’t have the weapons.

  ‘You sleep, Hana. One of us needs to keep watch in case they come back. Don’t argue with me,’ he added, his voice hard, when her mouth opened. ‘The concussion’s barely there now. You don’t need to watch over me any more.’

  She frowned, her eyes searching his face for fatigue or stress.

  He turned away. ‘Just do it, Hana.’ He added with a sigh when she shook her head, ‘After a man becomes this aroused, it’s difficult to roll over and sleep. If you stay awake, I’ll take it as a signal that you want me to keep touching you…and you want to keep touching me.’

  The blunt words shocked her, fascinated her. She’d aroused him with such a simple touch of her fingers over his hand and arm, a few brushes of her body against his?

  I was aroused only by the way he looked at me. I was totally lost in him.

  She still was aroused…and an hour later, lying rigidly still, she wondered if it was the same for women as men, because she couldn’t stop the heated pounding deep inside, the lilt and throb of her blood, when the cause of her sweet burden sat but three feet away in exactly the same predicament as her own, guarding her rest.

  Chapter Five

  FUNNY, but of all the attacks Alim had imagined during their crawling and jumping life on the run, the one he hadn’t thought of was the most likely to kill them. He’d thought of lions, rhinos or hippos, even a warthog, but not—

  He awoke with a start. He’d finally fallen asleep after hours of watching her. He’d known the whole time that she wasn’t asleep; she was restless with the same ache of desire low in her belly that he felt, and knowing that only made it worse.

  How could she have seen the mess of congealed flesh and the patches of grafted skin covering his torso, and still want him, be so vividly aroused by his touch? In all his life he’d never known a woman to have such an extreme reaction to anything he did, even his smile. He’d laughed, and she couldn’t drag her eyes from him…

  And when he’d talked of Fadi, instead of the usual numbness and agony combined, the feeling of being stuck in an unending dark tunnel, he’d felt—relief. Not forgiveness—he doubted that would ever come—but…he’d thought of Fadi that night, and smiled, remembering other parts of that day. The way big brother had done his best to keep up with him around the track; the laughing challenges; the relaxed grin on Fadi’s face. Alim hadn’t seen him let go of his responsibilities since—since he’d had to take over running the small nation at the age of twenty.

  He’d forgotten the joy of that day, until Hana reminded him without even asking.

  Could the woman who was his saviour also become his miracle? Was it possible?

  At last she’d slept as dusk began filling the sky with its violent magenta. Though he’d known it was time to leave, sleep had rushed on him without his knowledge.

  How long had he slept? Day had long since given way to the deep velvet of night—

  Rustling in Hana’s backpack alerted him to why he’d awoken so suddenly. Some small creature had found their stores.

  He grabbed the bag and tipped it upside down—and swore when he saw the damage wrought by the two small mouse-like creatures trying to bolt with their booty. The plastic double bags that were supposed to stop any scent escaping were torn to shreds, and the mice had already eaten two bars, by his count, and were into another two. With an incoherent sound of frustration, he dived for one of the bars the creatures were running off with in their mouths.

  The noise alerted Hana. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Mice,’ he muttered, jumping after the scurrying mouse, and yelling in triumph as he managed to snatch the bar back—or what remained of it.

  With a cry of distress, Hana dived after the other creature with one of the bars, but it disappeared down a hole in the creek bed with its find.

  Hana closed her eyes in despair. ‘We couldn’t afford to lose a single bite of food. We’re only travelling eight to ten kilometres a night as it is. Without enough food, we’ll never make it to the refugee camp.’

  ‘We’ll make it,’ he said, touching her face in reassurance.

  She jerked away so hard he thought she’d fall. ‘Do you think royal commands will magically protect us from starvation, my lord?’ She rubbed her eyes in tired frustration. ‘Have you ever had to worry that you’ll starve to death?’

  He couldn’t answer. Even on the run, he was a multibillionaire who helped others by choice, but could and did return after a food and medicine run to his luxury villa on the beach at Mombasa. If he was far from home he could stay at a hotel, wash off the grime, order a five-star meal and sleep on a cloud-soft mattress.

  ‘Have you?’ he asked, low.

  ‘Why do you think I didn’t have enough energy bars? I had hundreds of them, boxes full when I came, and vitamins too—I spent all the money I’d earned on them. I fed the villagers to stop them feeding grass to their children. I fed them until the first harvest came through, and then the supply trucks made it past Sh’ellah’s lines.’ Her gaze didn’t waver. ‘You think you know about suffering? You have no idea.’

  Her words shook him to his core. He’d known the suffering of loss—his parents had died when he was only nine, and Fadi’s death three years ago had devastated him—but he’d never gone to bed with his belly aching for sustenance; he’d never known desperation to stay alive another day, or to save his children.

  This was the most uncomfortable he’d ever been in a physical way.

  He’d thought himself strong for not complaining about living on energy bars and travelling by foot all night—but he’d never been more wrong. Or more shamed with a few graphic words.

  To hide the unaccustomed emotion, he broke the remains of the mouse-eaten energy bar in half, handing one piece to her. ‘For what we are about to eat, I am truly grateful.’

  She lifted hers in silent toasting, and ate.

  ‘Oh, one thing,’ he said in a conversational tone as he helped her pick up the plastic and ruined food. When she looked up, he smiled. ‘Don’t call me my lord. You know my name.’

  The little smile vanished. ‘We are what we are. You can run away from your life all you want, and tell people to call you Alim, but you’re still the sheikh of Abbas al-Din. And no matter how many times you call me a dawn star, I’m the daughter of a miner.’

  Burning fury filled him, but, tempered by long training, he was able to speak with careful restraint. ‘Why is my brave saviour making excuses, hiding behind birth and titles?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s what people do. King or sheikh, policeman or lawyer, rich or poor, imam or priest, father, mother, man and woman; it’s who we are. They’re roles assigned to us by the titles we bear, what we do with our lives.’

  ‘What we do, yes—and what you do saves lives. So why are you putting yourself in chains, limiting yourself by birth? I don’t expect you to be anything but who you are. I hope for the same from you.’

  She sighed and kept her face averted, her eyes closed. ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘No, you’re right, it isn’t. You’re protecting yourself from getting too close to me,’ he said slowly, not knowing what he was going to say until he heard the words. ‘We both chose to run from our reality and live this half-life, pretending that by saving others we can justify our past choices. If I am what I am, the same principle applies to you. No matter how far you run, you can’t deny whatever it is that made you leave your family behind.’ He gathered her hands into his and looked into her eyes. ‘And no matter your status in life, to me, you’ll always be a queen in my eyes, my Sahar Thurayya who saved my life, and made me a man again.’

  For a moment she stared at him, and though he couldn’t see it, he felt the blood pounding in her veins and her pupils dilating with the desire too intense and glowing to leave room for doubt. He was only holding her hands, and she wanted him…
>
  So her words shocked him. ‘My delusions might be thin, my lord, but they’re all I have, and I’m not ready to let go of them. So please leave me to mine, and I’ll leave you to yours.’

  Simple words, yet they cut to his heart like the sharpest of scimitars, tearing at their desire and leaving it slashed and bloodied on the ground.

  She turned back to cleaning the rubbish without a word. The shining, impish dawn star who’d made this hell of a journey the happiest time he’d known in years had withdrawn again, replaced by the quiet, uncommunicative woman of the first day.

  Would he never learn to keep his thoughts to himself?

  Coward, coward. The word rang in her head like a shrieking alarm, awakening her from this half-life, as he’d called it. Pretending what we do justifies our past choices.

  Did he have any idea how much he’d hurt her?

  He’d taken her hands so sweetly, arousing her as much as he terrified her; then he’d dissected her life choices like an emotional surgeon. Tearing her soul to shreds without knowing the reason why she’d run in the first place…and realisation hit her with the thought.

  She wasn’t falling in love with him; she was in love with him. God help her for the world’s biggest idiot, she’d let her guard down and fallen for a man she could never have. A beautiful stranger whose soul she’d recognised in moments; a smile from her dreams. At the worst time she’d met her soulmate, all her fantasies come to life in one man…

  You can never have him. You’ll always be alone, she reminded herself in fierce pain, and huddled a little further away from the warm, living temptation just a touch away.

  Hana tried her best to keep that distance every night as they travelled, but, oh, he made it so hard by staying only a step from her at all times, kept talking to her as if she were answering…and he kept smiling, making her want to step right into his arms…

  Three interminable days later, when the thin crescent moon was high in the night sky, the creek bed that had served as their cover had widened and flattened to half-marshy ground and the worst of the desert had given way to thin, straggling bush, they finally reached the elusive water source.

  She moved forward, out of the cover of the trees, but, too close as usual, he pulled her back. ‘Wait.’

  She frowned, then nodded as she saw the barbed wire stretching around the waterhole. A warlord had control, and someone was bound to be watching.

  ‘We’re out of water!’ She’d been hoping for one miracle in their quest: an unguarded water source. ‘What do we do now?’

  Alim’s grin was startling in the deep night. ‘We rely on the trained ecological engineer to find water.’

  She blinked. ‘I thought you were a research chemist?’

  ‘I took geology and environmental studies to balance the knowledge.’ He moved back into the shadows of the trees. ‘Look for the tallest tree here, where the shrubs are bunched closest together.’

  With new respect for this ruler of her ancestral home who hadn’t once complained on their desperate journey, who’d given help as much as he’d needed it, and who cared about the planet as well as fame and his country, she did as he asked.

  ‘Quick and quiet as you can,’ he whispered. ‘I doubt the forest will be left unchecked all night. It’s too tempting for enemies to hide in.’ He grinned at her with dogged determination.

  He was being strong for her; he knew she was falling down into despair. She nodded in shame and turned away, searching the foliage for where it was thickest.

  She gasped when she almost tripped over him some minutes later. He was on the ground, digging hard and fast with his fingers beside a thick tree surrounded by bushy scrub. He shook his head when she was about to speak, and tipped his head in a western direction.

  There were lights, and movement.

  She fell to her knees and dug beside him in silence. The ground was damp, growing wetter by the moment.

  ‘We don’t have time for the dirt to settle. It’ll be muddy, but drinkable,’ he murmured against her ear as he filled a canteen with a cupped hand.

  She shivered with the feel of his breath inside her skin. How could the tentative touches they’d shared feel so incredibly intimate? How did she want him so much all the time?

  ‘Any water’s good water,’ she murmured. All urge to celebrate their find had been smothered by the danger so close. And she kept digging.

  ‘Move,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘They’re coming. The bole of the tree over the other side’s been emptied by honey-gatherers, and the bees are long gone.’

  ‘The hole in the ground,’ she whispered frantically. ‘They’ll know—’

  ‘Go.’

  Obeying the imperative command, she slipped into the tree. She watched as he covered the hole with all the branches and leaves scattered about, used a branch with leaves to clean off what footprints he could. She ached to help, but knew she’d only ruin his handiwork.

  The lights and voices came closer. Go, Alim, run!

  As if he heard her heart’s cry he lifted his head, listening for a moment; then he stood on the branch and, with a mighty leap, he landed three feet up the nearest tree.

  ‘What was that?’ a voice cried in Swahili from not far away. ‘I heard something.’

  Alim shinned his way up the trunk of the tree, fast and quiet, his knees gripping the bole as his hands reached for a thick branch, the backpack slung across his shoulders. He moved so fast he was almost a blur in the night. As he jumped for the branch, he hung in the air for a moment; then he swung his legs up like a gymnast, and landed face down. He lay along the branch, making himself as flat as possible. He reached for the backpack and did something with it, what she couldn’t see; but now the men wouldn’t find him unless they shone a light on that particular branch of that one tree.

  But they probably knew about the hole she crouched in. She held her breath, pushed her back hard against the hollowed-out wood, and waited.

  The light seemed shockingly bright as half a dozen torches filled the small copse at once. ‘It came from somewhere around here.’

  Then a laugh came, followed by others, and she almost gasped in relief. She let the air out, taking in fresh and held it again before one of the men spoke. ‘A branch fell, that’s all.’

  The others made fun of the man who’d called the noise, and after a quick sweep of the area they all moved off.

  Soon, Hana heard the sound of a Jeep revving up and driving away—but as they’d done the day before, she stayed still, her thighs and calves cramping and shooting pains darting from her hips to shoulders. For long minutes she heard only the sound of a locust as it whirred from place to place in search of food.

  ‘Hana, I’ve got the water. We need to leave.’

  The whisper was startling in the silence. Hana jumped, and groaned with the pain it induced. Everything felt frozen.

  ‘Hana,’ he said again, and even in the hushed voice, she could hear his impatience.

  ‘I can’t move,’ she whispered back in misery she couldn’t hide. She was so tired.

  She heard him mutter something, and then his head and shoulders appeared before her. ‘You’re cramped?’

  She nodded, feeling ridiculous, a burden at the time she had to be strongest. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself. It was inevitable given the restricted diet we’ve been on, all the walking and running and where we’ve been sleeping.’ His hands reached for her feet. ‘Let me help.’ He removed her shoes and socks, and, from their awkward positions, he used his fingers to massage her soles, her heels, her ankles.

  And up…up, calves and knees and—oh…slowly he pulled her legs straight as he released her muscles from their bondage.

  It was bliss. It was an angel’s touch, soothing, freeing…arousing. It was symmetry and beauty beyond his poetic words, magic beyond anything the Arabian Nights could conjure, and not because he was a prince, a leader, but because he was Alim…because it was Alim’s touch. Because it was A
lim, who enjoyed both her teasing and her imperiousness, her laughter and her silence…Alim, who wanted her only to be herself in his presence.

  The ache replacing her pain was languorous, and again she felt more feminine, more alive than she’d ever been. How ironic that a sheikh was the only man who’d ever made her feel glad to be a woman…

  He’d half pulled her out of the hole before her back spasmed and she cried out in pain.

  ‘Hush, Sahar Thurayya, I have you.’ And his hands pulled her the rest of the way out of the hole. He turned her around so tenderly the pain was bearable, and his fingers worked their enchantment on her hip joints, her spine…

  She leaned back, falling until her head rested against his chest. She wept in joy with the exquisite relief. ‘Alim…ah, it’s wonderful…’ She heard herself moaning his name over and over. The uncoiling of her muscles was almost as incredible as the more sensual awakening. She felt as if she could fly, yet she was chained, chained to him, and it wasn’t frightening, it was perfect.

  It was Alim, and she’d never felt so alive as when she was with him.

  ‘Yes, my dawn star, it is…wonderful,’ he murmured huskily in her ear. He was moving to her shoulders, his thumbs rubbing the rock-hard muscles beneath her shoulder blades. ‘Lean on me. Trust me. I’ll never hurt you.’

  Something in the words made her heart stutter—but then those marvellous fingers moved to her neck, soothing, relaxing, arousing her anew. ‘I love the way you talk to me,’ she whispered as her head rolled around, luxurious freedom once more.

  ‘I’ve never spoken to any woman this way before,’ he murmured roughly, sounding surprised by the words. ‘You inspire me.’

  She turned her face, smiling at him, half drunk on the physical release of her singing muscles; intoxicated by his touch, by the way he made her feel. ‘What a beautiful thing to say…especially to a woman who smells so bad she offends herself.’ Her eyes twinkled.