by Olivia Gates
Then again, she’d already met her genie.
Right now, he was taking apart the mangled rear of the helicopter to get to the gear and supplies they’d need before they set off on their oasis-bound trek.
She shuddered again, this time complete with chattering teeth, as much from expanding awe and descending dread as from marrow-chilling cold aided by a formidable windchill factor.
Though he was making a racket cutting the twisted metal with shears he’d retrieved from the cockpit, and the wind had risen again, eddying laments around them, it seemed he’d heard her.
He straightened with a groan that reminded her of his injury, made her wonder again how he ignored it, functioned—and so efficiently—with only the help of a painkiller shot.
He reached out to her face, cupped her cheek in the coolness of his huge, calloused hand and frowned. “You’re freezing. Go back to the cockpit.”
She shook her head. “I’m cold, yes, freezing, no. You’re the one who’s half-dressed.”
Her last word got mangled by another teeth-rattling shiver.
His scowl deepened. “We need to set some ground rules. When I say something, you obey. I’m your commanding officer here.”
She stuck her fists at her waist. “We’re not in your army and I’m not one of your soldiers.”
He fixed her with an adamant glare of his own. “I’m the native around here. And I’m the leader of this expedition.”
“I thought we agreed we have equal billing.”
“We do. In our respective areas of expertise.”
“And you’re the desert knight, right?”
He gave her a mock-affronted look, palm over his chest. “What? I don’t look the part?”
“You sure do.” With a capital T in “the,” she added inwardly. “But we established that looks can be deceiving.”
“I thought I established they can’t be.”
“So you’re the real thing. But you could be the prototype and this would remain my area. I’m the one qualified to judge which one of us is in danger of hypothermia. And until you get bundled up in thermal clothing like I am, that’s you. So now you’ve done your Incredible Hulk bit and torn away debris and cleared a path to our supplies, you go back to the cockpit. I’ll get the stuff we need.”
He took a challenging step, crowding her against the mangled hull. “You’d spend hours trying to figure out what is where. I’m the one who knows where the stuff we’ll need is, and can get it in minutes. If you can stop arguing that long.”
“So I’m the uninjured, suitably dressed one, and your doctor, but you’re the expert on this lost-cause aircraft and on survival in the desert. See? We end up with equal billing. So we both stay, work together and cut the effort and time in half.”
His eyes had been following her mouth, explicit with thoughts of stopping it with his lips. And teeth.
Then he raised them to hers and captured her in that bedeviling appreciation she was getting dangerously used to. “You’re a control freak, aren’t you?”
She let her shoulders rise and drop nonchalantly. “Takes one to know one, eh?”
His lips widened in a heart-palpitating grin. “You bet.”
And even though she’d been and still was in mortal danger, and the emergency light at his feet cast sinister shadows over his hewn face, as if exposing some supernatural entity lurking inside him, she couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt more…energized.
Strange how the company made all the difference when the situation remained the same.
I couldn’t have dreamed of better company to be in mortal danger with.
Yeah, what he’d said.
Not that she’d agreed to it then. Or could credit it now. But there it was. She was actually looking forward to the grueling and possibly life-threatening time ahead. She’d always thrived on challenge and hardship to start with, but she’d never been anywhere near that level of danger. With Harres by her side, anything felt possible. And doable. And anything was…enjoyable?
She shook her head, as if she could dislodge the ridiculous thought. How could anything be enjoyable in their situation?
She had no idea how. But having no rationalization didn’t change the fact that being with him was turning this nightmare into the most stimulating experience of her life.
She watched as he bent the last strip of protruding metal, widening the makeshift hatch, then stepped back, gestured to her.
“Report to packing duty, my obdurate dew droplet.”
Her heart punched her ribs. No one, not even her parents, had ever come up with such endearments for her. Nothing anywhere as ready and inventive and…sweet. A woman could get used to this.
And this woman shouldn’t. For every reason there was.
She bit down on the bubble of delight rising inside her, popped it.
“That’s your retaliation for pigheaded, mulish ox and my assortment of other insults?” she tossed over her shoulder as she preceded him into the cramped space, kneeled on the uneven floor of what remained of the cargo bay and awaited his directions.
He came down facing her, started reaching for articles as if he knew exactly where they were. And he clearly did. Prince Harres seemed to be hands-on in his operations’ every level and detail.
After he hoisted on a thermal jacket, he answered her previous barb. “I am sabotaging myself by telling you this, since you might now stop them, but those aren’t insults. From you, they have the effect of the most…intimate caress.”
His eyes left her in no doubt of what that meant. She almost choked her lungs out imagining his body stirring, hardening, aching in response to her words, to her…
She pretended to cough, waved a hand at him. “Try another one. You’re just insult-proof, as you said early on.”
“You remember?” He looked disproportionately pleased that she did. “Aih, I’ve never had a hair-trigger ego. And then, most insults are falsehoods or exaggerations, attempts to get a rise. My best payback to insults is to let them slide off me, inside and out.”
She gasped in mock stupefaction. “You mean people actually dare to attempt to insult you?”
“I have an older brother. A very…aggravating one. And three younger ones. I’m no stranger to insults. But you will insult me only if you fear me or distrust me.”
Her heart hiccuped at the sudden seriousness in his eyes. The cross between warning and entreaty there had the mocking comeback sticking in her throat. She instinctively knew he was telling the truth. That this was the one thing he wouldn’t laugh at. The one thing that would hurt him.
And even if she told herself Todd’s ordeal balanced out everything Harres had done for her, that he’d only done it for the person who held the vital info he wanted to extract and to keep hushed, her fairness again intervened. He’d been right when he’d said he had nothing to do with Todd’s imprisonment. And she didn’t believe in guilt by association, even if she made it sound as if she did. And if she went a step further into truthfulness, she had to admit something else.
She didn’t want to hurt him. Not in any way.
Lowering her gaze in indirect agreement and swallowing her barbed tongue, she helped him drag out backpacks then cut off the safety belts that still secured crates in the debris.
He dragged one between them, popped the lid open before looking at her with teasing back in his eyes, to her relief. “There’s one thing I can’t get over. How you don’t take words lauding your beauty and effect as your due—my jasmine dew.”
She followed his lead, loaded water bottles and packets of dry food into the backpacks. “Next you’ll call me Mountain Dew.”
A chuckle rumbled inside his massive chest. “Oh, no. You get your own brand names. But we do have canned relatives around.”
She stuffed a compartment into one backpack, turned to the other one, which she noticed was much smaller, as he pulled out another crate. “How nutritionally sloppy of you.”
He opened the crate, produced guns,
flares, flashlights, batteries, compasses and many other articles, which he distributed between the two backpacks. “I assure you, I never come within a mile of anything canned, except in emergencies. For easily stored quick fixes of hydration and calories, they work in a bind.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to resort to them. I’d rather drink detergent. But then we won’t have to, since you have it all figured out, being the desert knight that you are.”
He gave her a stoking glance. “That’s right. And this desert knight says close your backpack and let’s move on to packing our accommodations.”
“You mean this tiny thing is mine?” She eyed his backpack. It was almost as big as her. “And this behemoth is yours?”
He nodded matter-of-factly. “I am twice as big as you are, and can carry four times as much or more.”
“Listen, this is getting old. I won’t stand by while you bust my sutures.”
“I thought they were mine.” Before the urge to smack him transferred from her brain to her arm, he added, “If I can’t handle it, I’ll tell you.”
“Yeah, right. Right after you tell me you’ve sighted the first flying pig.”
“But I’m the mulish ox here, therefore perfectly qualified for hefting and towing.” Before she could plow into a counterargument, he cupped her face in both hands. The gentleness in his grasp made everything inside her crumple, pour into those palms. “Thank you for worrying about me, for braving exhaustion to spare me. But I’ve been through worse, have trained to weather the worst conditions for over a quarter of a century.” His lips quirked. “Probably longer than you’ve been on the planet.”
That shook her out of her hypnosis. “What? When I told you I’ve been practicing medicine for years? You think they grant babies medical licenses now?”
“They do, to prodigies.”
“Well, I’m not one. I’ll be thirty next August.”
“No way.” He looked genuinely stunned.
“Yes way.”
“See? No end to your surprises.”
“Stick around. They’re bound to end sometime.”
“Oh, I intend to. And I bet they never will.”
“Didn’t take you for a betting man.”
“I’m not. But I’ll bet on you anytime.”
Only then did she notice he still held her face in his palms. And that she was shaking all over again. And that he knew that he turned her into a live wire, knew she was struggling not to succumb. He was also certain she would.
She glared back. Never again.
“Don’t be so sure,” he murmured, his tone a sweeping undertow, his exotic accent sliding over her, enveloping her.
She gasped. He’d heard her thoughts, was taking the challenge.
She shook her head, reclaimed her face from his possession.
With a last molten look of challenge, he resumed packing.
Afterward, he fashioned a sled from the helicopter’s remains, using ropes for a harness. On it he loaded a folded tent, their quarters, as he called it, and piled on blankets, sleeping bags and mats.
She matched him move for move, followed his directions, anticipating his needs as if they’d been working together for years in perfect harmony. And she felt that overwhelming in-sync feeling again, just as she’d felt when he’d assisted her in treating his wound, always reading her next move, ready for it with the most efficient action.
It wasn’t only that. She felt her body gravitating toward him, demanding his closeness. She resisted the compulsion with an equal force until she felt she’d rip down the middle.
It’s survival, she told herself. Seeking the one person around. Being out here would have been unsettling enough in controlled conditions. But she’d just learned that her predicament was far worse than she’d thought. And with him generating that field of reassurance and invincibility, who could blame her if all she wanted was to throw herself into his haven?
And since when did she indulge in self-deception?
This man had jolted things inside her, like electric cables forced life into a dead battery, from the second she’d turned to face him. Ever since, his nearness, everything he said or did, revved that life into something almost…painful. An edge that scraped everything aside. A knot of hunger that—
“You’re hungry.”
She jerked at the dark compulsion of his voice, and glared her resentment at him. Couldn’t he have the decency to have one crack in his imperturbable facade? It might be self-defeating to wish that her one chance at survival be less than the absolute rock he needed to be to get them out of this, but she still wished it. No one could be that unflappable, could he?
He only looked at her with that boundless tranquility that she felt traversed his being. She answered her own question.
Yes, someone could be. And his name was Harres Aal Shalaan.
And he’d just read her mind. Again.
Before mortification choked her, he let her off the hook. “Like you, your stomach snaps its teeth.” And she realized it was. She hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours. “So here’s the plan. We eat, prepare our gear then move out. It’s 1:00 a.m. now. If we move out in an hour, we’ll have around eight hours before things get too hot. When it does, we’ll set up camp, hide out the worst of it, then set out again before sunset. The schedule throughout will be two hours on, one hour off. More off if you need it. At a rate of about five miles every three hours, we’ll make it to our destination in about three days. If we ration ourselves, our supplies should last.”
“If they don’t, I’ll use the IV fluid replacement. We have a few liters still.”
“See? You are the best I could have hoped to be with in this mess.”
“I’m sure you could have managed on your own,” she mumbled, thrilled, annoyed, feeling things were about to get real at last, and struggling not to throw herself into his arms and cling.
“You’re admitting I’m not a useless nuisance? I’m deeply honored.”
She studied him for a moment, a suspicion coming over her.
Was he doing this on purpose? Every time she felt her will flagging, he teased her or provoked her and it brought her out of her funk and right back in his face.
Whatever it was, it was working. She grabbed at it with both hands. “It remains to be seen what exactly you are. You might still take us in the wrong direction and we’ll end up lost. And fossilized.”
He laughed. Rich, virile, mind-numbing laughter. Made all the more hard-hitting as it mixed with a guttural groan of pain. “I don’t take wrong directions. It’s a matter of principle.”
Yeah. She’d bet. And she was willing to gamble her life on that. She was going to.
Then again, what choice did she have?
None.
But then again, why should she even worry?
He’d gotten her this far, through impossible odds.
If there was anyone in this world who could get them through this, it was him.
But what if there was no getting through it…?
He suddenly grabbed her hand and yanked her against him.
This time she met him more than halfway. As he’d told her she would.
And whether it was survival, magic, compulsion, or anything else, she needed it. He needed it. She let them have it.
She dissolved in the maddening taste of him deep inside her, with the thrust of his hot velvet tongue as he breached her with tenderness and carnality and desperation. She surrendered to his domination and supplication, all-consuming and life-giving.
Then he wrenched away, held her head, her eyes. “I said you were safe with me, Talia, in every way. I’ll keep you safe, and I’ll see you safe. This is a promise. Tell me you believe me.”
She did. And she told him. “I believe you.”
Seven
Talia wondered, for the thousandth time since she’d been snatched from her rented condo at gunpoint, if any of the things that had happened since could be real.
One thing was certain, th
ough. Harres was.
And she was following him across an overwhelmingly vast barren landscape that made her feel like one of the sand particles shifting like solid fluid beneath her feet.
They’d set out over six hours ago. Before they had, during the hour Harres had specified for preparations, he’d studied the stars and his compass at length, explaining how he was combining their codes with his extensive knowledge of his land’s terrain and secrets to calculate their course. He’d said he needed her to know all he did. She thought that impossible when she couldn’t imagine how he fathomed different landmarks when sameness besieged them. Yet he’d insisted it was vital she visualize their path, too, and somehow managed to transmit it to her.
They’d just embarked on their third two-hour hike. He still walked ahead, seemingly effortlessly, carrying his mammoth backpack and towing the piled sled while she stumbled in his wake with her fraction of their load. Which was still surprisingly heavy. He’d been keeping them on paths of firm sand, so it wasn’t too hard. At first. She’d soon had to admit anything heavier would have been a real struggle.
She still continuously offered to carry more. Each time he’d answered that silence would boost their aerobic efficiency and increased the steps he kept between them no matter how hard she tried to catch up with him. It wasn’t only adamant chivalry, it felt as if he was making sure he would be the first to face whatever surprises the seemingly inanimate-since-creation desert brought, wouldn’t let her take a step before he’d ascertained its safety, testing it with his own.
Acknowledging his protection and honoring it, she treaded the oceans of granulated gold in the imprints of his much larger feet, feeling as if she was forging a deeper connection with him with each step, gaining a more profound insight into what made this unprecedented—and no doubt unduplicable—man tick.
It had been hours since dawn had washed away the stars and their inky canvas, the gradual boost in illumination bringing with it an equally relentless rise in temperature. While that had made each step harder than the last, it had given her a new distraction to take her mind off counting them, off the weakness invading her limbs.