The hallway opened to the breeze. Doors were thrown wide to the veranda. It was early morning, and a girl was watering the hanging baskets of bougainvillea. The fragrance stirred the air, mixing with heavy perfume. Ducking beneath the archway at the end of the hall, Michael entered a room. His gaze went to the massive English-style bed. A woman’s slim form clearly visible beneath a sheet moved slightly. Michael stripped the cover from her. She shot up with a startled squeal, her body barely hidden beneath a curtain of jet hair. She was naked, her dusky skin unblemished. Glass beads jangled on her ankles.
Michael dropped the coverlet. She looked all of fourteen. “I was told Donally Pasha was here.” He spoke in Arabic.
Her head shook. “My sheikh would whip me if he knew that the effendi did not sleep here, for all that he knew I existed.” Murmuring, she lifted dark liquid eyes to his. “Please say nothing.”
Bloody Christ, Omar was low-brow refuse, Michael thought. Having the greatest respect for Donally’s self-control, he wondered how the Irishman had not put a bullet into Omar’s head. The sheikhdoms were a medieval frontier answering to no constabulary, or a government that had little ability to enforce its own laws. And Michael had his bloody hands tied. How many young girls had he brought back from the markets to families that ended up selling them into sexual slavery or killing them?
“Where is Donally Pasha now?”
“He comes here last night and threatens to kill my master. It takes many men to pull him away.” The girl shrugged toward the veranda. “I think he is going after slavers in Kharga.”
Michael left through the veranda. His gaze went over the stone courtyard below where a donkey was pulling a cart of manure. He dropped to the courtyard below and crossed the grounds to the stables.
The man bent over the bay mare wore a black tunic fastened at the waist with a broad leather belt that carried a curved dagger. A tarboosh and turban covered his head. His face, tanned by the sun, contrasted with the stark blue of his eyes as he straightened and met Michael’s gaze over the saddle. The first thing Michael noticed, other than the gun pointed at his head, was that Donally’s eyes were the same summer blue as Brianna’s.
A growth of black stubble had rendered Michael uncivilized, but Donally looked feral. “Fallon.” The single harsh word kept Michael’s hands from the revolver in his belt or the knife in his sash.
They regarded each other, marking the passage of time since they’d last seen one another. When had it been? Last year at Captain Pritchards’s wedding? Donally swung into the saddle of the Arab mare he’d saddled, his hands clenching the reins as he brought the horse around, the pistol still in his hand. “Move out of my way.”
Michael had never heard an accent in Donally’s voice before. That he did so now told him the man was close to the edge and dangerous. “I’ve already sent men to Kharga,” Michael said. “Your wife and sister were not among those who might have been taken. They’re alive, Donally.”
The hammer clicked. “So help me, Fallon. Doon’t bloody tempt me.”
“They’re traveling with Abdul, a platoon of guards, a physician, and your servants, and are on their way to Cairo as we speak.”
Something changed in Donally’s harsh features. “What are you talking about?” The gun in his hand wavered. He pulled it back, appeared etched from stone as he struggled for composure.
“Your wife and sister weren’t in the camp when the attack came. They survived. And what they want most at this moment is to see you.”
Brianna didn’t know how long she’d lain in the sand on her back, staring at the sky like a slug in hibernation. Her long dark braid remained hidden beneath her turban. She had yet to feel her feet and derriere. For eight days the caravan had wound over the molten sand like a slow-moving river—and for every one of those eight days, she had ridden Matilda, the racing camel from hell.
Lying beside her, looking like some green-eyed jinn behind the cloth of her own turban, Alex groaned. “Tomorrow we should reach Cairo.”
“What missies need is liniment and a soft bed.” Abdul chuckled, standing above them. “Of which neither are here.”
“Thank you, Abdul. I shall add your advice to my tome of medical miracles.” Brianna struggled to her elbow. Will you unpack Lady Alexandra’s blankets and bring them to the tent?”
Cooking fires dotted the landscape. Brianna’s stomach growled. That was one more thing she was going to have to do. Help Abdul cook, because she’d taken it upon herself to be useful. She collapsed back onto the sand. The early morning sky was hazy and unpleasant. “Do you think Major Fallon’s plan worked?” she asked. It was a topic they’d both avoided.
“I think the major can take care of himself.” Alex stood and brushed the sand off her hands.
“Christopher can too, my lady.” Brianna’s voice was quiet.
“I know.” Alex’s worried gaze paused on Brianna, then abruptly she turned and stumbled through the sand up the hill. Brianna watched her. She turned away, digging her hand in the sand, her own frustration, which had been boiling all week, brought to the surface. Major Fallon was no unseasoned youth, as Stephan had been.
He’d put his tongue in her mouth and shattered every virginal stereotype she’d ever held about men.
Her whole body hummed.
Brianna rarely dwelled on men. She had no divine drive to be anyone’s wife, no maternal calling pealing bells over her head. Being the youngest in a family of five domineering older brothers had given her the impetus to make her own way. She was her own woman.
Yet never had she been subjected to such a powerful undercurrent of electricity as when he’d kissed her, which attuned her to her body in ways she’d never felt before. She’d experienced that undercurrent the first time in the pool at the oasis. She felt it again when her body leaned into his.
So had he.
And there had been a moment when Major Fallon kissed her when she wanted to taste more than his lips. To run her hands down his body. He’d had a hard body beneath those robes.
With a start, Brianna forced her attention back to the task at hand. Brushing the sand off her lap, she stood and scanned for Abdul. Her gaze stopped on the corral where her Arab mare had been penned. A man was watching her. Above his tagilmust his black gaze locked briefly on hers before he turned abruptly away.
“We are finished here, Sitt.” Abdul was suddenly beside her. “Do you need help moving your camera?”
“Who is that man standing near my horse? Do you know?”
Abdul glimpsed the topic of her query. “I had to run that one away once from your mare.” He spat in the sand. “He claims that he is a horse trader.”
The young man was gone when Brianna reached the corral of horses. Drawing nearer to where he’d been standing, she tented a hand over her eyes. The wind was gathering force. Her mare whickered restlessly.
“You aren’t so evil, are you, princess?” she murmured, her hands going over the mare’s long gray mane.
A gust of wind blew sand across the dozing caravan, and shielding her eyes, Brianna turned her face away. A hazy red luminescence radiated from the northeast. “What is it?” She was breathless when she joined Abdul and Alex outside the tent. Transfixed, Brianna watched the sky darken.
“They call it the sheytàn—Devil Wind.” Abdul’s long white robes were flapping in the wind. “It is the simoon.”
It looked like a monstrous fire. “How long before it reaches us?”
“A quarter hour, maybe.”
Riders suddenly appeared like a shimmering mirage running in front of the reddish glow, and Brianna froze. A dozen men on horses and camels were coming toward them at a gallop. One was riding a white racing camel, and her heart picked up pace.
Beside her, Alex took a step. The riders approached.
A small cry emanated from Alex’s throat, and before Brianna could catch her, Alex had gathered her robes in her fist. Half running, half falling, she slid down the dune, toward the riders. A black horse sud
denly separated from the group, and soon the dark-clad rider swung from the saddle and was on his feet, sweeping Alex into his arms.
Christopher.
Brianna’s feet carried her down the dune before she stopped. Alex’s arms were around Christopher’s neck and her feet off the ground as he wrapped her in his arms, kissing her lips, her hair, her face. Christopher had always been omnipotent in her eyes, invincible, but now seemed only too human as he held his wife.
“Go, Sitt Donally,” Abdul said from behind her. “He is your family, too. Bring him back here.”
But she didn’t run into her brother’s protective arms. She didn’t belong in that intimate circle. She looked past her brother, directly into Major Fallon’s eyes. Sporting a rough beard, he sat atop the white camel, his rifle lying casually across his knees. Brianna saw rather than heard him give a command to his men. They rode past her. The air was growing increasingly hotter. Brianna hadn’t realized how far she was from camp.
Major Fallon stopped in front of her, his arm braced across his thigh. “I suggest that you find shelter, Miss Donally.”
Her gaze shot to Christopher and Alex.
“Don’t worry about them, amîri. They’ll be all right.”
“Did your plan work?” Her voice was quiet. “You’re still alive.”
“It worked.”
Holding one hand over her turban, she turned as he rode past and into camp. Brianna scrabbled back up the hill and ran to help Abdul take down the tent. All around the caravan, people were doing the same. Somewhere, she could hear Major Fallon’s voice carry above the wind. Camels stretched out their long swanlike necks to the ground and closed their eyes. The heat continued to rise like the mouth of a hot oven. Brianna saw her mare pacing the corral and ran across the camp. In the chaos, she could hear Christopher calling her name. The horse reared when Brianna grabbed onto the mane, desperate to get the mare to kneel as the others had done. The sky continued to darken with violent, swirling particles of sand. She’d never seen anything so powerful as the darkness that was bearing down on them, and fought with the panicked horse until strong arms suddenly came around her.
“Get back!” Major Fallon took the reins. His hand went over the mare’s nose and mane. He spoke gently, making a clicking noise with his tongue. Brianna watched the horse kneel. He secured a cloth over the mare’s eyes and nose, then reached for her, and caught a jolt of electricity. It arced from his hands, and her eyes shot to his. “We have to get down,” he yelled against her ear.
Brianna’s gaze swung to the sky. A heavy blanket went over her as Major Fallon took her down into the sand beside the mare.
Her ragged breathing was the only sound in the narrow tomb in which she’d found herself enclosed. “I can’t breathe,” she whispered in panic.
“You can.” Major Fallon’s breath ruffled the loose tendrils of hair on her cheek. One of his legs lay over hers to still her panicked movement. “Unless you try to get out of here.”
She put a hand between them. “I need a knife. Give me a knife.”
He pulled back to look at her. “And have you bleed all over me?”
“I don’t want to kill myself. I need to cut my bindings.” She shoved against the hard ridge of his belly. “You’re too damn close!”
The low sound of his answering laughter filled the narrow space between them. “Unfortunately, we’re both going to have to live with that,” he said, his voice growing louder above the wind. “I would urge you to be still.”
The moaning, howling wind struck them. Brianna covered her ears and pressed her face against his chest. Michael was conscious of his arms surrounding her in an attempt to keep some of the terror at bay, fitting the softer curves of her body against the harder angles of his. A length of her hair had shaken loose from the turban.
“I swear, I don’t cry,” she said. “I don’t jump at bogeymen in the dark. I don’t faint—”
“I’m not accusing you of being weak.”
“Yes, you are.” She wiped a sleeve on her nose and pulled back to look up at him in accusation.
Michael found himself staring into the most extraordinary liquid-blue eyes he’d ever seen. Her musk filled the enclosed space, no doubt along with his. He shouldn’t have been tantalized, he told himself.
“I can feel it.” She laughed. “You’re being nice.”
His eyes dropped to her mouth. Annoyed with the extent of his growing arousal, he removed the knife from his hip. “Do you really want your bindings cut?”
“With that horrible thing? Are you insane?”
He stabbed the knife into the sand to anchor the blanket at his head. “You’re going to have to stop squirming.”
“I hope Abdul covered my photography equipment.”
“You’ll probably have to remember where it was and dig it out.”
Alarmed, her gaze lifted. “How long do one of these…these simoons last?”
“Days.”
“Days!” she gasped. “We’ll die of starvation.” Then she saw that he was laughing. Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Truly, Major, you are such a bore.” Her body relaxed a little as she seemed to compose herself. “You can let go of me.”
He complied, and she lay on her back and looked up at him. With her head wrapped in the turban, her Mona Lisa expression in place, she looked astonishingly serene in the dim light. Distracted by the length of dark hair that had fallen from her turban, he propped his head on his hand.
“Maybe a few hours,” he rectified.
“Do you think Christopher and Alex are all right?”
“What do you think?”
She propped herself on her elbow and peered up at him in the meager light. “I think a few hours is certainly more than the ten minutes we had the last time we were alone, Major.”
The shadow accentuated the provocative curve of her waist. He saw her mouth slide into a smile. “Don’t sound so smug. Miss Donally.”
“And here I was thinking we could have lusty sex—just me and the desert simoon against your hot naked skin.”
His eyes narrowed. Little-Miss-Spoiled-For-Life-With-One-Kiss thought she was safe.
She lay back, content to think herself immune from him. “You mean, you don’t want to strip naked?” she asked.
His mouth moved into a slow grin. He put his palm on her stomach. “I think it’s the best damn idea you’ve had yet.”
She slapped his hand away.
Michael liked that he’d shocked her, and put his hand back, lower this time. He had no idea why anger shot through him, except Miss Donally in all of her restless naiveté was like a shot of brandy in his veins. He bloody should have let her brother deal with her welfare. But when he’d seen her fighting to save the mare’s life, he’d only thought of saving hers. Maybe he’d wanted to be tucked in for the day with Miss Donally and her nice body.
“You know what else I think?” he said. “You like the thought of getting your hands dirty. It excites you.”
She didn’t remove his hand, and he was tempted to move it lower. To move his lips against her slim throat. He tried to stay detached. Except there wasn’t anything detached about his erection.
“I’m not going to kiss you,” he said, reading the look in her eyes. “If that’s what you’re wanting.”
“Don’t disgust me.” This time she did remove his hand. “You happen to smell like a camel.”
“And you don’t?” He laughed. His mouth lowered unwillingly, grazing hers. He could make quick work of her bindings, and had an urge to fill his hands with her breasts.
“And your face is rough,” she rasped, her eyes betraying her awareness of him.
“You don’t like that, do you?” His thumb slid across her bottom lip. “Have you ever come, Miss Donally?”
“Let go of me!”
He grabbed her hand and pressed it into his other hand, grappling easily with her slim form. He could see her pulse racing at the base of her neck. “What if I don’t?” He’d also pinned her wi
th his leg, and if he fought with her anymore, they were liable to lose their shelter.
He thought about opening her mouth and sucking on her tongue like a sweet orange, and might have if she hadn’t looked so eager for him to do something. Then his hand was on her again, moving lower over her abdomen.
“You get coy with me, and you’ll lose more than you bargained for, Miss Donally.”
“You don’t make me nervous.” Her voice was breathy. Challenging.
Did she think he wouldn’t take her dare? With her gaze on his, he could read her defiance and something far more potent conveyed in her expressive eyes, acting like an aphrodisiac. “Not even now?”
Her lips parted slightly. She let him trail his palm over the concave curve of her belly.
Christ, he shouldn’t be doing this, he told himself.
He should have stopped there.
He should have stopped before his palm came in contact with the hot juncture between her thighs. He should have removed his hand, but he was suddenly touching her in the most intimate way.
“Have you ever had a lover?” he asked, the intensity in his tone deceptively casual. He pulled back to look into her face.
Her lips were compressed. That something he’d seen in her thick-lashed eyes earlier had wobbled into something else. He wondered if a man had ever touched her at all.
He withdrew his hand. “I’ve never had patience for a practiced flirt, Miss Donally.” His voice was a quiet rasp, more anger-filled at himself for not acting smarter, for putting them both in a place neither had any business delving. “And I never play for anything halfway.”
The weighted silence was soon replaced by the moaning wind outside their enclosed sanctuary.
Finally, she turned away from him. “Why did you come back?” she asked. “We’ll be in Cairo soon.”
Michael didn’t answer her.
But his gaze fell on the pale curve of her profile, the bow of her full mouth, the gentle wing of an eyebrow. Not for the first time did he find himself staring at her, caught by her beauty, wanting to see into her eyes. In disgust, he turned his head and stared at the blanket. He was an idiot.
Must Have Been The Moonlight Page 6