by Sophia Lynn
No, she had not become immune to him at all. A few moments ago, she had been enjoying their time together, laughing with him as if they had known each other for years. Now in the fading evening light, there was an edge of hunger to him that called to something dark and primal inside her. There was risk and danger here, and the shock that traveled from his body to hers just through his touch was unlike anything she had ever felt before.
“Jahin...”
She couldn't say any more before he pulled her close, cupping the side of her face in his free hand. Bedelia only had time enough to realize that his hand was wonderfully warm before he dropped his lips to hers in a kiss.
She had kissed men before, of course. They had all been fumbling things that left her wondering what all the fuss was about. She had even wondered more than once whether she was frigid and cold, unable to respond to others the way the world told her she should.
With one kiss, however, Jahin told her that this was certainly not the case.
His kiss was fire and fury, igniting a response from within her that made her heart beat faster. Suddenly, with a single gesture, he changed something inside her, and all she wanted was to learn more about it. With a wild abandon she had never felt before, Bedelia threw her arms around him, dragging him close and tilting her head up so she could feel the kiss more clearly. She might have started out as shy and nervous, but soon she was boldly exploring the kiss, learning and craving more with every moment.
When they finally pulled back, she knew her cheeks were pink and she was breathing hard. She looked at Jahin as if he were some kind of god or hero, someone who could change the way the world worked with just a moment's touch.
To her surprise though, there was a slight knowing smirk on his face, which brought her right back to the ground. She hadn't expected him to be as awed with their touch as she was, but perhaps she had expected something a little less...smug?
“My god, you are a woman of passion,” he said with some satisfaction. “Perhaps you would like a chance to show me more?”
“What...what do you mean?”
“I mean that I have been reading your signals all day, and right now, I am inviting you to go back to my camp to show me exactly what you would like to.”
“I'm sorry... Did you think I was trying to...to seduce you or something?”
“You can call it whatever you want, beautiful one,” he said. “I just know that there is a pull between is that we do not have to ignore. This isn't some ancient time where a single hot look represented a lifetime of commitment.”
“Say it bluntly,” Bedelia said, surprising herself with how steady her voice was. She knew that all she was doing was buying heartbreak with this, but she had to be sure.
Jahin raised an eyebrow at her, shrugging slightly. “I am inviting you to my bed, where I would make you feel as good as it is possible for a woman to feel. I hardly think that a woman like you would balk at the idea.”
“A...woman like me?” The hits just kept coming, and for some reason, she couldn't seem to stop. There was a smart thing to do here, and that was to simply thank him for helping her when she needed it and go inside before she had to hear any more of this. Before she had to listen to him destroy all of the pleasant things she had thought and dreamed of throughout the day. She had known that those pleasant things were far from real or true or even possible, but they had still been lovely, and she didn't want to give them up.
“Well, you are in Muneazil by yourself, and certainly from the way you kiss, you are a woman of the world. You have struck me as a woman who knows what she wants, and who knows that I can give it to you.”
His grin turned sly, and a part of her was still resentful that he could be so handsome while he was being such a jerk.
“Come now, no games,” he said coaxingly. “Why bother playing games when we could be making each other feel so very good, so very whole?”
Somehow, Bedelia found herself smiling. It was a strange smile, one that didn't have much to do with anything else. She saw Jahin's grin widen, as if he had convinced her and he had won.
She kept smiling as she stepped a little closer to him and then slapped him across the face as hard as she could.
The force of the blow traveled from her palm up through her arm then through her entire body. She felt as if she was on fire, and that anyone who looked at her too hard would simply be burned. The look on his face changed from smug surety to shock, and she shook her head.
“Yes,” she agreed softly. “Let us not have any games. And I am a woman who knows what she wants, and what I want right now is to be away from you.”
He looked at her, speechless, which was satisfying in a dark kind of way, and then she spun around on her heel and walked away.
She didn't break down into tears until she was alone in her room, stifling her cries in a shirt. It had been an illusion. The whole day with a man she could honestly look at and call a prince was an illusion, and somehow, now that it was over, all she could do was mourn it.
Chapter Four
Back in his trailer, Jahin shook his head and examined the hand print on his face.
She is small, but she is mighty, he thought ruefully. He could see every finger outlined on his skin, and the place where she struck him still tingled.
Even though his face was sore, he couldn't find it in himself to be too angry with her. She was a romantic, and he had a feeling that romantics could be formidable indeed when their dreams and ideals were threatened. Hers had simply run a little deeper than he’d thought they would, and he had paid the price for underestimating them.
He stretched out on the small camp bed in his trailer, so different from the luxurious one that he was used to in the capital. It wasn't like he could have offered her very much in the first place even if he had gotten her to come back with him. And if she had, then what? They would have had a single night together, and then it would have been straight back to normal.
What the hell is wrong with me?
The more he thought of it, the more foolish it looked for him to think that she would be all right with sharing a single night with him. A woman like that, she wanted a lifetime, and that was not something he could give her.
No, it was more than foolishness, he realized. There was something about Bedelia that had drawn him in, even if it was a strange attraction and unlike one that he had felt for anyone else. It didn't make sense, not in the women he had been with in the past, not with the women he wanted to be with in the future.
He pushed aside the doubts that told him to go speak to her, to apologize and tell her that if he had hurt her, it hadn't been his intention.
Instead, Jahin stayed right where he was. There was no point in doing otherwise. All he could do at this point was hurt her more, make her angry or insult her. No, he thought ruefully, he had acted to protect himself, and now this was the consequence of doing that altogether too well. There was no way she would come near him now, and his infatuation--because now he could see that that was exactly what it was--was over.
“I am sorry, Bedelia,” he muttered to thin air, but it did not make him feel one bit better.
***
BEDELIA FELT A little better when she got up the next morning. Someone had left a plate of slightly stale pastries on the hostel's table, and she helped herself to one as she sat and thought about her day. There were about eight messages from Mr. Miller to get back to, and she didn't think he was going to be impressed with the fact that she had gotten her heart slightly broken by a random man at a horse fair.
She tried to tell herself that what had happened with Jahin was likely for the best. They came from worlds that were so different that it was bizarre they even breathed the same air. However much they had enjoyed each other's company, there would always be a limit to how much they had to say to one another, and at the end of all of that, there was nothing to be done.
Bedelia remembered the things he had said with a kind of shiver.
That is the
kind of man he is, she tried to tell herself. When someone tells you clearly and effectively who they are, you don't doubt them and look for excuses that they could be otherwise. You believe them, and you act accordingly. “Acting accordingly,” in this case, meant that she should realize she was far better off without a man like that, no matter how handsome or funny he was.
Still, a part of her couldn’t quite believe that the man who had rescued her earlier in the day had turned into such a careless monster at the end of it. She didn't know what it meant. A part of her couldn't understand what he had done or why he had done it. It was a puzzle to say the least, but it was not one that she had the time or the energy to understand.
“Not my problem,” she said, standing up decisively. She wasn't sure that it was true, but it felt good to stand up and say something decisively. It certainly didn't matter in the least that a part of her couldn't think of Jahin's copper eyes and lithe frame without a deep pang inside her heart.
“Let's find out where Miller wants me next.”
She had been planning to stay at the horse fair for at least another day, but right now, she wasn't sure she would stay even if people tied her down. The chances of running into Jahin, or worse, the two men who had accosted her, were too great, and they made her nervous. No, it would be better to move on and figure out what she wanted to do next.
Miller had given her a budget and a list of things he wanted, so it was easy enough to find out where her next research location was going to be, and also to start looking to the future. Even if a part of her kept looking over her shoulder and hoping to see a familiar smile and a pair of copper eyes, it was time to move on.
As she packed, she came across the little wooden figurine that Jahin had bought for her, the girl Meelia who had watered the valley with her tears. She held flowers of both white and red, and something in her painted face made Bedelia feel better.
It'll be fine, she told herself. Life goes on, and I am not going to miss him at all.
Chapter Five
Muneazil shared borders with the other emirates of the UAE, but unlike its desert neighbors, Muneazil also boasted a deep mountain range along one edge. Where some of the emirate was given over to golden sands, Muneazil also had dark mountains, and after a long and bumpy bus ride out from the capital, Bedelia found herself high in the mountains, looking around in awe at the town she had come to.
While the capital of Muneazil was impressive, the town of Cechon was amazing. It had been carved directly into the rock, an existence scraped out of stone over the course of five centuries. She had read that the first settlers had come there and found enough scraps of greenery to make them think they could live. As it turned out, they could, but that living had been perilous until the twentieth century brought improved farming techniques and better building abilities.
You can feel the history everywhere, Bedelia though wryly, dodging a pair of teens who were too busy looking at their smartphones to note where they were going. That was the sort of detail that she’d once thought Miller would like, but time after time, he had disregarded it, asking for the “real” stuff instead. She thought she was now getting closer to what he meant, at least, which was a good thing.
The town was bustling with the festival that she had come to see. According to the guide books, the festival celebrated a defeat by Rada Abdul Kattan over his enemies, and it had been celebrated for more than three hundred years. It seemed at first glance like a setting an action novelist could use in his work at any rate, and it was about as far removed from the horse fair and from the capital as she could get.
She had finally found some bobby pins, so at least her headscarf stayed in place. However, she still felt achingly out of place among the women of the town, who all seemed to have their own work and their own business to attend to. The festivities were due to start that night, and until then, she decided to get set up at the small hostel.
It was comfortable enough, with just a few international students who seemed pleasant, but for some reason, Bedelia couldn't relax. The wise thing to do would have been to nap so that she was awake for the festivities that started after dark, but instead, she secured her valuables in the communal safe then walked out on the streets.
She found her thoughts drifting back to Jahin as they had with almost alarming frequency for the past week and a half. It had been some nine days since she had left Masir, and for some reason, she couldn't get him out of her head. Perhaps it was because she had never met anyone like him before, or perhaps it was because he was so handsome. But the more it happened, the more it felt as if she had simply left a part of herself with him.
How strange would it be, she thought wryly, to go up to him at a press conference or something and say, “Excuse me, I think you have a bit of my heart. Care to give it back to me?”
She still generally thought that she had acted correctly at their last meeting, but there was a small part of her that demurred. She was without him right now, and she would have been no matter what she did. However, the choice she’d made left her thinking about him at odd moments. The other choice would have told her how those beautiful hands would have felt against her skin, how his mouth would have tasted if she had kissed him again, and she couldn't quite bring herself to completely believe that she had made the right choice.
Well, maybe if I ever see him again, I'll make a different one, she thought half-flippantly. It was a safe bet, because she was likely never going to see him again, but right then, she heard something that made her heart beat faster.
“I told you, I'll be back in a few days. I understand it is urgent, and to that end, I have left instructions explaining what is to be done in my absence. A member of my family has opened this festival every year for the past few centuries, and short of actual war or pandemic, I am not going to be the one to break that tradition...”
She would have told herself that she was mistaken, but Jahin had made enough of an impression on her that there was no way she would mistake his voice for anyone else's. Feeling a little like a sitting duck, she glanced around the corner, and there he was, as handsome as ever. This time, instead of the traditional clothes of a Muneazil rider, he was wearing a thoroughly modern Western business suit in charcoal, his white shirt almost blinding in how crisp and clean it was in this nearly medieval mountain town hewn from rock. There were two men in dark clothing standing respectfully next to him, and she wondered if they were guards or assistants.
Jahin looked irritated, talking with people on the phone who apparently wanted him to return to the capital, and finally he simply hung up, shaking his head.
“Fools and worse than fools,” she heard him growl. “They seem to think that the only people I rule over are the ones who live in the cities.”
The man standing to his right said something that made Jahin bark a quick laugh, and he looked like he was on the verge of replying when suddenly he froze. Copper eyes met green eyes, and she saw him shape her name with his lips, lips that she could still not think of without a shudder of pleasure.
It was exactly what she wanted. It was too much, it was far too much.
Without thinking of what she was doing in the least, Bedelia spun around on her heel and darted through the crowd. It was the only thing she could think of to do, and even as she dodged past people carrying things around for the celebration, chatting and laughing with one another, she wondered why she was doing it.
The reasonable thing, the adult thing, would have been to wave to him and then move on. If he wanted to talk with her, she could have been cool and calm and rational. She would have been polite, and she wouldn't have said anything about their last interaction if he didn't.
Instead, she darted behind a stand that was so covered with flowers that it was impossible to see the wood or the canopy, and as a confused teenaged vendor looked at her in surprise, Bedelia peeked behind her. She was half-convinced that she would see a bustling street full of people wondering why a woman had just raced past them pursued
by nothing at all. She was well-prepared to feel foolish because at the end of the day, Jahin simply didn't care about someone like her at all.
Then she saw him standing in the middle of the square, looking around slightly wild eyed, and she realized her mistake. Just as she was coming to this realization, his eyes met hers, and suddenly they were off again, her dodging through the stalls and the workmen, and him shouting after her.
Bedelia might have been curvy and short, but she had also run track when she was a teenager. While she was no sprinter, she was someone who had plenty of endurance, and she used that to her advantage now, dashing through alleys and sprinting around people who swore at her for nearly upsetting their bundles. She figured that if she could just make it worth it for Jahin to quit, he would... But he didn't.
Every time she glanced over her shoulder at him, he was gaining on her, and now that he had a solid visual lock on her, he wasn't wavering at all.
Bedelia finally ran out of breath and out of will to keep on running when she turned down an alley that had been open just two hours ago and discovered the way was now being blocked by a large truck. The alleys of the town were made for horses, not trucks, and there was not even a space where she could have slipped through. She was seriously contemplating trying to slide under the truck when a hard hand clamped around her upper arm, holding her as still as if she had been stuck in cement.
For a long moment, they simply stood and breathed hard at each other. Even if she could run like that, it didn't mean that she was used to it, and though Jahin was in good shape, it didn't mean that he was prepared to do it on a moment's notice.
“So,” Bedelia said brightly when she had finally gotten her breath back. “What brings you here?”
For a moment, Jahin simply glared at her in disbelief, and then an unwilling smile broke across his face as he shook his head.
“I cannot believe you,” he said. “I can't.”
“Oh? Am I that hard to believe?”