by Kim Lawrence
His relief was tempered by the realisation that if he had chosen another path he would never have found her. He might have passed within yards of her…
He was not normally a person who dwelt on what might have been, but he struggled not to dwell on the narrowly diverted disaster as he reminded himself that they were not home and dry yet.
Hearing things could not be a good sign; Eva lifted her head and forced her reluctant eyelids to part. The voice was not in her head, it was in her ear.
The storm had not abated; it was a man’s body and more precisely his chest, broad and incredibly comforting, that sheltered her from the extremes of the sandstorm.
Karim had found her.
‘Karim? You shouldn’t have come—now you’ll die too!’ she wailed.
The wind tugging and dragging at his white robes, he knelt before her, appearing immune as the rocks to the wind and sand. His eyes above the cloth that covered his lower face blazed like the stars that had been blotted by the sandstorm.
He bent his head close to hers like a lover, but there was nothing loverlike in the words he yelled in her ear. ‘Nobody is going to die. If the storm kills you it will deny me the pleasure of throttling you with my own hands!’
‘I—’
‘Shut up!’
Before Eva could respond to this autocratic decree she found herself drawn against his body. She gasped and stiffened, then sighed as a hand behind her head forced her face into his shoulder.
Karim, holding her, found himself caught between rage and tenderness.
Eva tried to lift her head but he pushed it back down. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m thinking.’
He was also stroking her hair in the middle of the raging storm; the small act of tenderness brought tears to her eyes. Eva closed her eyes, feeling his body heat and his strength slowly seep into her bones; for the first time she allowed herself to think that she stood a realistic chance of surviving this.
She was vaguely conscious of the sound of ripping cloth, but did not connect it with her own designer gown. Then as he rose she felt herself enfolded, not just by his arms, but by the flowing fabric of his robe, which he had wrapped around her. He placed a hand under her behind and without waiting to be instructed Eva automatically wrapped her legs around his middle, a voice in her head that clearly did not appreciate the seriousness of the situation saying she could get used to this.
‘Hold on!’
The instruction was unnecessary—she already was!
Having found it impossible to stay upright herself, Eva couldn’t believe that Karim could move forward with the additional burden of her weight. Above the sound of the storm that raged around them, with her head pressed into his shoulder, Eva was conscious of the heavy thud of his heartbeat.
She held tight, closed her ears, concentrated on the sound, felt the moisture leak from under her eyelids and as love for him filled her it was a relief to finally stop fighting the realisation.
What if she never had a chance to tell him how she felt? She felt the salty moisture leak from her eyes.
‘Not far now,’ Karim shouted in her ear. Fuelled by the adrenaline rushing through his veins and acting on nine parts instinct and one part sheer desperation, he hoped that he was telling the truth.
Eva wanted to ask, Not far from where? But she didn’t have the strength; it was all she could do to hang onto him. Her arms and legs were trembling with the effort of holding on.
How did he keep going? she wondered as Karim continued to make steady progress, not moving swiftly but with assurance; once or twice she could sense him testing his footing before he continued.
The almost animal screech of the whipping wind and whirling sand had filled her head and hurt her senses for so long that when it stopped abruptly it was disorientating.
She opened her eyes and there was nothing but inky, impenetrable blackness. She could still hear the keening cry of the wind but it was a background noise.
We’re safe…we’re safe, she thought, too relieved to wonder where they were or how he had found their sanctuary.
‘Wait here.’
Wait where? she thought.
Placed on her feet and without the supporting strength of his strong arms, Eva sank to the ground. It felt cold and hard against her bare legs.
‘Don’t leave me!’ she begged, not giving a damn about pride as she clung onto his leg in the pitch darkness.
The anger Karim had been forced to hold in check was once more frustrated, now by the note of pure panic in her tremulous voice. The vulnerability she so often struggled to hide behind a tough exterior was right there and it awakened protective instincts he hadn’t known he possessed.
She nearly died…He pushed away the thought because he knew if he let it take hold he would not be able to control the rage that continued to simmer just below the surface. He would finish rescuing her and then he would throttle her, he promised himself.
He unfurled her fingers and retained them in his hand as he dropped to his knees beside her. Reaching out, he found her face and framed it with his free hand, rubbing the dust from the curve of her cheek as he did so.
‘You will stay here. I will find some light, all right?’
There was a pause before she nodded, wondering where on earth he was going to find light. She shivered when his fingers fell away, the loss of physical contact making her feel utterly bereft, and she knew there was a lot more to her reaction than a simple fear of dark strange places. She craved his touch with an intensity that was just as primal as the survival instinct that had made her fight the storm.
‘I won’t go far,’ he promised.
He didn’t. Eva could hear him as she sat in the darkness, her teeth chattering more with reaction than cold, listening to the sounds of him moving around. He swore once when he obviously collided with something, then there was a scratching and scuffing sound, then light.
It came from an old-fashioned kerosene lamp that Karim held aloft.
Eva blinked as her eyes adjusted slowly.
Looking around, she was able to distinguish a crude table set against one wall. A chair stood beside it, another lay overturned. There were several assorted items that suggested this place had once been occupied.
‘Where is this place?’ Eva asked, rubbing her hand along the smooth stone surface she sat on. The walls around and above them had the same pale sand appearance. ‘What is it?’
Holding the light, Karim moved closer and, brushing some debris off the crude table, placed it down on the scratched surface.
‘Just like home,’ she joked shakily. ‘Though with slightly less gold leaf.’
Karim felt his admiration grow as he watched her produce a shaky smile.
How many women who had been through what she had would joke? Most he could think of would right now be having hysterics, hysterics that would have filled him with impatience. She was smiling—shaking like a leaf but smiling—and he was filled with…A flicker of shock registered in his eyes as he recognised the emotion that made him want to gather her in his arms as tenderness.
It seemed it was possible to want to throttle a woman and protect her from the slightest breeze at one and the same time; possible, but not comfortable.
He had not been comfortable since he met his Princess.
Eva’s wandering gaze found his face and lingered, the breath snagging painfully in her throat. The gold-tinged glow radiated by the flickering light cast shadows over Karim’s face, highlighting the strength and purity of his fabulous bone structure.
He was beautiful!
So beautiful it hurt; it hurt physically.
Her lashes swept protectively downwards as things deep inside her clenched and tightened. She was filled with deep, hopeless yearning. If these feelings she could not articulate never went away, how would she bear it?
‘There are a series of caves in the rock face. Up until ten years ago some were still occupied, but once there was an entire community living
here.’
‘Nobody lives here now?’ She tried to ignore the strange heaviness in the air that had little to do with the storm that raged outside and instead imagined the silent place filled with the buzz of people going about their lives, living and loving…It was difficult to visualise.
‘You’re not seeing it at its best,’ he observed, stamping his boots without taking his eyes from her face.
An edge in his deep voice made her look up at him. The light was not strong enough for her to read his expression, but Eva found the fixed intensity of his stare unnerving.
She looked away and, aware of her heart pounding against her breastbone, drew a line with her finger in the fine layer of sand that covered the stone floor.
She forced an awkward smile. ‘You’re not seeing me at my best, either.’
Chapter Eleven
BUT he was seeing her—you’d think he never had before, the way he was staring, his heavy-lidded regard still trained unblinkingly on Eva’s face as he pulled off his head-covering and dragged a hand through his dark hair.
‘You look exhausted!’ he observed, feeling a stab of selfrecrimination. The dust did not disguise the dark smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes.
As Eva’s gaze swept protectively downwards her attention was captured by a painted item lying in the dust. A frown of enquiry forming between her brows, she picked it up.
Karim watched her brush the dust off the broken toy very carefully, his eyes widening with shock as he caught himself wondering if he would choose to end this marriage given the choice?
The speculation was pointless—it was not his choice to make.
‘It’s a doll.’ When her gaze lifted to his her luminous eyes shone with unshed tears. ‘I wonder what happened to the girl who owned it…did she cry when she lost it?’ For some reason the idea of the lost doll and the lost community struck an emotional chord with Eva.
His lips curled into a cynical smile. ‘People discard things when they are broken and sometimes when they are not,’ he observed drily, thinking about his late wife’s reaction to the birth of her daughter. She had made clear she hadn’t wanted a girl.
Eva’s fingers tightened around the carved wooden toy as she leapt on his comment. ‘Are you saying we are broken?’ Broken implied they had ever been intact—a whole, but their fake marriage was a sham. She gave a grimace of distaste as her eyes slid to the rings that adorned her left hand. ‘You want an annulment?’ The idea should make her feel relieved. This was what she wanted—a way to escape.
His spine stiffened. ‘An annulment?’
Eva could feel the tension he radiated; the air around them vibrated with it. She gave a shrug. ‘Why not?’ Especially when there was someone so suitable just waiting to fill the vacancy.
His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that what this stunt was about? You think if you act badly enough I will let you go?’
She winced at his choice of words. It made her feel like a bird in a cage—a luxurious solid gold-cage, but still a cage. She shook her head in revolted rejection of the idea and told him indignantly, ‘It wasn’t a stunt! Do you think I planned a sandstorm?’ She gritted her teeth and cried, ‘I’m trying my best to be what you want me to be…’ Her energising burst of indignation vanished, leaving her feeling just incredibly weary.
She lifted her hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘I’m just not very good at it.’ That, she decided, tugging irritably at the torn bodice of her dress, was about the understatement of the century!
Karim swallowed. Her disconsolate little sigh tugged at his conscience and the exposed upper slopes of her breasts heightened the sexual frustration that he was fighting to control.
‘I only want you to be yourself, Eva.’
She gave a disbelieving snort. ‘What you want, Karim, is for me to vanish.’ She lifted her chin in denial of the pain searing through her.
‘What I want…’ His jaw clenched as, despite exerting all his considerable mental control, he failed to banish the erotic image in his head of her small slim hands sliding down his body…her parted lips moving over…He inhaled sharply through flared nostrils and snarled, ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ It was not bad advice for a man who could not stop thinking about making love to his own wife.
A man who had furthermore said he wouldn’t come to her bed until she asked for it. A night did not pass—a night, he was discovering, could be very long—when he did not regret the suggestion.
Eva couldn’t read his silence any more than she could read his silver stare, but even without translation it was shredding her nerves.
Maybe, she mused, he was choosing his words carefully, but she had no doubt about what he would say if he articulated his displeasure. Duty was the tenet that Karim lived his life by, and she had failed in hers.
She had probably caused him and her family untold political and personal embarrassment. She could have attempted to defend her actions, but what would be the point? What was she meant to say—I went for a walk because I was sick with jealousy watching you dance with your mistress?
Just get it over with, she thought. A rant about the diplomatic incident her walking out had no doubt caused was preferable to this—anything would be preferable to this!
Nibbling her lower lip as she hunched her shoulders, she wiped a weary hand across her face and hoped she wasn’t projecting the insecurity she was feeling.
‘Ugh!’ She grimaced when she felt the sand caked on her skin. She glanced down and closed one eye—it still didn’t look any better!
She was not recognisable as the woman who had dressed for her first formal event. Well, she hadn’t felt like a princess then, and now she didn’t look like one, either!
Her once pristine virginal white dress—the irony of that had not been lost on Eva—was no longer white, neither was it in one piece. It was ripped up to thigh level and rent in several places.
If her face and hair were in a similar condition to the embarrassingly large expanses of exposed flesh on her legs, she was a wreck.
Suddenly it struck her as intensely funny that minutes after she had escaped a near-death experience she was worrying about her appearance.
A giggle rose in her throat; a little escaped before she clamped her lips tight.
‘What is so funny?’
Eva, her green eyes glittering with unshed tears, raised her eyes to him. ‘I am,’ she told him, her voice rising to a quivering wail as she added, ‘I am also incredibly shallow.’
The need to take her in his arms was almost overwhelming. ‘This is shock.’ The abruptness of his tone made her flinch.
‘I…’ Her swimming eyes lifted to his and hers lip began to quiver.
‘Control yourself, Eva, you are not going to have hysterics.’
Eva gave a gulp and stared at him. ‘Control? Are you even human? We nearly died out there…’ She closed her eyes and shuddered.
A muscle clenched in his lean cheek. ‘You want me to get in touch with my feminine side and weep?’
The satirical interjection brought her eyes open with a snap. ‘And for the record you telling me not to do something makes me want to go right out and do it. Even though I’m far too old to become a rebel.’
‘Useful information, but at this moment I have no time to employ reverse psychology, so I would be obliged if you simply do as I tell you. Of course, if you wish to have hysterics?’ he inserted sardonically. ‘If they are part of your bid for freedom, like walking out into the middle of a sandstorm?’
Eva had opened her mouth to deliver a pithy retort, then suddenly she had a flashback to the moment when she had really imagined that she was never going to see him again.
The moment passed, but the emotional thickening in her throat still ached as she shook her head back and forth in a negative motion. ‘I really wasn’t trying to escape…I just…just…’
‘Sit!’
The terse command cut across her fumbling explanation.
He repeated his instruction, adding a please, and right
ed an overturned wooden chair from the floor. She watched warily as he set it beside the table.
‘You will crease your dress sitting on the floor.’
She looked from the hand he held out to her to his face and a quiver of a smile touched her lips as she stretched her hand to his. The quiver faded as their fingertips brushed; the wave of heat that passed through her body drew a dry gasp of shock from her throat.
She sat there staring at his fingers, struggling against the tidal surge of lust and yearning that paralysed her.
‘Come.’
She tilted her head and their glances meshed. The air felt thick with tension as Karim enfolded her small hand in his.
‘You’re shaking.’
She tried to smile. ‘I’m fine, just a little…’ in love. Actually she was overwhelmingly, desperately in love.
When she had dreamt of being in love Eva had imagined it would be an uplifting, life-affirming experience, not this crushing weight. ‘I lost a shoe,’ she said, sitting down.
‘I will buy you another shoe.’ He reached down and dabbed his thumb to the tear that slid down her grubby cheek.
The tenderness in his action made her eyes fill again. ‘For God’s sake, don’t be nice to me!’ she pleaded in a shaky whisper.
‘You’ve been through a terrible experience.’
Eva sniffed and said, ‘You never had any problem being mean to me before…Do you want me to cry?’
‘No!’ Female tears had never had any effect on him previously, but each individual tear he watched etch a grimy path down her dusty cheeks felt like a knife thrust. In a more moderate tone he added, ‘I have no wish to see you cry.’
‘Then change the subject. Did you ever see this place when people lived here?’
He nodded. ‘They were actually quite comfortable—cool in the summer and warm in winter.’
Eva watched him, mesmerised by the vibrancy of his voice. It was one of those occasions that she knew would remain imprinted on her memory, even when she was an old lady she would be able to recall the sound of his voice, little details like the sand adhering to his eyelashes and crusting his ebony brows.