by Nalini Singh
If she concentrated, she could follow the bare bones of their talk. They appeared to be catching up with each other’s news but there was an undercurrent of seriousness. The sheik was asking after the health of his people.
As she listened, the changes in Tariq struck her again. When they’d first met, he’d been every inch a royal, but more relaxed, having the support of his parents, a much-loved royal couple. Now the mantle of authority sat on his shoulders alone, and he wore it as if it had been made for him.
He’d always been touched with the promise of greatness. Before her eyes, that promise was being fulfilled.
“Enough,” Arin announced at last in English. “I am a poor host to keep you so long even before the dust is gone from your clothes.” He uncurled his legs, incredibly graceful for such a big man, and began to stand.
“Terrible,” Tariq agreed, but his eyes were full of laughter as he followed their host’s example. Jasmine’s guess that the two were good friends was confirmed by the back-slapping embrace they exchanged, before Arin led them toward the much smaller tent that had been prepared for them. Members of Arin’s council had greeted Tariq’s advisors upon arrival, and it was likely that they’d all settled in by now.
“Your tent should be larger. I would give you mine but your husband, he is not wanting to be treated like royalty.” Arin scowled at Tariq over Jasmine’s head. The two men had bracketed her between them as soon as they’d exited. She felt like a shrimp between two very large carnivorous beasts, but one of the beasts was hers and the other appeared friendly.
“If I am in that cavern you call a tent, people will not come to me as willingly as they do if I am in something approximating their own homes.” Without breaking his stride, Tariq reached over and tugged Jasmine’s headgear around her face, protecting her from the sun. “With you it is different. They have known you their whole lives.”
With a sigh, Arin abandoned trying to get Tariq to change his mind. “This—” he waved to a small dun-colored tent “—is to be your home for the next three or four days.”
Despite the dull exterior, the interior was beautifully appointed. Colors created bright splendor through the room, in cushions scattered about and gauzy silk hangings decorating the walls. Delighted, Jasmine peeked around the partition dividing the space and discovered a sumptuous sleeping area.
“Thank you. It’s beautiful,” she exclaimed, bestowing a dazzling smile upon Arin. He looked taken aback.
Tariq scowled. “You will go now,” he ordered. “I wish to talk to my wife about the smiles she gives away so easily.”
Arin laughed good-naturedly and left, but not before he threw Jasmine a wink. She ran to her husband and tugged his head down for a kiss. He picked her up off her feet to facilitate the soft, urgent caress.
“That is permissible, Mina.” He set her down on her feet. “You are welcome to kiss me at any time.”
“Gee, thanks.” She stepped back to escape him but he was too quick. Tariq held her against him, his hands splayed over her bottom. When she wiggled, he took mercy on her and slid his hands to her waist. “Why did you forbid me to smile at your friend?”
“Because women like him too much. It is very provoking.” His complaint was without heat.
“I think he’s nice.” Her husband’s playful mood was a rare treat, one she fully intended to enjoy.
He lifted her up until they were eye to eye. “Really?”
“Mmm.” She wrapped her arms and legs around him. “But I think you’re the nicest of all.”
Tariq’s grin was pure male. Her reward for her honesty was a kiss that was so hot, she felt singed.
THEY ATE DINNER WITH ARIN and other members of the camp in Arin’s huge tent. Jasmine liked being able to watch her sheik among his people. He was magnificent. Charisma flowed from him like a physical substance, bright and clear and utterly seductive. People listened when he spoke, and answered his questions without hesitation, basking in his attention.
“Your accommodations are suitable?” Arin asked.
She had to force herself to look away from her husband, aware that the moment she did so, Tariq glanced at her. His obvious awareness of her, even in the midst of a busy dinner, warmed her to her toes.
“They’re lovely. Thank you.” She smiled. “I’ve been forbidden to smile at you because women like you too much.”
Arin stroked his neat beard. “It is a curse I must bear. It makes finding a wife difficult.”
Jasmine thought she’d misunderstood. “Difficult?”
“Yes.” He looked mournful. “How can a man pick one lovely fruit when every day he is confronted with an orchard?”
She clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her laugh at his outrageousness. No wonder he and Tariq were friends. Right then, her husband tugged at her hand. Though he was talking to someone else, it was an unmistakable sign that he wanted her attention on him. She knew that he wasn’t really worried about Arin’s affect on women, so his possessiveness puzzled her.
“He is like a child, unwilling to share you,” Arin whispered, leaning over. “He is correct in this.”
She ignored the last part of that statement and concentrated on the first. It was true. Tariq was unwilling to share her—sometimes. He liked having her interact with his people and make friends such as Mumtaz, so he was no controlling oppressor. However, he seemed to want to keep her close.
What she didn’t know was whether he wanted her near because he needed her, or because he didn’t trust her out of his sight. She swallowed her hurt at the possibility that it was the latter, and smiled brightly at the woman sitting across from him. Taking that as a sign of encouragement, the woman drew Jasmine into conversation.
“TODAY, I INTEND TO VIEW several Zulheil Rose mines.” Tariq finished his breakfast the next morning and stretched. The power and beauty of his impressive musculature made Jasmine catch her breath. “It will require hard riding, so unfortunately you cannot accompany me.”
She scowled in disappointment. “Maybe next time. After we get back home, you have to teach me to ride those beasts.”
He smiled at her mock shudder. “I’ll do that, Mina. While you are here, you may wish to…I do not know the word, but it would be good if you would walk among the people.”
“Oh, you want me to mingle?”
“Yes. Especially with the women. Out here in the desert, a lot of them tend to be shyer than their city counterparts.”
“So you want me to talk to them and make sure they’re doing okay?”
He nodded. “You are a woman and you are friendly, especially as you continue to smile at everyone.” His tone was disgruntled but his expression approving. “Most of the Zeina citizens will try to come to meet us. It is the way we strengthen the bonds that tie our land together. The men tend to wait for me, but the women will feel easier with you.”
Jasmine bit her lip in sudden indecision. She felt more than saw Tariq’s relaxed body tense.
“You do not wish to do this?”
“Oh, I do. It’s just that…do you think I can? I’m just an ordinary woman. Will your people talk to me?” All her life, she’d never been good enough. Sometimes the past threatened to overcome her hard-won self-esteem.
“Ah, Mina.” Tariq tugged her into his lap and held her close. “You are my wife and they have already accepted you.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. You will trust your husband and do as he bids.”
His autocratic command made her want to grin. If he trusted her with this, then he had to have some faith in her. Perhaps it was even the beginning of a deeper kind of trust. The flame of hope inside her, which had been threatening to go out ever since he’d revealed the assassination attempt, started to flicker with fiery life.
“Aye, aye, Captain.” She adopted a meek expression that made him laugh and kiss her.
He rode out ten minutes later into the crisp desert morning. After waving him off, Jasmine took a deep breath and began to w
alk toward the heart of the camp. Within moments, she was surrounded by Zeina’s women, surrounded and welcomed.
It was only as dusk began to descend in purple strokes across the desert that she returned to their quarters. After washing the grit and dust of the day from her body, she dressed in an ankle-length skirt and fitted top in a beautiful shade of gold and lay down on one of the low couches to wait for her husband. Lulled by the soft chatter outside, she closed her eyes, intending only a moment’s rest.
ONCE AGAIN, TARIQ FOUND Mina asleep. This time he needed to wake her, to satisfy not carnal hunger, but something far more dangerous. “Wake up, my Jasmine.” His voice was rough.
“Tariq.” With a wide smile she opened her eyes and her arms and tempted him into her embrace. “When did you return?”
“Perhaps forty minutes ago. Now you must awaken so we can eat.” Nevertheless, he leaned toward her and let her put her arms around him. Spending the entire day apart from her for the first time since their marriage had brought old pain to the surface—raw, jagged pain that mocked him for pretending he didn’t need her. The truth was that he needed her far more than she would ever need him.
“With Arin?”
“No.” He smoothed the tangled strands of her hair off her face. “Just me. Tomorrow we’ll dine with our people again.”
Not wishing to face the emotions she aroused, he started to leave. She held him tight. “Don’t go. I missed you.”
“Did you, Mina?” He couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice. He needed her, but would never again chance entrusting her with that knowledge.
“Yes. I kept looking for you all day.” Her eyes were soft, her body warm from sleep.
“Show me how much you missed me, Mina. Show me.” He clasped her to him possessively, the wounded beast inside him unsatisfied with less than complete surrender.
He stripped her so quickly that she gasped, but made no protest. He laid her down on the thick rug on the floor, inflamed by the sight of her creamy skin and fiery hair against the scarlet-and-gold material. She was like some pagan fantasy, a dream designed to drive men wild.
Wrapping his hand around her neck, he kissed her, claimed her. He tasted every corner of her mouth while his free hand roamed her body, then covered the soft mound of one breast, making her whimper. Finally breaking the kiss, he bent down to take a tightly beaded nipple into his mouth. He sucked. Hard.
She bucked under him and her hands clenched in his hair. “Please…please…”
The broken sounds urged him on. Nudging apart her legs with his knee, he settled in between them, opening her to him. One hand flat on the rug beside her, he raised his head and looked down at her as he moved his other hand to her stomach and inexorably lower. Sky-blue eyes bled into indigo and lush lips parted in a fractured breath as he found the small nub hidden in her curls.
Though he was careful not to hurt her, this woman of cream and fire, his strokes were firm. Mina clutched at his arms and he could feel pleasure exploding inside her. He stroked harder, leaving her only for the instant it took to lift her right leg and place it over his hip, giving him full access to her secret places.
Her moan when he touched her again wasn’t enough. He needed more. He needed Mina’s utter and total submission. He needed her to hold nothing back from him. Needed her to need him like he needed her. Needed her to love him so much she would never leave him again.
Reaching lower, he slipped a finger inside her. Her body jerked. Her skin dampened. Then he lowered his head and lightly, carefully, bit the underside of one plump breast. Around his finger, her muscles clenched in an intimate fist so tight he was drenched, surrounded. It was at that moment, as she shoved a fist in her mouth to muffle her cries, that he removed his hand, released himself from his pants and surged into her. Unable to control the spasms overtaking her, she held on to him, biting his shoulder to silence her gasps and moans.
He welcomed the sweet pain. Mina had fallen over the edge and he could feel it beckoning, but he wouldn’t surrender. Not yet. Gripping her hips, he thrust hard. Fast. Deep.
Branding her.
“You’re mine, Mina. Only mine.” The words were wrenched out of the part of him that raged to claim her for all time.
Only when she lost the battle to muffle her pleasure and her cry rode the night air did he allow himself to fall into the beckoning void.
IT WAS AT THE FINAL DINNER with Arin that Jasmine learned about the relationship between the two men. While Tariq was deep in conversation, Arin answered her questions.
“Tariq spent time in each of the twelve tribes after he turned twelve. This was to teach him about his people.”
Jasmine thought that the experience must have been unutterably lonely. He would have been one of them but also, as their future leader, set apart. Her heart ached for the boy he’d been, but she could see the results of his training. Tariq mixed as effortlessly with these desert dwellers as he did with his people in the city.
“He came to Zeina at fifteen and we became friends.”
Arin’s words were simple, but she understood the depth of that friendship. Her husband didn’t bestow his trust lightly. And once that trust had been breached…
“And you’ve remained friends.” She swallowed her sudden apprehension and turned a bright smile on Arin.
The big man nodded. “He is my friend, but he is also my sheik. Make him just your husband, Jasmine, not your sheik.”
His advice echoed her thoughts of not so very long ago. She knew that Tariq needed freedom to lay aside the heavy burden of leadership, even if only for a few hours each day. It was easy to say but hard to put into practice, especially where her stubborn husband was concerned. Without warning, he could change, seeing in her the shadows of the past.
A memory of the bittersweet glory of their lovemaking yesterday flickered through her mind. The complex man she’d married, a man even more fascinating than the prince who’d been her first love, would give neither his trust nor his love into her keeping, unless she proved herself worthy. But she refused to quit trying to breach the walls around his heart. She could be just as stubborn as him.
THAT NIGHT, JASMINE SAT cross-legged on their silken bedding and watched Tariq undress in the warm glow of the lanterns. He turned and motioned her over with a tilt of his aristocratic head. She rose and walked toward him. Without words being exchanged, she knew what he wanted. She began to help him remove his clothing. His back was golden heat under her light touch, his body beautiful to her.
“You’d make a perfect harem slave,” he commented, tongue in cheek.
She bit him on his back for that remark. “I don’t think this primitive desert atmosphere is good for you.”
He chuckled at her response. She drew back when he was dressed only in loose white pants. To her shock, he held her gaze and pulled them off in one smooth motion. She couldn’t move as he threw the last piece of his clothing aside and stalked to her. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen him naked, simply that he had never acted with such sexual aggressiveness. Even his furious loving last night hadn’t been this…blatant.
He was a sleek, muscled warrior, rippling with strength kept in check for his woman. She knew that Tariq would never physically hurt her, which only made his maleness more compelling. Lips parted with sensual longing, she raised her head to meet his green eyes, shadowed in the dim light from the lanterns.
“You’re overdressed for a harem slave,” he murmured, and tugged her nightshirt over her head, leaving her naked.
“What about women?” she managed to ask, though her throat felt dry with need and her thoughts were scattered like tangled skeins of thread.
“Hmm?” He nuzzled her neck. It was, she was beginning to realize, one of his favorite preludes to lovemaking, as well as a gesture of affection.
“Did they have harems?”
He raised his head to meet her laughing eyes. “You wish for a harem, Mina?”
She frowned as if considering it. He squeezed her
tightly. “Okay! Okay! I think I can handle only one of you at a time,” she stated.
“You will only ever handle me,” he said with a masculine growl.
Jasmine smiled and, without stopping to consider her words, said, “Of course. You’re the only one I love.”
Tariq turned to stone. She wanted to take back her hasty declaration. He wasn’t ready; she knew he wasn’t ready. But the words had welled up in her heart and escaped before she could control them.
“You do not need to say such things.” Under her hands, liquid silk turned to steel and his warm flesh was suddenly searingly cold.
“I mean it. I love you.” There was no going back. Throwing away her pride, she gazed at him, silently begging him to believe her.
Tariq’s eyes were midnight dark in the lantern light. “You cannot love me.”
“How can I make you believe I do?” She ached for the loss of their joy, their laughter, their blindingly beautiful love.
Too late. She was four years too late.
He shook his head, answering her with silence. In the past, his control over his emotions had fooled her into thinking that his feelings didn’t run as deep as hers. Only now, when it was too late, did she understand that she’d hurt him more than she could have believed possible. He’d given her his warrior’s heart and she’d thrown it away in her ignorance of its value.
How could he possibly believe the truth after such a betrayal? And yet the truth existed. Her love for him was deeper, richer, more intense now. The child-woman who’d first loved him had matured into a woman who loved him so much she sometimes thought she’d die from the sheer intensity.
When he kissed her, she gave herself up to his embrace, swallowing her tears. Tariq played her like a well-tuned musical instrument, drawing every note of pleasure out of her. But he didn’t give her his heart. Her warrior didn’t trust her not to hurt him again.
Long after he’d fallen asleep, Jasmine lay awake, thinking of the past and how it had indelibly marked her future. Her husband’s distrust was like a razor in her chest, making each breath incredibly painful. Even worse was the knowledge that he believed love weakened him.