by Sophia Lynn
Still, it had to be done. Perhaps there was a way they could have the pleasure without the pain that would rush up after. Listening to her soft breathing, relishing the feel of her warm body against his, he lay awake, and he thought.
*
Bailey awoke the next morning feeling surprisingly well rested for having spent the night in a cave. She was a little startled to find that though the blankets had been tucked securely around her, she was alone on the pallet.
She felt relieved when she saw Dario at the mouth of the cave, the lightening dawn sky silhouetting his shape. She was disappointed, however, to see that he was dressed, but she supposed they couldn’t really spend all their time naked and making love.
Wrapping a blanket tightly around herself, she padded over to lean against him.
“Good morning,” she said, leaning up to kiss him. She was startled when he allowed the kiss but then pulled back.
“Dario?”
“You should get dressed,” he said, his voice level. “We have a few things to talk about.”
Those words did not bring her a great deal of confidence. It felt as if a heavy stone had been dropped in her belly.
“Um, all right…”
She found her clothes where they had thrown them the night before. They were dusty, but they were mostly dry. She shook them out as best she could before putting them on again and turning to Dario.
“What’s the matter?” she asked nervously. “You look like you are gearing up to tell me that last night was wonderful, but that you’re married.”
He laughed a little, which made her feel better, but then he sobered again.
“I would not have done what we did together last night if I was married,” he told her, “but you do have something of the truth there. I am deeply connected to my country, and as the sheikh, I must always be working in favor of its interests.”
She nodded, still mystified about what he was getting at. Suddenly, she felt very cold and lonely, a shocking thing to feel after how intimate they had been the night before.
“What are you saying?” she asked, her voice tense. “Please… just be clear. I’m not some delicate thing that cannot handle the truth.”
“I cannot give you… any true commitment,” he said, looking down. “Not really. When I marry, it will be to a woman who has a lineage and culture that matches mine, a woman who will rule by my side as a sheikha in her own right.”
Bailey swallowed hard, trying not to let on how much this stung. Any other man who had started speaking of marriage directly after their first night together she would have laughed off. However, as with all things, Dario was different. The peace and passion they had found together was a deep and stunning thing, something that felt like a once-in-a-lifetime wonder. That he would be dismissing it so casually now hurt.
“I never asked you for a wedding ring,” she started, but he cut her off.
“Please, let me finish, and then you can make your decision,” he said, his voice soft. “What we had last night was special. I have not experienced anything like what we had before. It reached me, it touched me. It woke me up in a way I never had. I… I cannot give you forever, Bailey, not even close, but I can give you this.”
“This?”
He opened his arms to encompass the cave where they had passed the night together.
“This place. This place, I want to give you as something just for us. When we are here, we have no past and no future. I cannot offer you the world, much as a woman like you deserves it, but I can give you this moment in time.”
She felt her heart breaking even as a part of her was fiercely grateful to have anything at all. Even as she had found a passion that she had never felt before, she was losing it.
“So when we are among others, down in camp, we continue as we are. And when we are here?”
“We are only ourselves. We are honest, we speak as we please, we do as we please.”
“And then we return to the others, where we have our real lives.”
The bitter laugh she got in response had the effect of quenching some of her anger in surprise.
“That is not what it feels like,” he told her. “What we had up here, that is what feels like my real life. Everything else… no, Bailey, what we have up here is real. Never doubt it. It is… perhaps the most real thing I have ever experienced.”
A part of her wanted desperately to cling to her pride. She wanted to throw his offer in his face, and march off down to the encampment. She reminded herself that in many ways she was a prisoner here, someone who had been brought to the encampment against her will and who had effectively been blackmailed into staying. The greater part of her, the one that had found such peace in his arms the night before, refused to let her pride take over.
“All right,” she said. “All right. I would like to ask one thing, however.”
He looked braced for anything.
“Yes?”
“Will you please kiss me?” It came out strangely wistful. She wished that she could take it back, but then he crossed the space between them.
He took her in his arms, and when he kissed her, she thought that his kiss was trying to say that he could not. The kiss was deep and passionate, one that wanted to brand them both so that they could never forget what they had between them.
When they pulled apart, Bailey reached up to touch her lips, marveling at how sensitive they were. When he saw what she was doing, Dario laughed ruefully.
“If you keep that up, we will never make it back down to the encampment.”
“I might not mind that,” she muttered, but she got herself ready to leave.
“Thank you,” he said, just before they left the shelter of the cave. “I… I do not know what I would have done if you would have said no.”
She met his eyes, trying to let him see how much this meant to her, trying to show him that she had feelings as deep as his.
“I might have to say no at some point,” she said softly. “This is new and strange to me, and I am not certain what I can bear. But… I will try.”
As they walked down the slope toward the still-silent encampment, she wondered what was going to become of them. Was the cave real for her, or was it the encampment and her work? What was her heart if it could be shunted off to a single place and a single time?
It was too much to think about. She knew that if she tried, she might make herself sick with grief and anxiety. Instead, she pushed it aside. She had the promise of the cave. She had the memory of a night unlike any other she had ever enjoyed.
For now, it was enough.
*
They parted ways when they returned to the encampment, but Dario couldn’t help watching after her. Dressed in the dark robes of the region, she should have been as unremarkable as any other woman, but whether it was from her gait, the way she set her shoulders, or the sweet lift of her chin, he would always know her.
He had seen the blow that her pride had taken when he made his offer, and it had cost him everything not to take it back, to give her what would make them both happy.
However, he was the sheikh. He was the First Among Ten Thousand. He was given power and money beyond the dreams of most men to act as the shepherd of his country, and nowhere in there was his happiness a guarantee.
He shook his head, trying to shake off his dark thoughts. What he had with Bailey was something precious. He would keep it as long as he could, and when the time came…
He would have to let it go.
CHAPTER FOUR
Bailey was startled by how quickly her days fell into a pattern. During the daytime, she worked as she always had. She developed friendships with the people around her, close connections formed with people who liked her and respected the work that she did. In some ways, she had never felt so accepted. She had always been the poor girl, the one on the outside working too hard to have any fun at all.
Sometimes, as she went through her day, she sa
w Dario, walking among his people with ease and affection. She saw how the men deferred to him, and how he gave every person their due. She could see how the people of his country would love him so well.
The women noticed him as well. She heard more than one whispered conversation about how handsome the sheikh was. She even heard one speculating about his prowess in bed, though she ducked away from that one very quickly.
It was like a wound she couldn’t stop worrying. At one point, she had finally asked one of the other women whether he was attached to anyone in particular.
The woman, a cosmopolitan from Jabal who handled the delicate site setup, shrugged.
“At some point, he will likely find a bride from one of the other emirates or from one of the noble families here in Jabal. Until then, well, he has certainly had affairs, but he is very discreet about them. One imagines that he keeps mistresses like a European aristocrat, secreted away in some lovely apartment that he visits.”
Or in a cave with a surprisingly comfortable air mattress, she thought wryly, and then she flinched at the idea of him having other women discreetly, making the same deal with them that he had with her. She hung on to the words he had said, about how real they were together and the passion that they shared, but weren’t those the words that every mistress heard?
Most nights found her waiting until dark had fallen. When the murmurs around the fire were dying down, and when people were starting to head back to their sleeping places, she would wave and yawn as if she were making her way to her own trailer. Once she was sure that she was out of sight, she switched on the tiny flashlight that hung on her key chain and made her way up around the excavation site to the cave that she was coming to know so well.
Some nights, he would arrive before she did. There might be a roaring fire to give the cave warmth, a welcoming spread of blankets that were waiting to cover their naked bodies. Dario would be there, smiling and waiting for her with open arms.
If Bailey was honest with herself, though, she would say the nights that she loved the most were the ones where she arrived first. Dario might be held up by serious logistical concerns with the other riders, or with the satellite talks that he had to have with Jabal officials from time to time. She would arrive at the cave, build up a fire, and sit on the ledge outside, staring up at the stars. She wondered if there was something strange about the fact that she liked waiting for him. There was a kind of quiet yearning there that she relished, and it felt good because she knew that he would come. She loved hearing his step on the rocky path, and she knew that when he came to her, his smile would be as brilliant as the sun itself.
They were drawn to each other by something that felt as natural, as powerful, and as unquestionable as gravity. In his arms, she felt more like herself than she had ever felt before.
“I feel so good with you,” she whispered one night. They were naked under the covers, her head was tucked under his chin. “I wonder sometimes, though, what I give to you?”
His laugh was incredulous.
“Do you even have to ask, my little gem? When I am with you, everything feels possible. I am purely myself, and that is a feeling that few people can offer me. With you, I feel like the finest version of myself that I can be.”
She supposed it made sense, but there was always a part of her that felt like there were pieces missing. What they had in the cave was real and true, but she was beginning to feel like two people. One walked in daylight, joked with her friends, and loved the work she was doing, even if she had been coerced at the beginning. The second one crept along the mountain at night, lived by firelight, and gave up her body to a man who could make her feel things she had never imagined before.
As time went on, those two different parts drifted apart farther and farther. Bailey told herself that there was no separation. She was one person. She knew that the split was hurting her, but she did not know how in the world she was going to fix it.
*
Things went on as they were for two weeks, and then the excavation team found the diadem. The shout went up around the camp that something big had been found, and sooner rather than later, most of the crew was at the dig site, watching from a safe distance as a skilled archaeologist worked gently to free the prize.
Bailey stood on tiptoe to watch as the woman painstakingly brushed away the centuries old stone and grit to reveal the shine of gold. This was a terrifying moment, when all of a scientist’s skills might still not be enough to prevent the destruction of an ancient artifact.
Bailey wasn’t sure when she became aware of Dario standing behind her, but suddenly he was there. They did not touch, but in the crowd, it was easy for him to come so close that his chest touched her back. Suddenly she was drinking in the scent of him, somehow able to sense his heat through the thin fabric of her clothes.
I am glad I am seeing this with him, she thought, and then a cry went up.
The head archaeologist lifted a shining gold object between her gloved hands, holding it up for others to see. From where she stood, Bailey could see that it was a delicate crown of twisted gold wire, intensely intricate and studded with the red gleam of some kind of deep red gem. It was a gorgeous piece, as brilliant as it must have been on the head of some ancient Jabal royalty.
With a flourish, the archaeologist came to offer it to Dario, who took it with reverent hands. Bailey was startled to see his eyes glance toward her, a strange look flickering across his face. Strangely enough, it looked like longing, something that sent a strange pang through her heart.
The cheer went up around them, and Dario smiled. When he raised his voice to speak, he directed his words at the camp.
“This is a great day for the history of Jabal,” he said. “This weekend, we are leaving behind guards, and we will all return to the city. Accommodations will be made for those who choose not to see their families. We will celebrate as only we know how to do, and then we shall return to learn more!”
This response was met with an even greater cheer. As Bailey watched, Dario left with his security team to install the artifact in one of the safes kept for this purpose. All around her, the group dissolved into chatter about what this weekend might bring and the generosity of the sheikh, but she was left feeling oddly desolate.
A few nights in the city after being in the desert for months sounded amazing, but somehow, she already felt at loose ends. She had never been to Jabal, and she knew that with the discovery of a new artifact, Dario would likely have his hands full.
As it turned out, Dario hadn’t intended for her to go to Jabal at all. When he told her the news that night at the cave, he was matter-of-fact.
“There is a small inn not terribly far from where we are. They are people I have known most of my life, good and trustworthy, and you will be safe there. I can send one of the riders to escort you there, and then we can make sure to pick you up on our way back to the dig.”
Bailey blinked at the unfairness of it.
“So… everyone else gets to go see Jabal, and for some reason, you are leaving me in the country?”
“It’s not that simple,” he said. “The truth is that there is still a great deal of bad feeling over the men who came to remove these artifacts. I am… afraid that if it is discovered that you are able to move about freely in the country, the consequences could be dire.”
Bailey narrowed her eyes.
“I don’t believe that,” she said bluntly.
Dario, who she was coming to realize expected his orders to be obeyed without question, looked startled.
“Excuse me?”
“I think you’re being paranoid,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I think that, yes, Christensen was a big deal… but that was a month ago. Longer. I also think that unless they are playing me up as the Jezebel that got away, no one cares or remembers who I was, and it’s not like there were any pictures taken of me anyway.”
Dario scowled, and she could imagine there were
officials and military men who cowered under that look. In some of their erotic play, that scowl could turn her to water. However, in a real-life context, it only frustrated her.
“You are deliberately defying me…”
“I am pointing out a flaw in your judgment,” she said, keeping her voice as level as she could. “You have given your argument, and now I get to give mine.”
“There is no argument here,” he said, his voice dropping down to a growl.
“There is,” she said, standing up as tall as she could. “Because otherwise, there is a man who is giving me orders without authority, and that means that man is a bully.”
For a moment, Dario stared at her, incensed. She narrowed her eyes, ready to counter whatever he said next, but then he turned away.
“You are a singularly infuriating and foolish woman,” he snarled, and then he stalked into the darkness.
Bailey stared after him, shocked and hurt. She had expected a fight. She had expected him to rage at her. She hadn’t expected this blunt rejection.
When it became clear he wasn’t coming back, she made her way down from the cave, moving carefully and slowly so she didn’t have to think about what was going on. When she was back in the safety of her own trailer, she sat for a while in bed, a book open but unread on her lap.
Is this the real version of us after all? Bailey wondered. Are we simply not fit to be together?
The next day was a frenzy in camp. The main convoy leaving for Jabal was departing that afternoon, and there was a great deal to get done. Everyone around her was lively about what their plans were. Some were going to see their families; others had no intention of sleeping at all until they were on the jeeps coming back to the encampment on Sunday night. Word had gotten around that the sheikh had rented out a block of rooms at a luxury hotel for those who didn’t have anywhere else to go, and most people were thrilled.
Bailey tried to be happy for her friends, but she knew that she wouldn’t have any part in it. She might demand and argue, but the truth was that in Jabal, she was Dario’s dependent. When he told her to go somewhere, she went. Dutifully, she packed her bag and went out to the convoy with the others.