is where you lived?” Olivia asked, a note of horror winding through her voice.
“Yes,” he said. “This is...this is my home.”
“How did you survive this? How did you ever survive this?”
He didn’t know how to answer that question. Because it hadn’t been difficult. Surviving what had come before it...that had been the hard part. To live in this, he had become this. Barren. Empty. Void of anything but the basics. But the need to survive.
“This...this is a part of me. This is what I am.” He indicated the empty, dry room. “This is all I am. I have purpose. But I am not...I am not more. Not more than this. I am not the beautiful, lavish halls of the palace. This is my soul. This is what’s left.”
“I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it, Tarek. You are more than this. You are more than what you were made.”
“I am exactly what I was made,” he said, his voice rough. “Nothing more.”
“That can’t be true,” she said, reaching up to touch his face. “I have seen inside of you. There is more than this. He didn’t destroy you. He didn’t hollow you out. He only wins if you let him.”
“You think it is so simple?” He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her hand away. “You think you can simply speak it and it will be true?”
“Why not? You think you can show me this, make analogies out of stone and sand and convince me that you were broken. That you are empty. That you are not the man who made vows to me. The man who read a book so he would know how to please me.”
“No. It is impossible. Stop.”
“What is impossible? What?”
“I cannot be more. I cannot give you more. I will leave you nothing but alone, and you don’t want that. I will be everything you were hoping to avoid.”
“You’re wrong. You’re wrong, because I wasn’t looking to avoid anything when I came here. I was looking for anything, and it was all about me. It had nothing to do with you. I didn’t think of who you might be at all. What you might come to mean to me.”
“I am a killer. A machine. That is all. All I create is pain.”
She grabbed hold of his hands, brought them to her cheeks and held them close to her skin. “With these hands? These hands that have brought me so much pleasure. And have been so tender with me.” She smoothed her palms over his knuckles. “I know you have dealt out pain. I know you have been responsible for unimaginable destruction. In the pursuit of protecting your people. But when you touch me... I have never felt the way that I do when I’m with you. You are more. I’ve witnessed it. I’ve felt it.”
He reached around, grabbing hold of her hair, holding her still, tethering them together. “I can’t. I can’t give more. I must keep focused. I must keep my eyes on my goal.”
“Do you have to deny yourself forever?”
“Yes,” he said.
“No.” She leaned forward, battling against his grip, kissing him on the lips.
And he couldn’t fight against this. Against the need that rose up inside him. The desire to be with her. He knew he was all wrong for her, knew that he could never give her what she wanted. Knew that he didn’t possess the answers to the questions that were in her luminous blue eyes. But he wasn’t strong enough to tell her no. Wasn’t strong enough to turn away from this. Here, out in the desert where he had been the most isolated, he could not say no to this. To this chance to water the dry spaces inside him.
She had already compromised his control. And right now, facing down the desperation in her eyes, he didn’t have it in him to try to reclaim it. He couldn’t give her anything deeper than this. But if she wanted his body, he would gladly share it. And if she would share hers with him... He was not worthy. But he wasn’t strong enough to say no. He had survived torture. Had been beaten, broken, had withstood terrible pain. But he could not withstand this desire. This desire that roared through him like a feral beast, tearing at everything in its path.
After this. After this he would rebuild himself. Would find himself again out in the desert as he had done once before. But not now. Now he would lose himself. In her. In this one way he had given himself permission to find release.
“There is a bed. Upstairs. It is not fine. It is likely full of sand.”
She shook her head. “I don’t care.”
He lifted her up into his arms, held her close to his chest. Felt her heartbeat. She was so beautiful, so breakable. How was he entrusted to hold her in his arms? He was nothing. Nothing but a blunt instrument. Nothing but a weapon. What business did he have putting his hands on her body?
None. None at all. But he didn’t possess enough honor to turn away from her, to turn away from this. He felt things breaking between them, splintering. Mirroring the broken pieces of humanity that were left inside him, buried deep. Shattered beyond repair. When she looked at him, it was easy to believe they might be fixed. Easy to believe that he could be whole. Because when she looked at him, she saw a man. But even if the pieces could be repaired, he knew for a fact there weren’t enough left to ever create a whole man. Not in the way she deserved.
She saw more than he was. And he wasn’t strong enough to end that illusion. Not now. After this it would have to end.
With each step he took, the sand depressed beneath his feet, another reminder of where they were. Of the fact that he was ready to strip this beautiful woman naked in the middle of the desert, in a house that was barely fit for a scorpion, much less a queen.
But even with guilt lashing at him, he couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop.
When they made it to the room he’d called his own for all those years, he set her down gently, her feet almost buried in sand. He went over to the crude metal bed frame and grabbed hold of the blankets, shaking them out fiercely. Now that he’d thought of scorpions, he had to be sure.
Her skin should never touch fabric this rough. Her body was worthy of only silk. And worthy of a man who knew better how to treat her. Better how to touch her.
Still, he walked toward her. Still, he wrapped his arm around her waist and tugged her against his body, kissing her deeply. Still, he brought her over to the bed and laid her down on the mattress. He was shaking as he let his hands drift over her curves, as he kissed her as if she was the oasis he’d been searching for.
Later. He would hate himself for this later.
He stripped her clothes from her, as quickly as possible, ruthlessly. No thought given to delicacy, to the expensive nature of her clothing. He heard fabric tear, and he didn’t care. If he was more beast than man, he would prove it now. He had no idea if wanting a woman made every man behave this way, made even the most controlled, careful of men act without thought to consequence.
But he didn’t care. It didn’t matter what other men did. It didn’t matter how sex usually felt. Because for him, this was unique. For him, this was the only experience. For him, there would be only her.
When she was bare before him, he bent his head and kissed the soft curve of her breast, drew her nipple deep into his
