deaths to anyone. She didn’t even like remembering it. But, safe in Khalil’s arms, she felt the need to tell him her story. Share her pain.
‘You know they died in the bombing,’ Elena began slowly. ‘And as far as I know, my mother died instantly. But my father—my father and I were alive after the bomb went off.’
Khalil didn’t say anything, just held her close. After a moment Elena continued. ‘I can’t remember much after the first bomb went off. I was thrown across the room and I landed on my back. I must have been unconscious for a little while, because I remember waking up, feeling completely disorientated. And everything...’ She drew a shuddering breath. ‘Everything was madness. People screaming and crying. So much blood...’ She shook her head, closing her eyes as she pressed her face into the solid warmth of Khalil’s chest.
‘I crawled across the floor, looking for my parents. There was broken glass everywhere but I didn’t even feel it, although later I saw my hands were covered in blood. It was so strange, so surreal... I felt numb and yet utterly terrified. And then I found my mother...’ She stopped then, because she never let herself think about that moment even though sometimes she felt as if it never left her thoughts: her mother’s lifeless face, her mouth opened in a soundless scream, her staring eyes.
She’d turned from her mother’s body and had seen her father stumbling towards her, terror etched on every feature.
‘There was a second bomb,’ she told Khalil, her voice muffled against his chest. ‘My father knew somehow. Maybe he guessed, or saw something. But he ran towards me and threw his body over me as it went off. The last thing he said...’ Another deep, shuddering breath. ‘“For Thallia”,’ she quoted softly. ‘He said “For Thallia” because he was saving my life for our country, so I could be queen.’
Khalil was silent for a long moment, his arms snugged around her. ‘And you think that was the only reason he was saving your life,’ he surmised quietly. ‘For the monarchy, not for you. Not because you were his daughter. Because he loved you.’
His words, so softly and surely spoken, cut her to the heart, because she knew they were true and she was amazed that Khalil had been able to see that. Understand it.
‘I never knew what they felt,’ she whispered. ‘I hardly ever saw them, all through my childhood. They were devoted to Thallia, but they never spent time with me.’ She let out a shuddering breath. ‘And then they were gone in a single moment, and I didn’t know if I missed them because they were dead or because I never actually knew them in the first place.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Is that awful?’
‘No, it’s understandable.’
‘But it seems so ungrateful. My father gave his life for me.’
‘You’ve a right to your feelings, Elena. They loved you, but how were you to know it if they didn’t show it until they’d died?’
She pressed her face even harder against his chest, willing the tears that threatened to recede. She wasn’t even sure what she was crying for. Her parents’ deaths? The lack of relationship she’d had while they’d been alive? Or simply the swamping sense of loss she felt, as if she’d experienced it for ever?
Until Khalil.
She twisted to look up at him. ‘I’ve never told anyone all that.’
‘I’m glad you told me.’
‘I’m glad I did too.’ She hesitated, because she felt a need to reassure him and, perhaps herself, that she knew this wasn’t real—that whatever intimacy had sprung between them was separate from what was going on in their lives. It didn’t really count.
Yet she said nothing, because it felt like it counted. It felt like the only thing that counted. Khalil had given her something, or maybe he’d just showed her she already had it: a capacity to share, to trust. To love.
She looked up at him, searching his face, wanting to know what he was feeling, if he felt the same pull of attraction and empathy that she did. But then she met his gaze and saw the fire burning there and her breath caught in her chest as desire, raw, fierce and overwhelming, crashed over her.
His face was so close to hers she could feel his breath fanning against her cheek, see the dark glint of stubble on his chin. His lips were no more than a whisper away from hers and, as she stared up at him and heard his breath hitch, she knew without a doubt she wanted to close that small distance between their mouths.
She wanted him to kiss her.
His head dipped and her heart seemed to stop and then soar. His lips were so close now that if she moved at all they would be touching his. They would be kissing.
Yet she didn’t move, transfixed as she was by both wonder and fear, and Khalil didn’t move either.
The moment stretched between them, suspended, endless.
His breath came out in a shudder and his hands tightened around her face. She tried to say something but words eluded her; all she could do was feel. Want.
Then with another shuddering breath he closed that small space between their mouths and his lips touched hers in her first and most wonderful kiss.
She let out a tiny sigh both of satisfaction and surrender, her hands coming up to tangle in the surprising softness of his hair. Her lips parted and Khalil deepened the kiss, pulling her closer as his tongue delved into her mouth, and everything in Elena throbbed powerfully to life.
She’d never known you could feel like this, want like this. It was so intense and sweet it almost felt painful. She pressed against him, acting on an instinct she hadn’t realised she possessed. Khalil slid his hand from her face to cup her breast, and a shocked gasp escaped her mouth as exquisite sensation darted through her.
Khalil withdrew, dropping his hand and easing back from her so she felt a rush of loss. He reached up to cover her hands with his own and draw them down to her own lap.
‘I shouldn’t have...’ he began then shook his head. Even in the moonlit darkness she could see the regret and remorse etched on his harsh features.
‘I wanted you to,’ she blurted and he just shook his head again.
‘You should sleep again, if you can,’ he said quietly and Elena bit her lip, blinking hard. She wondered, with a rush of humiliation, if she’d actually been the one to kiss him. In that moment it had been hard to tell, and she’d wanted it so much...
Had she actually thrown herself at him?
‘Sleep, Elena,’ he said softly, and he repositioned her on his lap so her head was once again pillowed by his chest. He stroked her hair just as he had before and Elena closed her eyes, even though sleep seemed farther away than ever.
What had just happened? And how could she feel so unbearably, overwhelmingly disappointed?
DAWN BROKE OVER the dunes, turning the sand pink with pale sunlight. The storm had died down and the desert had reshaped itself into a new landscape of drifts and dunes. Leaving Elena sleeping in their rocky shelter, Khalil went to check on the horses and get his bearings.
And
