this if you grew up in America?’
‘All this?’ Khalil repeated, raising his eyebrows.
‘Tents. Horses. Fighting. All this—this rebel stuff.’ She realised she sounded rather ridiculous and she shrugged, half in apology, half in defiance. Heaven help her, she’d had two glasses of wine and she was nearly drunk.
‘I served in the French Foreign Legion for seven years,’ Khalil told her. ‘I’m used to this kind of living.’
‘You did?’
‘It was good preparation.’
Everything in his life, Elena supposed, had been to prepare for being Sheikh, for taking the throne from the half-brother who didn’t deserve it.
Aziz... Why could she barely remember his face now? She’d been going to marry him, yet she’d forgotten what he looked like, or how his voice sounded. And with that thought came another fast on its heels.
She wasn’t going to marry him any more. Even if he rescued her, or Khalil released her, she wasn’t going to marry Aziz.
It was both a revelation and completely unsurprising. Elena sat back, her mind spinning both from her thoughts and the wine she’d drunk. For the first time, she accepted her fate...even if she had no idea what it would actually mean for her title, her crown, her country.
‘I’m not going to marry him,’ she blurted. ‘Aziz. Not even...not even if he found me in time.’
Something flashed in Khalil’s eyes and he sat back. ‘What made you change your mind?’
‘You did,’ she said simply, and she knew she meant it in more ways than one. Not just because he was the rightful Sheikh, but because he’d opened up feelings inside her she hadn’t known she’d possessed. She couldn’t marry Aziz now, couldn’t settle for the kind of cold, mercenary arrangement she’d once wanted.
‘I’m glad,’ Khalil said quietly. They gazed at each other for a long moment, and everything in Elena tensed, yearned...
Then Khalil rose from the table. ‘It is late. You should return to your tent.’
He reached for her hand, and Elena let him pull her up. She felt fluid, boneless; the wine must have really gone to her head.
He kept hold of her hand as they stepped outside the tent, the night dark and endless around them. The air was surprisingly cold and crisp, which had a sobering effect on Elena.
By the time they’d crossed the camp to her tent, Khalil’s hand still loosely linked with hers, she wasn’t feeling tipsy at all, just embarrassed. The evening’s emotional intimacies and revelations were enough now to make her cringe.
‘Goodnight, Elena.’ Khalil stopped in front of her tent, sliding his hand from hers. He touched her chin with his fingers, tipped her head up so she was blinking at him, the night sky spangled with stars high above him.
For a moment as she looked up at him, just as when they’d been in his tent, she thought he might kiss her. Her lips parted and her head spun and her heart started thudding in a mix of alarm, anticipation and a suspended sense of wonder.
Khalil lowered his head, his mouth a whisper away from hers. ‘Elena,’ he murmured; it sounded like a question. Everything in Elena answered, yes.
She reached up to put her hands on his shoulders; her body pressed against his, the feel of his hard chest sending little shocks of sensation through her.
His hands slid up to frame her face, his fingers so gentle on her skin. She felt his desire as well as her own, felt his yearning and surprise, and thought, We are alike in this too. We both want this, but we’re also afraid to want it.
Although perhaps Khalil didn’t want it, after all, for he suddenly dropped his hands from her and stepped back. ‘Goodnight,’ he said again, and then he started walking back to his tent and was soon swallowed up by the darkness.
ELENA DIDN’T SEE Khalil at all the next day. She spent hours lying on her bed or sitting outside her tent, watching the men go about the camp and looking for Khalil.
She missed him. She told herself that was absurd, because she barely knew him. She’d only met him two days ago, and hardly in the best of circumstances.
Yet she still found herself reliving the times he’d touched her: the slide of his fingers on her jaw; the press of his chest against her cheek. She replayed their dinner conversation in her mind, thought about his lonely childhood, his determination to be Sheikh. And realised in just three days he would let her go and she would never see him again.
A thought that made a twist of bewildering longing spiral inside her.
Then the next morning Khalil came to her tent. He loomed large in the space and shamelessly she let her gaze rove over him, taking in his broad shoulders, his dark hair, his impossibly hard jaw.
‘I need to go visit some of the desert tribes,’ he told her without preamble. ‘And I’d like you to go with me.’
Shock as well as a wary pleasure rippled through her in a double wave. ‘You...would?’
He arched an eyebrow and gave her a small smile. ‘Wouldn’t you like to see something other than the inside of this tent?’
‘Yes, but...why do you want me to go?’ A terrible suspicion took hold of her. ‘You aren’t...you aren’t going to show me off as some trophy of war, are you? Show your people how you captured Aziz’s bride?’ Just the idea made her stomach churn. Why shouldn’t he do such a thing? He’d captured her, after all. She was his possession, his prize.
Khalil’s face darkened, his eyebrows drawing together in a fierce frown. ‘No, of course not. In any case, the people I’m visiting wouldn’t be impressed by such antics.’
‘Wouldn’t they?’
‘They are loyal to me. And I would never act in such a barbaric fashion.’
‘Then why are you taking me?’
* * *
Khalil stared at Elena, the question reverberating through him. Then why are you taking me?
The simple answer was because he wanted to. Because he’d been thinking about her since they’d had dinner together, since she’d shown how she believed him. Believed in him. And having someone’s trust, even if it was just a little of it, was as heady and addictive as a drug. He wanted more. He wanted more of Elena and he wanted more of the person he felt he was in her eyes. The man he wanted to be.
The realisation had kept him from her for an entire day, fighting it, fighting the need and the desire, the danger and the weakness of wanting another person. Of opening himself to pain, loss and grief.
By last night he’d convinced himself that taking her to see the desert tribes who supported him was a political move; it would strengthen his position to have Aziz’s former bride on his side.
Gazing
