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His lips met hers in a rush like the eagle falling on its prey.
Far from diving for cover, Dani’s mouth rose to his and melded with it. Sensation crashed over her. She was dimly aware of their natural surroundings, the wind in the trees, animals scurrying nearby, and of his hands resting warmly at her waist, but her whole being focused on the kiss and the powerful and intense effect it created in her body. Heat flooded her core, spreading out to her limbs, squeezing the breath from her lungs as she gave herself over to the sensation.
She’d never experienced a kiss like this. Chemistry, was it? Or was it that she’d never kissed a man as gorgeous and dashing as Quasar? Either way the effect was overwhelming.
She had no idea how long they kissed, but when they finally pulled apart and she opened her eyes, she found herself blinking against now-unaccustomed daylight. “Oh, dear.” The words spilled out.
Quasar gave an amused frown. “Oh, dear? That’s not the effect I intended.”
Her Desert Knight
Jennifer Lewis
JENNIFER LEWIS has been dreaming up stories for as long as she can remember and is thrilled to be able to share them with readers. She has lived on both sides of the Atlantic and worked in media and the arts before she grew bold enough to put pen to paper. She would love to hear from readers at [email protected]. Visit her website at www.jenlewis.com.
For my sister Annabel
Many thanks to the readers who asked me for more stories about the Al Mansur brothers and fired my imagination to write them. Also thanks to my agent Andrea and the many people who read and improved those stories, especially my editors Demetria Lucas (book one), Diana Ventimiglia (book two), Charles Griemsman (book three).
Contents
Going to her favorite bookshop in Salalah was like stepping back into a chapter of Arabian Nights. To get there, Dani had to walk through the local souk, past the piles of carrots and cabbages, the crates of dates and figs, winding her way through knots of old men wearing their long dishdashas and turbans just as they must have done a thousand years ago.
Then there was the store itself. The double doorway of time-scarred wood was studded with big metal rivets, like the entrance to a castle. Only a small section opened, and she had to step over the bottom part of the door into the smoky darkness of the shop. The smoke was incense, eternally smoldering away in an antique brass burner that hung in one corner, mingled with pipe smoke from the elderly store owner’s long, carved pipe. He sat in the corner, poring over the pages of a thick, leather-bound tome, as if he maintained the shop purely for his own reading pleasure. It was entirely possible that the store was a front of some kind, since there rarely seemed to be any customers, but that didn’t diminish Dani’s enjoyment of its calming atmosphere.
The books were piled on the floor like the oranges in the stalls outside. Fiction, poetry, treatises on maritime navigation, advice on the training of the camel: all were in Arabic and nearly all were at least fifty years old and bound in leather, darkened by the passage of many greasy fingers over their smooth, welcoming surfaces. She’d found several gems here, and always entered the shop with a prickle of anticipation, like someone setting out on a journey where anything could happen.
Today, as she stepped over the threshold and filled her lungs with the fragrant air, she noticed an unfamiliar visitor in the picturesque gloom of the interior. The light from one tiny, high window cast its diffuse glow over the tall, broad-shouldered figure of a young man.
Dani stiffened. She didn’t like the idea of a man in her djinn-enchanted realm of magic books. She didn’t like men anywhere at all, lately, but she gave the shop owner a pass as he was quiet and kind and gave her big discounts.
She resolved to slip past the stranger on her way to the stack she’d started to investigate yesterday: a new pile of well-thumbed poetry books the shop owner had purchased at a bazaar in Muscat. She’d almost bought one yesterday, and she’d resolved overnight that today she wasn’t leaving without it.
The interloper was incongruously dressed in Western clothing—jeans and a white
