to fade and the pain in his muscles to settle, he reflected on the fact that the princess hadn’t been exaggerating her claim that she could manage perfectly well without a bodyguard. No one could have described her as defenceless.
So how could a woman who could deliver a punch like that appear vulnerable?
Her breathing was rapid and she gave a little shake of her head, her cheeks still wet with tears. ‘Sorry. I—I had a dream.’
‘Yes.’ Relieved that the problem appeared to be solved, Karim released her hand and started to stand up, but she grabbed his arm.
‘Wait a minute. Don’t go. Please don’t leave me.’
Her request was so unexpected that he simply stared at her. What did she expect him to do? ‘You’re awake now.’
‘It’s all still in my head. It was so clear …’ Her fingers tightened on his arm and he had little choice but to sit down again.
‘Think about something else,’ he advised swiftly, and she made a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh, fully awake now.
‘Sorry. This isn’t what you signed up for, is it? Go back to bed, I’ll be fine.’ With obvious reluctance, she released her desperate grip on his arm and bent her knees up to her chest, cuddling them like a child. ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’ She was shaking so badly that Karim could feel the movement on the mattress, and he gave an impatient sigh.
‘It was just a dream, Alexa.’
‘Yes.’ Her teeth were chattering and she buried her head in her arms. ‘Go back to bed.’
He should have done exactly that, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to leave her, and that impulse puzzled and exasperated him. ‘What was the dream about?’
Her head lifted and she looked at him, tears spilling out of her eyes and onto her cheeks. She made no sound, but simply blinked a few times and then brushed her tears away impatiently. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You need to go back to sleep,’ he said roughly. ‘Whatever it was all about, the memory will have gone in the morning.’
‘Not all memories are so easily erased.’ She spoke softly, as if afraid that to raise her voice might make those memories still more vivid. ‘I thought this would be a fresh start. I thought that I could finally leave it all behind. But it comes with you, doesn’t it? It follows you everywhere, because it’s been there for so long, it’s part of who you are.’
Was she talking to herself or to him?
Was she seriously expecting some sort of response?
Karim had no idea what she was talking about, but it sounded disturbingly like the sort of touchy-feely conversation that a woman ought to have with another woman. ‘What follows you?
‘The past. It’s always there. You can never shake it off.’
Confronted with a more clearly defined problem to deal with, Karim relaxed slightly. It was obvious that she regretted the things she’d done in her past, and that was hardly surprising, given just how wild her behaviour had been. Evidently her impending marriage to the Sultan had made her wish that she’d behaved with a little more restraint in her youth, which meant that it was her conscience that was disturbing her sleep.
‘The past is the past.’ Wishing that she’d stop shaking, he kept his words blunt. ‘There is never any point in looking back. It’s over and done with.’
‘That isn’t true. Don’t you ever look back?’
‘No,’ Karim said shortly. ‘The past is over. The future is the only thing that matters. And your future requires us to leave at dawn. If you don’t get some sleep soon you’ll be too tired to travel.’
‘I don’t want to go back to sleep. Can we leave now? I’m scared, Karim.’
‘We’re not leaving. Lie down.’
For once, she didn’t argue. Like a child obeying a parent, she lay down, and Karim stared at her shivering, half-naked form with exasperation. Wasn’t she going to pull the covers up?
After a moment’s hesitation he reached out and tugged the sheet up over her shoulders, covering her body and at the same time pondering on the entirely new experience of tucking a beautiful woman into a bed that he wasn’t sleeping in. As he rose to his feet her hand shot out and her slim fingers gripped his arm again.
‘Will you stay? Just for a moment.’
Her fingers tightened on his arm and he covered them with his own. Her slender fingers were freezing cold, and he rubbed his hand over hers and then realized what he was doing and released her instantly. ‘You’ll be fine now.’
What was he doing?
What instinct had driven him to offer comfort when he was so inexperienced in that particular skill?
‘Please stay with me. Just for a minute.’
For what purpose? What did she want from him? His eyes raked over her shivering body, but there was nothing in the least seductive about the way she lay. She looked fragile and vulnerable as she huddled under the sheets, as if she were trying to make herself as small and insignificant as possible.
‘What are you afraid of?’ Irritated with himself for responding to her, his voice was rougher than he’d intended. ‘Tell me.’
‘Why—so that you can take out your gun and shoot it?’ She gave a shaky laugh, released his arm and curled up into a ball. ‘There are some things that even a bodyguard can’t protect you from, and this is one of them. You’re right. You can’t help me, Karim. Go back to bed. I’m sorry I disturbed you.’
He had her permission to leave.
So why was he still standing there?
Something about her weary dismissal made it impossible for him to walk away, and the urge to help and protect her was so shockingly powerful that he almost laughed at himself. So he wasn’t entirely immune, then. Just like his father before him, he was a man capable of being manipulated by a woman’s tears.
‘There is nothing to be afraid of.’ He was impatient with himself, not her, but he saw her withdraw.
‘I’m fine, Karim. Go to bed.’
Frustrated by his inability to do exactly that, Karim frowned down at her, studying the dark shadows under her eyes and the almost translucent skin over delicate bones. She didn’t look fine. She looked like a woman who was hunted by demons. And she was a woman of contrasts—strong and feisty one minute, vulnerable the next. How had a woman who looked as though a gust of wind could snap her in two, shown such resilience in the desert? ‘Was your dream to do with your uncle?’
‘Can we talk about something else? Anything.’ Sounding more like a nervous child than a grown woman, she huddled under the covers. ‘It would help a lot if you could just talk about something normal for a moment. Tell me about your family.’
‘My family is not normal,’
