onto his leg in the pitch darkness.
The anger Karim had been forced to hold in check was once more frustrated, now by the note of pure panic in her tremulous voice. The vulnerability she so often struggled to hide behind a tough exterior was right there and it awakened protective instincts he hadn’t known he possessed.
She nearly died … He pushed away the thought because he knew if he let it take hold he would not be able to control the rage that continued to simmer just below the surface. He would finish rescuing her and then he would throttle her, he promised himself.
He unfurled her fingers and retained them in his hand as he dropped to his knees beside her. Reaching out, he found her face and framed it with his free hand, rubbing the dust from the curve of her cheek as he did so.
‘You will stay here. I will find some light, all right?’
There was a pause before she nodded, wondering where on earth he was going to find light. She shivered when his fingers fell away, the loss of physical contact making her feel utterly bereft, and she knew there was a lot more to her reaction than a simple fear of dark strange places. She craved his touch with an intensity that was just as primal as the survival instinct that had made her fight the storm.
‘I won’t go far,’ he promised.
He didn’t. Eva could hear him as she sat in the darkness, her teeth chattering more with reaction than cold, listening to the sounds of him moving around. He swore once when he obviously collided with something, then there was a scratching and scuffing sound, then light.
It came from an old-fashioned kerosene lamp that Karim held aloft.
Eva blinked as her eyes adjusted slowly.
Looking around, she was able to distinguish a crude table set against one wall. A chair stood beside it, another lay overturned. There were several assorted items that suggested this place had once been occupied.
‘Where is this place?’ Eva asked, rubbing her hand along the smooth stone surface she sat on. The walls around and above them had the same pale sand appearance. ‘What is it?’
Holding the light, Karim moved closer and, brushing some debris off the crude table, placed it down on the scratched surface.
‘Just like home,’ she joked shakily. ‘Though with slightly less gold leaf.’
Karim felt his admiration grow as he watched her produce a shaky smile.
How many women who had been through what she had would joke? Most he could think of would right now be having hysterics, hysterics that would have filled him with impatience. She was smiling—shaking like a leaf but smiling—and he was filled with … A flicker of shock registered in his eyes as he recognised the emotion that made him want to gather her in his arms as tenderness.
It seemed it was possible to want to throttle a woman and protect her from the slightest breeze at one and the same time; possible, but not comfortable.
He had not been comfortable since he met his Princess.
Eva’s wandering gaze found his face and lingered, the breath snagging painfully in her throat. The gold-tinged glow radiated by the flickering light cast shadows over Karim’s face, highlighting the strength and purity of his fabulous bone structure.
He was beautiful!
So beautiful it hurt; it hurt physically.
Her lashes swept protectively downwards as things deep inside her clenched and tightened. She was filled with deep, hopeless yearning. If these feelings she could not articulate never went away, how would she bear it?
‘There are a series of caves in the rock face. Up until ten years ago some were still occupied, but once there was an entire community living here.’
‘Nobody lives here now?’ She tried to ignore the strange heaviness in the air that had little to do with the storm that raged outside and instead imagined the silent place filled with the buzz of people going about their lives, living and loving … It was difficult to visualise.
‘You’re not seeing it at its best,’ he observed, stamping his boots without taking his eyes from her face.
An edge in his deep voice made her look up at him. The light was not strong enough for her to read his expression, but Eva found the fixed intensity of his stare unnerving.
She looked away and, aware of her heart pounding against her breastbone, drew a line with her finger in the fine layer of sand that covered the stone floor.
She forced an awkward smile. ‘You’re not seeing me at my best, either.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BUT he was seeing her—you’d think he never had before, the way he was staring, his heavy-lidded regard still trained unblinkingly on Eva’s face as he pulled off his head-covering and dragged a hand through his dark hair.
‘You look exhausted!’ he observed, feeling a stab of self-recrimination. The dust did not disguise the dark smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes.
As Eva’s gaze swept protectively downwards her attention was captured by a painted item lying in the dust. A frown of enquiry forming between her brows, she picked it up.
Karim watched her brush the dust off the broken toy very carefully, his eyes widening with shock as he caught himself wondering if he would choose to end this marriage given the choice?
The speculation was pointless—it was not his choice to make.
‘It’s a doll.’ When her gaze lifted to his her luminous eyes shone with unshed tears. ‘I wonder what happened to the girl who owned it … did she cry when she lost it?’ For some reason the idea of the lost doll and the lost community struck an emotional chord with Eva.
His lips curled into a cynical smile. ‘People discard things when they are broken and sometimes when they are not,’ he observed drily, thinking about his late wife’s reaction to the birth of her daughter. She had made clear she hadn’t wanted a girl.
Eva’s fingers tightened around the carved wooden toy as she leapt on his comment. ‘Are you saying we
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами
