canyon, she would live.
If she rode onto the plateau, the coming sandstorm would eat her alive.
Hoofbeats pounded in rhythm with Kareef’s thoughts as he raced after Jasmine into the dark shadowed canyon.
He had to find her.
He would find her.
Clamping his thigh muscles over the saddle, he leaned forward and urged his horse faster. He’d spent his youth in these canyons. He was again a reckless horse racer who feared nothing…but losing her.
He raced fast. Faster. His stallion kicked up dust, scattering it to the four winds. He raced beneath the sharp arches and towering cliffs of the canyon.
Within minutes, he’d caught up with her. Leaning forward, he shouted Jasmine’s name over the pounding hoofbeats of their horses.
She glanced back and a shadow of fear crossed her face. He heard the panic in her voice as she urged her mare faster.
But Kareef gained ground with every second. He reached out his hand to pluck her off the mare’s back—
His hand suddenly grasped air as she veered off the road. She’d abruptly turned the mare west through a break in the red rock, climbing the slope up out of the canyon.
“No!” he shouted. “The storm!”
But his words were lost in the rising blur of the wind, beneath the pounding hooves of her mare’s wild, joyful, reckless climb.
He could feel, rather than hear, the approaching storm behind him. The first edges of dark cloud pushed around them, turning blue sky to a sickening brown-gray. The crags were turning dark and hidden in deep shadows.
Cursing her, cursing himself, he veered his horse up to pursue her. She was fast, but he was faster. For the first time in thirteen years, he was again Kareef Al’Ramiz, the reckless horse racer. Unstoppable. Unbreakable.
He would die rather than lose this race.
“Sandstorm!” he shouted over the rising wind.
At the top of the plateau, Jasmine turned back to him sharply. But at the same moment, he saw her mare draw to a sudden skidding stop as she suddenly grew tired of the race and deliberately, almost playfully, threw her rider. For a long, horrible instant, Kareef watched Jasmine fly through the air.
Sniffing, the mare jumped delicately in the other direction, then turned to run back the way she’d come, toward the stables and oats that awaited her.
Jasmine hit the ground and crumpled into the dust. Kareef’s heart was in his throat as all the memories of the past ripped through him. He flung himself off his stallion, falling to his knees before her.
“Jasmine,” he whispered, his heart in his throat as he touched her still face. “Jasmine!”
Like a miracle, she coughed in his arms. Her beautiful, dark-lashed eyes stared up at him. She swallowed, tried to speak.
“Don’t talk,” he ordered. Relief made his body weak as he lifted her in his arms. He held her tightly, never wanting to let her go. How had he spent so many years without her? How could he have known she was alive…without tracking her to the last corner of the earth?
He heard the distant rattle of sand and thunder, heard the wail of the wind.
“I have to get you out of here.” He whistled to the horse. “We don’t have much time.”
He glanced behind them. The safe part of the canyon was too far away. They’d never make it.
Jasmine followed his glance and instantly went pale when she saw the dark wall of cloud. “I thought—” her voice choked off “—I thought it was a trick.”
She’d grown up in Qusay. She knew what a sandstorm could do. He shook his head grimly, clenching his jaw. “We have to find shelter.” His eyes met hers. “The closest shelter.”
Her chocolate-brown eyes instantly went wide with panic. “No,” she gasped. “Not there, Kareef. I’d rather die!”
He felt the first scattered bits of sand hit his face.
“If I don’t get you to safety right now,” he said grimly, “you will die.”
Whimpering, she shook her head. But he knew she had to see the darkness swiftly overtaking the sun, had to feel the shards of sand whipping against her skin. If they didn’t find shelter, they’d soon be breathing sand. It would rip off their skin, then bury them alive.
“No!” she screamed, kicking and struggling as, holding her with one arm, he lifted them both into the saddle. “I can’t go back!”
“I can’t leave you to die,” he ground out, turning the horse’s reins toward the nearby cliff.
“I died a long time ago.” Her eyes were wet, her voice hoarse as she stared at the dark jagged hole, hollowed and hidden in the red rock. “I died in that cave.”
The pain he heard in her voice was insidious, like a twisting cloud of smoke. He breathed in her grief, felt it infect his own body.
Jasmine Kouri. Once his life. Once his everything.
Then his eyes hardened. “I can’t let you die.”
She twisted around in the saddle, wrapping her arms around his neck as she looked up at his face pleadingly. “Please,” she whispered, her eyes shimmering with tears. “If you ever loved me—if you ever loved me at all—don’t take me there.”
He looked down at her beautiful face, and his heart stopped in his chest.
If he’d ever loved her?
He’d loved her more than a man should ever love any woman. More than a man should love anything he couldn’t bear to lose. Looking down at her now, he would have given her anything, his own life, to make her stop weeping.
Then he saw a drop of blood appear on the pale skin of her cheek, like a red rose springing from the earth. First blood.
A growl ripped from his throat. His own life he would give. But not hers. Not hers.
Ignoring her cries, he grimly urged the black stallion toward the plateau to the red rock cliff. The sounds of her wailing blended with the howls of the wind. He felt prickles of sand start to abrade his skin with tiny cuts.
He held her against his chest, protecting her with his own body as he rode straight for the one place he never wanted to see again. The place where they’d both lost everything thirteen years ago. His own private hell.
Hardening his heart to granite, he rode straight for the cave.
“No!” Jasmine screamed in his arms, struggling to jump off the horse’s back. But Kareef wouldn’t let her go.
She felt the bone-jarring pounding of the stallion’s gallop beneath her. She felt the heat of Kareef’s chest at her back, felt his strong arms protecting her as the flecks of sand began
