Desert Sheikhs Collection: Part 2. Susan Mallery

in it was an arrow to her heart. Despite her hunger to know, she couldn’t bear to disrupt their new harmony by bringing up the past.

      She parted the branches protecting her from his view. “Are we leaving?” Other than a few bent shoots of grass, nothing revealed that they had camped in this desert haven.

      “I would not starve you. Not when I am the cause of the hunger you must be feeling.” The rumble of his voice washed over her. She smoothed her pants, inexplicably shy.

      Straightening from his leaning position against the trunk of a tree heavy with dark green, glossy foliage, Tariq skated his eyes over her modestly garbed form with a possessiveness she couldn’t mistake. Her breath hitched. When he looked up, she thought she might just beg him to take her.

      He crooked a finger.

      Some feminine instinct protested that arrogant action, even as the needy part of her wanted to run over and say yes, please. Instead, she stuck one hand on her hip and copied the gesture, with a boldness that, around her husband, felt right.

      Tariq’s smile was a slash of white in the duskiness of his face. To her surprise, he obeyed her command and walked over to stand in front of her, so close that her breasts brushed his chest with every breath she took.

      “What would you do with me, my wife?”

      Now that she had him where she’d wanted him, she couldn’t think of what to say.

      Mina’s sudden shyness surprised Tariq. He traced a finger down the cool smoothness of her cheek. She ducked her head, but brought her hand up to cover his. He smiled and bent his knees to bring himself to her level. He surprised her with his sudden descent, and that was the only reason he saw the shadows in her eyes.

      He rose to his full height, thunder pouring through his veins. She was hiding something. “What is worrying you?”

      She jerked her head up. Hair the color of shattered rubies tumbled over his hands. Blue eyes displayed her distress at being found out. “What do you mean? I’m fine.”

      Her small lie only made him more determined. What was she thinking that she had to hide it from him? Where she was concerned, he’d learned to trust his instincts. Mina called to the part of him that was wild, primitive, untamed, a part that could be dangerous if he didn’t keep it leashed. Complete possession of Mina was the payment demanded by the wildness for four years of imprisonment.

      “I am your husband. You will not lie. Answer me.” He thrust his hands through the fiery silk. The last time she’d hidden her thoughts from him, she’d been convincing herself to walk away. It had almost destroyed him. He didn’t think he would survive if she ran from him a second time.

      “We’ll be late,” she protested.

      Time was no longer important. “They will wait.” His voice was made rough by his knowledge of his vulnerability to her.

      “This isn’t the place.” She put her hands on his chest, as if to push him away.

      “You will answer me.”

      The small hands on his chest curled into fists. “You are so arrogant, sometimes I want to scream!”

      The explosion almost made him want to smile. Mina’s temper delighted him. Only the knowledge that she was hiding something from him curbed the urge. His mother had hidden her illness and it had cost him his chance to say goodbye…and maybe more. Mina’s secret could cost him his wife. “I am simply willing to go after what I want.”

      “So am I.” Her voice was fierce. “I came to you.”

      “And you will stay.” He would not give her a choice. “Is this primitive land starting to lose its charms?”

      She rolled her eyes, impertinent in her anger. “No, but you’re driving me crazy with your questions.”

      “Answer me and I will ask no more.” His logical response made her grit her teeth. Those magnificent eyes flashed lightning at him.

      “I’ll tell you later.”

      “Now.” He kept her in place with his hands in her hair, clenching thick handfuls of the luminous strands.

      She looked away from him. Her body was poised for flight but there was nowhere for her to go. In its blinding starkness, his land was his greatest ally. As he watched, the realization of her weakness dawned on her.

      “You’re taking advantage of your strength.” Her hunted expression accused him.

      “I will use every advantage I have.” He would not, could not, lose her. She was as vital to him as breathing.

      For a second, their eyes met. Silence hung between them, his implacable words almost visible in the air.

      “What does it matter what I was thinking?” He knew she was clutching at anything that might offer a reprieve. The hint of victory sharpened his hunter’s instincts.

      “You belong to me, Mina.” This time she’d have no secrets from him. Perhaps, he acknowledged, her youth had made her vulnerable to the pressures she’d been put under four years ago. But if he’d known of those pressures, he would have been ready to fight for her and might not have had his heart ripped to pieces.

      Her sigh signaled defeat. “I was thinking of the past.”

      Some of the chill that had retreated under the fire of their heated conversation returned with a vengeance. “Why do you think of such things?” The past held only pain and betrayal.

      “I can’t help it. Not when it stands between us.” Her expression was earnest, her words passionate.

      As Jasmine had feared, the mention of the past blighted the incipient joy of the day. Tariq’s smile was only a memory now, this hard-visaged desert warrior the reality. He didn’t deny her statement and the silence grew until it pressed heavily upon her. Wary of the stranger he’d become, she lay her hand on his left bicep. The muscle was inflexible.

      “Four years, Tariq.” Her emotions were naked in her voice. “Four years we were apart, and you refuse to share even a crumb of your life during that time.”

      His expression grew even darker. “What would you know?”

      The question stunned her. She’d been expecting a harsh reprimand or perhaps cold dismissal. For a moment, shock kept her silent, but then words tumbled out of her. “Anything! Everything! Not knowing about those years is like a hole inside me, a part where you’re missing.”

      “You made that choice.”

      “But now I’ve made another choice!”

      The infinitesimal turning away of his face was his only response.

      “Please,” she begged.

      He released her. Startled, she swayed before regaining her balance. Stepping back, he regarded her with eyes darkened to the color of ancient greenstone. “I was the subject of an assassination attempt by a terrorist organization on my way back from New Zealand.”

      “No! Did they…?”

      He shook his head in a sharp negative as an answer to the question she couldn’t bring herself to ask. “They had no chance.” When he returned to his position by the tree, her sense of isolation almost overwhelmed Jasmine.

      “Are they still active?”

      “No, they were supported by their government, which was overthrown two years ago. The new government is friendly and will sponsor no more such attempts.”

      She thought that he was trying to soothe her obvious pain. That gave her the courage to continue, even though the ice in his voice was an obvious command to withdraw. She almost expected to see the air fog with her breath.

      “But even one!”

      That was when he delivered a blow so staggering that he might as well have backhanded her. “They thought me weak and an