“You must have other beverages in your place.”
“Tap water.”
Her lips twisted. “You won’t put me off, you know.”
“I’m stating facts.”
“Next you’ll say you have nothing to eat but dried dates.”
His shrug should have been immortalized on video as the template for nonchalance. “It’s not far from the truth.”
Water and dates, huh? The sustenance of desert nomads. It actually fit that he, having lived years in survival mode through hardships and deprivation the likes of which she couldn’t imagine, would be programmed to exist on the bare necessities. Even now that he was a billionaire, he hadn’t gone soft or become dependent upon modern comforts and conveniences. He might drive a car only his kind of money could buy, but he reverted to his adversity-thriving true self in a heartbeat.
We remain who we are, no matter where we are.
And who he was, was the best thing she’d ever known.
She grinned into his brooding eyes. “Water and dates work for me.”
“Fine. You can come in.” Not much of an invitation, but she’d take it. She was sizzling with eagerness to. At least, she was before he doused it. “Until your escort arrives.”
Before she could object, he was out of the car in yet another impossibly effortless move.
Her exit wasn’t as graceful, nor was her progress to catch up with him at the door of what looked like a deserted warehouse below an equally empty, old, industrial-looking brick building.
As he pointed a remote at the huge steel door, she nodded at the deserted area. “See this? There’s no one around like there always is in our region. No malicious eyes to monitor my visit or wagging tongues to weave it into a scandal. Why are you worried?”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Because I can’t worry about anything with you around. Because I feel safer with you than I ever did in my life. Why else?”
Another episode of inertness descended on him. She was quickly learning that indicated astonishment. Even shock.
His next words reinforced that belief, his eyes narrowing a fraction. “You believe I pose no danger of any sort?”
“Definitely not to me.” The words were out before she realized he might mean a different kind of danger… the sexual kind.
If only. With this avenging archangel, she was safer in that arena than she was in her currently all-female environment. A depressing thought if any ever was.
He pressed the remote and the door opened with the whirr of a perfectly oiled machine, belying its weather-beaten appearance.
Before he turned away, he belatedly commented on her wholehearted assertion. “Interesting.”
You can say that again, she thought, watching the receding streetlights paint shadows across his back as he forged deeper into the darkness, a sorcerer becoming one with his lair.
He left the lights off. On purpose, she was sure, to rattle her. Punishing her for behaving so “inappropriately”?
Too bad for him it wouldn’t work. Not only did she have no fear of darkness, it was true she’d fear nothing with him by her side. Maybe they did lack some knowledge of one another that closer interaction would have fostered, but she did know the essential him. His essence had touched hers so profoundly that he starred in her very first memory.
Deciding to call him out on his efforts to intimidate her, she said, “Let there be light, Rashid. Only so neither of us breaks a toe against a cabinet or something.”
At her mockery, there was light. Not a sudden burst, but a dawning of golden, sourceless illumination so gradual her vision didn’t have to adjust to take in her surroundings. A vast, 50-foot-ceilinged warehouse-to-loft conversion. There was one word for it: Spartan. She now truly knew what the word meant. It was this: a warrior’s dwelling. Sparse, utilitarian, austere. It was also more. A piece of ancient Azmahar, before oil and technology had transformed its distinctive heritage into yet another twenty-first-century Westernized hybrid. Every line and surface, and what little furniture there was, was steeped in Azmahar’s history, bearing the stamp of its authenticity in a muted palette of desert-inspired tones.
“Of course.” She realized she’d said that out loud when he turned to her. “Now that I’ve seen this place, I realize nothing else—and nothing less—could have suited you. Or… contained you.”
“Contained me?” His gaze swept the place before he leveled that bone-melting stare back on her. “Quite the bottle, isn’t it?”
A laugh burst out of her. “You do fit the genie profile. Especially with the way you materialized out of thin air tonight.”
Shrugging out of his coat, he moved deeper into the huge space. “I’m sure that satisfies your sense of dramatic license far more than the mundane explanation.”
Removing her coat as well and following him farther into the room, she faced him as he stopped before a fireplace and held out her arms for the logs he’d picked up. “I’ll do that. You sit down.”
“So it’s not ‘jump’ this time, but ‘sit,’ eh? What next? Roll over? Beg?”
A chuckle bubbled out as she tried to imagine him doing any of that. But the funny actions only turned to licentious images in her head. Oh, the images.
Trapping a moan, she grinned. “Maybe. And maybe I’ll ask you to jump to that mezzanine. I bet you can jump tall buildings in a single bound. But even superheroes need to put their feet up once in a while. As you’re going to do tonight.”
Without a shadow of a smile in return, he handed her the logs and left her to start a fire. He sank down on top of a woolen kelim woven in Azmahar’s national colors and motifs. Leaning on one of two huge complementing cushions, he proceeded to watch her like a black panther would contemplate a contrary gazelle.
His gaze made her more distressed with each breath; its touch unleashing impulses she’d believed would be forever banked with him forever out of her life.
As he would be after tonight.
But tonight was still here. As was she. And she would make the most out of this windfall.
With the fire going, she turned to him. “You’re hungry.”
“I am?”
“Judging by your size and muscle mass, you must require quite a lot of sustenance frequently. It’s been almost four hours since you came to my rescue. So yes, you’re hungry now.”
It could have been the play of firelight. But she could swear an obsidian flame started flickering in the depths of his eyes.
He inclined his head, casting his face in deeper shadow, depriving her of closer investigation. “So you don’t just order your males around, you tell them how they feel, too.”
“‘My males?’“ A laugh overcame her. “Ya Ullah, what a concept.” His intensity ratcheted up until she had to look away, had to walk to the open-plan kitchen at the far end of the gigantic space. “So… food. Please tell me I’ll find something more than water and dates in there.”
“I can still call someone to follow you home now rather than later.”
“No, thanks.” Arriving at the kitchen, she looked around. “You weren’t exaggerating, were you? No fridge? So how do you eat? Out? Or do you exist on takeaway? Or have a cook come in regularly?”
“No cook. I get fresh ingredients delivered daily, use them up, rinse and repeat.”
That actually sounded like a very healthy way to live. He