“Hiraz?”
“I was not good company at that time.” Tariq’s quiet response drove another nail into the bruised flesh of her heart. “Hiraz was riding in the foremost car with two guards. Another two were in the following car.”
“You were alone.” Instinctively, her hands left the pommel and pressed over his.
“I am never alone, Mina.” His words were as close to a complaint as she’d ever heard. Even a sheik, she understood, needed privacy. A man like Tariq would need it more than most. “My driver is always a trained guard.”
“What happened next?” She was caught in the destructive grip of a past that could have physically stolen Tariq from her. As it was, the emotional damage caused by the attack was profound.
He leaned down and moved her headgear aside so he could whisper into her ear. The intimate gesture made her glad that they were riding at the back of the group.
“We took care of them.” His masculine scent surrounded her, his warmth an experience she didn’t want to escape.
“That’s all you’re going to say?” she protested, disturbed by the way he seemed to be withdrawing once again.
“There isn’t much else. They were religious zealots from a troubled nation who sought to kill me with their bare hands. I disabled three, my driver two.” He nuzzled her neck, a gesture so achingly familiar that tears threatened. The tone of his voice belonged to an exasperated man tired of a topic, rather than one bent on rebuilding an impenetrable wall.
“And the other guards took care of the rest after breaching the barrier of trucks?” she guessed.
Tariq drew back from her and pulled the covering close around her face. “You are too fair,” he grumbled.
“Maybe I’ll tan.” There was always hope.
His response was a disbelieving snort. “Enough of this. We will talk of other things.”
She might’ve argued with him, but he’d already relented a great deal after his initial refusal to speak about his life. Pushing her luck could backfire. “All right.”
“I don’t believe you.” He sounded so male, so put upon.
“Drat.” She fell back into the relationship as it had been before she’d learned the awful truth about how Tariq had been targeted for assassination because of his perceived weakness in loving her. She needed to feel his happiness, to find hope in his laughter.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
She thought he was referring to their fight. “This is a beautiful day. It’s a day to be happy.”
His chuckle startled her. “I was asking how your sweet bottom was feeling.”
She blushed and elbowed him. “Behave.” The last traces of frost were long gone. Fire surrounded her. She swallowed tears of bittersweet happiness. There would be no more pain this gorgeous day. She’d pretend that the world was perfect and that the man holding her so carefully, loved her, too.
However, that night, Jasmine couldn’t keep pretending that everything was okay. Not when her heart was threatening to break under the strain. “Would it be okay if I retired early?” she asked Tariq. The firelight, which had seemed so romantic the night before, now made her eyes feel dry and achy.
From his protective position slightly in front of her, Tariq glanced over his shoulder. “You do not wish to remain?” His voice had a dark edge that she couldn’t decipher.
“I’m tired. This is new for me,” she confessed, hiding one truth behind another.
Her husband moved until he was sitting next to her. Then, to her surprise, he pulled her against his seated form. Tariq rarely touched her in public. She hadn’t yet found the courage to ask him whether it was because he didn’t want to, or because of the circumspection demanded of his position.
“I apologize, Mina. You don’t complain, so I forget that this journey must be hard for you.” Deep, sensuous, caressing, his words washed over her like soft, welcoming rain.
She nestled her head against his shoulder, finding that some of her inner ache had disappeared. He held her as if she mattered. “Am I expected to stay because I’m your wife?”
His muscled arm firmed around her as he shifted her a tiny bit nearer, eliminating any hint of space between their bodies. “Your intelligence is one of the reasons you are my wife,” he murmured. “My people judge those not of our land. It’s a flaw in us and yet it’s so much a part of Zulheil that it may be our saving grace. We do not trust easily.” Jasmine had known that the first moment she’d met him.
“Even though they’ve accepted you because you are my chosen wife,” he continued, gazing down at her upturned face, “and you’ll receive obedience, the amount of respect you receive will be determined by a thousand things, among them your ability to endure this harsh land.”
She understood what he would never articulate. His honor was now bound inextricably to hers. It was a fragile link that could shatter as it had once before, and rip even this shaky relationship from her grasp. “I’ll stay. Just hold me?” She winced at the neediness of her voice.
He answered by touching her cheek with his free hand, his dark eyes fierce with what she wanted to believe was pride. Another knot melted inside her. When he looked away, she watched the play of the firelight on his face. He was at once beautiful and dangerous. A panther momentarily at rest. A warrior at home among his people.
Jasmine smiled. Her earlier frustration and pain had faded to a dull ache. Strangely content now, she stared up at the jewel-studded night sky, wondering if within those pinpricks there was a candle to light her way into her husband’s heart.
Six
By the time Tariq returned from a last-minute consultation with one of the guides, Mina was curled up and half-asleep. No light from the campfire reached their bed and neither did the voices of the men. He stripped down to the loose pants designed by his ancestors to offer respite from the unrelenting heat of the desert, glad for the small lagoon that had allowed the entire party a chance to bathe.
Memories of watching over his wife while she swam sent familiar need racing through him, but it was clear that Mina was exhausted. Tenderness overwhelmed him. She looked so small and fragile, and yet she made him feel so much. Too much. Heart clenching with emotions he didn’t want to accept, he lay down beside her, wrapped her in his arms and let her rest. For a while.
Unfortunately, he didn’t get to wake her with slow, sensuous caresses as he’d wanted, because deep in the night she jerked upright beside him, and he could almost smell her fear. He reached up to pull her back into his arms.
“Tariq!” She turned blindly toward him.
“I’m here, Mina.” He succeeded in trapping her fluttering hands and held her tight against his body, disturbed by the too-fast thudding of her heart.
“Tariq.” This time her voice was a husky whisper, but no less desperate than her first fearful cry. She clutched at his shoulders with small hands.
“Hush. You are safe, my Jasmine.” He stroked the curved line of her spine, trying to calm her. When she continued to shiver, he flipped her over onto her back and pressed his body along the length of hers. Some of her tension seemed to seep out of her at the full-body contact. “Mina?”
“They hurt you.”
“Who?”
“The men in the trucks. I thought they took you from me.”
He hadn’t thought that his revelation would have this effect. “I am safe. They did not succeed. You did not lose me.” When she looked as if she disagreed, he held her tightly. “You will not worry about these things.”
Wrapped