Guarding the Princess (9 page)

Sure, she might come to feel something for Haroun. But the idea that she might never, ever experience true love, the giddy highs of real passion—the stuff of films and great books, emotions that drove people to fight wars, create magnificent art, build soaring temples—depressed her.

As much as Brandt mocked her for being royal, it wasn’t easy. She couldn’t have the things normal people aspired to, even though her needs as a woman might be just as deep and real as the next woman’s.

He reached into the backseat suddenly, yanked out the whiskey bottle, held it between his thighs as he unscrewed the cap, took a deep swallow. She watched his Adam’s apple working, and slow fingers of desire tickled down inside her...she couldn’t help it. Even now.

He held the bottle out to her.

“Want some?”

“No.”

He took another sip, then recapped it.

“What are you seeking alcoholic relief from? Me?”

He gave a hard, dry, hard laugh. “I’m not seeking relief. It’s the breakfast of kings. Oh, wait, not
your
kind of king.”

Her jaw dropped. “You’re
jealous?
”

He barked another laugh, pressing down on the gas, and bouncing the jeep in a way that forced her to grab the roll bar for balance.

“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, you know.”

“Suits me just fine.”

“I thought you’d want to stay sharp, not drunk,” she said.

“This is me being sharp, sweetness.”

She cursed at him in Arabic again and he drove faster, jouncing her around in the front seat.

“So that’s it—you despise me because I’m engaged to a man with more money and power than you’ll ever have, yet I still kissed you.”

“Jesus, Dalilah, give it up, will you? It’s just a freaking kiss.”

“You think I’m promiscuous, cheating on him, betraying him, is that it? Is it that simple?”

“I’m a simple guy.”

“Oh,
that’s
amusing! Simple is the last thing you are. You’re a...a cantankerous bull with issues over your past and...God knows what else.”

He snorted.

“See? You even sound like one.”

He spun abruptly to face her, and she recoiled slightly at the sudden ferocity in his features. “You want the truth, Dalilah? Here it is—” he turned back to face the terrain “—I don’t do commitment and I like to be with women who don’t do commitment, either. No promises. Just straight-up good sex. Both sides understand the equation and want nothing more. I do
not
have a problem with promiscuity.”

Blood flared hot into her face. “So what is the problem?”

“The problem is you.
You
do
commitment.
You
made the choice to marry Haram—”

“Haroun!”

“You made him a promise by wearing a rock big enough to feed a small goddamn country, and you know what? While I don’t do commitment as a matter of routine, when I
do
choose to make a promise, that’s everything in my book. Believe it or not, I do have honor, and I’m loyal to a goddamn fault. Just ask your brother. It’s why I went to work with men like him—men who promise to leave no man behind, and know how to keep that promise. And it’s why he came to get me out of a hellhole in Nicaragua—he wouldn’t leave me behind. And that, Princess, is why I owe Omair. That’s why I’m here saving your pretty little ass right now, because Omair knows I owe him, and that I’ll die before I let you get hurt.” He clamped his mouth shut as he swerved sharply round a steep rock, almost tipping the jeep onto its side.

“Doesn’t mean I have to be nice about it,” he muttered as he gunned the jeep into an expanse of sand dotted with squat Mopani.

Dalilah stared at his rugged profile, assimilating this new information, her heart thudding wildly in her chest. “You think I have no honor? You think
I
don’t keep a promise? Because that’s not true! You have
no
idea what I’m prepared to give up for a promise not even made by—”

“Just stop talking, okay.”

Her eyes widened. “Where in hell do you get off—”

“I was in that other man’s position, Dalilah,” he snapped angrily. “Not once, but twice. Call me a fool, but I didn’t learn from the first time around and a woman just like you burned my ass. Then got killed for it.”

Her mouth dropped. “That’s not...you don’t understand. I—”

“I don’t want to understand.”

He drove faster, harder, sending up clouds of fine gray dust that coated the trees, giving them a ghostly air of menace in the heat. Vegetation closed in again, as if the bush was deliberately trying to block their way.

Brandt swung round a thick clump of Mopani, and dead ahead in the track, hemmed in by trees on either side, loomed a large bull elephant with crooked tusks.

He slammed on the brakes.

Silence descended as dust rose in soft billows around them. Time stretched, warped, shimmered in the heat. The elephant was so close Dalilah could see individual hairs poking out of its leathery skin. Two egrets rode on his shoulders and tracks of dark moisture leaked like tears from behind his eyes.

The bull raised its trunk, catching their scent, and his ears flapped out wide. The egrets took flight.

Her heart began to slam against her ribs.

“Don’t. Move,” Brandt whispered.

She couldn’t if she tried. She was paralyzed with fear. Her attention shifted to the animal’s tusks, then to the moisture tracking through gray dust on the inside of the bull’s back legs. His penis arced almost to the ground.

The bull flapped his ears in and out, swayed his tusks.

Slowly, carefully, Brandt shifted the gears into Reverse.

But before he could even touch the gas, the bull’s ears suddenly flattened against his head and he curled up in his trunk, lowering his head.

“Oh, hell,” Brandt whispered, hitting the gas.
“He’s coming!”

Chapter 8

T
he elephant charged in a thundering cloud of boiling dust. Brandt floored the accelerator, one hand gripping the steering wheel, his other arm over the backseat as he tried to keep an eye on both the advancing bull while blasting the jeep backward at full throttle through thick sand. He swerved round a clump of trees, tires whirring up dirt, brush catching under the chassis.

Bang!

The jeep jarred as something hit underneath.
Crap.
And the bloody bull was still coming. Swinging the wheel hard, sweat drenching his shirt, blood pounding in his ears, he fishtailed backward around an outcrop of red rock.

The bull slowed near the outcrop, then stopped, his ears fanning in and out from his head. Brandt kept going, engine whining—he wasn’t certain the charge was over—but his heart sank as, in the sand in front of the jeep, trailed a black swath that was pouring out from under their vehicle like blood from a severed artery.

He brought the jeep to a stop in soft sand, his attention riveted on the animal as he carefully read the bull’s body language, the position of his ears, trunk. The elephant’s ears flared slowly out then in once more, as if deciding whether to charge again, then he turned and loped slowly into a copse of trees in the distance. Leaves began to shiver as the bull took out his grievance against the trunk of the tallest tree.

Brandt turned off the ignition, furious with himself. This entire area was populated with Mopani that had been eaten uniformly squat by elephants—he should’ve been on the lookout for the giant pachyderms. Instead, his blood had been raging and his brain clouded by this fiercely intriguing—and damn sexy—princess he was supposed be saving, not getting stomped to death by a sexually frustrated bull in musth.

Like the goddamn situation with Carla—he’d let himself get sucked in, and it could have gotten Dalilah killed.

They sat for a while, dust settling around them, on them. Heat pressed down, the sounds and scents of the bush filtering back into their consciousness as they watched the dusty gray giant in the distance.

“Jesus, that’s one mean-ass, sexually frustrated bastard.” Brandt turned to Dalilah. Her black eyes were huge, her face bloodless and streaked with dust. “You all right?”

She nodded, her gaze flicking nervously to where the beast was uprooting his tree as she reached up to wipe sweat from her brow with a trembling hand. The gesture smudged a gray streak of dirt across her face.

Brandt stared at the streak, adrenaline still slamming through his body.

“How did you know it was going to charge?” she whispered. “Usually it’s a mock charge.”

“Usually?”

“I...I’ve been on a safari before. Sometimes the game-viewing vehicles get too close, and the elephant does a little run, but it never ends in a full-blown charge.”

“Did you see the moisture down the sides of his face?”

“The tears?”

“Not tears. Temporin from glands behind his eyes. And the urine dribbling down the insides of his leg—” Brandt nodded toward the shuddering tree. “That young bull is in full musth—high as a kite on sex hormones. That sharp, bitter odor was a dead giveaway. Humans can usually pick up that scent from a few hundred meters away.” He paused. “I should’ve noticed before we even got into that situation.”

“I didn’t notice anything.”

“Not your job to.” He dragged his hand over hair thick with dust, then he swore softly. “You could see he meant business the instant he tucked his trunk under and his ears back out of harm’s way. Musth bulls, especially the young ones, can be extremely aggressive and unpredictable. You need to give them a wide berth.”

“Like someone else I know.”

He looked at her in surprise, then threw his head back and laughed. The release felt damn good. Talk about sexual frustration—this woman could read him like a book and had the nerve to say so.

“I get the impression you only smile or laugh when everything around you is going to hell in a handbasket,” she said, a glimmer of amusement twitching at the corners of her own gorgeous mouth.

“Damn,” he said softly as the laughter eased and tears of mirth leaked into the dust around his own eyes. “You take the cake, woman.” He gave another snort of laughter, then, as he sobered, he said more quietly, “I could really get to like you, you know.”

She went silent. They sat like that for a while, hearts racing, adrenaline pounding, a kinetic energy arcing between them, pulling them together even as they both fought against the sexual impulse. Slowly, very slowly, Brandt reached up, even as his brain screamed
don’t,
and he touched her, wiping the dirt from her brow with the pad of his thumb.

Her gaze held his, dark, loaded. His groin went hard and he couldn’t breathe.

“You’re getting dirty, Princess.”

She broke the gaze, looking down at the diamond ring on her hand in the sling.

Before he could say anything, she’d turned away from him, hair falling in a curtain across her cheek, hiding her expression.

“Dalilah?”

“It’s nothing.” But her voice was thick.

Brandt frowned as empathy squeezed his chest. He was feeling all sorts of emotions he didn’t want, but in spite of his best efforts, Princess was winning, and he was powerless around her. Brandt didn’t like the feeling.

Irritably he grabbed the rifle and climbed out of the jeep. He dropped to his knees and peered under the chassis. Oil pooled heavy and dark in the sand, confirming his worst fears—a ruptured sump. He reached under the vehicle to dip a finger into the liquid to be certain.

“Brandt!”

“Just a sec. I need to—”

“Brandt!”

He bumped his head as he jerked back out from under the jeep and peered up over the hood. His heart stalled at the terror on her face. She pointed.

“He’s coming back!”

Brandt spun round.
Holy crap.
The bull was not content with his tree—the big bad pachyderm was heading their way in another cloud of boiling dust.

He braced a hand on top of the door, hurtling clean into the driver’s seat and dumping the rifle on her lap. Firing the ignition, he hit the gas and slammed the gears into Reverse, wheeling hard and spinning the jeep around a hundred and eighty degrees. He floored the accelerator, bombing forward through scrub, bashing against rocks. The elephant loomed in the rearview mirror and the trail of black blood leaking from the jeep’s innards grew thinner and thinner. Panic clawed at Brandt’s throat—the engine was going to seize any second now, but the bull was closing the gap. He began planning how to get Dalilah out of the vehicle should they stall.

“He’s falling back!” Dalilah yelled suddenly. She was twisted round, rifle balanced on the back of her seat, aiming and ready to fire with one hand.

Brandt glanced up into the rearview mirror. The elephant was dropping back into a trot.

He slowed the jeep, but kept going until the animal turned and started retreating, this time heading toward a faint wisp of gold spindrift rising above the Mopani scrub. Relief gushed through Brandt’s chest—the bull was rejoining his herd, finally. But the jeep’s engine coughed, choked and stalled.

He sat back, breathing hard.

Dalilah was, too.

Brandt pounded his fist on the dash, angry. This was a good vehicle—it could have gotten them far. He might have been able to mend the oil pan, but now that he’d run the engine without oil until it died, it was toast. Their jeep was dead, done, gone.

She watched him, then glanced nervously into the cloud of dust settling in their wake, silence suddenly loud, not even the call of a bird, or the sound of insects.

“You really can’t fix it?”

“No,” he said. “I can’t goddamn fix it.”

He raked his hand through his dark blond hair again, dust making it stand up in front. He swore again, softly.

“I’m sorry, Dalilah.”

“Brandt, you saved my life a couple of times over already. You have
nothing
to be sorry about.” She reached for his thigh. A touch, just fingertips against skin. A quiver ran through his muscles, like a small electrical shock chasing over his skin.

“And now that I’m still alive,” she said softly, voice thick, “I have to say, that was truly incredible to witness. Honest.”

He looked slowly into her eyes.

“You mean it,” he said. It wasn’t a question. She really did get off on the thrill. Everything about this woman was exciting, unanticipated. There was nothing safe about her at all.

“I keep forgetting,” he said quietly, devouring her with his eyes. “You’re no newcomer to Africa. How many safaris have you been on?”

The guttural sound of his voice curled into her chest, the intensity in his ice-blue eyes cutting her to the quick. But something in Dalilah hardened as she saw where he was going with this—he was aiming for his switch again, seeking something to dislike in her, a way to shut her out.

“A few,” she said guardedly.

“And before you arrive at the safari destination of your choice, you fill in one of those forms, check off what animals you want to see? A lion kill. An elephant charge. Like going to Disneyland. Big tip to the guide at the end of the trip if he delivers?”

She removed her hand from his thigh.

“I thought,” she said quietly, “that you might be trying to irritate me, get under my skin in order to keep me angry. Or that maybe you were being a jerk because you had issues over something in your past. But I was wrong.” She paused, looked up and directly into his eyes. “You’re just a prick. An arrogant, self-absorbed, pigheaded bastard.”

He said nothing.

Tension simmered between them. Sexual. Fierce. She could see it in his face. She could feel it in herself. And in the distant sky dark forms circled. Vultures.

She turned away. “Fine. You’ve got your assignment from my brother, you’ve got a package to deliver so you can get paid. Where do we go now, and how?”

Abruptly he reached for the rifle in her lap. He yanked open the glove compartment, removed a pouch with maps. Unhooking the GPS from the dash, he swung open his door and jumped out.

Brandt spread the map out on the hood and bent over to study it, sun beating down on his back, his skin gleaming with sweat. Dalilah watched the lion tattoo on his biceps as his muscle flexed when he moved.
Tautona.
They were right—he was a gnarly scarred lion of a man without a pride or the social skills required to belong to one. No wonder he prowled and hunted alone, lived in his own territory.

Sweat pearled and dribbled down between her breasts, the sling and splint making her feel irritably hot. She glanced up as a massive bird flew low overhead, its wings beating with a soft
whoosh whoosh whoosh
through the air. A snake writhed in its beak. There was a scent of hay, or sage, coming from the grass and in the distance she saw dark shapes moving slowly. Buffalo? Nerves whispered and Dalilah’s attention shifted to the rifle lying on the hood near Brandt’s hand. She just wanted this over now.

“We need to go on foot,” he said, fiddling with the GPS.

“Obviously.”

He shot her a sharp glance.

Dalilah recoiled at the look in his icy eyes. More softly she said, “Which way?”

He jerked his head to the map. “You want to see, come look.”

She muttered a curse, got out, went round the hood to stand beside him. The sun baked down on them like a furnace and Dalilah realized just how much she was going to miss the shade provided by the jeep’s cover.

“This is where we were headed via vehicle—” He pointed to the topographical map, the hairs on his bronzed arm gleaming gold in the sun, his skin glistening. “Along the plain, toward this rift.” He jerked his chin up to the horizon. “The rift is that way—it’s a big cliff that runs for several kilometers. The idea was to drive north where the terrain levels out a bit, and then drive up onto the plateau here.” He jabbed his finger on the map. “From this point the plan was to head to the paved road here.”

He pointed to a thin line bisecting the eastern part of Botswana from the South African to the Zambian border. Dalilah squinted against the glare of the sun and shaded her eyes, studying the map, conscious of the scent of him. And the smell of oil and dust.

“That road serves as a main thoroughfare for occasional truck convoys carrying oranges from Zambia, copper from the Congo, laborers, cattle. It bisects a game conservation area here, where I wanted to cut off the road and head through bush to the west, there.” He jabbed his finger at a space of nothing.

“What’s there?”

He rubbed the dark blond stubble appearing on his jaw, not looking at her, thinking. “My farm,” he said quietly.

“Your
farm?
”

He didn’t answer. He was busy plotting a route into the GPS. He glanced up, squinting into the distance. “Now we’ll have to walk directly west to the rift wall, and climb up. On one hand it’ll be slow. But it will also save us having to drive a full day north in order to access the plateau via jeep. You up to a hike?”

“Do I have an option?”

“Nope.” He hooked the GPS onto his belt. “Amal will have found my plane by now and be looking for a way over the Tsholo. Like I said, they’ll come fast—our tracks will have baked like clay into the mud. If we climb up the cliff, they won’t be able to follow us up the face with horses or jeeps. They’ll still have to drive the full day north to get up onto the plateau and then they’ll have to cut back again for our tracks. It’ll buy us a small advantage.”

Fear coiled cold and tight in Dalilah’s gut as she thought of Da’ud, his throat slit in his bed, of her dead parents. Of all the terrible things the Ghaffar clan had done to her family and country. Amal would spare her no mercy—she knew that. Her death would be violent. He’d make her suffer, and he’d make her brothers suffer, too.

Shading her eyes, Dalilah squinted into the distant glare. Heat shimmered off the veldt in waves. It would be just her and Brandt out there, crossing these Botswana plains. She wasn’t sure that they’d make it, but it was better than waiting for Amal.

“Can we take the two-way radio from the jeep dashboard?” she asked quietly.