The Sheik Who Loved Me (7 page)

Her features fell. She nodded silently, studying the form of his horse.

“I’m sure word will come soon,” he offered, hoping at the same time it wouldn’t. He wanted just a few more hours with this compelling woman. Because right at this instant he liked the way she made him feel. She’d made the blood flow hot in his loins in a way he’d forgotten was possible. And it made him feel powerful. Alive. It made the colors of the world seem brighter. It made him feel like a king.

She lifted her huge green eyes to his. “He’s stunning,” she said. “I heard you’d just broken him in.”

“Yes.”

“All primal power,” she said, moving closer. From his vantage point David looked down into the valley of her breasts. She laid her palm flat on his stallion’s flanks and rubbed him as if testing his muscle, his strength.

To David’s astonishment, Barakah held steady under her touch, obviously reading her surety. The woman was confident around horses. And too bloody confident in her underwear. This was going to be his undoing. He couldn’t take his eyes from the depression between her breasts, the way droplets of sea water clung to the fine blond hair there, drying into soft clusters of salt. He moistened his lips. He could imagine slowly licking that salt from between her naked breasts as he watched those exquisite nipples tighten. He could almost taste the salt. His vision began to narrow at the hot and delirious thought of it.

“Yes,” she said, her voice shattering his illicit thoughts through his brain in a kaleidoscope of sharp shards.

He blinked, momentarily confused. He cleared his throat. “Yes, what?” His voice came out thick and rough.

“Yes, I’d like a ride home,” she said, her eyes studying him intently.

“You’re not afraid?”

“Of what? You?”

He shifted. She had to have seen the raw stamp of arousal on his features. And now she was toying with him. Or was she?

“My stallion,” he said. “You’re not afraid of Barakah?”

“No,” she said simply.

“You’re experienced, then.”

Her eyes flashed to his and she raised a brow.

“I mean, with horses.”

She gave a slow, sly smile. Damn she
was
toying with him. “I guess I know a thing or two.” She stroked the stallion’s neck. Then she angled her head, catching his eyes with a mischievous twinkle in her own. “He looks like one hell of a challenge, though.”

David swallowed. She wasn’t only toying with him. She was flirting. She was turned on. He could see it in the hardening of the nipples under that darned thin fabric. It spiked his blood clean off the Richter scale. “You afraid of
anything?
” he asked, his voice coming out an octave lower.

She held his gaze. “I guess I’ll have to find out.”

“Barakah’s no easy ride,” he warned. “And there’s no saddle.”

“You make that sound like a dare, Rashid.”

He smiled slowly. “Maybe it is, Sahar.”

“I don’t believe I turn down a challenge.”

“A woman after my own heart.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Come on, then.”

“Wait.” She spun around, her hair fanning out behind her. It was almost dry already and the salt had plumped the curls, making her mane wild and full. With her back to him, she bent over to retrieve the pile of clothes. Her movement was so fluid he didn’t have a chance to turn away. Even if he had wanted to.

He was held transfixed by her smooth back, the neat ridge of her spine, the way her panties skimmed her firm rump. He became insanely aware of the way her buttocks separated into two tight globes; of the neat gap at the apex of her thighs.

Blazing heavens. He blew out a hot breath, turned quickly to stare over the ocean as she slipped back into Watson’s clothes. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t have this woman, for all the reasons he’d mentally checked off last night. They were still just as valid. She had another life that could come back and bite them all, that could hurt Kamilah. And him. And her. In spite of her rebellious streak, she was vulnerable, even if she wasn’t admitting it to herself. She wasn’t in a position to make decisions like this. And it was up to him not to abuse that. He clenched his teeth.

“I’m ready.”

He was not. He turned to face her. She was holding her hand out to him. He reached down, grabbed her arm and swung her up fast and hard. Too hard.

He bit back a curse. He hadn’t meant that. His vigor had been born of sexual frustration. But she moved fluidly with his brusque momentum, straddling her legs over the flanks of his horse and slotting comfortably in behind him. She slid her arms around his waist. “Ready.”

And he knew he was sunk. He swallowed hard at the sensation of her legs splayed open against him. He nudged Barakah forward and instantly he felt the tense and flex of her inner thigh muscles around him as she moved with the rolling motion of the horse. This was going to kill him.

He sucked in a gulp of air and urged his powerful stallion slowly back up the ridge, allowing both the horse and the woman to get used to each other.

Barakah topped the ridge and immediately strained against David’s control in a desire to charge across the hills for home as they did each morning. He held the beast in, allowing only an incremental increase in speed. Sahar moved with surprisingly fluid ease behind him. He kicked up the pace—she handled it. He gave the stallion even more rein, freeing him to gallop.

Her arms tightened around his waist, the wind pulled at his hair and she laughed behind him. It kicked his spirits sky-high. He let loose, holding nothing back. And they sped with reckless abandon over the hills. Sahar moved as if she was one with his body. He moved as if he was one with his horse. And for an instant they
were
one. A most intimate union. Man, woman and beast. David felt a wild spiritual freedom. His heart sang. The horse’s hooves thudded on packed dirt, his mane flying free.

Sahar knew in her deepest being she had never experienced anything like this with a man. She knew it not with her mind but the very molecules and cells of her body.

She’d never dreamed, when she’d seen the dark Arabian horseman silhouetted against the sea, that she’d be straddled behind him like this. One with him and his stallion. It was sublime. She felt the wind pull at her hair, draw tears from her eyes. And she clung with her thighs to the hard and powerful man between her legs, the sensation deliriously wild and intimate.

They raced along the ridge and over the hills, the sea gleaming aquamarine in the distance, the castle looming ahead. Sahar knew she’d have to wake up eventually. But right now she was existing merely in the moment. She was living a dream. A fairy tale. And a part of her did not want to wake from it.

Breathless, exhilarated, blood pumping, they came to a halt in front of the stables. David slid down from the horse, held his arms up to her.

She stilled.

He stared up at her. Silent for a moment. There was a blaze in his eyes she had not yet seen. An unspoken connection. His hair was tousled by wind and he was covered in fine desert dust. So was she. She swung herself off the stallion and into the steely strength of David Rashid’s arms.

For a second he held her there, aloft, his eyes smouldering. They were at a crossroads. Her world stood still. She became conscious of nothing beyond the hot breathing of the horse, the rhythm of blood in her veins, the heavy-lidded intent in David’s eyes. And a scorching ribbon of desire unfurled slow and deep inside her.

He brought her slowly down to him, drawing her closer into his chest, toward his exquisitely sculpted lips. He let her feet touch the ground. And his hand ran roughly up the back of her neck. He forced his fingers up into her tangled mass of hair. He tilted her face sharply up to his and he pressed his lips down hard onto hers.

Sahar’s vision swam. Her knees buckled. Her lips opened under his aggressive firmness and his tongue slipped hot into her mouth. She felt herself go faint. He deepened his kiss as he slid a hand down the hollow of her back to the base of her spine. He pulled her pelvis sharply up against his thigh. Sahar gasped, her mouth opening wider. She could taste the salt of his skin, feel the roughness of the dark stubble on his jaw, the hard heat of his chest against hers.

Her body thrummed. Ached. With exhilaration, with need. Nothing existed beyond this moment. And in his arms she felt the way she had felt in the ocean. Natural. Wild. A primal being. She kissed him back, hungrily, trying to feed an unidentified need deep within.

Then he jerked back, releasing her instantly.

Stunned, Sahar blinked into the sudden sharpness of the sun. Why had he dropped her like that?

Then she saw. A little figure, in the far distance, barely distinguishable, was skipping along the path that led down to the stables.

“Kamilah!” His voice was hoarse. There was raw shock in it, as if he’d been caught off guard doing something illicit. As if the fact he was doing it at all rocked him to the very foundation of his being.

Sahar swallowed, still stunned. “She…she couldn’t see us, David. She’s too far away,” she said, out of concern.

He turned on her, his face like hard granite, a blackness in his eyes. All trace of the man she was with a second ago was gone. The look on his face ripped the ground right out from under her, and her heart sank like a cold stone. “David?”

He glared at her. “This is
exactly
what was not supposed to happen!” He whirled on his heels, grabbed Barakah’s reins, stormed off toward the stables.

Sahar reeled. She felt as though she was flailing in air. She watched his powerful form disappear into the stable buildings.

She sucked in a shaky breath and pushed her mess of hair back from her face. Reality began to seep back into her brain. He was right. She’d been a fool. They had both been crazy. Overpowered by the moment they had slipped across a line. But neither of them had any idea what other life might await her.
Who
might be waiting for her.

But whatever life she’d had, she knew for certain she’d never had a man like David Rashid. A deep loneliness seeped into her, but she shook it off. There could be no tomorrows for her. Not until she figured out who she was. It could be no other way.

She turned her attention to watch the dark little figure coming down the path.

Kamilah came to a halt in front of Sahar. Puzzled, the child looked from Sahar to the stables, to where her father had disappeared. A sadness slid into her eyes.

Sahar bent down. “Were you looking for your daddy?”

She nodded, still staring at the empty stable door.

“What did you need him for, sweetheart?”

Kamilah hung her head. “I guess he has to work again,” she said softly. “He always has to work. He never has time to play with me.”

She stroked Kamilah’s cheek. “I think your daddy’s got a lot on his mind. He’s a busy man.”

“I guess so,” she said quietly. “But he used to play before mummy died. He wasn’t so busy then.”

And with those few words, Sahar got a whole picture. While Kamilah had cut herself off from her father and the rest of the world through the loss of her voice, David had cut himself off in his own way. He’d turned to work. He’d lost the ability to connect with his child.

The idea made her heart squeeze tight inside her chest. It was all so tragic. A father and a child who loved and desperately needed each other, but who couldn’t find the way to each other. They stood on either side of chasm not even knowing they needed a bridge. And Sahar felt something surge through her. A need to help build that bridge.

She hooked her finger under the child’s chin. “I tell you what, since your daddy is so busy, how about you play with me?”

A smile crept cautiously along Kamilah’s mouth.

“Deal?”

Kamilah nodded, slipping her little hand into Sahar’s, her warm fingers clutching tight. And Sahar’s heart blipped at the sensation. Because in that instant she just knew she didn’t have a child of her own somewhere. She just knew.

A part of her was beginning to feel like there really wasn’t anything special waiting for her anywhere in the world.

At least she knew how to play. It was all she really could do right now, exist in the moment, for the moment.

And wait to see if her memory returned.

She tugged Kamilah’s arm. “Come on, then. How about a game of tag?” And the two of them raced around the side of the palace.

Chapter 6

D
avid stared blankly at the papers his lawyer had faxed him, unable to focus. He clicked a button on his computer, and the screen crackled softly to life, but he couldn’t concentrate on that, either.

He’d showered, changed, but his insides still churned. It was as if he was in shock. He couldn’t erase Sahar from his mind; the way he’d connected so intimately with her on his horse. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had happened. There was no clear line demarcating black and white. But at some point he’d slipped over the invisible boundary and been swept so completely into the moment that he’d forgotten the past…and the future. It had only been the moment—on that horse with her wrapped around him—the primeval sensation of just being. Man and woman. Fully alive, vividly and vitally so, in a world that was warm and free.

He blew out a shuddering breath.

He’d never felt anything like it in his life. He clenched his fist around a pencil. It snapped sharply. Startled, he looked down at the broken thing in his hand. The connection between them had snapped just like that, the second he’d seen Kamilah in the distance.

And as much as he wanted Sahar, the very last thing he wanted to do was hurt his child. Because when the time came for Sahar to leave, it would kill them both.

He had to stop this. It was too much of a gamble. She could leave anyday. Any minute. It could happen the instant the phone on his desk rang.

David rubbed his brow fiercely, then reached for the phone—and stopped himself. Surely Watson would ring if he had news.
Damn.
He couldn’t even pick up the bloody phone to see if they had an ID on her yet. He
wanted
her to be Sahar. Not someone else.

He slammed the pencil shards onto his desk, turned to his computer, forced his mind to function and began to review the latest production report from the Azar uranium mine.

Things were looking good. Britain and France were snapping up all the yellowcake he could produce. He started to scan the numbers. But they blurred, her image once again shimmering in his mind.

He smashed his hand onto the desk. He couldn’t take this. She lingered in his senses like opium. He needed to wipe his mind clean, but it was impossible.

He sat back in his leather chair, closed his eyes. And once again he could feel her long, sun-browned legs around him, the wind in his hair, the movement of Barakah under them.

She was so different from Aisha.

Aisha had been soft and dark, sweet and gentle, raised with a strong religious influence. She’d been bright, sensitive, creative. A wonderful advisor and a friend. Yet she’d deferred everything to him with a soft feminine subservience that had boosted his male ego. She’d stood by his side with a quiet luminescent beauty at social functions in London society. She’d carried herself with grace, walking the strange cultural lines of Azarian tradition. She’d been a perfect asset. A gentle lover. A wonderful mother. He never thought he could want anything more.

Until Sahar. This was a shock to his system. She challenged him in a way Aisha never had. She matched him. Her femininity was as strong as it was sensual. Her grace was that of a lioness. Fluid. Powerful. Proud.

And dangerous.

Because she’d snared something within him, made him lose focus. David Rashid
never
lost focus. Doing so meant making mistakes.

He gritted his teeth, jerked up in his chair, grabbed the phone and punched in Watson’s number. The doctor answered on the second ring.

“Watson, any news?”

“Rashid, I was just about to call you.”

David’s stomach tightened. “You have word?”

“Not a bloody thing. It’s too weird. The British ambassador here even volunteered to check in with the other embassies in the region for us, but so far, nothing. She’s a complete mystery.”

A quirky mix of relief and anticipation rippled through him. “The ambassador found nothing whatsoever?” he asked, just to be sure.

“Nope. It’s the darnedest thing. No one has ever heard of this woman. No one has reported her missing. There’s been zip from the dive operators, the embassies, the Ministry of Interior, the airlines. Nothing from the Interpol databases. It’s like she never officially set foot in Sudanese territory.”

“You mean she’s
un
officially in the country?”

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?”

“Maybe she came down from Egypt on one of their dive tours.”

“That’s just it, David. The ambassador says his staff has checked everything, even the embassies up there. It’s like she doesn’t exist.”

A dark thrill quirked through him. He couldn’t begin to define it. Didn’t want to.

“Women like her don’t go unnoticed, Rashid.” The doctor chuckled. “Maybe there
is
something to Kamilah’s mermaid theory.”

“Yeah. Right.” She was an enigma all right.

“Or…” The doctor hesitated. “Maybe there’s something
else
going on here.”

David detected the subtle shift in Watson’s tone. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but a part of me gets a sense someone over here in Khartoum might be hiding something.”

“Such as?”

“Such as who she is.”

“Why on earth would you think that?”

“You know me, Rashid, I’m the born conspiracy theorist. It’s nothing I can put my finger on. Just a feeling.”

David frowned. Watson might be a conspiracy theorist at heart but his instincts were solid as rock. Still, David couldn’t begin to imagine why someone would try to hide Sahar’s identity. “I think the African sun is getting to you, Doc,” he joked. “Let’s wait a couple of days to see what comes up, now that the word is out about her. When are you heading into Azar?”

“I’ve got the supplies I need. I’ll be up at the new mine in about two days to set up the clinic. And, Rashid—”

“Yeah?”

The doctor paused. “Watch your back.”

David laughed dryly. “Why? The mermaid’s going to stick a knife in it?”

Watson was silent.

The image of Sahar fighting with her stick on the beach filtered into David’s mind, but he shook it off. “Seriously, Watson, even if someone is hiding something, what can the woman do?”
Apart from unhinge me physically and mentally.

“I’m just saying be careful, that’s all.”

David hung up and stared at the computer screen. He couldn’t afford to think about Sahar now. Not in any way. He had work to do. He brutally shoved his thoughts aside and turned his attention to his work.

He leaned forward, his interest finally back where it belonged. But laughter drifted through his open windows, shattered his thoughts.

He cursed softly, lifted his head.

The melodious sound floated up to him on the warm breeze. A woman laughing with a child. The muscles around his heart tightened reflexively.

He got up, moved to the window, rested his hand on the cool sill. Sahar and Kamilah were chasing each other on the grass below the patio. A smile snared the corners of his mouth. They were playing tag, he realized. Intrigued, he leaned farther out the window and once again watched Sahar move. There was nothing self-conscious about the way she was charging about after his little girl. She was utterly free, unfettered of any inhibitions. His smile broadened. It was probably because she didn’t know anyone was watching. And once again he was a voyeur. He wanted to keep it that way. He leaned back into the shadow lest she see him. He didn’t want them to stop. Not yet.

Kamilah shrieked with utter childish delight, and he felt a heavy burden lift from his heart. His eyes moistened. This is what
he
should have been doing with Kamilah these past two years. Playing. He should have been tumbling on the lawn with his daughter, allowing her to be a child instead of bouncing her from specialist to specialist in an effort to solve her problems. Maybe the answer had been in his own hands all along.

Sahar tagged Kamilah and the two of them rolled like puppies in the grass. The sound of his daughter’s infectious chuckle gripped him by the throat. It burbled from deep in her stomach, erupting like a bubbling brook.

It was a sound he hadn’t heard in almost two years. Laughter hadn’t rung through the halls of the Rashid household in all that time, and his heart lifted in sheer empathetic joy at the sound of it.

He forgot his need for hiding. He leaned forward, pushed the window open wider, hungry for more. He chuckled softly to himself. Sahar was still in the doctor’s muslin clothes, still covered in dust from their ride. She was running barefoot, Watson’s oversize thongs discarded on the grass. Her hair was a glorious wild tangle, her eyes alive with laughter, her cheeks flushed with exhilaration.

She was like something from another world. Her dusty attire reminded him of a desert traveler, at ease with few possessions, content in the arms of nature’s awesome power. It was something he related to. Wholeheartedly.

It was that very sense of purity, of man alone against nature, that had kept driving him back into the harsh ways of the desert for most of his life. It was the clarity he found out there, the brutal honesty, the essence of life that drew him into the oceans of sand and endless horizons.

Out in the Sahara man was stripped to the bare-bone basics. Hunger and thirst was a constant. And the focus was on the present. It was harsh. But it was true.

And as he watched her, he began to understand how she’d managed to suck him into the moment earlier in the morning. It was because it was a state he’d so often aspired to. It was the very thing that kept drawing him back to the wild open spaces of his beloved Sahara. And now he’d glimpsed it in her.

He wondered, though—would she be this free once her past came to reclaim her? Would she lose that unabashed magic when she found her place in the pecking order of the civilized world again, when she discarded Doc Watson’s old garb and once again donned the lush silks and tailored linens he had no doubt she was accustomed to wearing?

He chewed on his cheek, wondering what she’d look like in silks and gold. Would the clothes and adornment change how he viewed her? Maybe if she dressed in the couture to which she was accustomed she might actually remember more about her past, about herself.

Again Kamilah chuckled. Sahar laughed heartily in response, the sound of it rich, enticing.

He could feel it inside him.

His smile deepened. And on impulse, he swiveled, reached over his desk, picked up the phone and punched in a number he hadn’t called in a very, very long time. It was the number of a high-end boutique in Cairo. And as he waited for the sales clerk to pick up, he felt just a little playful. The sensation caught him off guard—and it felt good.

Sahar and Kamilah took refuge from the midday heat in the shadows of one of the palace courtyards. They sat on an intricately carved marble bench, sipping the iced mint tea Fayha’ had brought them. While they sipped they listened to the soft tinkle of water spouting from the mouths of ornate stone lions that reared up around the fountain in the center of the enclosed garden. The air was heavy with sensual warmth and the heady scent of flowers.

The palatial surroundings seemed surreal to Sahar. She felt like Alice, slipping through the looking glass of her old world into the alternate reality of a Middle-Eastern fantasy. She was sure that any minute she’d wake with only a massive bump on the head to show for it all. She wiggled her toes in the jasmine-scented air, not sure if she actually wanted to wake up. Because this dream came complete with a dark and dangerously seductive Arabian prince. The memory of their morning ride began to stir her blood once again. She couldn’t believe how she’d let herself go.

She laughed at herself. What a twit. Of course she’d slipped into the moment, because that’s all she could do. She only had the present. No past. And therefore no future to contemplate—at least not until she had an identity. She’d be crazy to let herself go like that again. Besides, she still had the lurking sensation of danger when she looked into his face. But that only intensified his mystique. And despite the fact he set warning bells clanging in her brain, she knew if David Rashid so much as looked at her with those smoldering eyes again…she laughed nervously.

“What are you laughing at?” Kamilah asked.

Sahar glanced down at the little girl sitting companionably at her side. An old leather-bound book rested on her lap.

“I’m laughing because I’m a silly fool in a crazy dream,” she said. “And if I don’t laugh about it, I’ll cry.” Sahar nodded toward the book in Kamilah’s lap. “What book is that you’re reading?”

Kamilah lifted it, pushed it reverently into Sahar’s hands. Sahar read the title and smiled softly. She fingered the embossed lettering. It was an old copy of Hans Christian Andersen’s
Little Mermaid.

Kamilah’s liquid brown eyes watched her intently, waiting for reaction. “It’s my favorite,” she prompted.

“It is?” She was amazed at how Kamilah had opened up after their game of tag. It had broken down yet another barrier, and the child was almost talking with ease.

“It was my mother’s. She used to read it to me a lot. Do you know the story?”

Sahar thought about it. “Yes, I do, actually. If I remember correctly, it’s about a little mermaid princess, the daughter of the sea king. She was the youngest of five sisters and the prettiest of them all.”

“Six,” Kamilah corrected. “There are six sisters.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, the youngest of the six mermaids, then. And she was not only the most beautiful, she also had the loveliest voice on earth. She fell in love with a human prince and she desperately wanted a chance to be on land with him. But,” said Sahar, “before she could get legs and go on land she had to sacrifice her voice to a wicked old sorceress. And then, because she didn’t have her voice, she had to try and make the prince love her without using words.”

“So you
do
remember that.” There was a strange mixture of curiosity and accusation in the little girl’s statement.