A half hour into the journey she broke the silence. “Where are we going?”
“My Kasbah. My home,” he said. “One of my homes,” he corrected.
“Why this one?”
“It is where all Karims spend their honeymoon.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know what to think, or feel. So much had happened in the past few hours that she felt numb and overwhelmed.
Part of her brain whispered she was in trouble, and yet another part hadn’t accepted any of this.
It didn’t make sense, this forced marriage. She kept thinking any moment she’d wake up and discover it a strange dream.
Her captor was big and solid, his chest muscular, his arms strong, biceps taut as he held her steady in the saddle, his broad back protecting her from the cold.
He struck her as powerful but not brutal. Fierce and yet not insensitive.
In a different situation she might even like him. In a different situation she might like the spicy exotic fragrance he wore. In a different situation she might find him darkly beautiful.
But it wasn’t a different situation. There was no way she could find him attractive, or appealing. She wasn’t attracted to him, or the hard planes of his chest, or even aware of the way his muscular thighs cradled her, pinning her between his hips and the saddle’s pommel.
They lapsed back into a silence neither tried to break. But an hour later, Mikael, shifted, drawing her closer to him. “There,” he said. “My home.”
Jemma stared hard into the dark, but could see nothing. “Where?”
“Straight in front of us.”
But there was nothing in front of them. Just sand. “I don’t see—”
“Watch.”
The brilliant moonlight rippled across the desert, bathing all in ghostly white.
And then little by little the desert revealed a long wall, and then a bit later she was able to see shapes behind the wall. The shapes became shadowy clay buildings.
In the middle of the night, in the glow of moonlight, it looked like a lost world. As if they’d traveled back in time.
She sucked in a nervous breath as they approached massive wooden gates cut into the towering clay walls. Two enormous gas lanterns hung on either side of the dark wooden gate, and Mikael shouted out in Arabic as they reached them, and just like that, the gates split, and slowly opened, revealing square turrets and towers within.
Robed people poured into the courtyard as the gates were shut and locked behind them.
They were lining up before the first building with its immense keyhole doorway, bowing repeatedly.
“What’s happening?” she whispered.
“We’re being welcomed by my people. They have heard I’ve brought home my bride.”
The camel stopped moving. Robed men moved forward. Mikael threw the reins and one of the men took it, and commanded the camel to kneel.
Sheikh Karim jumped off the camel, and then turned to look at her. His gaze held hers, his expression fierce. “What we have just done is life changing. But we’ve made a commitment, and we shall honor that commitment.”