With shadows covering half her face and revealing the other half, she was temptation and retribution come together. This woman and his desire for her, it seemed, were very much still an uncontrollable aspect of his life. And it robbed the sweet taste of her from his mouth.
She would save him and she would damn him.
“How far will you go to alleviate the guilt?”
She flinched. And yet he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to hurt her. He just wanted her to stop acting as if she cared.
“I have not been just to you. Everything I did, everything I caused, they were my actions, Nikhat. I could fall lower and hold you responsible, but the fact is that I did it all. I don’t want your guilt or your reparation.”
“Wait,” she said, halting him with her fingers on his wrist. There was a resolve to her mouth that he remembered so well. “Maybe some of it is guilt, maybe some of it is a misplaced sense of responsibility.
“But whatever the past, Azeez, we’re in this together now. Whether you believe it or not, whether you want it or not, you have my loyalty above everyone else, and you have my friendship.”
* * *
Nikhat rubbed her eyes, jolting awake as the helicopter landed. From her seat, all she could see was a specter of light behind her, illuminating the vast dunes of sand in front of her. In the twilight, the dunes looked like a sea of glistening reddish-gold, stark and yet beautiful.
She turned in place, taking in the beautiful landscape, and stilled. A resort stood about half a mile ahead of them, a fluorescent white glow lighting it up like a mythical fortress against the darkening sky. She thought she knew everything about the royal family. But she hadn’t even heard a whisper that this place existed, and she wondered if the outside world had, either.
Thankful to Azeez for reminding her to wear a jacket, she extracted a scarf from her handbag. She stood to the side as he had a word with the pilot and then the chopper left.
Only then did she make out the dark shape of a four-by-four with the old bodyguard that she remembered, Khaleef, at the wheel.
She wrapped the scarf snug around her face just as Azeez motioned for them to walk toward the resort. A gasp fell from her lips as lights came on in front of them, illuminating a wooden bridge that resembled an old drawbridge from ancient times.
Laughing, she ran a couple of steps and stepped onto the bridge. Small lights placed along either side turned on, causing tall shadows to fall from the date trees. With turreted domes and shadowed arches in front of her, she felt as if she had stepped into the pages of a book she had read when she was a child.
And the prince…
She turned around to find Azeez standing still at the first step, his coal-black gaze resting on her. She let the magical quality of the dusky evening seep into her.
Deciding that she wanted to help Azeez, not because her own future was dependent on it, not because her guilt demanded it, but because it would give her satisfaction, but because she cared what happened to him, was a relief. She felt as if a weight had lifted from her heart.
She was not going to weave impossible dreams, neither was she going to lie that they didn’t mean anything to each other.
“A bridge, really?” she said, holding on to the humor she had found in it just seconds ago.
She glanced at the fortlike structure, the exquisitely maintained lawn in front of it with a fountain and the strategically placed lights.