There’d be no reasoning with him, no pleading or emotional protests. He’d seen too much, known too much, lost too much to be moved by talk or tears.
He’d already battled death, grief, sorrow on his own and it’d taught him that strength came from loss. Power came from fear. Courage from the absence of hope.
A woman’s tears didn’t move him. Not if it meant he’d save her life. If not his own.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“TAIR,” Tally whispered.
His fingers tightened around hers.“Iya?” Yes.
There was a brief pause. “Are you mad at me?”
“La.”No.
“Okay.”
But Tally wasn’t reassured and as they passed through Tair’s men, armed with swords and guns to enter the four-wheel drive vehicle, Tally flashed back to the dream she’d had on her wedding night. The dream of the robed men carrying swords and whips and how they’d taken Tair from her.
But Tair wasn’t gone, she reminded herself as the doors closed and Tair personally locked them. Tair was here. Everything would be fine.
But on the way to Fez nothing was fine. For the first hour Tair barely looked at her and didn’t speak. Tally looked at Tair and worried.
He could say that he wasn’t angry with her, but he was definitely upset. “I’m sorry,” she finally ventured. “I’m sorry about what happened—”
“It’s not your fault.”
But somehow she knew it was. She knew they’d used her to try to get to Tair and she knew Tair had had to come rescue her. Again. “I wasn’t going to take them to Bur Juman. I wouldn’t have—”
“They kill women, Tally.”
Tally bit her tongue, waited for whatever else it was that Tair had to say. But what she thought he’d say and what he did say were two different things.
“This isn’t working.” His voice was hard and sharp. It was the voice of a stranger. “It’s time for you to return to America.”
Blood surged to her cheeks—hurt, shock, humiliation but she didn’t flinch, not outwardly. “I don’t understand.”
His dark gaze was eerily cold, hard, ice in the desert as he stared into her eyes. “Then listen to me. I’m telling you. I don’t want you here.”
“Here.”She pounced on the word as if it were the rope that Tair had thrown her the day she was sinking in the sand pit. “You don’t want me here. But you do want me.”
“No.” His expression grew harder if it were possible, the dark eyes crackling with ice and storm. “I don’t want you. I’ve—” and he took a quick fast breath “—tired of you.”
Tally’s upper lip twitched, an involuntary reflex. Pain. Panic. Disbelief. He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it. She was his.She was his. She’d been his since that first day in the desert…“Tair.” Her voice was but a whisper, husky, pleading.
“I will see you to Atiq. Make sure you board the correct flight. We go today.”
“Today?” Her head was spinning. She couldn’t follow him, couldn’t see how she’d gone from a night in his bed, an endless night of endless exquisite lovemaking. A night without words, a night of just touch, a night where the caress of his fingers and lips meant more than words ever could and yet now…now…
“Tair.” Tally couldn’t even look at him, couldn’t bear to see so much ice and disdain in his eyes, not in those beautiful eyes she loved, not in that fierce face of his that had always gentled when he looked at her. But it wasn’t gentling now. There was nothing gentle about him anymore.
But Tally wasn’t ready to quit. She didn’t know how to quit, hadn’t perfected giving up. “I don’t believe you. I don’t. You’re just mad about something. I must have done something—”
“No, Tally, it’s not something you’ve done. It’s me. This is about me. I’m…bored.”
Bored.
Tally nearly choked, air strangling in her throat. Her face felt strange. Her skin hot, so hot it was going to peel off her face. “I’ve never bored you,” she retorted fiercely. “Never.”
“Well, I’m bored now.”
“You’re not. Maybe you realized you couldn’t handle me. Maybe that’s what you’re feeling, but it’s not boredom.”
He stared at her with cold, dead eyes. “You can protest all you want, but I know what I want, know what I feel—”
“You, feel? When did you start to feel?”