To Tempt a Sheikh(11)

A breath shuddered out of her as she let him manipulate her body onto his lap. "Resistance is futile, huh?"

He smiled down at her as he opened the ointment tube. "Oh, yes. You're  in no shape for it right now. Resist me all you like when you're no  longer in pain."

She murmured something, a cross between grudging consent and whimpering  pain/pleasure as he carefully began to examine her, then spread the  ointment he'd warmed first between him palms over her aching flesh. His  own flesh ached, too, all over.

Then, as she relaxed into his touch, arched up into his soothing hands,  he saw the outline where the impact had bruised her paleness.

All blood was back, shooting into his head.

He heard the viciousness in his voice as he growled, "Just thinking they  had their hands on you at all, let alone in violence, makes me  contemplate murder."

She fidgeted at his intensity, her eyes scanning him from her upside-down position. "You mean you don't do that on auto?"

He gave her a chiding glance. "Murder isn't even in the same solar  system as manipulation or framing innocents for fraud. Don't you think  you're taking your enmity too far?"

She sighed as she relaxed again under his cosseting hands. "I don't  know. Maybe you think killing someone a suitable punishment for abusing  their power, as an ultimate example for others. As for taking my enmity  too far, let me throw one of your brothers in jail for five years, ruin  his future and destroy his psyche, and then we'll discuss the  exaggeration of my beliefs and reactions."

He stopped his massaging movements when she started to quiver. She could  be getting cold or tender … or aroused. He was all of that. And though  all he wanted was to rip off his clothes and hers and remedy all the  causes of their distress, he knew that must remain a fantasy for now.                       
       
           



       

With what stood between them, maybe forever.

He kept his hands pressed lightly into her flesh for a few more defusing moments, his gaze tangling with her turbulent one.

Then he removed his hands, helped her up. She declined his help  straightening her clothes. Then, with her eyes still wrestling with his,  she nestled into the farthest part of the cockpit from him, against her  door.

He'd thought he could postpone this until she was less raw, until he'd  decided how to go on from here. But her withdrawal snapped something  inside him. He had to settle this score. Now.

He pressed closer, showing her he wouldn't take her categorizing him as  the villain and shunning him. "Let's get one thing clear, Talia. I was  not a party to what happened to your brother. So I have no more to say  on this matter. And nothing to apologize for." Satisfaction surged as he  saw that sense of fairness of hers flickering in her gaze, admitting  his point. "So, until I'm in a position to learn more, and do something  about it, I won't let you bring it up again. The subject of your brother  is closed for now."

He held her eyes until she gave him a resentful if conceding huff.

He gave her an approving nod, as if sealing their treaty.

Then he said, "Now, to the only subject we should concern ourselves with for the duration. Our survival."





Five




"What do you mean our survival?"

Harres frowned at Talia's glower. His was of confusion. Hers seemed to be equal measures that and a revival of anger.

"What kind of a question is that? We're in the middle of nowhere, as you pointed out. The most hostile nowhere on the planet."

"Yeah, sure. So?"

He shook his head, as if it would shake her words into making sense.  "You were worried about getting out of this alive. I thought you  understood the danger we're in."

"I thought I was in danger. The only danger I thought I was in was human-induced."

His exasperation rose to match hers. "You mean me- induced."

She shrugged, unfazed by his displeasure. "Yeah, you-induced. I was  thinking you'd use my being out here with you as the only way of  rejoining humanity, as … persuasion to get me to spill. And that once you  were certain I wouldn't give you anything, you wouldn't be too gung ho  about my well-being, maybe even my survival."

Blood bounded in his arteries until he felt each hammer against the confines of his body.

He forcibly exhaled frustration before he burst with it. "I thought we  got this ridiculous-and let me add, most dishonoring, injuring and  aggravating-misconception out of the way."

Her eyes seemed to be giving him a total mind-and-psyche scan before she  gave a slow nod. "I guess so. But since that only happened in the past  few minutes, I had no time to form an alternate viewpoint. I sure didn't  consider for a second that you were in any danger. After the escape,  the gunshot and the crash, that is. After you survived all that in one  glorious piece, I thought you were home free."

"How is it even possible you think so?"

"Oh, I don't know." Her voice drenched him in sarcasm. "Maybe my first  clue was how glib about the whole situation you were. You know, being so  cheerful and carefree that you spent most of the past hour laughing and  lobbing witticisms in between pestering me for my gender, interrogating  me for my agenda and trying to deluge me with testosterone."

And he had to. He laughed again. "It's your effect on me. You make me cheerful and carefree, against all odds."

Her lips crooked up in a goading smile. "Next you'll say I made you kiss me."

"In a fashion. You made me unable to draw one more breath if I didn't.  You made me thankful. That I found you, that I saved you, that you saved  me, that you exist and that you're with me. And you did make me do it  in the most important way, the way all of the above still couldn't have  made me. Because you wanted me to."

She gave her lips, which had fallen open, an involuntary lick, her eyes  glittering as if she felt his there, tasted him. Then she gave a  smothered, chagrined sound before her eyes sharpened again and she  thrust both hands at him in a fed-up gesture. "See? Is it any wonder I  couldn't even conceive that you had anything to worry about? Who talks  like that if he's in any kind of danger, let alone a potentially  life-threatening situation?"

He sighed, conceding her point. "Apparently, I do. With you around. But  when you talked about my needing your scalpels again, I thought that  proved you were aware that I shared your danger."

She waved a hand. "Oh, I was just pointing out that if you held me here at your mercy, you'd be at mine, too."                       
       
           



       

He huffed a stunned chuckle. "We're sitting inside a crashed helicopter,  our as well as my only way out of here. How can you consider that I'm  not right with you at the mercy of the desert?"

Her shrug was defensive this time. "Why should I have considered that?  So the helicopter crashed. But you're the one, the only, Prince Harres  Aal Shalaan. You must have all sorts of gadgets on hand and can contact  your people to come pick you up whenever you want."

He gave a regretful nod. "I do have gadgets, every one known to  humankind. And all useless, since we are in a signal blackout zone. The  nearest area with possibility of transmitting or receiving anything is  over two hundred miles away."

Her eyes widened with each word until they'd expanded to a cartoonish  exaggeration. "You mean your people have no way of knowing where you  are?

"None."

After a moment of wrestling with descending dread, she seemed to come to  a conclusion that steadied her. "Well, that alone will have your armies  combing the desert to find you."

"Sure it will." He sighed in resignation. "And they'll find me. In maybe a week. We have water on board for a couple of days."

"They can't possibly take a week to find you!" Her protest came out a  squeak. "With all the high-end tech stuff at their disposal, and the  whole country out looking for its precious prince, I bet they find you  within a couple of hours from the moment they realize you're missing!"

He wanted to press her into his flesh and absorb her worry. But he owed  her the truth. He would see her to safety, but he had to prepare her for  the grueling experience that he couldn't spare her before he did.

Bleakness clamped his heart, erasing any lightness as he forced himself  to decimate her hope. "They have no way of knowing where to start  looking. Once my men go back home and realize I didn't precede them,  they'll go back to where we originally landed as a starting point to  search. But they'll have no way of knowing which way I headed, or how  far in which direction I crashed."

"So they'd take longer, maybe a day or two," she still argued. "Surely  they'll crisscross the area with enough aircrafts, one of them is bound  to spot us within that time frame."