To Tempt a Sheikh(18)

Eight




Harres ignored pain, smothered exhaustion.

He had to last until he got Talia back to the oasis.

Those who'd ridden with him offered again to take care of her, of both of them.

He couldn't let them. Wouldn't. He had to be the one to carry her to safety. As he'd promised.

He asked a few of them to go back in his and Talia's tracks before they  were wiped away by the incoming sandstorm, to retrieve what he'd  ditched. The medical supplies most of all. He let those who stayed with  him help secure Talia astride the horse, ensconced in his arms like he'd  had her during their rests between the punishing hikes.

The ride back to the oasis took longer. Too long. Each moment seemed to  expand, to refuse to let the next replace it, bound on prolonging his  ordeal, on giving him more time to relive the hell of being forced to  leave her behind.

He'd gone further out of his mind with each bounding step away from her.  He'd struggled to force himself to focus so he could see his path to  the oasis, their ticket to survival. But the sight of her bundled up in  blankets and ensconced in the barricade of a steep dune had been branded  on his brain. He'd lost chunks of sanity with each hour, knowing the  blankets' protection would turn to suffocation once the desert turned  from an arctic wasteland to a blazing inferno. He'd prayed the message  he'd left her in the sand wouldn't be wiped away by the ruthless winds,  that she'd heard his plea before he'd left, to please, please wake up  soon, read it, unwrap herself and use the blankets as shelter with the  tent prop he'd kept.

But the message had been obliterated. And she'd unwrapped herself but  hadn't taken refuge from the baking sun. After more than five days of  ordeals almost beyond human tolerance, it had been a miracle she'd  lasted that long. The only reason he had was because he was bound on  saving her.

He gathered her tighter to his body, his heart draining of blood all  over again as he imagined her waking up alone and finding no explanation  for his disappearance.                       
       
           



       

It had been his miscalculations that had led to this situation. The  terrain had changed beyond recognition from the last time he'd been  there, and fearing the lethality of the quicksand areas that were the  major factor behind the segregation of the oasis, he'd taken a much  wider safety margin around their now obscured boundaries. He'd ditched  their supplies too late, when doing so no longer meant quickening their  progress, with irreversible exhaustion setting in.

He'd stumbled into the oasis's outer limits a few stages beyond  depleted. He'd seen how he'd looked in the horrified expressions of  those who'd run to him with water and efforts to spare him another step.  Their horror had only risen when they'd realized he was bleeding. In  his mad dash, he'd torn Talia's meticulous sutures.

He'd let the oasis people bandage and clothe him in weather-appropriate  clothes, gulped down reviving drinks only because he knew he'd be no  good to Talia if he didn't get repaired and refueled. He'd still given  it all only minutes before he'd jumped on their most powerful endurance  horse and exploded out of the oasis with their best riders struggling to  keep up with him.

It had been another eternity until he'd gotten back to her.

He groaned. Even in the face of death, his Talia had been the essence of  composure and grace. And wit. A chuckle sliced through him as her words  echoed inside him again. Until he replayed her last ones before she'd  surrendered to oblivion in his arms.

You are the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me … .

He shuddered, pressed her closer as if to absorb her into him, where he'd always protect her with his very life.

She might have meant those words for her savior. But he'd reciprocated them, had meant them, for her.

After one more interminable hour, he brought his horse to a stumbling  stop at the door of the cottage that had been prepared for them.

He only let others support Talia's weight for the moment it took him to  sway off the horse. Then he reclaimed her, folded her into him as if he  feared she'd evaporate if he loosened his hold.

Once inside the dwelling that he couldn't register beyond it being a  roof over their head and a door cutting them off from the rest of the  oasis, he coaxed the mostly unconscious Talia to drink again, glassfuls  of both water and a high-calorie, vitamin and mineral drink the locals  had concocted for conditions of extreme dehydration and sunstroke.

With utmost care, crooning encouragement and praise, he undressed her  down to those ridiculous men's underwear, bathed her in cool water,  fanned her dry and then sponged her down again, cooling her raging heat.  When he finally judged her temperature within normal, he dressed her in  one of the crisply clean, vibrantly colorful nightdresses the oasis  women had provided.

Throughout, though her consciousness rose and fell like waves in a  tranquil sea, she surrendered to his ministrations, unquestioning,  unresisting.

He finally laid her down on the soft kettan linen sheets freshly spread  on a firm mattress on top of a wide, low platform bed. As he withdrew, a  distressed sound spilled from her suddenly working lips, her brow  knotting as if in pain.

She couldn't bear separation from him. As he couldn't from her.

He came down beside her, cocooned her with his body. She burrowed deeper  into him with each ragged breath until he felt she'd slid between the  layers of his being, making him realize again that he'd had so many  vacant places inside of him, ones she'd exposed. Ones only she could  fill.

He stilled, savoring the imprint of each inch of her, vibrating to her  every tremor, his rumbles harmonizing with her unintelligible purrs of  fatigue and pure contentment.

Then she went limp and silent, her breath steadying, indicating her descent into replenishing sleep.

But he couldn't take that for granted.

At the tattered periphery of his awareness he thought he should seek the  oasis elder and ask if there was still time before the sandstorm to  have envoys sent to his brothers. Maybe if they moved fast enough,  they'd get ahead of it.

But he couldn't bring himself to leave Talia. His only concern was to  see to her health and comfort. Until she opened her eyes and her beloved  personality shone at him through her heavenly gaze, he could think of  nothing but her. Even the fate of Zohayd came second.

He'd do nothing but watch over her until she woke up … .



Talia woke up.

For long moments after her eyelids scraped back over grit, she couldn't credit the images falling on her retinas.

She was ensconced in gossamer off-whiteness, drenched nerve-tingling spiciness and sourceless light.

Her surroundings came into sharper focus. She was actually surrounded by  a fine mosquito net, lying in a gigantic bed on the smoothest linens  she'd ever touched. She'd smelled the scents more than once since she'd  come to Zohayd, seemingly a lifetime ago, incense of musk and amber and  ood. The light was seeping from openings below a low ceiling blocked by  arabesque work so delicate it must be almost as effective as the net.                       
       
           



       

She hadn't turned her head yet. She couldn't. But she saw enough to  fascinate her on the side she could see. A wall of whitewashed  mud-brick, a palm-wood door and window with shutters, cobblestone  floors, two reed couches spread with wool cushions handwoven in a  conflagration of color and pattern, with the same distinct Bedouin  design gracing a rug and wall hangings. Oil lamps and incense burners  hung on the wall, made of hand-worked bronze, simple, exquisite and  polished to a dazzling sheen.

Was this another world? Another era?

She should know where she was. The knowledge just evaded her. She also  knew she'd woken up many times before. If she could call the hazy  episodes waking up. Now fragments of recollection clinked and bounced  around like a rain of beads on the ground of her awareness.

Then as moments of wakefulness accumulated, the jittery particles  settled, coalesced, stringing together to form a timeline. And she  realized what had happened.

Harres had come back for her. Her desert knight had ridden back on a  white horse, leading the cavalry. But not before she'd compounded  dehydration and heat prostration with sunstroke.

No wonder distortions and abridgments stuffed her head. Yet one thing  possessed hyperreality in the jigsaw of the haziness. Harres. Caring for  and healing her. Looking so worn-out, so anxious, she would have wept  had she been able to.

"Are you awake for real this time, ya habibati?"

His voice was as dark and haggard as she remembered from her delirium.

She twisted around, homing in on it. She found him two feet away on her  other side, sitting on the floor with one knee bent, primed, slightly  above her level with being so tall and her bed so low. He was wearing a  white abaya.