To Tempt a Sheikh(4)

The man narrowed his eyes, concentrating the intensity of his amusement.  "You're an expert at diversion, aren't you? Give it up, already. I'm on  to you. So on to you that not even a bullet is dulling my response."

"A bullet?" T.J felt both eyes almost pop out with shock. "You're hit?"

The man nodded. "So will you take pity on an injured man and bestow your  name on me? Make it your real one this time. And let me see how you  look without that rug on your face."

"Oh, shut up. Are you really injured or are you playing me?"

The man suddenly sat up from his seemingly indolent pose, tugged T.J.'s  right hand. T.J. ended up pressed against him, chest to chest, face in  his neck, arm around his massive torso. The sensation of touching a live  wire came first. Then that of sickening viscosity scorched everything  away.

Before T.J. could jerk back in alarm, the man meshed his right hand in  T.J.'s hair, pulling gently until their gazes once again melded. "See?  I'm bleeding. For you. I might die. Can you be so cruel as to let me die  without knowing who you are?"

T.J. wrenched away from him, one hand drenched in the thick heat and slickness of his blood. "Oh, just shut up."

Those lethal lips twitched. "I will if you start talking."

"You don't need me to talk, you need me to take care of this wound."

"I'll take care of it. You talk."

"Don't be stupid. Your intercostal arteries might be severed, and those  bleed like gushing faucets. You might think you're stable, but there's  no telling how bad your injury is, what kind of blood loss you've  suffered. Your blood pressure could plunge without warning. And if it  does, there's no bringing it back up!"

"Spoken like an expert. Been shot before?"

"I've treated people who were. People who weren't too stupid to jump at my offer to help them."                       
       
           



       

"Is that any way to talk to the man who took a bullet for you? And will you peel that thing off your face, already?"

"I can't believe this! You might slip into shock at any moment and you're still trying to prove this lame theory of yours?"

He just smiled, imperturbable, immovable.

"Okay," T.J. gritted. "I'll talk. After I take care of you."

"I'll let you take care of me. After you talk."

"Come on. Where is this chopper's emergency kit?"

"I'll tell you after you tell me what I want to hear."

"Not the truth, huh? 'Cause I already told you that."

The man backed away when T.J. lunged at him, hands reaching out to  expose his wound. "Uh-uh-uh. No touching until you admit you're a woman.  I only let women touch me."

T.J. glared into eyes that had a dozen devils dancing in them. "You're  really out of touch with the reality-the gravity-of your situation,  aren't you? But what do you care if I admit it or not? You know it,  after all. And then, I'm not going to merely touch you, I'm going to  bathe in your blood."

The appreciation in the man's eyes expanded, enveloped T.J. whole. "I  knew you were a bloodthirsty wench when you almost sliced me in half  with the power of your glare alone. Then you tried to powder my teeth  and transform me from a baritone to an alto."

T.J. felt a smile advancing, dispelling the frown that by now felt etched on, and had to admit …

That man was lethal. In every sense of the word.

But though he was teasing, his irreversible deterioration might actually  come to pass. There was no telling how serious his injury was without a  thorough exam. "And to think you seemed intelligent. Guess appearances  can be deceiving."

The man's lips twisted. "You can talk."

"Oh, but I thought my appearance didn't deceive you for a moment, that my 'femininity' kicked you like a mule."

The man sighed, nodding in mock helplessness. "Aih. But if I do succumb, remember, it's your doing, in every way."

"Give me a break." T.J. exhaled forcibly then scratched at the beard.

Then she snatched it away.

She yelped as a blowtorch seemed to blast her nerve endings, forcing her  to leave the beard dangling over her lips. She rubbed at the burning  sensation, gave her tormentor a baleful glance. "Happy now, you  pigheaded, mulish ox?"

"A one-man farm, eh? No one has ever flattered me as you do." She glared  at him as he oh-so-carefully removed the rest of the beard, making the  adhesive separate from her skin with a kneading sensation instead of a  stinging one.

Then he pulled back, massaged her jaw and cheeks in an insistent to and  fro, soothing her skin with the backs of those long, roughened,  steel-hard fingers. She moaned as a far more devastating brand of fire  swept her flesh from every point of contact.

He groaned himself. "Ya Ullah, ma ajmalek. How absolutely beautiful you  are. I thought I'd seen all kinds of beauty, but I've never laid eyes on  anything like you. It's like you're made of light and gold and energy  and gemstones."

Heat rose through her at his every word. When she'd first seen him,  she'd been freezing with dread and the desert's chill. But when she'd  turned to him in that filthy bathroom, his very presence had sent  animation surging into her every cell. The crash had drained her, but  the heat of his solicitude, his awareness and appreciation, the stoking  of his challenge, had been melting away the ice that seemed to have  become a constituent of her bones.

She still couldn't believe he'd seen through her disguise. No one had  during the week she'd been in Zohayd. Her captors hadn't, and she'd  spent a whole day in their grasp. But he'd sensed her femininity in  moments, with his senses almost blinded by the night's dimness, the  urgency and her disguise. He'd also had no tactile evidence, with the  buffer of clothes-especially her jacket and the corset flattening  her … assets.

Yet he'd known. And just as he'd felt her vibes, she'd been immersed in  his. She'd felt every hot granite inch of his formidable body, smelled  him over the overpowering stench of her prison, over the dispersion of  the desert and the deluge of post-accident mayhem. She'd heard each  inflection of his voice through the din of her inner cacophony and the  madness of their escape and crash.

And instead of reacting to his maleness as she had to her captors'-with  dread, revulsion, aggression and desperation-she was finding it  bolstering, soothing and, if she could believe her body's reactions in  these insane circumstances, arousing.                       
       
           



       

She hadn't found a male this arousing in … ever.

And to find this man so might mean it was she who'd hit her head. Or  something. There must be something wrong, if all she wanted right now  was to snuggle into him and hold on tight.

As if responding to her need, mirroring it, he leaned in, pressed his  face lightly into her neck, breathed her in and groaned again with  intense enjoyment. "Even with male cologne and all the traces of your  ordeal, you smell heavenly. And you still haven't told me your name, ya  jameelati."

She pulled back from his hypnosis, from the idiocy of her untimely  weakness. She had to patch up this obdurate hulk. "And you still think  if you ask me enough times I'll give you a different answer."

His eyes stilled on her. Then he nodded, as if coming to a decision. "So your name is T.J. What do the T and J stand for?"

She blinked. "You believe me?"

"Yes. My instincts about you have been right-on so far. They're saying  you're telling the truth now. They even insist you probably haven't  developed the ability to lie."

"You make me sound like an incontinent blabbermouth. I gave my kidnappers nothing."

"Withholding the truth is not lying. It can span the spectrum of  motives, from fear to nobility. Doing it under threat of harm or worse  is courageous. But in almost all situations, telling an untruth is  cowardly. And I had no doubt of your courage from the first moment. So,  with that established … your name?"

T.J. drew in a shaky inhalation then blurted it out. "Talia Jasmine. Satisfied? Now where is that damned emergency kit?"

She heard his intake of breath, felt it sweeping inside her own chest  like an internal caress. But it was the wonder that flared in those  preternatural eyes that started her shivering again. With everything but  cold.

Without a word, he reached overheard, opened a compartment and produced a huge emergency bag.

She pounced on it. Relief swamped her as she made a lightning-fast  inventory of the contents. Everything she could possibly need.

She took out a saline bag, hooked it in an overhead protrusion, dragged  his right arm over her lap and pushed the needle into his vein, then  secured it with adhesive tape and turned the drip to maximum for  quickest fluid replacement.