LITMIR.BIZ

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not all.”

      “The Bedouins out here have their own form of the language. Sometimes larger families have their own variation, though that is less common.”

      “Thank you for the history lesson. I shall make a note. Who are you?”

      “I am Sheikh Zafar Nejem, and I daresay I am your salvation.”

      “I think I would have been better off if I were left to burn.”

      * * *

      Ana clung to the horse as it galloped over the sand, the night air starting to cool, no longer burning her face. This must be what shock felt like. Numb and aware of nothing, except for the heat at her back from the man behind her, and the sound of the horse’s hooves on the sand.

      He’d stopped talking to her now, the man who claimed to be the Sheikh of Al Sabah, a man whose entire face was obscured by a headdress, save for his obsidian eyes. But before she’d been kidnapped...and it surely had only been a couple of days...Farooq Nejem had been the ruler of the country. A large and looming problem for Shakar, and one that Tariq had been very concerned with.

      “Zafar,” she said. “Zafar Nejem. I don’t know your name. I can’t...remember. I thought Farooq...”

      “Not anymore,” he said, his voice hard, deep, rumbling through him as he spoke.

      The horse’s gait slowed, and Ana looked around the barren landscape, trying to figure out any reason at all for them to be stopping. There was nothing. Nothing but more sand and more...nothing. It was why she hadn’t made an escape attempt before. Going out alone and unprepared in the desert of Al Sabah was as good as signing your own death certificate.

      They’d been warned of that so many times by their guide, and after traveling over the desert in the tour group on camelback for a day, she believed him.

      So much for a fun, secret jaunt into the desert with her friends before her engagement to Tariq was announced. This was not really fun anymore. And it confirmed what she’d always suspected: that stepping out of line was a recipe for disaster.

      She was so fair, too much exposure to the midday sun and she’d go up in a puff of smoke and leave nothing but a little pile of ash behind.

      So bolting was out of the question, but the fact that they were stopping made her very, very uneasy. She’d been lucky, so lucky that the men that had kidnapped her had seen value in leaving her untouched. She wasn’t totally sure about her new captor.

      She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the burn in her lungs, compliments of the arid, late-afternoon air. It was so thin. So dry. Just existing here was an effort. More confirmation on why running was a bad idea.

      But she had to be calm. She had to keep control, and if she couldn’t have control over the situation, she would have it over herself.

      Her captor got down off the horse, quickly, gracefully, and offered his hand. She accepted. Because with the way she was feeling at the moment, she might just slide off the horse and crumble into a heap in the sand. That would be one humiliation too many. She had been purchased today, after all.

      “Where are we?” she asked.

      “At a stopping point.”

      “Why? Where? How is it a stopping point?” She looked around for a sign of civilization. A sign of something. Someone.

      “It is a stopping point, because I am ready to stop. I have been riding for eight hours.”

      “Why don’t you have a car if you’re a sheikh?” she asked, feeling irritated over everything.

      “Completely impractical. I live in the middle of the desert. Fuel would become a major issue.”

      Oh yes. Fuel. Oil. Oil was always the issue. It was something she knew well, having grown up the daughter of the richest oil baron in the United States. Her father had a knack for finding black gold. But he was a businessman, and that meant that the search was never done. It was all about getting more. Getting better.

      And that was how she’d met Sheikh Tariq. It was how she’d ended up in Shakar, and then, in Al Sabah.

      Oil was the grandaddy of this entire mess.

      But it would be okay. It would be. She thought of Tariq, his warm dark eyes, his smile. The thought of him always made her stomach flip. Not so much at the moment, but given she was hot, tired, dusty, and currently leaning into the embrace of a stranger, thanks to her klutzy dismount, it seemed understandable.

      She straightened and pushed away from him, heart pounding. He was nothing like Tariq. For a start, his eyes were flat black, no laughter. No warmth. But so very compelling...

      “Where are we?” she asked, looking away from him, and at their surroundings.

      “In the middle of the desert. I would give you coordinates, but I imagine they would mean nothing to you.”

      “Less than nothing.” She squinted, trying to see through the haze of purple, the sun gone completely behind the distant mountains now. “How long until we reach civilization? Until I can contact my father? Or Tariq?”

      “Who says I’ll allow you to contact them? Perhaps I have purchased you for my harem.”

      “What happened to you being my salvation?”

      “Have you ever lived in a harem?” He lifted a brow. “Perhaps you would like it.”

      “Do you even have a harem?”

      “Sadly,” he said, his tone as dry as the sand, “I do not. But I am only just getting started in the position as sheikh, so there is time to amass one.”

      She nearly choked, fear clutching at her. “I am...stranded in the middle of a foreign desert....”

      “It’s not foreign.”

      “Not to you!” she said.

      “Continue.”

      “I am stranded in the desert with a stranger who claims he’s a sheikh, a sheikh who bought me, and you are joking about my future! I have no patience for it.”

      She had no patience left in her entire body. At this moment, she had two options: get angry, or sink to the ground and cry. And crying was never the preferred option. No, the schools she’d attended, the ones she’d been sent to after her mother left, had been exclusive, private and very strict. She’d been taught that strength and composure were everything. She’d been taught never to run when she could walk. Never to shout when a composed, even statement would do. And she’d learned that tears never helped anything in life. They didn’t change things. They hadn’t brought her mother back home, certainly.

      So she was going with anger.

      His manner changed, dark brows locking together. His black eyes glittering with dark fire. He tugged at the bottom portion of the scarf, which had kept most of his face hidden until that moment, and revealed his lips, which were currently curled into a snarl.

      “And you think I have the patience for this? These men are playing at starting a war between two nations simply to keep their petty ring of thieves intact. They are trying to buy my loyalty with blackmail. Because they know that if your precious Tariq finds out you were taken by citizens of Al Sabah, or God forbid, they find out the Sheikh of Al Sabah possessed you for any length of time against your will, that the tenuous truce we have between the countries will shatter entirely. How do you suppose my patience is?”

      She blinked, feeling dizzy. “I...I’m going to start a war?”

      “Not if I play it right.”

      “I imagine putting me in your harem wouldn’t defuse things.”

      “True enough. But then...perhaps I want the war.”

      “What?”

      “I am undecided on the matter.”

      “How

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