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Heat stormed her cheeks. The same heat that flooded her veins. “Notyears.”
“You will answer to me one day, Woman. You might not like the idea, but it’s true. The sooner you accept it, the sooner life will become easier for you.”
She wanted to throw something at him, anything. The cups of tea. The tray. A pillow. He was so damn smug. So horribly arrogant. “I take it then I call you Man?”
His faint smile faded. “You are very impertinent for a woman.” Silent, he regarded her. “You may call me Tair,” he said after a moment.
“Why do you get a name and I get Woman?”
“Because I brought you here, which makes you my responsibility, and therefore my woman.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does to me and that’s all that matters since this is my tribe and you are mine.”
“Will you please stop calling me your woman? I’m not your woman. I’m no one’s woman, and I wasn’t spying on you or whatever you think I was doing in El Saroush’s medina,” she said, referring to the border town’s old square where he’d kidnapped her. “Why would I spy on you? I don’t even know who you are, and what point would there be spying on a group of bedraggled men riding through town on horseback? I may be an American,” and she drawled the word for his benefit, “but I do have standards.”
He nearly hissed. “Bedraggled men?”
She crossed her arms, chin titled rebelliously. “Even your horses are bedraggled.”
“They’re not,” he contradicted, incensed. “Our horses are some of the finest Arabians in North Africa. We breed them ourselves.”
“They’re dirty. You’re all dirty—”
“You should see yourself.”
“I’d bathe if you let me! I’d love some clean clothes, too, but somehow I don’t think you kidnapped a change of clothes for me.”
“I’ll get a knife,” he muttered, “get rid of your damn tongue now.”
She should be afraid, she should, but somehow she wasn’t. He might be huge, and fierce and intimidating but he didn’t seem cruel, or like a man who impulsively cut out tongues. “The point is that I didn’t even notice you in town. I was interested only in the children playing. And all I want to do is be allowed to continue on to Casablanca.”
“Why Casablanca?”
“It’s the next stop on my itinerary.”
His expression turned speculative. “You’ve friends there?”
“No. I’m on my own.”
“Casablanca’s a rebel stronghold.”
Tally sighed. “You’re rather obsessive about this whole terrorist thing, aren’t you?”
He studied her for a long moment before leaning forward to take her face in his hand. He lifted her chin this way and then that. “You are what, thirty years old? Older?”
She tried to pull away but couldn’t. Her pulse jumped, skin burning. She didn’t like him touching her. He made her feel odd, prickly things. Things she had no business feeling. “I just turned thirty,” she answered faintly.
“You wear no ring,” he said, still examining her face. “Did your husband die?”
“I’ve never been married.”
“Never?”
“I don’t want a husband.”
He let her go then and his dense black lashes dropped, concealing his expression. He was silent, assessing her, and the situation. “You’re not a virgin, are you?”
His tone had changed and she didn’t know if it was shock, or respect but either way it irritated her. Her life, her past, her relationships, and most of all, her sexuality were her business and no one else’s. Least of all a barbaric desert tribesman. “I’m thirty, not thirteen. Of course I’ve had relationships—and experience—but I choose to remain single. I prefer being single. This way I can travel. Explore. Do what I want to do.”
Tair continued to study her as though she were alien and fascinating in a strange sort of way.
Tally wasn’t sure she liked the look on his face. His expression made her nervous. Made her feel painfully vulnerable.
“Your parents—they’re still alive?” he asked.
She nodded, neck stiff, body rigid. She really didn’t know where he was going with this and didn’t want to find out.
“They don’t worry about you?” he persisted.
“No.” She caught his eye, flushed. “Maybe a little. But they’re used to my lifestyle now. They know this is who I am, what I do. Besides, they have other kids who supply them with grandchildren and the like.”
