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“I won’t, Tair, and you know me. I’ll run.”
He shrugged again, unruffled. “And I’ll come find you.”
Her head turned and she looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Don’t do this,” she said softly, the warning clear enough in her voice.
“It’s already done. You’re here. We’re together. I shall announce our marriage—”
“Marriage?”
“You shall be my second wife.”
“And your first?”
“Dead.”
Her mouth opened, closed and she put fingertips to her forehead where everything seemed fuzzy. Heatstroke. That’s what it was. She was suffering heatstroke. “I will never marry you.”
“There’s no real ceremony. Nothing you have to do—”
“That’s not the point.”
“—so I say the words, announce it to my people, and it is done. You are my wife.”
“Your wife.”
“It is not such a very big step. Everyone already knows you are mine. We are merely making official what is widely assumed. That you are my woman.”
Tally honestly thought she was going to faint.
If only she could faint. If only she could slide to the floor and not have to listen to another word. But maybe in her dead faint he’d wave his hand over her and do his hocus-pocus wedding ceremony and then she’d really truly be in trouble then.
No, she couldn’t faint. She had to stay calm and find a way out of here. Marry Tair? Be a sheikh’s bride? Never.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THEYdidn’t end up having tea, at least, not together. Tally was too upset and Tair wasn’t in the mood to coddle her. It’d be so much more convenient if she knew who he was. If she understood his power. His name. His reputation.
His reputation.
Leaving his stables where he’d checked that all the horses had been properly seen to, Tair slowly ran his thumb across his jaw, rubbing slowly, thoughtfully over the squared chin.
Tally didn’t know his reputation but she should. She should know the kind of man he was. She should know what he’d done, what he’d do, without the least bit of remorse.
He was proud of his nature, comfortable being the warrior. The aggressor.
Bandit. King. Thief. King.
His lips pressed as he inhaled, nostrils pinching.
He’d lived too long to be timid, suffered too much to be gentle, risked too much to be sympathetic. Perhaps there were other men in his tribe, future leaders who’d be more temperate—just—but that was not him.
He wasn’t kind, or generous. Neither patient nor sensitive.
He stole. He demanded. He insisted. And that was the way it was. He was also a man who had vowed to protect Tally now she was his.
And his Tally would be wise to accept the truth, and facts, fast.
Exhausted from the trip, Tally had hoped she’d fall into bed and sleep one of those deep dreamless sleeps but no, sleep wouldn’t come and she spent hours tossing and turning in her bedroom high in Tair’s personal tower.
Rolling over onto her back, she punched her pillow behind her head and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself.
It wasn’t that getting married or being a wife was so distasteful. It was the way Tair did everything. It was his high-handedness, his authority, his insensitivity. It was the fact that heinsisted it be done.
First of all, marriage wasn’t a solution. Tally had lived enough years to know that love and relationships were important, but marriage was more of a problem then a solution. Marriage meant compromise, loss, sacrifice, and maybe someday she’d be ready to settle down, scale back her aspirations, give up some dreams but she wasn’t there yet. Wasn’t ready. There was still so much she needed to see, so much she wanted to do. Tally knew she had it in her to be a good mother—someday.
Someday. As in five, ten years from now.
Impulsively Tally left her bed. She knew where Tair’s room was. His room was just doors from hers, on the same floor. Slipping a silk robe over her nightgown she went there now.
Tally knocked softly. “Tair?”
He called for her to enter.
His lamp was on and he was stretched out on his bed, shirtless, reading the first of an enormous stack of newspapers. His room was considerably cooler than hers with the tall glass paned doors open to the night.
“Can’t sleep,” she said nervously, glancing at his thickly muscled chest, and the scars over his heart, before looking away. The scars troubled her. Made her afraid for him somehow. “Am I bothering you?”
