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Her arm wrapped around his neck. “I didn’t hear you outside.”
“I am very quiet.”
“Thank you.”
He made a rough inarticulate sound that she didn’t understand but she felt his chest vibrate and his hold on her tightened.
She knew he’d protect her. He’d protect her no matter what.
He loves me in his way, she thought. He loves me the way he knows how and it was enough. “I knew you’d come,” she whispered, a lump forming in her throat.
“Did you?”
She nodded, insides knotting, emotions strange and strained. She never wanted to care for him; never expected him to care for her. Love between two people such as they complicated everything. It wasn’t the tidy romantic love of Western culture—the love captured in movies and popular bestsellers. Love here in the desert was hard, fierce, sacrificial.
Love here wasn’t safe. Love in Ouaha was dangerous, nearly as dangerous as Tair himself.
“Put me down,” she said as they reached the street and were circled by Tair’s men. “I can walk.”
Tair put Tally down, let her walk.
They were in trouble.He was in trouble. He couldn’t do this. Couldn’t make this work. Not like this, not when he felt the way he did these past forty-eight hours, the worst hours he’d known since discovering the slaughtered bodies of his wife and tiny son. Feeling what he’d felt, going where he’d gone—into an endless abyss, a place of such darkness that he could only describe it as absolute rage and despair—and it wasn’t a place he could handle, wasn’t a place that allowed him to be.
He couldn’t beSoussi el-Kebir, or Sheikh el-Tayer, not with Tally here.
The marauding Barakan rebels were cowards and villains and they didn’t just pillage and burn. They’d slaughtered the elderly, the women, the children. Ara and Zaki had been among the dead in the terrible bloodbath seven years ago. But seven years seemed like nothing when he remembered his terror as he returned from Atiq riding through the night, riding with heaven and hell in his heart, only to arrive home and hold his five-year-old as Zaki died.
Tair wouldn’t let himself think much more than that.
But he knew, he knew in his black scarred heart, that he couldn’t go through that loss again, and he couldn’t think, lead, guide—not with Tally here. It was one thing to have a mistress. Another to have a beloved wife.
And Tally was his—she’d been his from the start—and she made him afraid, made him worry, made him a man.
But he couldn’t risk being an ordinary man. Mortal. He had to remain a monster. Frankenstein-like in his inability to give, or feel.
Tally. His woman.
He’d have to send her back, send her home. Not to his home, but hers, that loft space she rented in downtown Seattle’s historic district.
He felt Tally slip her hand into his as they approached the waiting armored cars. His jaw hardened and he didn’t look at her, didn’t let himself think or feel. Once his mind was made up, he never changed it.
There’d be no reasoning with him, no pleading or emotional protests. He’d seen too much, known too much, lost too much to be moved by talk or tears.
He’d already battled death, grief, sorrow on his own and it’d taught him that strength came from loss. Power came from fear. Courage from the absence of hope.
A woman’s tears didn’t move him. Not if it meant he’d save her life. If not his own.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“TAIR,” Tally whispered.
His fingers tightened around hers.“Iya?” Yes.
There was a brief pause. “Are you mad at me?”
“La.”No.
“Okay.”
But Tally wasn’t reassured and as they passed through Tair’s men, armed with swords and guns to enter the four-wheel drive vehicle, Tally flashed back to the dream she’d had on her wedding night. The dream of the robed men carrying swords and whips and how they’d taken Tair from her.
But Tair wasn’t gone, she reminded herself as the doors closed and Tair personally locked them. Tair was here. Everything would be fine.
But on the way to Fez nothing was fine. For the first hour Tair barely looked at her and didn’t speak. Tally looked at Tair and worried.
He could say that he wasn’t angry with her, but he was definitely upset. “I’m sorry,” she finally ventured. “I’m sorry about what happened—”
“It’s not your fault.”
But somehow she knew it was. She knew they’d used her to try to get to Tair and she knew Tair had had to come rescue her. Again. “I wasn’t going to take them to Bur Juman. I wouldn’t have—”
