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Drax nodded his own head. They embraced again, and Vere stood and watched as Drax ducked under the ferocity of the wind and climbed into his four-wheel drive.
‘Excellency, we must leave soon,’ one of the workmen begged Vere urgently.
Vere nodded, but didn’t move until the whirling sand had swallowed up Drax’s vehicle and he could see him no longer.
Outside the windows the sand whirled and the wind howled, battering the vehicle from all directions. Sadie had long ago lost sight of the track she had been following, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything. She only wanted oblivion.
A sob tore at her throat, her emotions shaking her body in much the same way as the storm shook the vehicle. Both she and the vehicle were in the grip of a force so powerful that they could not escape from it. The storm was threatening to pluck up the heavy car and mercilessly destroy it, but it wasn’t that that was making the dry sobs tear at Sadie’s throat. Drax! How could he have planned to subject her to such degradation? She couldn’t bear to think of the fate he had been willing to inflict on her, and she couldn’t bear to know that she had loved him. She wanted to tear his memory from her heart and her mind.
The vehicle’s engine started to race as it struggled to climb a steep, invisible incline—so steep that it must almost be perpendicular, Sadie realised, as the wheels spun and the vehicle rocked. Without warning it suddenly started to plunge downwards at great speed.
Sadie tried to brake, but it was no use. The vehicle was out of control. She cried out in the seconds before the vehicle lurched to an abrupt halt, causing her to bang her head on the wi
ndow, and through the pain she was aware that she had cried out Drax’s name. And the pain of knowing that was far greater than the injury to her throbbing head. Her forehead felt wet and sticky. She lifted her hand to it and saw that she was bleeding. Already she could barely see through the windscreen because of the sand. She knew she ought to be afraid, but somehow she wasn’t. What was the point? Right now dying felt easier than living with the knowledge of Drax’s cruelty.
Sadie couldn’t have got very far, Drax tried to reassure himself. She had driven off down a well-used track, according to the driver of the off-roader she had taken. But she had also driven right into the path of the oncoming storm—which was why he had refused Vere’s offer to come with him.
That he would find Sadie was not in doubt. Whether they would survive the fury of the storm was a different matter. Like all modern vehicles in use in Dhurahn for desert travel, both were fitted with a special tracking system that ensured a driver could not become lost in the desert. His mobile phone might not work in the ferocity of the storm, but the tracking device would. Which was just as well, Drax thought, well aware of how easily a sandstorm could change the landscape, wiping out its existing features and creating new ones. It was impossible for him to see very much through his windscreen, but unlike Sadie he knew exactly what to do when he suddenly started to climb a steep sandhill.
Even though he knew approximately where the other vehicle was, it still took Drax several precious minutes to locate it, half buried beneath the sand. When he wrenched open the door and saw Sadie slumped over the driving wheel he felt as though his heart was being forcibly ripped out of his chest. But the moment he touched her she jerked upward, her eyes opening and darkening with horror as she saw him.
‘No! Not you…No…’ She was crying and half hysterical as she tried to push him away, to stop him from lifting her out of the car, but Drax persevered, dragging her free as she collapsed against him. Bent almost double under her weight, he struggled back to his own vehicle. Already sand was drifting against it, driven there by the unrelenting wind. Drax knew there was no chance of them making it back to Dhurahn ahead of the storm, but if they stayed here it would overwhelm them. The oasis was their best chance of survival—if they could get there.
Somehow he managed to manhandle Sadie into the passenger seat. He had left the engine running, and as he put the vehicle in gear Sadie started to come round.
She was with Drax. Sadie shuddered. Why had he come after her? Why hadn’t he just left her in peace? Was he so perverted that he would risk death rather than be denied his sick pleasure?
Tears filled her eyes and spilled down on her cheeks.
Drax reached out his hand to touch her, and immediately she cowered away from him, her eyes bleak with pain.
‘What are you doing here? Why did you come after me?’
‘Because I had no choice. I love you, Sadie. You are my life and—’
‘No.’ How dared he lie to her like this when she knew the truth? How dared he look at her with a pain in his gaze that said she was more precious to him than life itself?
She started to laugh, almost hysterically.
‘Yes!’ he insisted. But Sadie shook her head.
‘You’re lying. You don’t love me. I heard you, Drax; I heard everything you said about me to Vere. About the two of you sharing me.’ She made herself say the horrible words and endure the poison of their taste. ‘I won’t let you do that to me, Drax. I’d rather die,’ she said wildly. ‘I won’t let you abuse me like that.’
‘Was that why you left the camp?’ Drax demanded.
‘You didn’t think I’d stay, did you, after hearing something like that?’
Sadie gasped as the wind howled and screamed, buffeting the four-wheel drive and causing it to rock from side to side.
‘Sadie, it isn’t as it seems.’
‘How can it not be? I heard you.’
‘I know you did, but…’ Drax cursed under his breath as he fought to control the vehicle. ‘I love you, Sadie.’
‘Don’t say that! You’re lying.’
‘No, I’m not. What you heard me saying to Vere was—’
