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He went behind her chair and positioned himself so that he could pull it out for her while she stood. It was such an odd thing. The way that he played the part of a gentleman even while holding her against her will.
He took her arm, as if he was a man taking her out for a night on the town, and not a walk out in the desert.
He led her back to the spacious entry, and out the front door, which only opened because of the touch of his palm.
Yes. She even needed him to get outside. She was right to try this. Right to do it.
She made a somewhat decisive move away from him as the evening air enveloped her. “It’s beautiful,” she said, spinning in a circle. What she had said about clothing had not been wrong. She felt powerful in this dress. She felt like the sort of woman who could do whatever she wanted. Who could bend the universe to her will.
And she would try. She would try, no matter the cost.
She looked around and took stock of her surroundings. Took another step to keep herself just distant enough.
And then thunder rolled, out there in the desert, echoing off the mountains all around them.
“What is that?”
“A storm. We shouldn’t stay out here. They rage hard and fast.”
One fat drop of water landed on her face. Then another. “Just a moment,” she whispered.
“Ariel...”
And that was when she ran. She ran like the desert contained her salvation and she had no choice but to fling herself into it, arms wide open. Water hit against her body, cold and harsh, and she ran.
She ran, in jeweled slippers and a gown made of silk that clung to her skin. She ran even though she could not win. She ran because it was the only way she would ever be able to continue to look at herself in the mirror day in and day out for the remainder of her life, which she would no doubt spend as a prisoner.
A prisoner.
She ran. Tears streaming down her face. And when she felt a strong arm grab her around the waist, and when she found herself being spun, her back hitting firmly against the rock wall of the mountain behind her, with a wall of male muscle in front, she let out a sob of distress.
Everything in her rebelled against this moment. Against this man. Against the inevitability of it. She pounded her fists against his chest. And let out the most vile string of curses she’d ever said in all her life.
“I hate you,” she shouted. “I don’t want to be a prisoner for the rest of my life.” She hit him again, and he simply stood fast, holding her still with ease. The storm that she unleashed upon him was a tiny, wrecked gull raging against the tempest.
“I will not be a prisoner for the rest of my life.”
She shrieked it. Shouted it. Until she felt the tide beginning to turn inside of herself. Until she felt the power begin to turn and shift within her.
Until she felt herself begin to change. Until the words took on new meaning. Until she recognized the power within them. The power within herself. She had known that she wouldn’t escape, out here in the desert. She had known. But she had to do it to prove her mettle. To prove her might. To prove that she was not a wilting flower who would go into the heat to die, but rather a gem who would only become stronger through fire and flame.
“I am not a prisoner,” she said. “I’m Ariel Hart. I’m a world-renowned fashion designer. And I did not betray you. I don’t deserve to be held against my will, to have everything that I have worked for stripped away from me. I don’t deserve it, and I refuse to be punished for the sins of my father. I demand that you give me a life, or I will never stop trying to run. Because as long as I’m in a cage I will kick against the bars, I promise you that, Cairo.”
“You are a fool,” he hissed, moving closer to her, the rain sliding down over his handsome face. So close. So close. “You would die out here. Me capturing you is the kindest thing that could happen.”
“I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid to challenge death. To challenge the desert. I have never been afraid. Always, the men around me have sought to manipulate my life. To decide who I am and what I can do and how much I can be. And only with my father gone, only with your brother in prison, was I able to pursue a life of my own. I went and made myself a success, and I had to spend those years hoping that...”
“Hoping I was dead?”
Never that.
Oh, never that.
Even standing here now, awash in her rage and indignity, she’d never want him dead.
It was the worst part of all of this. Her connection to him. The fact that she could never be fully certain if the reason she hadn’t jumped out of that car back in Paris wasn’t to save herself the road rash, but to give herself some time with him.
If the reason she’d run now, knowing she would be caught, was because part of her didn’t want to be free of him.
