Tamed: The Barbarian King (8 page)

“Kareef?” she whispered, then stopped.

“Hmm?” His face was pressed against hers, his body still naked beneath the sun. He didn’t open his eyes. The sun had already half-dried the dark wave of his hair.

She took a deep breath. “I was…I was wondering…”

Then a sparkle caught her eye. She looked out by the pool and saw the pants he’d discarded carelessly before
he’d jumped into the water. Something had tumbled out of the pocket, now glistening green in the light.

The emerald.

The tiny heart-shaped emerald on a gold chain her parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday. She’d been wearing it when Kareef had asked her to marry him that day in the thicket of trees behind the riding school. According to the ancient Qusani ritual, she’d been required to give a token as pledge of her faith. So she’d pulled the gold chain off her neck, and placed it in his hand as she’d tearfully spoken the words that would bind them.

And now, after thirteen years, he was carelessly carrying the necklace around in his pants pocket, awaiting the moment he would divorce her.

Staring at the emerald glinting in the sun, she blinked hard as all her dreams came crashing around her.

Kareef lifted his head. “What is it?” he said lazily, his hand lingering on her breast. He sighed. “Don’t tell me. Do you already want more?” He yawned, but was already smiling as he reached for her. “You tire me out, woman….”

She closed her eyes. She
did
want more. More of him. More of everything. And she suddenly couldn’t allow him to touch her—not when she felt like crying, thrashing, wailing like a child for what she could never have.

He stopped. “Jasmine?”

“It’s nothing,” she whispered. “I’m just—” her voice broke
“—happy.”

“As am I.” Kareef’s hand suddenly tightened on her own. “But you know our time cannot last.”

Her eyes flew open. Already? She wasn’t ready for him to speak the words. Her eyes fell upon the emerald necklace hanging out of his pocket in the shorts crumpled by the pool. She wasn’t ready! Not yet!

With a nimbleness born of fear, she leapt to her feet, backing away. “It’s a beautiful day. Shall we go for a ride?”

The way his jaw dropped would have been comical, if her heart weren’t breaking.

“A ride?” he repeated in shock.

“Horse riding,” she explained succinctly.

Frowning in bewilderment, he rubbed the back of his head. “But you hate riding. You…hate it.”

Was he remembering the same thing she was, of their long-ago horse ride in the desert? Of how he’d found her, thrown on the rocks after his horse Razul had been spooked by a snake? Kareef had fallen to his knees before her, his eyes dark with fear, his face pale and streaked with dirt beneath the red twilight.
“Hold on, Jasmine,”
he’d whispered as he’d carried her to the cave.
“Just hold on….”

Lifting her chin, she swallowed, pushing the memory away. “I don’t hate riding,” she said flatly.

“Since when?”

Her eyes flashed at him. “I’ve been gone a long time.”

“Have you changed so much?”

“How about we race, and see?”

“You—race against me?” He laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Are you scared?” she taunted in reply.

His face grew serious. He rose to his feet. Standing
naked in front of her, beneath the shadows of the loggia, he cupped her face in his hands.

“You don’t have to do this, Jasmine.” His tender blue gaze, endless as the desert sky, whispered through her soul. “You don’t have anything to prove.”

“I know.” In his arms, beneath the deep intensity of his glance, she could feel her heart break with yearning to be his wife. Not just today, but forever. With a sharp intake of breath, she forced herself to pull away. “Race you to the stables!”

She hurried to their bedroom and ransacked the bottom of her suitcase.
I’ll just enjoy this last day,
she vowed to herself.
I’ll emblazon it forever on my heart.
Throwing on underwear beneath a long white cotton dress of eyelet lace, she quickly ran a brush through her long dark hair and ran out of the house.

A few minutes later, when Kareef appeared at the stables dressed in black pants and a white shirt, she’d already climbed into the saddle. When Kareef saw the horse she’d chosen, he stopped in his tracks.

“Not that one.”

“She’s the one I want,” Jasmine replied steadily.

Kareef glowered down at the wizened old horse master with skin like tanned leather who’d assisted her into the saddle.

“Bara’ah is the one she chose, sire,” the Qusani said with a shrug, his raspy voice tinged with the ancient dialect of Qais. “Give your lady the freedom of your house, you said. Obey her every whim, you said.”

Caught by his own command, Kareef scowled at them both.

Jasmine beamed back at him. She was determined
to show them both how much she’d changed over the last thirteen years. She was strong. Independent. She didn’t need him to protect her as she once had, and she would prove that.
To both of them.

Kareef stepped toward her, looking up. “Not this mare, Jasmine. Bara’ah is full of tricks. You saw how she escaped her paddock—she caused the car accident.”

“She didn’t do it on purpose.” She patted the horse’s neck sympathetically. “She was just tired of being trapped behind walls.”

“Jasmine—”

“You’re already losing the race,” she said, and lightly kicked the black mare’s sides. The horse sprung forward, flying out of the stable, leaving Kareef cursing behind her.

He caught up with her five minutes later across the flatlands, when she slowed the mare down to a controlled trot.

“You
do
know how to ride,” he said grudgingly. “Where did you learn?”

She gave him a sweet smile. “New York.”

She’d taken lessons in Westchester County, spending her free time riding in Central Park. She’d learned to ride English style, Western style, even Qusani bareback. She’d hoped it would stop her nightmares, stop her from dreams where she hit the ground and woke up with the taste of blood in her mouth.

It hadn’t. But at least she had learned a new skill. It gave her great pleasure now to ride beside Kareef as his equal, with confidence and skill. Especially in this beautiful place.

Qais was so stark and savage, she thought, looking
around her. Some might have found the vast open landscape bleak, but she felt freedom. She no longer felt hemmed in by skyscrapers that blocked her vision, that blocked the sun.

Here, in every direction, Jasmine could see a horizon.
She felt free.

“Come on,” she said playfully, turning her reins in a new direction. She had no idea where she was going, but she loved not knowing. “On the mark…get set…
go
!”

She took off at a gallop into the desert, and Kareef pursued her.

Jasmine was ahead of him for about three seconds before his stallion whooshed past her. She followed, clinging to Bara’ah’s back with every ounce of her determination. But Kareef had been a horse racer since childhood, and he was on a bigger, faster horse; her ten years of practice could not compete with his glorious fearless speed.

Whirling around, he pulled in front of her with a grin. “I win.”

“Yes,” she sighed. “You win.”

“And so I take my prize.” Drawing his horse beside hers, he leaned over and kissed her in the saddle. It was a hard, demanding kiss that left her aching for more.

When he pulled away, she stared at him in shock.

Here in the desert, the sun burned away all lies. As she stared at his beautiful, strong, arrogant face, everything suddenly became clear.

She loved him.

She always had, and she always would.

Jasmine gripped the pommel of her saddle, blinking, staggered by the realization.

Smiling, Kareef reached out to stroke her cheek.

“You kiss like you ride. Like a wanton,” he murmured appreciatively. He looked down at her intently. “Jasmine,” he said in a low voice, “you have to know that I…”

Then his eyes suddenly focused on something in the distance behind her. His hand dropped from her cheek. He sat back stiffly in his saddle.

“What is it?” she whispered, staring at him.

Clenching his jaw, he nodded to a spot behind her. “The house where you will live. Hajjar’s house.”

She twisted in the saddle and gasped. Far on the horizon, she saw an enormous monstrosity of a mansion, a red stone castle with red flags flying from the turrets. She blinked at it in horror.

“He’s not there,” he said quietly behind her. “They’re not at home.”

“So where are they?” she whispered. “Where did they go?”

Kareef exhaled, hissing through his teeth. She heard him shift in the saddle. “Don’t like the look of those clouds,” he said. “See them?”

Desert sandstorms were the subject of scary tales told to Qusani children, so Jasmine looked sharply at the horizon. The sky had indeed darkened to a deep gray-brown; but she could barely look past Umar’s hideous red castle to see the clouds. Comparing the hideous red edifice to Kareef’s simple home in the oasis, she wanted to weep. But she wouldn’t let Kareef see her cry. Couldn’t!

“Jasmine, we should go back,” Kareef said quietly behind her. “Then we need to talk.”

She whirled back in the saddle. She saw his hand already reaching in his pocket. She sucked in her breath. In another moment, he’d pull out the emerald necklace. He only needed to hand it to her and speak three words to separate them forever.

Irony. The same hour she’d realized she loved him, he would divorce her.

She would marry Umar and be his trophy wife, caged in this monstrous red castle and other sprawling mansions just like it in luxurious locations around the world.

She would have respectability. She would have a family.

But at the price of her soul.

Kareef’s eyes narrowed as he again stared past her toward the horizon. “We must hurry. Come now.”

With a low whistle, he whirled his horse around and tore into a gallop, clearly expecting her to follow.

She watched him for one instant.

“No,” she whispered. “I won’t.”

She turned her reins in the opposite direction. With a sharp voice in the mare’s ear, she leaned forward, pushing her heels hard against the mare’s sides. With a snort, the horse flew.

“Jasmine!” Kareef shouted behind her. “What are you doing? Come back!”

But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t even look back. Love was burning her like acid, bubbling away her soul.

Tightening her knees, she held her body low and tight against the horse’s back, riding up the red canyon. Riding for her life.

K
AREEF
gasped as he saw Jasmine leap her horse across a juniper bush, sweeping across the sagebrush. She’d once been terrified of horses. Now she rode with the grace and natural ease of a Qusani nomad.

He stared in shock at the cloud of her dust crossing the desert.

But she didn’t know that devious mare like he did. There was a reason Bara’ah wasn’t north at the stadium, training to race in the Qais Cup in two days’ time. She’d left one jockey in a body cast last year. Full of malicious tricks, she liked nothing more than to throw her riders.

He had the sudden image of Jasmine half-smashed on the rock, crumpled and bleeding, as he’d found her thirteen years ago….

“Jasmine! Stop!”

He saw her goad her mare into greater speed.

Fear rushed through him as he glanced back again at the distant horizon and saw scattered brown clouds moving fast, much too fast. A sandstorm could cross the desert in seconds, decimating everything in its path.

A shudder went through his body. He turned back.
With iron control, he clicked his heels on the stallion’s flanks. Huffing with a flare of nostril, the animal raced forward. But Jasmine was already far ahead.

Kareef hadn’t expected her to disobey him. No one had disobeyed him for years.

He should have expected it of her.

As he pursued her, he cast another glance behind him. The clouds were beginning to gather with force across the width of the desert. The sky was turning dark. There could no longer be any doubt. Holding the reins with one hand, he reached into his pocket and discovered his cell phone was lost, fallen in the rough speed of their race. But he still had Jasmine’s necklace.

His eyes narrowed as he watched her race her horse headlong into the canyon. No help could come for them before the storm.

So be it. He would save her alone.

As long as she stayed hidden, as long as she didn’t climb up out of the canyon, she would live.

If she rode onto the plateau, the coming sandstorm would eat her alive.

Hoofbeats pounded in rhythm with Kareef’s thoughts as he raced after Jasmine into the dark shadowed canyon.

He had to find her.

He
would
find her.

Clamping his thigh muscles over the saddle, he leaned forward and urged his horse faster. He’d spent his youth in these canyons. He was again a reckless horse racer who feared nothing…but losing her.

He raced fast. Faster. His stallion kicked up dust, scattering it to the four winds. He raced beneath the sharp arches and towering cliffs of the canyon.

Within minutes, he’d caught up with her. Leaning forward, he shouted Jasmine’s name over the pounding hoofbeats of their horses.

She glanced back and a shadow of fear crossed her face. He heard the panic in her voice as she urged her mare faster.

But Kareef gained ground with every second. He reached out his hand to pluck her off the mare’s back—

His hand suddenly grasped air as she veered off the road. She’d abruptly turned the mare west through a break in the red rock, climbing the slope up out of the canyon.

“No!” he shouted. “The storm!”

But his words were lost in the rising blur of the wind, beneath the pounding hooves of her mare’s wild, joyful, reckless climb.

He could feel, rather than hear, the approaching storm behind him. The first edges of dark cloud pushed around them, turning blue sky to a sickening brown-gray. The crags were turning dark and hidden in deep shadows.

Cursing her, cursing himself, he veered his horse up to pursue her. She was fast, but he was faster. For the first time in thirteen years, he was again Kareef Al’Ramiz, the reckless horse racer. Unstoppable. Unbreakable.

He would die rather than lose this race.

“Sandstorm!” he shouted over the rising wind.

At the top of the plateau, Jasmine turned back to him sharply. But at the same moment, he saw her mare draw to a sudden skidding stop as she suddenly grew tired of the race and deliberately, almost playfully, threw her
rider. For a long, horrible instant, Kareef watched Jasmine fly through the air.

Sniffing, the mare jumped delicately in the other direction, then turned to run back the way she’d come, toward the stables and oats that awaited her.

Jasmine hit the ground and crumpled into the dust. Kareef’s heart was in his throat as all the memories of the past ripped through him. He flung himself off his stallion, falling to his knees before her.

“Jasmine,” he whispered, his heart in his throat as he touched her still face. “Jasmine!”

Like a miracle, she coughed in his arms. Her beautiful, dark-lashed eyes stared up at him. She swallowed, tried to speak.

“Don’t talk,” he ordered. Relief made his body weak as he lifted her in his arms. He held her tightly, never wanting to let her go. How had he spent so many years without her? How could he have known she was alive…without tracking her to the last corner of the earth?

He heard the distant rattle of sand and thunder, heard the wail of the wind.

“I have to get you out of here.” He whistled to the horse. “We don’t have much time.”

He glanced behind them. The safe part of the canyon was too far away. They’d never make it.

Jasmine followed his glance and instantly went pale when she saw the dark wall of cloud. “I thought—” her voice choked off “—I thought it was a trick.”

She’d grown up in Qusay. She knew what a sandstorm could do. He shook his head grimly, clenching his jaw. “We have to find shelter.” His eyes met hers. “The closest shelter.”

Her chocolate-brown eyes instantly went wide with panic. “No,” she gasped. “Not there, Kareef. I’d rather die!”

He felt the first scattered bits of sand hit his face.

“If I don’t get you to safety right now,” he said grimly, “you
will
die.”

Whimpering, she shook her head. But he knew she had to see the darkness swiftly overtaking the sun, had to feel the shards of sand whipping against her skin. If they didn’t find shelter, they’d soon be breathing sand. It would rip off their skin, then bury them alive.

“No!” she screamed, kicking and struggling as, holding her with one arm, he lifted them both into the saddle. “I can’t go back!”

“I can’t leave you to die,” he ground out, turning the horse’s reins toward the nearby cliff.

“I died a long time ago.” Her eyes were wet, her voice hoarse as she stared at the dark jagged hole, hollowed and hidden in the red rock. “I died in that cave.”

The pain he heard in her voice was insidious, like a twisting cloud of smoke. He breathed in her grief, felt it infect his own body.

Jasmine Kouri. Once his life. Once his
everything
.

Then his eyes hardened. “I can’t let you die.”

She twisted around in the saddle, wrapping her arms around his neck as she looked up at his face pleadingly. “Please,” she whispered, her eyes shimmering with tears. “If you ever loved me—if you ever loved me at all—don’t take me there.”

He looked down at her beautiful face, and his heart stopped in his chest.

If
he’d ever loved her?

He’d loved her more than a man should ever love any woman. More than a man should love anything he couldn’t bear to lose. Looking down at her now, he would have given her anything, his own life, to make her stop weeping.

Then he saw a drop of blood appear on the pale skin of her cheek, like a red rose springing from the earth. First blood.

A growl ripped from his throat. His own life he would give. But not hers.
Not hers.

Ignoring her cries, he grimly urged the black stallion toward the plateau to the red rock cliff. The sounds of her wailing blended with the howls of the wind. He felt prickles of sand start to abrade his skin with tiny cuts.

He held her against his chest, protecting her with his own body as he rode straight for the one place he never wanted to see again. The place where they’d both lost everything thirteen years ago. His own private hell.

Hardening his heart to granite, he rode straight for the cave.

“No!” Jasmine screamed in his arms, struggling to jump off the horse’s back. But Kareef wouldn’t let her go.

She felt the bone-jarring pounding of the stallion’s gallop beneath her. She felt the heat of Kareef’s chest at her back, felt his strong arms protecting her as the flecks of sand began to snarl around them with deadly force.

The howl of the wind grew louder. Her dark hair flew wildly around her face. She closed her eyes, fighting the rising tide of fear. He was taking her to the cave. The
place that had terrified her beyond reason for a thousand nightmares.

“We’ll make it,” Kareef said harshly, as if he could make it true by the sheer force of his will. His shout was a whisper above the wail of the storm.

Looking back, she saw a wall of sand pouring like a massive dark cloud behind them, a black blizzard sweeping across the wide plateau, leaving nothing in its wake.

They reached the cave just in time. He pulled her off the horse, yanking them back some distance inside the darkness. Stumbling, she watched the huge wave of wind and sand pass the mouth of the cave, leaving them coughing in a cloud of dust.

Staggering back, she looked blindly behind her into the black maw of the cave. And against her will…

She saw the spot where she’d lost their baby.

Pain racked through her, pummeling her like a torrent of blows. Anguish broke over her, as devastating as the wall of sand outside, crushing her soul beneath the weight.

As Kareef turned to calm the stallion, tying his reins to a nearby rock, Jasmine’s trembling legs gave way beneath her. She fell back against the red stone walls, sliding down to the ground, unable to look away from the spot of earth where she’d nearly died.

Where she
had
died.

Across the cave, she saw Kareef gently calm the stallion, whispering words in ancient Qusani as he removed the pack from the horse’s haunches. He offered the horse water and food then brushed down the horse in long strokes. The sound of the brushing filled the silence of the cave. She stared at him.

Kareef always took care of everything he loved. What a father he would make.

But they could never share a child.

Not a day went by that Jasmine didn’t think about the baby she’d lost in the riding accident before she’d even known she was pregnant. Their child would have been twelve now. A little boy with his father’s blue eyes? A little girl with plump cheeks and a sweet smile?

As Kareef started a fire in the fire pit with wood left recently by Qusani nomads, a sob rose from deep inside her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking up as tears spilled down her cheeks. “It’s my fault I lost our baby.”

She heard his harsh intake of breath, and suddenly his arms were around her. Sitting against the wall of the cave, he lifted her into his lap, holding her against his chest as tenderly as a child.

“It was never your fault. Never,” he said in a low voice. “I am the only one who was to blame—”

His voice choked off as the small fire flickered light into the depths of the cave, casting red shadows over the earth. She looked up at him slowly. His face was blurry in the firelight.

She blinked, and the pain in his eyes overwhelmed her. She could hear the roar of the wind and hoarse rattle of the sand against rock outside. Instinctively, she reached out to stroke the dark hair of his bowed head. Then she stopped herself.

“You broke your promise to me, Kareef,” she said hoarsely. “You brought a doctor to this cave, after you gave your word to tell no one. Though we both knew it was too late!”

“You were dying, Jasmine!” He looked up fiercely. “I was a fool to make that promise, a fool to think I could take care of you alone, a fool to think that love alone could save you!”

“But when I lost your child and the ability to ever conceive,” she said numbly, “you couldn’t get away from me fast enough.”

His hands suddenly clenched around her shoulders. The dark rage in his eyes frightened her.

“I left to die,” he ground out. With a hoarse, ragged intake of breath, he released her, clawing his hand through his black hair. “I failed you. I couldn’t bear to see the blame and grief in your eyes.
I went out to the desert to die
.”

His voice echoed in the cool darkness of the cave.

He’d tried to die—the strong, powerful, fearless boy she’d loved? The barbarian king she’d once thought to be indestructible?

“No,” she said, “you wouldn’t.”

“One more thing I failed to do.”

Bewildered, she looked up at his handsome face, half-hidden by the shadows. “But…it wasn’t your fault.”

“I was the one who saddled Razul for you! I was the one who taunted you into climbing on his back! I wanted so badly to race with you.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I thought I could keep you safe.”

“Kareef.” Her voice was a sob. “Stop.”

But he was beyond hearing. “After the accident, I let you stay here in the cave for days, injured, without a doctor’s care. You nearly died from the infection.”

“I was trying to protect my family from the shame—”

“I brought the doctor too late, and never thought to
worry about his assistant.” He gave a bitter laugh—brittle, like dead leaves blowing in the wind. “Afterward, when I disappeared into the desert, I left you believing you’d be happier without me, safe and protected by your family. It never occurred to me that the scandal could break and you’d be sent into exile. You’d already been in New York for three years before I even heard you’d left Qusay!” He leaned forward, his jaw tight. His eyes were dark in the flickering fire. “But I made him pay for what he did to you.”

Her full, pink lips trembled. “Who?”

“Marwan. When I discovered he was the one who’d started the rumors, I stripped him of everything he owned. I sent him into exile.”

A small sound escaped her lips. A rush, like a shuddering sigh. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Did you know he blackmailed me?”

“What?”

“On my journey back to the city, when I still had a fever, he threatened to tell everyone about my miscarriage. He said he’d claim I did it deliberately to rid myself of the baby. He’d say I’d had endless nameless lovers and couldn’t guess the father. He said he would ruin me.” She took a deep breath, forcing her eyes to meet his. “He would do this—unless I took him as my lover.”