“I’m sure you could have managed on your own,” she mumbled, thrilled, annoyed, feeling things were about to get real at last, and struggling not to throw herself into his arms and cling.
“You’re admitting I’m not a useless nuisance? I’m deeply honored.”
She studied him for a moment, a suspicion coming over her.
Was he doing this on purpose? Every time she felt her will flagging, he teased her or provoked her and it brought her out of her funk and right back in his face.
Whatever it was, it was working. She grabbed at it with both hands. “It remains to be seen what exactly you are. You might still take us in the wrong direction and we’ll end up lost. And fossilized.”
He laughed. Rich, virile, mind-numbing laughter. Made all the more hard-hitting as it mixed with a guttural groan of pain. “I don’t take wrong directions. It’s a matter of principle.”
Yeah. She’d bet. And she was willing to gamble her life on that. She was going to.
Then again, what choice did she have?
None.
But then again, why should she even worry?
He’d gotten her this far, through impossible odds.
If there was anyone in this world who could get them through this, it was him.
But what if there was no getting through it…?
He suddenly grabbed her hand and yanked her against him.
This time she met him more than halfway. As he’d told her she would.
And whether it was survival, magic, compulsion, or anything else, she needed it. He needed it. She let them have it.
She dissolved in the maddening taste of him deep inside her, with the thrust of his hot velvet tongue as he breached her with tenderness and carnality and desperation. She surrendered to his domination and supplication, all-consuming and life-giving.
Then he wrenched away, held her head, her eyes. “I said you were safe with me, Talia, in every way. I’ll keep you safe, and I’ll see you safe. This is a promise. Tell me you believe me.”
She did. And she told him. “I believe you.”
Seven
Talia wondered, for the thousandth time since she’d been snatched from her rented condo at gunpoint, if any of the things that had happened since could be real.
One thing was certain, though. Harres was.
And she was following him across an overwhelmingly vast barren landscape that made her feel like one of the sand particles shifting like solid fluid beneath her feet.
They’d set out over six hours ago. Before they had, during the hour Harres had specified for preparations, he’d studied the stars and his compass at length, explaining how he was combining their codes with his extensive knowledge of his land’s terrain and secrets to calculate their course. He’d said he needed her to know all he did. She thought that impossible when she couldn’t imagine how he fathomed different landmarks when sameness besieged them. Yet he’d insisted it was vital she visualize their path, too, and somehow managed to transmit it to her.
They’d just embarked on their third two-hour hike. He still walked ahead, seemingly effortlessly, carrying his mammoth backpack and towing the piled sled while she stumbled in his wake with her fraction of their load. Which was still surprisingly heavy. He’d been keeping them on paths of firm sand, so it wasn’t too hard. At first. She’d soon had to admit anything heavier would have been a real struggle.
She still continuously offered to carry more. Each time he’d answered that silence would boost their aerobic efficiency and increased the steps he kept between them no matter how hard she tried to catch up with him. It wasn’t only adamant chivalry, it felt as if he was making sure he would be the first to face whatever surprises the seemingly inanimate-since-creation desert brought, wouldn’t let her take a step before he’d ascertained its safety, testing it with his own.
Acknowledging his protection and honoring it, she treaded the oceans of granulated gold in the imprints of his much larger feet, feeling as if she was forging a deeper connection with him with each step, gaining a more profound insight into what made this unprecedented—and no doubt unduplicable—man tick.
It had been hours since dawn had washed away the stars and their inky canvas, the gradual boost in illumination bringing with it an equally relentless rise in temperature. While that had made each step harder than the last, it had given her a new distraction to take her mind off counting them, off the weakness invading her limbs.
He’d shed one layer of clothing after another, was now down to the bandages she’d changed an hour ago and the second-skin black pants fitted into black leather boots. With his back to her, she was finally free to study him, to realize something.
He was perfect.
No, beyond that. Not only couldn’t she find fault with him, but the more she scrutinized, the more details she found to marvel at.
He seemed to be encased in molten bronze spun into polished satin ingeniously accentuated by dark silk. His proportions were a masterpiece of balance and harmony, a study in strength and grandeur. She’d never thought a man of such height and muscular bulk and definition could display such grace, such finesse, such poise. How could such a staggeringly physical manifestation combine such power and poetry of motion? And that was when he was half-buried under the backpack and tethered with the sled’s harness. And that was only his body.
His face was a testimony to divine taste, hewn beauty in planes and slashes of perfection. In the dimness, his eyes had dominated her focus, but now, as she saw his face from every possible angle, she found something new to appreciate with every self-possessed move of his head. Between the intelligence stamped on the width of a leonine forehead, the distinct cut of razor-sharp cheekbones, the command in the jut of a sculpted jaw and nose and the humor and passion molding sense-scrambling lips, she couldn’t form an opinion on a favorite feature. Not when so many other things vied for her favor. The eyebrows, the lashes, the neck, even the ears.
And then there was the hair.
Since dawn’s first silvery fingers had touched it, she’d become fascinated with it. But it had taken full exposure to the desert’s merciless sun to highlight its wonders.
The color seemed to have been painted from a palette of every earth color in creation, forged from resilient gloss and blended with trapped solar energy. As he walked ahead, the undulating silk seemed an extension of his beauty and virility, transmitting the same power and purpose. Every few minutes, when he turned to check on her, the mass seemed to beckon to her numb fingers to come revel in its pleasures for themselves.