Olivia Gates - Midnight on the Sands

And she knew that he meant it.

ZAHIR stopped in the doorway of the library. Katharine was there, sitting by the fireplace, an orange glow bathing the pages of her book, and her pale skin. The fire wasn’t really necessary, even though the desert did get cooler at night. But he had a feeling Katharine had lit it for ambiance, comfort. She was that kind of person. The kind who enjoyed moments, small, simple things. Like flowers in vases.

When it didn’t irritate him, it amazed him. Made him ache for something he didn’t truly believe he could ever find for himself.

It made him feel like he should turn away from her. To go back to where things were numb.

But he didn’t want to. For the moment, he would take the ache with the pleasure of seeing her. “Come riding with me.”

She looked up at him, a smile spreading over her face. “I’d love to.” She stood from the chair she’d been sitting in and set her book on the side table.

It did strange things to his stomach, to have her say she wanted to do something with him. And she smiled at him. Very few people smiled at him.

But then, Katharine was like very few people.

“Not in that,” he said, looking at the brief sundress she was wearing. It was her standard uniform, and one he wouldn’t complain about, because he could look at her legs all day, but it wasn’t workable riding gear. Even if the thought did make his blood pump faster, hotter than it had in years.

“I’ll change.”

She walked past him and his eyes were drawn down to the shapely curve of her hips as they swayed with each step. Fierce hunger gripped him, lust tightening into his stomach like metal hooks, digging deep, painfully so.

He wanted her with a need that defied logic. A need that defied reality. Katharine had an untouchable beauty, ethereal and earthy at the same time. The kind a man could only dream of tasting once in his life.

The kind he could never touch.

And she was to be his wife. But not his wife in any true sense of the word. A woman still so far out of his reach, she might as well be back in her own country. A woman he had no right to touch.

He’d been crazy to force her to stay in Austrich as part of the arrangement. At the time, he’d been trying to punish her. Now he could see it was only punishing him.

She had offered herself to him once, offered to have a marriage with him on whatever terms he desired. Right now, he desired whatever terms would make stripping her of that little dress and losing himself in her body acceptable.

“Just a second,” she said, slipping into her room and closing the door behind her.

He rested his palm, still raw from the day he’d fallen into the broken vase shards, on the cold, painted wood of the door. It was a poor substitute for the warm, soft flesh of a woman. But it would have to do.

It had been so long since he’d touched a woman’s skin. But he would rather live as a monk for the rest of his life than force a woman into his bed. Not physically, and not through manipulation. He would have a partner who desired him. An impossible desire, perhaps. Pride still lived in him, as much as his injuries would allow. That, and humanity. He would never sink to such a base level. He might be known as a Beast, but he was still a man. No amount of sexual frustration would strip him of that.

He curled his fingers in, making a fist that still rested against the cool surface of the door. He was a man. He would not use her need for marriage, her altruistic intentions to save her country, to get her into bed.

But he was tempted. So much he shook with it. Tempted to disregard what she might want, how she might feel about him, what letting his guard down to that degree might do to both of them, and think of his desire alone.

“Ready.” She opened the door and stepped out in a pair of figure-hugging sand-colored leggings and a structured olive-green jacket. It was like the runway version of a riding outfit. Fitted, sleek and eye-catching.

It was also the antithesis of a solution as far as getting his libido reined in was concerned.

“Come out this way.” He started to head out toward the back of the palace, the exit that was nearest the stables, where the horses were waiting, already tacked up.

He looked down at her hand and was tempted to take it in his. As he had done yesterday. She had been his anchor then. Had kept him from slipping over into that abyss that always came just before his mind was assaulted by violent flashbacks.

He tightened his hand into a fist and denied the impulse, letting her simply follow him.

“I haven’t been out to the stables yet. I didn’t … I wasn’t really sure if it might be off-limits to me.”

“And yet you find my bedroom a nice place to pass time in the evening.”

“Well, I was looking for you. And I … I know I’ve made a mess of some things here, Zahir.”

“The mess was already made, Katharine,” he said, having to force his words through his tightened throat. “Why do you do that?”

“Why do I do what?”

“For a woman with such confidence, you seem to take on more than your share of fault.”

“I just … I want to be useful.”

“Is that all?”

She was silent then, no witty comeback to that response. For the first time, he felt sorry for her. She was doing what she felt was right, what she felt she had to do, and yet, by her own admission, this experience was comparable to being in a darkened tunnel. And she was waiting for the light. That moment when she could be free. Of all this. Of him. Of the disaster that he was.

“Perhaps,” she said, finding her witty comeback, he assumed, “you see it in me because the same tendency lives in you.”

“I have earned every ounce of my guilt.”

“No,” she said, “you haven’t. The guilt belongs to other men, Zahir. The men who attacked your family. All for what?”

“Money,” he said. “Power.”

“All things you don’t seem to care about. Or even want. I don’t see how you think you have a stake in this.”

“Because I am left. I had to have committed a sin to manage that,” he said.

“Or maybe you were blessed.”

“That’s the last thing I feel, latifa .”

He opened the door to the outside and relished the feel of the cool evening wind on his face. This was when he felt normal. Alive. Otherwise he just felt … nothing, either that or a crippling guilt. Well, he could add lust to the list now. Nothing, guilt and lust. It was a small step, but it was a step.

The horses, one bay and one black, were waiting just outside the barn, tethered to the fence. He walked over to the larger, black mare and stroked her nose. The horses didn’t fear him. “This is Lilah. You can ride her. She’s very gentle.”

“The sentiment is appreciated, but I don’t need gentle.”

That statement made a dark cascade of erotic thoughts spin through his mind, made him pause for a moment as he thought of all the hidden meanings her statement could possess.

“Noted,” he said, jaw clenched tight.

“And who’s your handsome gentleman there?” she asked.

He put his foot in the stirrup and swung his leg over his mount. “Nalah doesn’t appreciate being called a he.”

“Sorry. I assumed—” she pulled herself up onto Lilah “—that a big strong man like you would ride a stallion.”

“Oh, no, definitely not. Not a good idea to have two stallions together, you know?”

She laughed, a shocked burst of sound that echoed through the paddock. “Did you just call yourself a stallion?”

He felt a smile teasing the edges of his lips, such a foreign feeling, even more so the small bit of contentment that accompanied it. Such a strange thing to talk to another person like this. To find that barrier of fear and uncertainty absent. Pride grew in him, mingling with the surge of warmth that was trickling through his veins. He had made her smile, after she had looked so sad.