Olivia Gates - Midnight on the Sands

The wedding was another matter. Hundreds of people with their eyes trained on them, the chance for him to either emerge in triumph, or humiliate his people. His family name. It was hard to explain, even to himself, what he thought might happen in that situation. The possibility of lost time, a loss of control, with an audience, was more terrifying and more likely than the chance of another attack.

And that he had control over. At least he was finding he did. That there were touchstones he could reach out to. That Katharine’s voice could keep the gates that held back the memories locked up tight. That there were things other than the exhausting, all-consuming use of his self-will to keep himself from experiencing them in crowded spaces.

“The wedding will be easy,” he said.

“Easy?” She pushed up out of the chair and stood, arms folded. He allowed himself a tour of her curves, welcomed the tightening of lust in his gut. “Weddings are never easy, no matter what the circumstances.”

“I thought you were trying to make me feel better about all this.”

“I’m just trying to get us through,” she said.

“A lofty goal.”

“I think it’s all any engaged couple can hope for.”

“You may have a point there,” he said. “Although my first engagement was brief.”

“Oh … Amarah.”

The venom in her tone amused him. “Amarah wasn’t evil.”

“I can’t imagine her as anything else,” she said. “She should have stayed with you.”

“So you didn’t end up having to deal with me?”

“No. Because she made a promise to you.”

He gritted his teeth, hating to tell the story, yet feeling he had to. So she could understand. “You remember how I was the first time in the market.” She nodded. “I was like that all the time after. Moments of lucidity followed by endless screaming, raging. I was in pain, and the medication I was given to manage either made me sleep or made reality become blurred. I was not the man she knew. I didn’t even look like the man she knew. The skin on my face was so badly burned I wasn’t recognizable. And for a while they thought my mind was gone, too. I thought it was. There was so much grief. So much pain everywhere, inside of me, my skin felt like it was still on fire. And when I started to shut it down, my memories, my emotions, then I could function. Then I could learn to walk, learn to deal with losing the vision in my eye. How could I have asked her to stay? How could I have asked her to live with the Beast?”

“You aren’t … “

“I was. Then especially.” He had never spoken these words to anyone. Never told the whole truth of it. But he wanted her to know.

Her green eyes were filled with pain. Not pity. Nothing so condescending. It was as though she felt what he’d felt. As though she shared in it. “How did you even go on, though? To lose your family … and then her?”

“I had Hajar. And I knew that I had to protect my people. That it was left to me. And as much as I am not a ruler … I had to do what I could. I started with homeland security, moved into hospitals for children who had been victims of attacks. We treat children from all over the world for free. Of course to support that I had to work on new ways of bringing revenue in. It’s kept me going.”

“How can you think you aren’t meant to be a ruler, Zahir? Your people … “

“Are afraid of me.”

“Maybe because you haven’t shown them who you really are.”

She said it with such earnest sweetness, as though she truly believed there was something in him worth valuing, even after his admission of how … dark and empty he was inside. Maybe she just didn’t understand. He’d been told that could be part of the PTSD, too. The absence of emotion. But it didn’t go away. Other things had gotten better, but the blank void inside him remained. And knowing that it might have a medical cause did nothing to make it less acute.

He looked at her, studied the way she looked at him. And he longed to change it. He turned away from her. “So I have been preparing to deal with the crowd. Is there anything else?”

“We … we’ll have to dance. We don’t have to dance, actually. If your leg … “

His stomach tightened. He’d been damned if he’d take the easy way, the handicap or whatever it was she was offering. “I thought we had to.”

“Not if you … I don’t want to … “

“You told me you’re not fragile. Neither am I,” he said. “I used to dance. I didn’t take lessons or anything, but especially during my university years in Europe, I danced quite a bit.” Not that he’d enjoyed it for its own sake. It had been more of a pickup technique. But it had worked.

“That surprises me.”

“It shouldn’t. Women like to dance and I always liked women.”

“And they liked you.”

“It seems another lifetime ago, but if I can ride a horse, I’m certain I can dance. Unless you don’t want to dance with a man who might limp through the steps.”

She frowned. “That’s not it. I don’t want to tax you, I … “

A shot of competitiveness sent a spark of adrenaline through him. “ Latifa , you are welcome to try to tax me. I doubt you will be able to.”

A stubborn spark lit her eye, an answer to his challenge. Good. He wanted her to challenge him. To see him as a man, and not her patient. “I’d like to see some of these dancing skills,” she said.

“Not up to par with what you’re used to, I’m certain. But I know I still can.”

He held out his hand and she simply stared at it. “I’m not really used to anything. I haven’t done a lot of dancing.”

“That surprises me.”

“Why?”

“You’re a beautiful woman.”

Katharine cleared her throat and looked away, the compliment making her feel self-conscious. “Well, I am a woman who was promised to a sheikh in marriage. And who anticipated being used for another political union so … I was never really encouraged to dance.”

“And you need encouragement to do things? I thought you did as you pleased.”

“I do what my father asks,” she said quietly. “What makes him see some kind of value in me.”

Zahir’s eyebrows locked together, his expression fierce. He leaned in, cupping her chin and tilting her face up so that she had to look at him. “If he does not see the value in you, he is a blind fool. No, not even blind. I can’t see out of one eye, and yet I see your value.”

Katharine swallowed hard, her eyes riveted to his. “Do you?”

“You are the only person who has challenged me, on this side of the attack or the other. You have more tenacity than any man I have ever met.”

“Same goes,” she said, fighting to keep from crying, to keep from melting over the words he’d just spoken. They were balm on a wound she hadn’t realized was so raw. “Now,” she said, trying to change the topic before she dissolved, “dance with me.”

Eyes trained on her, Zahir bent and picked up a flat remote from the side table, pointing it upward and hitting one of the buttons. Slow, sexy jazz guitar filled the air. Not what she expected against the Arabic backdrop, but maybe even more fitting because of that. Because none of this was what she expected.

Zahir advanced on her slowly, his black eyes on hers, his movements languid, despite the limp. He held out his hand and she took it, warmth flooding her when his fingers entwined with hers. He pulled her to him, her breasts meeting his chest, and he wound his other arm around her waist. For a moment she saw it, the playboy he’d been. The man who’d had women falling at his feet, into his bed.

It coupled with the other things she knew about him, the intensity of the trauma he’d undergone. How far he had come since. As sexy as he had been before the attacks, as attractive as he’d been when he’d been a playboy dancing his way through the clubs in Europe, she knew that Zahir couldn’t touch the man he was now.