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“Your father deprived my mother of life. I’m Arabic. A life for a life. A woman for a woman. He took her. I should take you.”
“No.”
“Saidia requires a prince. You’d give me beautiful children.”
“I’d never be willing in bed, and you said even in a forced marriage, the sex is consensual.”
“You’d consent.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You’d beg me to take you.”
“Never.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “You’re wrong. And I will prove you wrong, and when I do, what shall you give me in return?”
Jemma rose from the table, and went to the doorway. “I want to go. I want to go now.”
“I don’t think that’s one of my options.”
* * *
Jemma didn’t know where to look. Her heart raced and her eyes burned and she felt so sick inside.
This wasn’t what she’d thought would happen. This wasn’t how she’d imagined this would go. Jail was bad. Seven years under house arrest boggled the mind. But marriage?
The idea of Sheikh Karim forcing her to marry him made everything inside her shrink, collapse.
She’d thought the last year had been horrific, being shunned as Daniel Copeland’s daughter, but to be married against her will?
Her eyes stung, growing hotter and grittier. She pressed her nails into her palms, determined not to cry, even as she wondered how far she’d get if she bolted from the house and ran.
Marrying Mikael Karim would break her. It would. She’d been so lonely this past year, so deeply hurt by Damien’s rejection and the constant shaming by the media, as well as endless public hatred. She couldn’t face a cold marriage. She needed to live, to move, to breathe, to feel, to love...
To love.
It was tragic but she needed love. Needed to love and be loved. Needed connection and contact and warmth.
“Please,” she choked, the tears she didn’t want filling her eyes, “please don’t marry me. Please just leave me here in Haslam. I don’t want to spend seven years here, but at least in seven years I could be free and go home and marry and have children with someone who wants me, and needs me, and loves me—” She broke off as Sheikh Azizzi entered the room behind her.
The village elder was accompanied by two robed men.
Jemma pressed her hands together in prayer, pleading with Mikael. “Let me stay here. Please. Please.”
“And what would you do here for seven years?” he retorted, ignoring the others.
“I’d learn the language, and learn to cook and I’d find ways to occupy myself.”
Mikael looked at her, his dark gaze holding for an endless moment and then he turned to Sheikh Azizzi and spoke to him. Sheikh Azizzi nodded once and the men walked out.
“It’s done,” Mikael said.
“What’s done?”
“I’ve claimed you. I’ve made you mine.”
She backed up so rapidly she bumped into the wall. “No.”
“But I have. I told Sheikh Azizzi I’ve claimed you as my wife, and it’s done.”
“That doesn’t make us married. I have to agree, I have to speak, I have to consent somehow...” Her voice trailed off. She stared at Mikael, bewildered. “Don’t I?”
“No. You don’t have to speak at all. It’s done.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” He rose and stalked toward her. “And like this,” he added, sweeping her into his arms and carrying her out of the house, into the night.
Outside, the convoy of vehicles were gone. Villagers clustered near a kneeling camel.
“Who is that for?” Jemma choked, struggling in Mikael’s arms.
He tightened his grip. “Settle down,” he said shortly. “Or I’ll tie you to the camel.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“You don’t think so?” he challenged, stepping through the crowd to set her in the camel’s saddle.
The leather saddle was wide and hard and Jemma struggled to climb back off but Mikael had taken a leather strip from a pouch on the camel and was swiftly tying her hands together at the wrist, and then binding her wrists to the saddle’s pommel.
The crowd cheered as he tethered her in place.
“Why are they cheering?” she asked, face burning, anger rolling through her as she strained to free herself.
“They know I’ve taken you as my wife. They know you aren’t happy. They know you are ashamed. It pleases them.”
“My shame pleases them?”
“Your shame and struggles are part of your atonement. That pleases them.”
“I don’t like your culture.”
“And I do not like yours.” He scooted her forward in the saddle, and then took a seat behind her, his big body filling the space, pressing tightly against her. “Now lean back a little.”
“No.”
“You’ll be more comfortable.”
“I can assure you, I would not be comfortable leaning against you.”
“We are going to be traveling for several hours.”
She shook her head, lips compressed as she fought tears. “I hate you,” she whispered.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He gave a tug on the reigns and the camel lurched to its feet.
The villagers cheered again and Mikael lifted a hand, and then they were off, heading for the gates and the desert beyond.
CHAPTER FIVE
THEY RODE FOR what felt like hours through an immense desert of undulating dunes beneath a three quarter moon. The moon’s bright light illuminated the desert, painting the dunes a ghostly white.
Jemma tried to hold herself stiff and straight to avoid touching Sheikh Karim but it was impossible as time wore on, just as it was impossible to ignore his warmth stealing into her body.
A half hour into the journey she broke the silence. “Where are we going?”
“My Kasbah. My home,” he said. “One of my homes,” he corrected.
“Why this one?”
“It is where all Karims spend their honeymoon.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know what to think, or feel. So much had happened in the past few hours that she felt numb and overwhelmed.
Part of her brain whispered she was in trouble, and yet another part hadn’t accepted any of this.
It didn’t make sense, this forced marriage. She kept thinking any moment she’d wake up and discover it a strange dream.
Her captor was big and solid, his chest muscular, his arms strong, biceps taut as he held her steady in the saddle, his broad back protecting her from the cold.
He struck her as powerful but not brutal. Fierce and yet not insensitive.
In a different situation she might even like him. In a different situation she might like the spicy exotic fragrance he wore. In a different situation she might find him darkly beautiful.
But it wasn’t a different situation. There was no way she could find him attractive, or appealing. She wasn’t attracted to him, or the hard planes of his chest, or even aware of the way his muscular thighs cradled her, pinning her between his hips and the saddle’s pommel.
They lapsed back into a silence neither tried to break. But an hour later, Mikael, shifted, drawing her closer to him. “There,” he said. “My home.”
Jemma stared hard into the dark, but could see nothing. “Where?”
“Straight in front of us.”
But there was nothing in front of them. Just sand. “I don’t see—”
“Watch.”
The brilliant moonlight rippled across the desert, bathing all in ghostly white.
And then little by little the desert revealed a long wall, and then a bit later she was able to see shapes behind the wall. The shapes became shadowy clay buildings.
In the middle of the night, in the glow of moonlight, it looked like a lost world. As if they’d traveled back in time.
She sucked in a nervous breath as they approached massive wooden gates cut into the towering clay walls. Two enormous gas lanterns hung on either side of the dark wooden gate, and Mikael shouted out in Arabic as they reached them, and just like that, the gates split, and slowly opened, revealing square turrets and towers within.
Robed people poured into the courtyard as the gates were shut and locked behind them.
They were lining up before the first building with its immense keyhole doorway, bowing repeatedly.
“What’s happening?” she whispered.
“We’re being welcomed by my people. They have heard I’ve brought home my bride.”
The camel stopped moving. Robed men moved forward. Mikael threw the reins and one of the men took it, and commanded the camel to kneel.
Sheikh Karim jumped off the camel, and then turned to look at her. His gaze held hers, his expression fierce. “What we have just done is life changing. But we’ve made a commitment, and we shall honor that commitment.”
Then he swung her into his arms and carried her through the tall door of his Kasbah, into a soaring entrance hall, its high white plaster ceiling inset with blue and gold mosaic tile.
He set her on her feet, and added, “Welcome, my wife, to your new home.”
* * *
A slender robed female servant led Jemma through the Kasbah’s labyrinth of empty halls. The maid was silent. Jemma was grateful for the silence, exhausted from the long day and hours of travel. The last time she’d glanced at her watch it had been just after midnight, and that had to be at least an hour ago now.
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