The Sheikh Who Stole Her: Sheikh Seduction / The Untamed Sheikh / Desert King, Doctor Daddy

Tariq closed his bloodshot eyes. Maybe he’d already died and was in hell. It seemed unlikely that pain such as this would exist anyplace but there. He turned his face from the blistering heat and blinding light of the flames next to them. Better. That spoke against hell. He didn’t think a place like that would afford any relief.

The man kicked him. “Wake up and talk.”

He opened his eyes and glared into his torturer’s face, until the bastard turned toward the fire to pull out a stick that glowed red at the end. He lowered the hot tip to Tariq’s exposed thigh, and there was nothing Tariq could do. He was bound tight, the man’s foot holding his ankle to the ground. His pant leg had been ripped away a long time ago. Red welts lined his skin where he had been repeatedly burned.

“Where is the gold?”

Tariq turned his head toward the cave’s opening, not wanting to see his flesh seared yet again. He clenched his teeth and stared out into the night. A sole sentry sat by the cave mouth, while sleeping smugglers lay scattered across the floor. They had gotten bored with his torture over an hour ago, and gone to sleep, save the man who held the stick and seemed to have inexhaustible energy for causing him pain.

Fire branded his skin, but Tariq swallowed his groan, fought against the agony. He wasn’t going to give the bastard the satisfaction of crying out loud. “There is no money.” He said the words through gritted teeth, sweating profusely.

His torturer simply laughed and thrust the stick back into the fire.

Tariq kept his gaze on the small patch of sky and stars, trying to focus on them and on Sara’s beautiful face alternately as the sickly smell of his own burned flesh filled the air.

Where was she now? There had been that explosion. And then the smugglers had taken him away, without him seeing Sara again. Had they killed her? Fear of that had tortured him during the long trek, and was more painful than the burns on his thigh.

What had become of Karim? Had he, too, been lost to a trap? Those thoughts bound Tariq more tightly than his ropes. He should have somehow defended Sara and warned his brother.

He watched as the guard at the mouth of the cave raised his head and peered into the darkness. Had he seen or heard something? Was Karim coming? Had he found them somehow? Tariq had been listening for the sound of a chopper, but hadn’t heard it. Then again, torture did have a way of occupying a man’s full attention.

The guard stood and walked away from the opening of the cave.

A shadow appeared a few seconds later and slid inside. Not the guard, and not Karim, either, but someone much more slightly built. He recognized the shape and swore silently in helpless desperation, even though knowing she was alive filled him with relief. She shouldn’t be here.

He watched as Sara moved around, staying away from the area lit by the fire. He knew the exact moment she spotted him, knew when she decided to come out into the light to get to him.

His torturer was pulling the stick from the fire and giving him a demented grin, his focus fixed on his task.

Tariq could do nothing to stop Sara without bringing attention to her. Then she lifted something that in a split second he recognized as the tire iron. If they survived all this, he was going to frame it and hang it in the palace.

She brought the tire iron down hard on the back of the man’s head, and he folded without a sound. Sara immediately dropped to the sand next to Tariq and covered herself with a blanket, in case anyone woke up and looked around.

“Sara,” he said in a barely audible whisper, just to reaffirm that she really was alive and with him.

After a few moments, when no one raised the alarm, she reached out slowly, touched his face and left her hand there for a second. An amazing woman. He could only stare at her and drink in the sight. She was here, she was safe and she was about to save him.

She was already pulling water from somewhere and pouring it over his burns to cool them. She was an angel. His angel, he thought, with an urgent, possessive sense that took him by surprise.

He wished his hands were free so he could draw her into his arms. He inhaled a slow breath and held her troubled gaze in the light of the fire. “You shouldn’t have come.”

She was the one shaking her head now, even as she ran her fingers over the rope that bound him. “Karim is on his way.”

Relief eased Tariq’s tense muscles as she worked quickly, her movements impossibly quiet. He admired her temerity, her honor, that she would risk her life to save him instead of seeking to take the shortest route to safety.

“Thank you.” Loyalty was not something he had experienced a lot of in his life, especially not over the last couple of years. Hers touched him deeply.

“Quick.” He shifted as Sara worked the ropes with nimble fingers. The tension in his chest eased with every millimeter the rope loosened. “You have the phone?”

She nodded.

Allah be blessed. They might make it out of here yet. He lay still, not wanting to make her job any more difficult.

She made no noise. He couldn’t fathom how anyone could have heard her. But as he turned his head, he could see a dark shadow rise behind her, and before he could warn her, the butt of a rifle smashed hard against the back of her head. All he could do was roll forward, so that when she fell, it was on him instead of the rock floor of the cave.

SHE WAS BOUND hand and foot when she awoke. Bound to another person. To Tariq, she realized with considerable relief when she turned her head, the events of the previous night coming back to her. Sun poured in the cave’s opening, and the men around them were going about their business. Nobody paid any attention to the prisoners.

She’d been captured. She had failed. Frustration and disappointment rose like bile in the back of her throat as she recalled her easy defeat hours before. She’d gotten knocked out briefly, and after she’d come to, she’d been too upset that they had caught her. It had taken her forever to calm down enough to fall asleep. She was tired still.

“Are you okay?” Tariq asked her, his voice low and gentle. His gaze burned into hers.

His strength and warmth comforted her. She nodded and wiggled her limbs to get some circulation back into places where the ropes cut off the flow of blood. Although she had managed to grab a few hours of sleep, she still felt exhausted and sore all over. “Where are we going?”

They hadn’t been allowed to talk earlier, had earned some pretty hard kicks for every whispered word. But currently, nobody seemed to be paying attention to her.

“En route to some bandit camp.”

“Still in Beharrain?” She remembered reading that the border between Beharrain and Yemen was fairly flexible in this corner of the desert, moving as the individual tribes moved with their animals from watering hole to watering hole.

He nodded.

She thought of the satellite phone, then remembered that the bandits had taken it after they’d knocked her out, along with the tire iron she’d been growing attached to. “What happened back at the oasis?”

“I slashed three tires before they discovered me. They had spares. And you?”

“Hid upstairs, caught the camel, then followed as fast as I could.”

“You should have saved yourself.”

“Right. I’m sure that’s exactly what you would have done.” She flashed him a skeptical look.

His split lips stretched into a pained smile. “Definitely a lioness.” His gaze darkened and held her spellbound. “I’ve never met anyone quite like you,” he said.

She grew embarrassed at the open admiration in his voice, not sure she really deserved it, and looked away. The uneven stone floor of the cave dug into her back, but she didn’t dare sit up for fear of drawing attention to herself, to Tariq. They were lucky that for the moment they were forgotten. The bandits around them were finishing breakfast, some carrying their sleeping gear out of the cave, probably loading it back onto the truck.

“I think we’ll be moving on.” She scanned them one by one, mainly young men in their twenties. She could see only two or three who seemed older than that. They were all armed, an AK-47 hanging from each man’s shoulder.

One of them yelled something in Arabic as he strode their way.

“What does he want?”

“They are ready to load us onto one of the trucks.” Tariq sat up and helped her do the same. “Can you stand?”

She wobbled, but gave it her best shot. As soon as the bandit reached them, she understood why Tariq wanted to do as much as they could on their own. The man was rough, gripping her much harder than was necessary, his stubby fingers digging into her flesh as he yanked her around.

Tariq said something to him in Arabic, a brief sentence in a deep, harsh voice.

The man’s eyes narrowed as he leveled his gun at Tariq and shoved them forward. But he let go of her arm.