Sheikh's Blackmailed Love (5 page)

Sitting in the farther reaches of the light, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and the shadows of people dancing and laughing all around her, Bailey thought that she could have been anywhere in the world, or any time.

Or perhaps not any time
, she thought with an inward grin as she watched one of the younger Jabal students display some video or another on his tablet.

One night, almost a month after she had come to the camp, she caught Dario’s eye across the fire. This time she didn’t drop her gaze, and he didn’t either. Despite the people laughing and talking around them, it felt as if they were alone in the fire-lit darkness.

He looked no different from his men, who the academics and the diggers called the riders, but there was something that set him apart. Sometimes, she wondered if it was that he moved in the eye of the storm, the desert winds his to command.

She felt her mouth go dry as he stood. He walked toward her seat in the darkness, and Bailey wondered if she should have left well enough alone. Some people, she knew, couldn’t be together without disaster, and belatedly, she wondered if she and the sheikh were like that.

When he came over, he didn’t loom over her or beckon her to stand. Instead, he dropped down on the log she was using as a seat, as naturally as if they did this all the time.

“So?” he asked, as if they were continuing a conversation.

“So what?” she asked challengingly. “You were the one who came over here.”

Instead of being angry or irritated, he laughed. “So I did. I see you are speaking to me now.”

“I never really stopped,” she said with a shrug. “But you’ve been watching me.”

Another man might have sputtered or denied it. Dario only shrugged. “Yes. You have been watching me too. Why is that?”

She was ready to be defensive if he insinuated something she didn’t care for. She was ready to be wary or sharp. But in face of his simple and honest question, Bailey could only reply with the truth.

“Because you are beautiful to me,” she said softly.

His laugh was purely masculine, pleased and arrogant. “That is not what I expected to hear,” he said, and she smiled.

“What did you expect to hear, that I was busy plotting your death and my escape?”

“Perhaps,” Dario allowed. “Do you think of it often? Escape, I mean, not my death. I hope you do not think of my death often.”

“After the first few days, I hardly thought about your death at all,” she assured him. “And as for escape… no. I don’t think about it at all. I mean, who’s to say that I would get so lucky a second time?”

Dario raised a dark eyebrow. He had, she thought, a magnificently expressive face. Unless he turned icy with rage, she could read every shade of humor and amusement in his lips, his brows, his dark eyes.

“You think you got lucky?” he asked.

Bailey nodded firmly.

“I could have given that note to anyone,” she said. “I could have given that note to someone who turned it right in to Christensen, hoping to get a reward. I could have given it to someone who didn’t care at all. Instead I gave it to you.”

“I wish I didn’t have to admit this just as we are starting to get along, but I feel compelled to admit that it wasn’t a matter of the riders and me being in the neighborhood and getting your note. We had heard news of Christensen’s organization weeks ago, and we were already closing in. The note did tell us we were on the right track, though, if that helps…”

“Oh, I know that you didn’t come just because I gave you a note and said please,” she said with a smile. “It was only… you heard me.”

Dario tilted his head, looking at her with curiosity, and she nodded.

“You heard me. I had been in Christensen’s camp all day, every day for months, and I was surrounded by people who only cared for the good that I could do for them. I also knew that if I stopped doing that good for them, I would very quickly be dead.”

Dario winced at that, but she could tell that he knew she spoke the truth.

“You were different. A woman that you didn’t know from Eve stumbled up to you in the middle of a strange village and did her best to drag you into her life because she was desperate for salvation. You heard me.

“So yes, I would say that was lucky.”

They fell into a silence after that, watching as a pair of young engineers decided that the fire needed to be much higher. One was from Jabal, and the other was from Norway. The only language they had in common was science, but apparently that was enough to send the flames shooting into the sky.

Impulsively, Bailey reached out and took Dario’s hand. For a moment, she thought he would pull away, but then with a soft sigh, he wrapped his hand around hers. She was startled by how large it was, by how calloused his palm and fingers were.

“Your hands are rough,” she murmured and then blushed, wondering if she had been unspeakably rude.

He laughed a little.

“I was put on a horse when I was just five years old,” he said with a grin. “The things that you truly love leave marks on you.”

It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to lean in a little closer to him, to relish the warmth of his body. That heat that flickered so tantalizingly between them was still there, but there was something sweeter about it, more comforting, much more kind.

There was no telling what might have happened if a small explosion from the fire didn’t send people scattering, the two engineers cackling with laughter.

“I had better go make sure those two idiots don’t hurt themselves,” he said, climbing to his feet.

Bailey nodded, despite feeling a slight pang at his loss.

“This was good,” he said softly, glancing down at her. “Perhaps… well, perhaps we have reached some kind of peace.”

Before she could decide what she wanted to say to that, he strode away, waving down the two engineers who looked like schoolchildren caught by the teacher.

This is what I’ve always wanted
, she thought suddenly.
To be part of people who share a passion, and who accepted me as one of them.

The thought was enough to warm her, and she snuggled down in her blanket. Someone close by was playing a stringed instrument with a metallic sound, something quick like a heartbeat. The sound of laughter and music spiraled high into the sky, and Bailey felt at home in a way she had never dreamed that she was capable of doing.

*

Something changed after that night. She laughed and talked more with the people she saw, and when she slept through the night without waking up once, she realized that the long shadows cast by her time with Christensen were finally beginning to pull back a little.

The real change, however, had to do with Dario. They hadn’t been avoiding each other before, but now when they saw each other, they stepped closer to speak for a few moments. Once in a while, their meals coincided and they could speak together. Whenever they touched, there was a kind of electricity that leaped between them. It was something they had both silently agreed to ignore for the time being. At least, Bailey was ready to ignore it. Sometimes, she could feel a question in Dario’s eyes, but she knew he wouldn’t advance without her word.

Life at the camp was like living in a small village of people who all cared for the same thing, even if they had different ways of showing it. When something good happened, it was celebrated together, and when problems occurred, everyone banded together to fix it.

Bailey learned that first hand a week after the night at the fire when the sky grew dark.

“What’s going on?” she asked in confusion, stepping outside. “What’s happening?”

A digger she didn’t know grabbed her hand and started tugging her toward the excavation site.

“Rainstorm,” he said abruptly. “One that is very, very early. We did not know it was coming. We must cover up the exposed areas or they might be washed away.”

Bailey gasped, hurrying along after him. She could feel that the temperature had dropped nearly ten degrees in the time since she had stepped out of her work area. When she got to the site, the exposed areas looked painfully vulnerable. She could see where one group had been excavating what looked like a stoneware stove, one corner jutting out of the earth. If they did not cover it up, it might all be washed away.

She fell in with a group dragging tarps from the storage bins to the carefully marked sites. The first fat drops of rain chilled her to the core, and in a few minutes, it started pelting down. At the site itself, like most of the other women, she gave up the robes to wear khaki shorts and a tank top, and the cold water on her skin was almost shocking.

She knew it could not have been long, but it felt as if they worked for hours, covering the site and then anchoring them as well as they could. By the time they were done, the rain had gone from splatters to a sheeting downpour. Still, the crew worked grimly, willing to stay in the cold as long as it took as long as they could save the site.

Finally, she heard the head archaeologist’s voice cutting through the hubbub like a foghorn.

“That’s it! That’s all we can do! Head back to camp.”

Frozen to the bone, Bailey started to trudge back to camp with everyone else, but then Dario took her hand. She looked up in surprise. He was as soaked as anyone else, his dark hair hanging down almost to his shoulders, but there was a wild grin on his face. He leaned down until his mouth was close to her ear.

“Come on,” he said. “If you are not afraid.”

“I am not afraid of you,” she retorted, and she turned to follow him.

With Dario holding her hand, the path became clear. He moved like a mountain goat up the mountain, moving up along the slope as if he had walked it every day of his life. They had left the others long behind them. The wind carried to them traces of shouts and laughter, but louder still was the rain, the way it struck the mountain and the sand.

Bailey was starting to shiver harder when Dario turned around a corner that she had thought was solid stone. Instead, it turned out to be an outcropping of rock that hid a shallow cave. It was perhaps a little smaller than her trailer, and it was obvious that someone had been there before.

There was a small stone ring at the mouth of the cave, and beyond, there was a thick pallet of blankets on top of a large air mattress.

“What is this place?” she asked softly, and when he turned to her, she could feel her heart beating faster.

“Mine,” he said, and in that moment, Bailey knew that he wasn’t just talking about the cave. She didn’t know if it was fate or simply pure animal attraction, but in that moment, she could do nothing besides fall into his arms.

They were like people starving and suddenly there was a feast in front of them. When Dario took Bailey into his arms, she whimpered with need and pressed herself as close to him as possible. This man was what she wanted, what she felt as if she had needed for her entire life.

Their frantic hands tore at each other’s clothes. With quick motions, they removed their sodden clothing, letting it drop to the ground. Underneath, they found skin that was chilled from the rain, but with quick hands and hungry mouths, they sought to warm each other.

Bailey could barely believe this was happening. Her whole life, she had played it safe, worked hard, kept her nose to the grindstone, and did the work that was in front of her. Rolling into a cave with the man that she wanted like water, kissing him and touching him, felt immensely flighty, immensely risky. It felt as if she were falling through thin air, trusting that there would be a net at the bottom to catch her.

It felt like the most amazing thing she had ever experienced in her life.

When she kissed Dario, she could feel the need in his own body rising to meet hers. They had both been hungry for so long, they couldn’t resist any longer.

For a moment, when she stood naked in front of him, she hesitated. With her brown hair and slender figure, she knew that she was certainly no match for the beauties that the sheikh of Jabal could have with a snap of his fingers. Suddenly, though she desired him no less, she wanted to crawl into the pallet and shut her eyes.

Dario was having none of that. With gentle but firm hands, he drew her arms away.

“You are a beautiful woman,” he said softly. “Why so shy now? Where’s the fiery girl who shouted at me as soon as I brought her to this camp?”

She laughed a little self-consciously.

“That was something else,” she said. “This is me. Men have said before that I’m… too skinny, not womanly…”

“Then they were idiots who did not know how lucky they were to be where I am right now,” Dario said fiercely. “Your lovers should have cherished every moment they spent with you, should have told you that the very roses of paradise bloomed on your lips…”

The poetry of his words made her sigh, but then he picked her up, taking her to the pallet. From their earlier vigor, she had thought they would simply fall on each other like wild animals, but at the moment, their passion seemed banked, though certainly not doused.

“You are a woman who deserves to be worshiped,” he said softly. “You deserve to have every part of you kissed… caressed, set on fire…”

He lay her on her back, holding her in place when she would have curled up to protect herself. Now she could see that he was studying her, watching her with the intent gaze of a hunting eagle. She would have been embarrassed, even humiliated, if he hadn’t been so obviously aroused by her body.

“You are a prize,” he said finally. “In the ancient days of Jabal, the tribal leaders who would eventually become the beys and the sheikhs took their wives from the neighboring kingdoms. They rode into the villages under the cover of darkness, and they sought only the most beautiful to be their brides.”

“Would they ride them down until they were tired and sweep them up on their horses?” Bailey asked with a slight smile, remembering how he had plucked her up so easily.

His answer was a sharp white grin.

“That was one way. Perhaps I would have found you by the river, washing your clothes, or perhaps merely swimming because of the heat. You wouldn’t have been allowed on your own, but perhaps the water was too cool, too beautiful.”