She gaped up at him. “Support? You mean …”
He nodded. “Everything you need to be in absolute comfort and security, you and anyone you want, will be yours.”
“Are you talking about money?”
“Anything—and everything you’ll ever need or want.”
She lowered her eyes for a long moment, until he thought she wouldn’t comment, had accepted. Then she raised her eyes to him, hard eyes, and, ya Ullah, so hurt.
“I’m going to say this once. Once, Malek. I don’t want, and I will never take, anything from you. Never. So don’t ever, ever say this again, and never, ever try to—to …”
She fell silent, breathing hard, her fists clamped at her sides. And he lost what remained of his mind.
He put his insanity into words. “Don’t go, Janaan.”
Her eyes flared, hesitant, raw.
“I can’t take … what you offered.” Her eyes dimmed again. He gritted his teeth. “But you came here to explore your heritage, and you’ve barely begun. I can’t let this experience be a total loss for you just because you had the gross misfortune to meet me. Stay and continue doing the job you so love, that you do so magnificently well. Stay and let me show you your land.”
She bowed her head, tore at his heart with her anguish, with everything that made her herself. Then she nodded. His heart almost blasted through his ribcage, to throw itself at her feet.
Her smile trembled up at him. “You know what? It may be a good plan. On longer exposure you may find out I’m a boring, aggravating pain, and I may find out you’re an overbearing, overgrown brat, and when it’s over we’ll be glad that it is …”
And she was in his arms again, his lips devouring her flippant words.
It was when they were both writhing in agony that he drew back, his every nerve cursing him for the deprivation.
“This is the last kiss, Janaan,” he panted. “I’ll keep my promise from now on.”
She clung to him. “Even if I don’t want you to? I don’t want you to! Malek, please!”
He took himself out of reach at the cost of yet another portion of his soul, groaned, “Especially as you don’t want me to. I have to protect you as you don’t know the first thing about protecting yourself.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT HAD BEEN A crazy plan.
One hatched by a clearly unbalanced mind and agreed upon by another mind in an equal state of disrepair.
To have more time together, in the same proximity and interaction of their first week together wasn’t only crazy, it was heart-shredding, sanity-compromising, self-destructive.
It was also glorious. As they carried on their mission, traveled into the mountainous parts of Ashgoon, their rapport deepened, their appreciation of everything about each other soared. Malek was astounded by how right everything was. Their ideologies meshed, their wits, their senses of humor, their work ethic. Even the friction was magnificent.
She objected fiercely to his protective ways, called it his sheikh shtick, his terminally chauvinistic streak, and he was driven to distraction by her overly independent, if very effective, ways. They clashed, collaborated, melded, and it was beyond anything he’d ever dreamed of.
Beyond love and need, the concept of soulmates, one he’d only ever scoffed at, floated constantly in his mind, descending into his heart to become a fact. It explained how fast they’d both recognized and surrendered to their unprecedented connection.
But what wrecked him was her acceptance. That he’d never be hers, that she’d disappear from his life at the end of this mission. She had this serenity about her of someone who’d accepted her fate.
And as he counted down to the unthinkable day when he would have to let her go, knowing he’d hurt her as much as he’d hurt himself, knowing she’d go on hurting as much as he would, he couldn’t stop marveling at how she seemed to have stopped thinking about what would happen next and threw herself into the here and now of this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“So what do you intend to do from now on?”
It was only when she spoke that he realized he’d been staring at her.
“Hel-lo? Earth to deep-space Sheikh. Any hope you’ll get the future king back on line?”
She was making fun of him. He loved it, as always. Also he loved how she didn’t avoid talking about his status, had turned it into a subject for light-heartedness, sometimes even gentle ridicule, so it wouldn’t overwhelm him, and her, with its inescapability.
But she’d asked him something. About the future, his plans for it.
Ya Ullah, she wanted projections of his life in the luxurious prison of duties he’d been sentenced to? Of his life with the faceless woman he’d take for a wife, force himself to touch, to copulate with.?
He stomach churned. He barely suppressed a shudder of revulsion and said abruptly, “What exactly do you want to know?”
She winced. “Whoa! You mentioned you have ongoing relief plans for the communities we visit, and I’m only curious to know what they are.”
That was what she’d meant?
Of course. She hadn’t intruded by question or comment into anything remotely personal.
No. No, that wasn’t accurate. She did delve into his innermost recesses, his views, reactions, instincts, preferences, seemed to know them any way down to the last detail. She was avid to know everything that made him himself. But nothing about what made him a sheikh, or Damhoor’s future king.
“OK, your chance to answer my most relevant question is over,” she quipped. “Here comes the next wave of patients.”
He blinked, turned his head to see children coming in.
Janaan rose from his side to organize them for examination by a quick triage. He’d barely shaken himself from his daze when she turned to him.
“These eight kids.” She pointed to the ones she was leading to the examination stations as the others walked the rest out. “I suspect congenital heart conditions. Serious ones.”
A quick look told him she was right. The children, between four and eight, looked nothing like their healthier counterparts. Emaciated, underdeveloped, subdued. Their labored breathing at rest and their blue-tinged lips and nails told the rest of the story. And to think those were the ones who’d survived. Others with more serious conditions had long since died when they could have been saved if only the necessary medical services had reached them.
But those children’s families weren’t living in the hostile mountains of Ashgoon out of choice. They were escapees from the civil wars, subsisting in inhuman conditions. What he and GAO were doing here was a drop in the ocean. He hoped enough drops would become a healing shower, prayed he’d have the wisdom to deal with this country’s rulers, to one day solve these people’s ongoing problems.