She couldn’t breathe. Her insides cramped with a blow of longing so hard she moaned.
At hearing the explicit sound his eyes flared like a sun going supernova. “But it won’t be enough. Only chaining you to my wrist and throwing away the key will be.”
And he considered that—what? Punishment?
She tried to talk, found that sandpaper had replaced her vocal cords.
“Feeling the after-effects of intubation still?” He placed one knee on the bed, making the hard mattress dip, putting his hands to the curtains as if he was feeling walls he was about to smash, his pose imposing, intimidating. And even more arousing. At least she knew her body was functioning if it was rioting this way, when he was clearly furious, too. “That’s what you get for playing Superwoman. Surprise. The boulder didn’t bounce off you.”
She found her voice for this, or something that passed for it. “As long as it didn’t hit you.”
He tore the curtains away, loomed over her, panting, his skin turning copper in his extreme. Oh, God, what had she said?
“And why would you care, when you almost killed me anyway? Seeing you lying there, broken and bloody! The one reason I didn’t keel over was because I had to take care of you first. Because you were alive. If you weren’t—if …” He clenched and unclenched his fists, as if he was struggling not to grab her and shake her. “You could have just shouted for me to get out of the way. You could … you could … Be’hag Ellahi … you could have died.”
“That’s why you’re so angry?” Tension seeped out of her. “I thought it was something serious.”
“Almost killing yourself isn’t serious?” he exploded.
She winced at his thundering volume. “Endangering myself is one of your hot buttons, isn’t it?”
“One of?” She’d bet that snarl could perforate steel. “Endangering yourself? You risked your life for mine!”
She ran her hands over her head, her arms. “Uh, I feel very much alive here. Not withstanding that my first thought as I woke up here was that I must be in heaven.”
“You risked your life for mine. That you’re still alive is because God chose not to accept your sacrifice.”
“I think you had a say in canceling that sacrifice.” She sat up and he seemed to lose all explosive retorts in his alarm over her sudden move. “Oh, I’m all right. As good as new, really, just sore from lying in bed too.” Her words petered out. She was in a sleeveless, low-cut, satin nightdress the same dazzling white as everything around her.
Her heat rose as she imagined him putting her in it, and more as she, in such languorous detail, saw him taking her out of it. A breath shuddered out of her as the creamy silk slid over her legs, intensifying the heavy throb between them.
She squeezed them together to contain the ache, looked up at him with eyes barely open with the weight of desire.
“So, how bad was it?” she almost moaned.
Malek’s teeth clapped together before grinding out a sound that made her dizzy. “Severe concussion, scalp wound, six badly bruised ribs, lacerated intercostals muscles, collapsed lung, massive hemopneumothorax. And a full body contusion.”
“In other words, I got off pretty lightly.”
“Lightly? Do you want to rid me of what little remains of my sanity? It was only because of that monster emergency bag you so love, which you held up as a shield at the last moment, that you’re not dead. Or, worse, maimed beyond recognition, a paralyzed vegetable!”
“Well, I’m not. You saved me.”
“Only because you saved me.”
“So what do you say we call it even? We are, really.” Before he could rave and rant again she hurried on, “And just where are we? Is this your home?”
He scowled his displeasure at her change of subject and muttered, “We are in Ayn Al-Hayah oasis. I have a retreat here.”
“An oasis! So I wasn’t that far off when I thought I was in heaven. Ayn Al-Hayah.” She sighed, felt a sore spot where he must have placed a chest tube to drain accumulating blood inside her chest. “Eye of life?”
“Ayn here means spring.”
“Hmm. So how long have we been here?”
His scowl softened, his eyes turning amber with deflating anger and mounting awareness. “Just today. You were in and out of consciousness for nineteen days before that.”
“I’ve been in la-la-land for twenty days?”
“Which part of severe concussion didn’t you get? And then you were in pain, and I had you on potent painkillers, and those knocked you out even worse than the concussion did. You’d look awake and then I’d later realize that you had been sleep-talking.”
“Yeah, my threshold to any kind of medication is low. But what about the mission?”
“Elal Jaheem with the mission.” That was roared. “You’re thinking of the mission when it’s a miracle that you’re alive?”
“Well, duh. Of course.” She suddenly sat up. “The people in the Jeep … what happened to them?”
His eyes remained hard, but his voice gentled. “Another batch of miracles. Fractures and concussions and gashes but nothing too serious.”
She subsided against her downy pillow. “Thank God.”
His tension eased, his eyes melted. He came down on the bed, supported by his extended arm. And it hit her harder. The scent of maleness and protectiveness, fiery and clean and musky. Her mouth watered. Her stomach rumbled.
“You’re hungry.” He started to get up and she clutched his hand. The hand that had snatched her from death’s jaws.
“Not for food.” She pulled at it, bringing his unresisting bulk down to her. “Not for food, ya habibi.”
“Janaan.” he groaned as he sank in her arms, letting her singe her lips with the pleasure of running them all over his jaw, his neck, his cheekbones.
“You shaved for me,” she moaned into his skin. “You knew I’d wake up starving for you, wanted me to feast on you.”
And she tried, trembling with the enormity of having him in her arms again, her hands quaking over the breadth of his back, the leashed power of his arms, sinking in the knotted muscles, in his vitality, his reality, her lips taking hesitant glides over his, her tongue laving them in tiny licks, still not believing their texture and taste.
A rumble poured into her mouth, lancing into her heart just as it spiked her arousal to pain with its unadulterated passion.