clear.”
“An extinct oasis?” His gaze clashed with hers. It wasn’t unheard of—water disappeared and, with it, the plants, animals and the people.
“What if there was still water left, not enough for a community but for a few people?” The question she posed hung for a moment between them. Outside the room, they could hear the low voices of their hosts.
“Wouldn’t others know of it?”
“Not necessarily, not if it was obscure, hidden.” She ran a finger over the area she’d been studying as if mapping their route. “Or maybe so small as to be of little interest.”
He thought of the possibility she’d raised, but there were still so many unknowns. “We could drive miles out of our way in order to find out there’s nothing. We could...”
“It used to be a good-size community from the looks of it. A village, anyway—a hundred people, roughly, on a guess.” She spoke quickly, clearly excited by the discovery. “What better place to hide than an oasis that everyone believes no longer exists?”
She looked up at him and he leaned down and met her halfway. His lips roved over hers as he drew her into his arms. Her softness pressed against him, making him want so much more. Her mouth opened, inviting more. She was sweet and hot and... He pulled back. The last thing they needed was to be discovered, an unmarried couple making out in their host’s library.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he moved away from her.
“You’d better not be,” she whispered huskily.
“Come here,” she said, the atlas in her hands, and when he was again beside her she showed him something else that excited them both. “Two hundred miles east of here, but in the same direction as our extinct oasis. It can’t be a coincidence.”
“El Dewar,” he said with a frown, trying not to notice the smell of her or the feel of her shoulder rubbing against his arm. It was as though fear and anger had merged with passion and become an unstoppable comet. He wanted to find his sister, kill her kidnappers and make love to Kate, and not necessarily in that order. He took her hand with his as he met her eyes. “Straight through the Sahara. There are no roads.”
“Emir,” she said in a soft tone, lower than normal, and one that hinted at other things. But what she had to say was all business. “Looking at this map, where the oasis is situated, if you wanted to go there, you’d have to drive through El Dewar or, at the least, near it. It’s a tough drive, but we knew this wasn’t going to be easy. I think we stop at El Dewar tomorrow, ask a few questions.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “Maybe someone knows something.”
Emir’s pulse leaped at the possibilities.
But as he looked more closely at the landscape revealed on the old atlas, his heart sank. If this was where they had Tara, they were well defended. “If this is right—they’d be backing an almost-impermeable approach.” His thumb traced the way the map outlined rises of rock and cliff that wound in a horseshoe around what had once been a desert paradise. “It would be almost impossible to get to them, sneak in, without climbing the hills behind them.”
“Difficult,” Kate corrected, “not impossible. I’m betting we could work our way in through the rock, over the hills—whatever. There’s got to be a way. If, of course, this theory is even right.”
Emir put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her. As his tongue met hers and her breasts pressed against him, it seemed like time stood still. But it was only seconds before he released her and before they took the atlas to show their host to ask him about the existence of the oasis.
“It has been uninhabited since before the days of my grandfather. Many of them moved here when it dried up. They hoped to get away from the desert,” Yuften said solemnly. “I did not remember the name but the location is unforgettable.”
Hours later they tried to get some sleep.
For Emir, it was impossible, for he was more aware of Kate with every second he spent in her presence. He’d kissed her one too many times when he shouldn’t have kissed her at all. Maybe if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t want her like he’d never wanted another woman. Her mat was feet from his and a curtain divider away, and it didn’t matter.
The sound of her soft breathing through the remaining hours of the night had driven him crazy. Each toss and turn, every sound, alerted him to her nearness. The cool desert air had chilled him. He’d wondered if she was cold. But there was nothing he could offer her, nothing except his own body heat, and that was unacceptable, but only because of their host. She was too near and yet too far. Worry for Tara, desire for Kate—the torrent of emotion caused the earlier headache to return, but again even the usual two aspirins were unable to stop the pounding as sunlight began to threaten the night.
They were up and preparing to leave as the sun streaked pink across the eastern sky.
* * *
TARA SHIFTED. She had to use the facilities in the worst way. She never thought an everyday necessity that one usually didn’t pay much attention to would become her Achilles’ heel. She squirmed, shifting onto her side, taking the pressure off her full bladder. She couldn’t risk drawing attention to herself. She’d seen how her captors had looked at her as the sun rose. She’d been in this hell for over twenty-four hours.
“Find me Emir, please,” she whispered to the brother who, of all of them, had been her ultimate protector, even against the gentle teasing of her other brothers. He had always stood up for her. All her brothers were her heroes, but Emir stood out among even them. Maybe because he was the eldest. It didn’t matter why. What mattered was that she needed him. She’d been wrong and she’d do anything to undo what she’d done, but that was impossible, she knew that. She prayed her repentance would be enough.
She pulled her knees up tight and took a deep breath, but it didn’t help. Her tormentor was heading her way. His advances had become more and more intimate and she knew that the last time she’d been lucky.
She knew him and yet he was like a stranger, a frightening stranger. The man she remembered had been an average-size man with a glint to his dark eyes that indicated he loved a joke. And she’d told him many, at least when she’d been younger, before tragedy had struck.
Now he was lean to the point of skinny and the planes of his face were rough, wrinkled and almost feral. And then there was the scar. It wasn’t the horrid scar that disturbed her the most, but more the way those dark eyes skimmed over her in an almost hungry way that made her draw back and pull her knees even closer to her chest as if that would somehow protect her.
“What do you want?” she asked and realized that she might know exactly what he wanted. She could see the lust in his eyes. There was a time when she couldn’t imagine him looking at her like that and, in fact, in all her life he never had. But he didn’t always see her as Tara anymore. There were times when he had, briefly, in the beginning. She’d pointed out who she was once, but she now had a bruise on her cheekbone that ached when she touched it, to remind her to not do that again.
“I’ve wanted you for so long and yet you only looked at him.” He frowned as his knuckle skimmed her cheek.
Who? she thought. She tried to think clearly through the confusion of his words.
“Who?” she whispered. She was both scared to engage and scared to not know what he was speaking of.
He cursed and raised his clenched fist.
She couldn’t back down. She fought not to do just that.
“Your husband, of course. Who else?” He relaxed his fist and ran his hand through his grizzled, uncombed hair. He looked away from her and then turned back, a hard look in his eyes. “How did this happen?” he asked. His eyes were now, seconds later, reflecting genuine concern as he looked at the bruise on her cheekbone. It was as if he could not remember his actions from one moment to the next.
Tara fought with her control but it