marry Umar and be his trophy wife, caged in this monstrous red castle and other sprawling mansions just like it in luxurious locations around the world.
She would have respectability. She would have a family.
But at the price of her soul.
Kareef’s eyes narrowed as he again stared past her toward the horizon. “We must hurry. Come now.”
With a low whistle, he whirled his horse around and tore into a gallop, clearly expecting her to follow.
She watched him for one instant.
“No,” she whispered. “I won’t.”
She turned her reins in the opposite direction. With a sharp voice in the mare’s ear, she leaned forward, pushing her heels hard against the mare’s sides. With a snort, the horse flew.
“Jasmine!” Kareef shouted behind her. “What are you doing? Come back!”
But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t even look back. Love was burning her like acid, bubbling away her soul.
Tightening her knees, she held her body low and tight against the horse’s back, riding up the red canyon. Riding for her life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KAREEF gasped as he saw Jasmine leap her horse across a juniper bush, sweeping across the sagebrush. She’d once been terrified of horses. Now she rode with the grace and natural ease of a Qusani nomad.
He stared in shock at the cloud of her dust crossing the desert.
But she didn’t know that devious mare like he did. There was a reason Bara’ah wasn’t north at the stadium, training to race in the Qais Cup in two days’ time. She’d left one jockey in a body cast last year. Full of malicious tricks, she liked nothing more than to throw her riders.
He had the sudden image of Jasmine half-smashed on the rock, crumpled and bleeding, as he’d found her thirteen years ago…
“Jasmine! Stop!”
He saw her goad her mare into greater speed.
Fear rushed through him as he glanced back again at the distant horizon and saw scattered brown clouds moving fast, much too fast. A sandstorm could cross the desert in seconds, decimating everything in its path.
A shudder went through his body. He turned back. With iron control, he clicked his heels on the stallion’s flanks. Huffing with a flare of nostril, the animal raced forward. But Jasmine was already far ahead.
Kareef hadn’t expected her to disobey him. No one had disobeyed him for years.
He should have expected it of her.
As he pursued her, he cast another glance behind him. The clouds were beginning to gather with force across the width of the desert. The sky was turning dark. There could no longer be any doubt. Holding the reins with one hand, he reached into his pocket and discovered his cell phone was lost, fallen in the rough speed of their race. But he still had Jasmine’s necklace.
His eyes narrowed as he watched her race her horse headlong into the canyon. No help could come for them before the storm.
So be it. He would save her alone.
As long as she stayed hidden, as long as she didn’t climb up out of the canyon, she would live.
If she rode onto the plateau, the coming sandstorm would eat her alive.
Hoofbeats pounded in rhythm with Kareef’s thoughts as he raced after Jasmine into the dark shadowed canyon.
He had to find her.
He would find her.
Clamping his thigh muscles over the saddle, he leaned forward and urged his horse faster. He’d spent his youth in these canyons. He was again a reckless horse racer who feared nothing…but losing her.
He raced fast. Faster. His stallion kicked up dust, scattering it to the four winds. He raced beneath the sharp arches and towering cliffs of the canyon.
Within minutes, he’d caught up with her. Leaning forward, he shouted Jasmine’s name over the pounding hoofbeats of their horses.
She glanced back and a shadow of fear crossed her face. He heard the panic in her voice as she urged her mare faster.
But Kareef gained ground with every second. He reached out his hand to pluck her off the mare’s back—
His hand suddenly grasped air as she veered off the road. She’d abruptly turned the mare west through a break in the red rock, climbing the slope up out of the canyon.
“No!” he shouted. “The storm!”
But his words were lost in the rising blur of the wind, beneath the pounding hooves of her mare’s wild, joyful, reckless climb.
He could feel, rather than hear, the approaching storm behind him. The first edges of dark cloud pushed around them, turning blue sky to a sickening brown-gray. The crags were turning dark and hidden in deep shadows.
Cursing her, cursing himself, he veered his horse up to pursue her. She was fast, but he was faster. For the first time in thirteen years, he was again Kareef Al’Ramiz, the reckless horse racer. Unstoppable. Unbreakable.
He would die rather than lose this race.
“Sandstorm!” he shouted over the rising wind.
At the top of the plateau, Jasmine turned back to him sharply. But at the same moment, he saw her mare draw to a sudden skidding stop as she suddenly grew tired of the race and deliberately, almost playfully, threw her rider. For a long, horrible instant, Kareef watched Jasmine fly through the air.
Sniffing, the mare jumped delicately in the other direction, then turned to run back the way she’d come, toward the stables and oats that awaited her.
Jasmine hit the ground and crumpled into the dust. Kareef’s heart was in his throat as all the memories of the past ripped through him. He flung himself off his stallion, falling to his knees before her.
“Jasmine,” he whispered, his heart in his throat as he touched her still face. “Jasmine!”
Like a miracle, she coughed in his arms. Her beautiful, dark-lashed eyes stared up at him. She swallowed, tried to speak.
“Don’t talk,” he ordered. Relief made his body weak as he lifted her in his arms. He held her tightly, never wanting to let her go. How had he spent so many years without her? How could he have known she was alive…without tracking her to the last corner of the earth?
He heard the distant rattle of sand and thunder, heard the wail of the wind.
“I have to get you out of here.” He whistled to the horse. “We don’t have much time.”
He glanced behind them. The safe part of the canyon was too far away. They’d never make it.
Jasmine followed his glance and instantly went pale when she saw the dark wall of cloud. “I thought—” her voice choked off “—I thought it was a trick.”
She’d grown up in Qusay. She knew what a sandstorm could do. He shook his head grimly, clenching his jaw. “We have to find shelter.” His eyes met hers. “The closest shelter.”
Her chocolate-brown eyes instantly went wide with panic. “No,” she gasped. “Not there, Kareef. I’d rather die!”
He felt the first scattered bits of sand hit his face.
“If I don’t get you to safety right now,” he said grimly, “you will die.”
Whimpering, she shook her head. But he knew she had to see the darkness swiftly overtaking the sun, had to feel the shards of sand whipping against her skin. If they didn’t find shelter, they’d soon be breathing sand. It would rip off their skin, then bury them alive.
“No!”