The Panther & the Pyramid (Khamsin Warriors of the Wind) (35 page)

Now filled with self-loathing, he sat up, his back to the wall sectioning off the sheikh's harem. Furtively he grabbed his
jambiya
and cut himself. He smeared the blood on the sheepskins, then quickly dressed.

He paused to glare at the faces peeping out from the thin curtain. "Get her clothing. Now," he barked in Arabic to the women. They scrambled to obey. He picked up his scimitar and
jambiya
, slid them into his belt. His oily rifle he slung over one shoulder. As the women hustled back into the tent, bearing Jillian's clothing, he regarded his wife.

She dressed, shoulders slumped, gaze downcast. Graham held out a hand. Jillian took it as they went outside. Men stood nearby, watching with dark, burning gazes. He felt the wild rage to feel bone and blood beneath his crushing fingers.

Graham suppressed emotions and stood alone, ordering Jillian to mount her camel. He did not dare drop his gaze or let his hand leave his scimitar hilt.

"She's mine now. I will take her with me." His bristling stance and hand on the scimitar hilt said,
Try to stop me
.

Mahjub gave a slight, respectful nod and said in Arabic, "Go with Allah in peace." But Graham could read the sheikh's sly thoughts. A man alone with a woman in the desert was vulnerable.

Instinctively Graham knew they must put as much distance between themselves and this tribe as possible. Violence and greed swirled in their dark eyes.

As he fingered the butt of the rifle against his hip and stared at Mahjub, the sly gaze lowered. Graham nodded and headed for his camel.

Chapter Twenty-two

They did not talk as they traveled, pausing now and then to erase their camel tracks. Graham spoke once, to explain he was trying to confuse the Bedu, should they decide to follow. The wind filled the silence between them, licked her clothing, adding to her internal misery. Graham had remained grimly quiet since his whispered confession of love. It was as if the words were never spoken.

They camped near a remote oasis with a cluster of date palms. There were two springs, one clean and cool, the other bubbling and warm. Jillian sat on the sands and studied the location. Small animal prints abounded. A crow landed nearby, regarded her with black eyes. Black as Graham's. In misery she watched it drink and fly away. Free.

The wild hare he caught with his crossbow he skinned and spitted. It smelled delicious as the grease made the fire spark and hiss, but she had no appetite. She prepared the meal in silence by the light of the flickering campfire.

Shadows danced across the grim set of his jaw as he sat cross-legged, eating.

After the meal, she washed the dishes with water, a luxury, and took a towel and soap to bathe at the spring. Graham's dark eyes burned into her.

"It's not safe alone. There are vipers."

Turning from him, she spoke in a low voice over her shoulder. "I'll take my chances."

But he rose and joined her anyway, trudging over the sands to the tiny spring. Jillian bit her lip as she stared in longing at the clean water. She hesitated at undressing before him.

"Go on," he said gruffly.

While she slipped from her clothing, he whirled. Graham stood, legs outspread, the rigid blue wall of his back facing her. He was giving her privacy.

Hot, soothing water surrounded her as she entered the little spring. Jillian ducked beneath it, swam a little ways out, clutching the soap. Silent sobs wrung from her throat. For long minutes, she cried, covering the sound with sounds of splashing and scrubbing. She scrubbed at her body with fierce loathing, erasing memories and smells.

When she emerged, her body was red from both the warmth and scouring. She quickly dried off and dressed. Graham stood a little way off, still with his back to her.

She wondered if he'd heard her sobs. She didn't even care.

They walked in silence back to the camp. Jillian took a seat on the striped blanket in their tent as Graham sat beside her. Misery overwhelmed her. She didn't know how to ask for comfort to ease what had happened between them. She felt as if she were losing him. Perhaps she already had.

"I'm sorry I had to do that to you, Jilly," he said.

She hugged her knees tighter, remaining silent.

"It was degrading. I violated and humiliated you."

Her throat tightened. "I suppose you had to do as you must, to save us both. Don't blame yourself, Graham. Your actions were justified."

Dark fire leaped in his eyes as he turned to her, his expression fierce and haunted.

"No. There never is any justification for forcing someone against their will—"

"They forced me, not you. I agreed," she protested, shrinking away from the violence in his eyes.

"I should have killed them."

"You would have been killed. You were outnumbered. Death is not preferable."

"Sometimes it is."

She went still, sensing something haunting in his tone. His eyes were distant as he gazed off into the sky. "Because once, Jilly, the same thing happened to me."

Fearful of shattering the moment, afraid that he would run away inside himself once more, she said nothing. Graham's dark gaze flicked to hers.

"In the desert there is no hiding from yourself. I didn't want this moment to come, but it has. It's time you know what happened when I was six. I wasn't raised by a nice English couple after my parents were killed. I was taken prisoner by one of the men who slaughtered them, taken into his black tent and raped."

The hollow feeling in Graham's chest echoed his desolation. Sweet Christ, it had finally come to this. She would see the blackness inside him and then it would be her choice to walk away or stay. He felt the blackness wrap its inky arms about him like the coldness of a stone tomb. He dully recited the story, not daring to meet her eyes; his gaze riveted to her feet instead, hidden beneath the white robe.

He left no detail out, from the moment his panicked gaze saw the warrior tribe galloping toward the caravan, his mother shoving Kenneth into a basket to hide him and his parents desperately trying to find a hiding place big enough for him. The sun flashed on the steel scimitars as the raiding al-Hajid took lives without mercy, the steel scimitar hovering above him as he cringed. He told of the shining gleam in the eyes of the warrior who studied him and then grabbed his arm, taking him prisoner.

Hidden feet beneath Jillian's white robe. A peep of small, delicate toes, scrubbed pink. Graham stared at them as he relayed the details of the dirty sheepskin grinding into his nose, the nightly torment from Husam, his captor—and Faisal, the man who pulled him from the wretched blackness with a hand outstretched in kindness.

"Faisal saw me taken prisoner and took pity on me," Graham said. He dared to glance at her face. Would he find pity there? Or disgust?

Jillian showed neither. Her expression remained carefully blank. But her fists clenched, showing the little rounded hills of her knuckles.

Graham told her Faisal had lived among the infidel in Cairo and knew English. At the risk of his own life, he'd smuggled sweet dates to Graham whenever his captor let him go hungry. Discovering the boy had a quick, clever mind, he'd taught him as he taught his own sons—how to hunt the wild hare, to analyze camel tracks in the sand, to read in both English and Arabic, to look for signs of water and survive in the desert on nothing but dates and camel milk. He even told her of al-Hamra and the slim hope he'd held out for escape—and the terrible price he paid for such hope and trust.

He did not tell her al-Hamra was her father. Some things were simply too terrible to reveal.

Graham told Jillian how, when he was nine, Husam tired of him. His captor had turned him out into the desert miles from the camp, leaving him to die in the scorching sun. At this, a harsh intake of breath escaped Jillian. Graham glanced at her. Tears shimmered in her eyes. She blinked them away.

His gaze locked on the ground once more. If he looked at his wife, he, too, would cry. Graham pushed aside his emotions, concentrating on keeping his voice steady instead.

He had been left in the desert to die, but returned three days later, crawling on his hands and knees, but alive. Faisal had stepped in and told the sheikh he had learned the ways of the desert and earned the right to live. The sheikh had given reluctant permission for Graham to live with Faisal, but vowed he would never be acknowledged as a warrior.

Faisal taught him anyway. Others ignored him, shunned him. To win their respect Graham became a rogue warrior, joining in the fighting and raiding, but always on the fringes. Eventually they called him The Panther, the cat that hunts alone.

"Faisal told me in the desert, there are no secrets. The desert exposes a man to his deepest core and what he truly is. No matter what terrible things I suffered, no other man could take my soul. And he told me that if I ever got lost within myself, to go to the desert and find who I was again."

Jillian spoke finally, her voice remarkably soft and soothing against his ragged nerves, like the whisper of silk.

"Are you still lost?"

He hesitated and stared out at the sand. "I don't know."

Jillian wrapped her arms about herself as her husband went off to relieve himself—or so he said. She did not dare express sympathy or show it; instinct warned he would loathe pity.

Shocked horror had pulsed through her as he told his story. That little boy enduring so many horrors—flashes of pain surfaced in his dark eyes. She didn't know what to do, how to help him, what doubts and torment he had suffered. All she knew was that she loved him.

Splashing sounded in the distance. Jillian rose and went to the small spring and hovered discreetly behind a palm.

Naked, her husband was immersed waist deep in the warm spring, scrubbing himself with fury. His handsome face twisted in anguish. Just as she had, earlier. Her heart twisted. I love you, she thought.
Will you let me love you, Graham? Can you?

She turned and quietly slipped back to the tent.

Much later, when he felt calm enough, Graham returned to their camp. Jillian remained silent, her gaze following him. He sat on a blanket, cold eating him inside.

She spoke, her voice even. "Were you ignored by the other warriors or...?"

Graham drew a deep breath. "I was seen as an outcast, a girl. I fought to be accepted."

"What did you do to become accepted?"

"I killed my abuser in a duel. Then I cut off his balls and gave them to my sheikh as a trophy." Graham sucked in air, waiting duly to see condemnation or disgust in her eyes. It did not come.

"What did he say?"

Relief stabbed him. Still, he did not lower his guard. "He laughed. Fareeq liked cruelty and sport. He ordered me to be initiated as a warrior."

They had taken him to the sacred grounds where boys turned into men, made him swear the oath of loyalty and circumcised him. The pain had been excruciating. He'd been offered a sedative drink, but Graham had not taken it. He had welcomed the pain.

Respect had flowed then, slowly, like a sluggish river. Always he'd had to prove himself; killing more, risking more. He'd learned to distance himself from emotions. Eventually when Faisal's daughter married into the Khamsin tribe, Graham had accompanied her and become a Khamsin Warrior of the Wind.

"I wanted desperately to be seen as a man," he whispered, remembering his struggles for acceptance.

"How many men have you killed in battle?" Jillian asked.

He tensed, seeing himself in her eyes, a savage raised in a culture of cruelty. "Hundreds. I do not know."

"And how many people have you loved?"

Taken aback, he recoiled. Jillian sat serene, unblinking. "I do not know."

"Less than you have killed."

"Yes," he agreed.

"Less because you wouldn't allow it, Graham. You loved once, and love was taken from you. You were afraid to love again. As you're afraid now. Because you don't want to be hurt again."

His stomach clenched in remembrance: blood flowing like water upon sand, his parents' death screams, the smell of dirty sheepskin in his nose, stares and taunts...

A kind hand stretched out. His foster parents had nurtured him, but he did not love them. Did he?