“He doesn’t know we have help. At least in following him,” Tariq murmured as he leaned closer.
Eyes in the sky were what they had. A little help from their friendly neighborhood CIA asset. In the event of an extreme emergency, that asset could get them out of the fortress and to an extraction point, but it wouldn’t be easy. It would compromise positions and covers and that was something no one wanted to do unless they simply had no other choice.
If Azir moved in a direction that would compromise Paige’s safety, or her life, then he would call them in, and it was that simple.
If he had time.
Abram glanced at her again, the fiery red-gold of her hair as it spilled around her shoulders, the relaxed position of her body indicating she was at the least, dozing.
As the day had worn on, Paige had become worn out. The drug used on her, the confrontation and abuse inflicted by Azir, and the stress of the day had culminated into complete exhaustion.
“Azir timed this personally,” Tariq stated as he followed Abram’s look. “And the perfect weapon to strike against you. How did he know?”
Tariq watched Abram, seeing the normally hardened expression as it softened almost imperceptibly. For the first time in far too many years, he was watching a woman affect Abram, and that scared the hell out of him. Because now just wasn’t the time for this.
“Who the hell knows how he found out.” Abram breathed out roughly. “But he did, and now we have to deal with it.”
“Do you have a pt her” Tariq asked, nodding toward Paige as her head slipped deeper into the cushion behind her.
“Keep her safe and alive,” Abram stated roughly as he turned back to his coffee and sipped at the brew. His expression remained savagely intense. “Stay one step ahead of Azir where she’s concerned and make certain he doesn’t get the jump on us. Until we can get her out without compromising our contacts, then we have no other choice.”
“And if we can’t?” Tariq had a feeling he knew the answer to that question.
“If we can’t then all bets are off.” The look Abram turned on him was more than savage now, it was primal, murderous.
Tariq barely controlled a flinch as he stared back into pure black icy rage. And he couldn’t say he blamed Abram. He’d lost too much in the years past, had watched too many hopes and dreams fall at his feet and buried too many friends, as well as two too many wives, one of which had owned him as much as any young man could be owned.
Abram wasn’t a young man anymore though. He was an adult in his prime, and the heart he possessed was a man’s heart, with all its scars and driving hungers.
It was one Tariq understood, because he too possessed such a heart.
Glancing at the young woman Azir had ordered him to aid Abram in pleasing, he wondered if sharing a woman with another man would always tempt him. Would the day come when he would come to crave his own woman, his own life? Or would his own scarred soul refuse to give the world enough trust to love again?
“When she turned eighteen she asked me if I’d ever love again.” Abram drew his attention back.
The look on his cousin’s face was remote, but his eyes were alive with the memories of the pain he had suffered. “Aleya had just died with our child.” He shook his head with a quick, rough movement. “I told her only if hell froze over.”
But Abram loved the girl now sleeping in his room, Tariq thought. He wouldn’t admit it, not yet, but it was there in his eyes.
“And what would you tell her now?” Tariq asked, suddenly wishing he could have slipped some of Khalid’s fine whiskey into the fortress.
If ever a man needed a drink, it was now.
Abram finished his coffee and rose to his feet before answering. “I would tell her I wouldn’t dare tempt fate a third time,” he whispered, his voice as tortured as Tariq knew his soul was. “I don’t think I could survive it again.”
Abram moved to the couch then, picked his delicate lover up in his arms, and ied her to the huge, custom-made bed at the other end of the room. It was conveniently situated close to the hidden door that led beneath the harem and into an underground cavern at the base of the mountains beyond.
A tunnel they both prayed no one else had found in the years since Abram had. They suspected not, or else Azir would have had it filled in and destroyed like the others that had been discovered.
His harem had once been sacred to him. Until he had lost the funds the government once paid him and no longer had the gold or American cash to pay for the kidnappings or the American women occasionally auctioned off in the slave markets.
“Stay, Tariq,” Abram told him as he lay his burden in the large bed before undressing and laying down beside her.
Silk sheets and the thin cashmere blanket was pulled over them as Paige turned and curled into the warmth of Abram’s chest.
Such trust, Tariq thought as he turned out the lights, set the secondary security, and moved to the bed himself.
Undressing as well, he crawled in beneath the blankets, rolled onto his stomach, and settled into the comfort of the bed.