The Royal House of Karedes: The Desert Throne. Annie West

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      She was strapped into a car upside down. Her knees were hanging against her chest and she could see the blue sky through the window at her feet. The seat belt felt so tight that she couldn’t breathe. Something warm and liquid dripped across her lashes.

      “I’m bleeding,” she whispered aloud.

      She heard Kareef’s curse and suddenly the passenger door was wrenched open, causing scattered pieces of broken glass to clatter from the window to the road. Suddenly, the seat belt was gone and she was in Kareef’s arms, sitting on his knees in the dusty road.

      She felt his hands move over her head, her arms, her body. “Nothing’s broken,” he breathed. He held her tightly against his chest, kissing her hair, whispering, “You’re safe. You’re safe.”

      She closed her eyes in the shelter of his arms. She pressed her cheek against the warmth of his neck.

      Time felt as mixed and confused as the smashed, upside-down cars in the road. For the space of a dream, she’d been sixteen again, with her whole life ahead of her, certain of Kareef’s devotion and his strong arms around her.

      Those same arms were around her now, even more powerful and muscled than they’d been before. What had happened?

      “Get a doctor!” Kareef turned and thundered.

      She was dimly aware of bodyguards rushing around them, shouting into cell phones, but they all seemed far away. She and Kareef were at the eye of the storm.

      She looked at him and saw the blood on his clothes, the tears in the white fabric of his shirt, and a chill went through her. Trembling, she reached her hand toward his face, toward the thin lines of red streaking his chiseled cheekbone. “You’re bleeding.”

      He jerked his head away. “It’s nothing.”

      He didn’t want her to touch him. That much was absolutely clear. She felt her cheeks go hot as she put her hand down. She pressed her lips together, wanting to cry. So much had changed since the time of her beautiful dream. “But—you should see a doctor.”

      He rose to his feet, holding her. “Unnecessary. But for you…” He looked down at Jasmine. “Can you stand alone?”

      “Yes.” Her head was pounding, but she would not try to lean against him. She would not make him push her away. If he did not want her to touch him, she would stand alone on her own two feet if it killed her.

      Releasing her hand, he brushed dirt off the shoulders of her pink blouson minidress. “Your hat is gone,” he muttered.

      She looked up at him in a daze. “It doesn’t matter.”

      “We’ll have someone find it.” Taking a damp towel from a bodyguard, Kareef wiped her forehead, then paused. “You’ve got a small cut on your scalp,” he said matter-of-factly, his voice calm, as if trying not to scare her. He turned back to his bodyguard. “We must take Miss Kouri back to the hospital.”

      Miss Kouri. So he’d reverted to that. He was already keeping his distance, as if he’d already divorced her.

      The bodyguard shook his head at Kareef. “The cars are totaled, your highness.” His voice grew bitter, angry. “That mare escaped into the road again. Youssef had to swerve to avoid her.”

      Kareef looked past the smashed, upside-down Rolls-Royce toward the black horse still standing in the road. “Ah, Bara’ah. Even put out to pasture,” he murmured softly, “you’re up to your old tricks.”

      Jasmine followed his gaze. The slender black mare, chewing lone wisps of grass that had grown through the cracks of the pavement, looked back with placid amusement.

      “Get her back in her paddock,” Kareef said. “Get a new car from my garage.”

      His garage?

      Jasmine looked down the road and saw a wide, lowslung ranch house of brown wood, surrounded by paddocks and palm trees.

      Comfortable and peaceful, without any of Umar’s gilded, lavish ostentatiousness, Kareef’s home was a green oasis in the vast wasteland of the desert.

      He’d done it. He’d created the house he’d once promised her. But he’d done it alone…

      Her hands tightened. And Kareef wanted to take her away. He wanted to take her back to the city, to leave her in some sterile, beeping hospital room—alone. Perhaps he intended to run inside and get the emerald, and divorce her on the way?

      It was what she’d thought she wanted—a quick divorce without seduction, without entanglements. But now, she suddenly felt like crying.

      “I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

      At the sound of her voice, Kareef and the bodyguard turned to her in surprise, as if they’d forgotten she was there.

      “But Jasmine,” Kareef replied gently and slowly, as if speaking to a recalcitrant child, “you need to see a doctor.”

      “No hospital.” Dark hair blew in her eyes from her collapsing chignon. Pushing back her hair, she saw blood on her hands. Looking down, she saw drops of blood on the pink silk of her dress.

      Just like the last time she’d been in an accident. The last time she’d seen her own blood. After the accident—before the scandal…

      She suddenly couldn’t get enough air.

       She couldn’t breathe.

      Panicking, she put her hands on her head as she tried to get air in her lungs. More dark tendrils tumbled from her chignon as the world started to spin around her.

      Kareef’s eyes narrowed. “Jasmine?”

      Her breath came in short, shallow gasps as she backed away from him. Everything was a blur, going in circles faster and faster. No matter which way she looked, she saw something that trapped her. The home of her dreams. The man of her dreams. The blood on her dress…

      Kareef grabbed her before she could fall. His intense blue eyes stared down at her. She dimly heard him shouting. She saw his men rushing to obey.

      She saw Kareef’s lips moving, saw the concern in his blue eyes, but couldn’t hear what he was saying. She could only hear the ragged pant of her own breathing, the frantic pounding of her own heart.

      Colors continued to spin around her as her knees started to slide. In the distance she saw the black mare staring back at her. Black like the horse who’d thrown her long ago. Black like the accident that had caused her to lose everything.

      Black.

      Black.

      Black…

      Suddenly, Kareef’s worried face came into sharp focus.

      “You’re awake,” he said in a low voice. “Do you know who I am?”

      Jasmine discovered that she was lying on her back in a bedroom she didn’t recognize. Her head was pounding; her throat was dry.

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