In a land that knew only dark beauty, she was something of a hybrid no one dared touch. But the tall Arab did not appear in the least daunted by her abnormality. No, she saw...

Better this way, what remained of his battered sensibilities told him. He was no good for her, anyway. She didn’t understand him. She didn’t understand that he was cursed. And, selfish as he was, he’d...

He watched her for her reaction, or possibly watched her just to watch, his eyes hooded by his lashes and his mouth impassive. A faceless man—such as the one she had dreamed of since she...

It came as naturally to him as breathing or lying, or worse. His mama had only taught her son to be cautious at all times. Garnette was more than that. Much, much more than that.

He wanted to die. He prayed for it. Through the roar in his ears, he begged for it.

Do the walls understand English?

No wonder you were abducted so easily.

Caine might have smiled at her, had his heart not been breaking to smithereens inside of him.

She wondered how a man could look into a woman’s eyes and lie so completely, so convincingly. She wondered how he could have looked and not seen the love that had glowed there, the blind...

Where better to be kidnapped and sold into slavery, than a country just recently ravaged by war?” with a discernible sneer.

This man was no servant. She looked up at him in acute agitation and knew: this man was now her master.

No fairy tale, this. This was by no stretch of the imagination a polished fantasy. This was a searing, living force, rough around the edges, unfamiliar and bittersweet.And precious.

It will help immensely.

He smelled the salt on his own lips and the orange blossoms in her hair. Real ones, he could see now, tucked into the curls with cheap, native combs. The sight of them gave him...

Therefore, she hummed the provincial lullaby she had learned from the officers’ children in the English Quarter of Jerusalem, and watched in fascination while the savage radical’s eyes misted over with tears. For an instant,...

They were literally inches from being buried alive in this place, millions of miles from home or any sort of civilization, where they would never be found or mourned… and Caine continued to smile.Sweet heavens,...

Every black ounce of it. Scars and all.

When silence greeted her question, she looked at Caine—for that was how he saw himself in that moment and in all the moments after: his brother’s murderer.

Looking back at him was a man who was battered and broken.And alive, for the first time in his life.

The horizon was indistinguishable from the inky black, which fell upon the desert like a sorcerer’s mantle shot through with diamonds. The stars were so tiny, so far away, and yet, at the moment, with...

Kent had begun sleeping with his good eye open, for he knew the mark of sedition when he saw it. Even partway blinded, who could see it better?

She’d said she loved him. She’d put that impossible, unimaginably beautiful gift in his hands and he’d thrown it back at her. To save her. To save himself.

La mu’axsa, but I think I’ll just keep sliding down this greased pole to hell?

She was a little thing, too, inciting that basic compulsion in him as a man to protect her in so hectic a place as post-war Israel. Even so, his actions were borne out of an...

I’ll thank Him for ya.

You told me to!

I stole you, among others, from the streets of God’s birthplace. I forced you to work as a slave. Imprisoned, mistreated and starved you and your companion. To top it off, I am in the...

By now, she was far from the scorch of these sands. After the ransom deal, she would be safely married in England. To Ashton. And Caine, who had hurt her far more than anything Abdullah...

Caine was a murderer. A liar. A cad. A skulker in shadows and a heartless wretch. What sort of woman or God would love someone like him?

Ma’aleyk, and your way hurts my ears,” he argued.

Nothing else.

Never,” he said again.

He didn’t deserve compassion. Sympathy. Not even understanding. He deserved worse, far worse than he had ever been given.

Caine usually woke from the recurring dream mid-air, having yet to be dashed upon the rocks, whimpering and panting like a child crying for his mother. Now he lifted his eyes to a dark, empty...

I know I am flaky, I accept that—and I know, as well, that I can mangle the good king’s English like no one else in my or the next ten governesses’ acquaintances, but that will...

The blood dried on his good hand, he passed his palm over her hair. It curled about his wrist and sprung back into displace as the breeze fluttered by. In the firelight, it was golden...

What she knew was sand and wind and innumerable stars. The rumble in a camel’s throat as it swayed over shifting dunes, its trappings jingling in time with its steps beneath her. She knew the...

It gives me charge of your life.

He heard the voice that had called to him in dreams, had saved him from the sands and from following his brother into the river.

He’d thought it would be the right thing to say, but she scoffed a little… and that, more than anything—more than the prospect of having his ribs crushed in or his face pulled off or...

Kent steepled his fingers in consideration. Blood-red rubies flashed in the sunlight, like the eyes of a demon clutched in his hands.

She was an extension of his dreams. A sprinkling of magic dust, of unfeasible wishes, on his stable existence. The one thing-the one bright, marvelous thing-he wanted more than the world, but didn’t deserve. However...

And what was to become of what he had taken from her? He had dashed her heart to the ground and danced on it with combat boots. Did he sit in that seditious palace day...

I did not know English women were so strong.

Do you know why? Because there will always be bigots and cowards and power-mad devils in positions of omnipotence. Look around you. There has been war here since time began. It’s nature. Animals kill each...

Anger swirled in him, a tempest readying her strike. And like a helpless vessel caught in her fury, he felt himself dashed against the rocks without mercy.

Kas was right: a woman could destroy a man. This one could do so, simply by knowing his name. She could do so, simply with her eyes.

She thought she loved him. She was crazy.

I’ve crossed a world of sand and tears in search of you. I love you. I’ve done nothing in my life worth more than that.

Fate had a cruel sense of humor. It had been all his fault, anyway, whatever Mick or Gillia told him. Careless preoccupation and utter stupidity. Boyhood ignorance and negligence. He was only getting what he...