Besides, it was a car and not a flailing-limbed camel, too panicked and too stupid to know that fighting the wet sand was the worst thing it could do and would only hasten its demise. The car would sink slower if it didn’t go down nose first, but not with the doors open.
Maybe Sera was just too afraid to argue, because she reached out, trying to pull the heavy door back. ‘It won’t budge,’ she cried, and he cursed when he saw why.
Already the bottom corner of the door was dragging at the sucking sands. Soon the soft sand would pour through the open door, claiming the car for its own. ‘Leave it,’ he ordered, ‘and get into the back.’
The car tilted further as she scrambled over the front seats. Meanwhile he moved cautiously closer, testing each step before giving it his full weight. ‘Watch out!’ he heard her call, as if he were the one stuck in the middle of a pit of sinking sand.
His foot found the edge of the pit, sinking into the soft, damp sand just a couple of feet short of the car’s tailgate, but at least she hadn’t landed the car any further in. He might have to congratulate her for that once they were out. Still, it would be a stretch, but he should be able to reach the tailgate. He made sure both his feet were on solid sand and then leaned over, letting himself fall the last few inches to the doors, wrenching the handle, fighting the angle of the sinking car to pull the back doors open.
‘I’m sorry,’ she cried, from where she sat huddled in the back seat. ‘But I couldn’t stay back there. I had to get away.’
The car slipped deeper then, tilting further, the metal groaning an unearthly groan, metal and rubber against the sucking forces of sand, and she winced, her fingers clutching the back seat like claws. The acid reply that he’d been so ready to let fly from his lips died a rapid death. ‘Forget it,’ he simply said, pulling stuff out of the back of the car and tossing it behind him, hoping it reached solid ground but more intent on making space right now for her to climb through. ‘Just be ready to jump over when I tell you.’ He found a folded tarpaulin and flapped it open with one hand, spreading it out on the soft ground below him as best he could. It wasn’t much, but at least it would be some protection if anything they needed fell in his rush to clear space.
‘I’m sorry about the car,’ she babbled. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘I said forget it!’ He did a rapid assessment and decided he’d made enough space for her to climb through. ‘Now, let’s get you out of there. Are you ready?’
She nodded uncertainly and he leaned out of the way to give her more room. She hauled up her robe to clamber inelegantly over the tilted seat, revealing a long sweep of golden skin followed by another just as perfect, just as lean and smooth and long, distracting him when he least needed a distraction.
The car dipped sideways into the sand and his hold slipped with it. ‘Rafiq!’ Sera screamed, reaching for him as he fell, but he had landed on the tarpaulin, his weight spread, and was able to roll away and be on firm sand again before he could sink.
‘Now, get ready,’ he told her, relieved to see she had tucked the offending legs back under her robe, where they could not distract him again. ‘Reach for my hand, and when I give the word, you jump. Got that?’
She nodded and dragged in a breath, as if steeling herself, her eyes a mixture of fear and apprehension.
He leaned out towards her and she balanced as best she could in the sloping doorway, reaching out her own hand to him. His fingers curled hungrily around her small hand even as the car pitched nose-down, with sand pouring into the front seat. Sera gasped, lifted higher with the back of the car, her fingers slipping from his as her arm stretched. But his grip only tightened. There was no way he was letting her go.
‘Now!’
She sprang at his command, the same instant as he pulled on her hand, launching her across the distance with so much force that she collided against his chest. His arms immediately wrapped around her as he spun her away from the edge of the pit and to safety.
‘What the hell were you thinking?’ he yelled. ‘What the hell were you playing at?’
And her response came not with words but as tremors. They started out as a shiver that set her body quaking in his arms. He looked down at her flustered face, at the black-as-night eyes that looked up at him, eyes wounded by the verbal attack that had come so close on the heels of her rescue, and he looked at the open mouth as she dragged in air, at those lips, so close to him now that their proximity must surely equate with possession.
Possession he had no choice but to take.
His mouth crashed down upon hers in a brutal kiss, a kiss that he tore from her, a kiss that spoke of dread and fear and loss, of agony and relief as his mouth plundered hers, his hands sliding up her slim back to bury themselves in that silken curtain of black hair and anchor her close to him. Remorseless and ruthless. Avenging himself for the wrongs of the past. Like a man dying of thirst, he drank deeply of that first heady stream. Unable to stop even when good sense dictated he should, even when he knew his life depended on restraint.