Sheikh's Castaway by Alexandra Sellers

“You’re the big, strong primitive male, after all! You’re the one with the ceremonial sword!”
    Some change in him made her shift uncomfortably. But really, it was ridiculous! What was she supposed to do half-naked, shoeless and weaponless, in a forest?
    â€œBy tradition, yes, I should be your protector,” he said. “But yesterday you rejected tradition, and you rejected me. I am nothing to you now, and you—” his eyes narrowed “—you are nothing to me, Noor. You can’t run from me one day and demand my protection the next. If you want breakfast, you will have to help find it.”
    She knew she was on dangerous ground, but unaccustomed hunger was making her mulish. “I have found it! It’s in those neat little plastic packs of emergency rations over there in the raft! And that’s all the hunting-gathering I’m going to do this morning, thanks!”
    She stepped forward, but his hand on her shoulder, very firm now, stopped her.
    â€œI think we have already established that in a battle between brains and brawn, brawn inevitably wins. Do you care to put it to the test one more time?”
    She looked at him and saw nothing but implacable determination. His eyes were the colour of volcanic lava—the surface black, but with lines of glowing light hinting at a fierce, banked heat within. Was it her imagination, or was that red-gold line of fracture a little wider now?
    She used to imagine that what she saw was a deep dynamo of passion—but he had been faking that. What was the source, then, of that half compelling, half dangerous heat?
    She was convinced that the man who had yesterday been prepared to marry her would now watch her starve without a flicker of conscience. Noor could just imagine him taking pleasure from eating his bloody kill in front of her without offering her a morsel. Yet the Bari she had known until yesterday—thought she had known—would have acted very differently in these circumstances.
    That curious sense of two time streams brushed her again. Suppose she had married Bari, and suppose they had taken off for their honeymoon and been brought down by the storm, ending up here, exactly where they were. How would he be treating her now?
    She laughed aloud. “You know, all things considered, I’m pretty lucky! It’s not very nice learning that a man’s a monster, but it could be a lot worse, couldn’t it? I could be discovering right now that I was married to a monster!”
    â€œA man protects his wife,” he contradicted her in a gravelly voice. “You are not my wife, by your own choice. Why does that make me a monster?”
    Something like regret reached for her, but she shook herself out of its stealthy grip, bent to toss aside the gold foil sheet, picked up the rectangle of white silk she had slept on last night, and wrapped it around herself. It didn’t offer much more actual protection than the skimpy teddy underneath, but psychologically, just here and just now, it was almost as good as putting on armour.
    She pulled the knot of her makeshift sarong tight above her breast, staring at him as she did so.
    With an arrogant blink that was his excuse for a nod, Bari turned and went over to the beached raft again, bending to search inside. When he straightened, he was tucking the knife into his waistband.
    â€œNot packing the ancestral sword today?” Noor commented brightly.
    â€œIt is a battle sword,” Bari told her softly. “It would be sullied by the blood of the hunt.” She wasn’t sure if he was joking, or speaking for effect, or telling the simple truth.
    â€œCommon sense somehow suggests,” she remarked sweetly, “that a hunter has to get a lot closer to his prey with a knife than with a three-foot blade, but I’m not going to argue with the great warrior!”
    â€œIt would be a waste of time, and you are hungry,” he agreed pleasantly.