Strangers in the Desert by Lynn Raye Harris Page B

would be better simply to go inside.
    She turned to leave, intending to step over the knee-high hedges, but gasped at the sight of a man standing at the edge of the labyrinth, watching her.
    Adan.
    “I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
    He stepped over the first hedge. “Neither could I.”
    Then he stepped over another one. “You aren’t giving up, are you, Isabella?”
    He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Dear God in heaven. His torso gleamed in the moonlight, all hard planes and ridges where muscle and bone melded to create something damn near to perfection.
    Isabella swallowed. No, not
near
perfection. Definitely perfection. She’d seen enough muscled chests on the beaches of Maui for the past year to know perfection when she saw it.
    “I’m not getting anywhere,” she said, her pulse beginning to throb in her throat. And elsewhere.
    Her body was reacting, melting, aching. The surge of moisture between her legs didn’t shock her. Adan made her feel things that no man ever had. Hot, needy things. She wanted to roll with him in a bed, to feel his magnificent body inside hers, to see if the things she’d dreamed—remembered?—were as good as they were in her head.
    “It takes patience,” he said, stepping over another hedge, and then another one.
    “I’ve waited too long,” she said—and wondered exactly what she meant by that statement. He stepped over the last hedge, stopping in front of her. He was so near, his body radiating so much heat that she thought she might burn if she touched him.
    “Sometimes waiting makes the culmination that much sweeter.” His deep voice was a vibration of sound through her body. She felt the words as much as she heard them. “Finish the path, Isabella.”
    “Will you go with me?” Because it seemed it would be easier if someone was with her. Less frustrating.
    Slowly, he shook his head. “You have to walk it alone. But I’ll be waiting in the center.”
    And then, before she could stop him, he hopped the rest of the hedges into the middle. She wanted to do the same. She stood there, undecided for several moments. It was just a path, for heaven’s sake, and yet it intimidated her.
    “Trust me,
habibti.
Walk the path,” he urged.
    Isabella blew out a breath and started to trace her way through the path again. She didn’t want to finish. She wanted to
be
finished. Frustration built inside her like a snowball, gaining layers on each turn. The weight of it pushed outward until she felt she would split apart if she didn’t reach the middle. It urged her to just hop the hedges and join him.
    No.
    She was going to walk the damn thing at least once. She would not allow him to call her a quitter. She wasn’t a quitter, no matter what he might think. She didn’t know why she’d left her father’s house in the night, alone, but she would be damned if she’d let this man continue to believe it was because she had no staying power.
    She’d be damned if she’d let
herself
think it was because she had no staying power. Because that was her secret fear, she acknowledged. That she was somehow flawed and that Adan had been right. That she’d left because she couldn’t handle the responsibility.
    She circled toward the center again, then back outside, and then, just when she thought she was about to be directed to the outside yet again, the pathway spilled her into the grassy center. She stopped abruptly as a flood of emotion nearly overwhelmed her. And then the feelings of unworthiness, guilt and fear lifted offher shoulders—as if she’d been carrying a load of rocks that had suddenly fallen away.
    It was shocking. Because all she’d done was walk a circular, twisting path into a small clearing. It was nothing significant. Nothing earth-shaking or life-changing.
    And yet she felt as if she’d succeeded somehow.
    Adan held out his hand and she took it, let him pull her into the center of the clearing. He turned her until her back was to him. She could feel his body pressed close