Taken by Storm (ROMANTIC REALMS COLLECTION) by M.J. Schiller

“Five?” He finished, tucking the end of the bandage into the folds he had created. He remained squatting in front of her, glancing down at the ground for a second, and then back up, squinting. “What’s your name?” he asked her for the second time, wondering if she would again refuse to answer him.
    “Bashea,” she replied softly.
    “Bashea,” he repeated. “That’s pretty.” Her gaze shifted from one of his eyes to the other with an unreadable expression on her face. He watched Bashea, frozen by her beauty, until Radeem’s loud snoring rudely broke the spell she’d cast. He laughed. “He’s a jewel, that one.” He gestured over his shoulder. Radeem’s head had fallen back against the tree trunk, his mouth open wide as he slept. Tahj got up to retrieve a blanket and spread it over the sleeping man, still laughing quietly.
    “He is your brother?” she questioned upon his return.
    “What? Radeem? No. My friend.” He busied himself by searching through the bag for a minute. “I’m Tahj, by the way.” He held out his hand, and she slipped her slender one into it.
    “Prince Tahj?”
    He frowned, rifling through the bag again. “I suppose. But prince of what?” he muttered, unwanted images of his slain mother and father filling his mind. A breeze blew, and she trembled again, wrapping her arms around herself. “I’ll get the fire started now.”
    She started to stand. “I’ll help.”
    Tahj laid a hand on her uninjured shoulder. “You just relax. You’ve had enough action today.”
    Clearing a spot in between the trees, Tahj collected brush to start his fire. He pulled a flint box out of one of the packs and soon had small flames leaping to life. As he returned to Bashea, he found her face even more bewitching in the firelight.
    “That feels good.”
    “Hmmm?” he responded absentmindedly.
    “The fire. It feels good.”
    He stirred himself to respond to her. “Oh, yes. Well, I’m sure a bigger one would feel even better, but I don’t want to take any chances on being discovered. We’ll just have to stay close. To the fire, that is,” he added lamely, but Bashea didn’t seem to notice. She was staring into the fire, mesmerized by the dance of the flames.
    “Mmm-hmm.”
    “I’ll be right back. I want to find a boulder or something to rest our backs against.”
    Tahj’s lopsided smile sent a strange shiver through Bashea. She looked down, afraid he would notice. After a second, she laughed at herself, shaking her head. Thick, wavy black hair, perfect, bronzed skin, a face that looked like it had been chiseled by a master, and that tantalizing flash of white teeth—what was not to like? But it was foolish to get all gaga over a man, and she was no fool.
    Bashea watched him leave the already comforting ring of light from the fire, feeling a sort of pang as he slipped away into the dark. She glanced over at his friend, who was oblivious to it all, and wondered over how she had gotten where she was, in the middle of the woods with a handsome prince and a loveable buffoon.
    Not for the first time, she thought about her family. Would they be sitting around a fire now, too, telling tales as they were the night she was abducted? Was Gaspard relating a story he read in some book he dug up, or was Bagrat horsing around with Jahmeel, coming dangerously close to the fire as they sparred with one another? Bashea hugged her knees closer, ignoring the pain it caused her shoulder, even as she was unable to ignore the pain in her heart. She rested her forehead on her knees and let hot tears roll down her cheeks where no one could see them, face buried in the little valley of her legs. Seconds later, hearing the crunch of a stick, her head sprang up and she hastened to wipe away the tears.
    Tahj had searched through the brush and now came back, emerging from the dark with a five-foot section of log laid across his shoulders, arms looped over it like a yoke. He grinned at Bashea, obviously pleased with