The Sheikh's Virgin

Her own childish desert fantasy.

Inexplicable tears scalded the back of her eyes and she gripped her wineglass tightly. How terribly infatuated she used to be…

What a silly crush it’d been…

“Sheikh Nuri,” she breathed his name, unable to look at him.

His dark head inclined, his expression blank. “S-salamu alikum.”

The traditional Barakan greeting, Peace on you.

The wrong answer from what had once been the right man.

Her lips parted, air slipped out. Kalen Nuri was here. Stood just a foot away. The shock returned, hit her hard, a blow to the breastbone, a fierce punch that knocked the air from her, making her head light, nerves taut, everything too wobbly.

It had been years since she last saw him…and now he was here but he wasn’t her friend. Of that much she was certain.

“You can’t tell me that my father didn’t send you.” Her words were terse, anger pitching her voice low. “You can’t lie to me, too.”

He shrugged. “I can tell you the truth. But it’s your choice whether to listen. Your choice what to believe.”

“I want the truth.”

“I know what your father intends for you.”

He wasted no time, said it so bluntly that she couldn’t look away, and as she stared at him the craziest things happened inside her—inarticulate words like you’re here, you’re really here—even as her rational mind told her that he was more dangerous than anything her father had arranged for her. “My father works for your brother.”

Kalen made a dismissive gesture. “Your father works for himself.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t trust my father.”

“No.” The sheikh studied her just as intently as she had examined him. “Do you trust your father?”

“He’s my father.”

“Youthful naiveté.”

“Naiveté?”

“It’s a kinder word than stupidity.”

Her surge of temper didn’t help the pounding that had begun at the top of her skull. “What do you want?”

“As I said, to give you options.”

She said nothing, just stared at him.

Sheikh Nuri’s mouth curved but the shape wasn’t kind. “You don’t have to marry Mr. Abizhaid.”

Something inside her twisted up tight. No, she thought silently mocking herself. I used to want to marry you. “Really? And what’s wrong with Ahmed Abizhaid?”

“He’s old, he’s hairy, he’s heavyset.”

“So?”

“He has children from his first marriage older than you.”

She said nothing.

“He’s notorious for his fanaticism.”

Keira grit her teeth together, refusing to speak. She sensed that Sheikh Nuri was enjoying himself at her expense.

“And he has questionable political ambitions.” The sheikh lifted his hands, an expressive gesture of laying the facts out for her. “But if this is appealing…”

His voice drifted off and she looked away, saw the lights of the city flicker, the distant white and red streams of light indicating the freeway traffic. “It’s not appealing, and you know it.”

“You need my help.”

“I don’t want your help.” She didn’t want anything from any man. Once she’d been trusting, once, yes, she’d been naive, but she wasn’t the foolish girl of the past.

“So you’ll cut off your nose to spite your face?”

“You know nothing about my nose, or my face, Sheikh Nuri.”

“I know that lovely face will be veiled and hidden if you don’t allow me to help.”

She couldn’t answer. Terror filled her. She knew the life Sheikh Nuri described, knew of the women’s quarters, the secret women’s world and she didn’t want it. Couldn’t bear it. She’d never been Barakan. She’d finished university with honors, had been hired as a communications director for Sanford Oil and Gas, an international firm based in Dallas, and she traveled, worked, succeeded. Succeeded beyond her wildest expectations.

How could she have her freedom stripped? How could she go back to what she’d escaped?

No. No. She wouldn’t be segregated. Wouldn’t be veiled. Would never allow herself to be hidden as though she were something to be ashamed of. “I haven’t lived in Baraka since I was four,” she said.

“Your father has already sent people for you.”

Keira went hot, then cold.

“There are three men waiting at your house this very moment.” He paused, let his words sink in. “They’re not going away without you.”

“I won’t go home then.”

“Your father has infinite resources. He’ll find you wherever you go. And there his men will be. Waiting.”

“No.”

“Yes. And you know it’s true.”

She closed her eyes, hating him, hating the words he said. He was right. She knew he was right. Her father got what he wanted. Her father always did.

“Face the truth, Miss al-Issidri. It’s me. Or them. Pick your poison.”

CHAPTER TWO

PICK her poison?

Her father, or him? Disgusted, she groaned inwardly, her body seething with tension. “I’m not playing this game, Sheikh Nuri.”

“Maybe you aren’t, but your father is. Three men are waiting at your house now. They’ve a car, a plane, a flight plan. You go home and you become theirs.”

Her disgust intensified, as did her fear. Thoroughly chilled, she craved a wrap to keep her warm. “Why should I believe you?”

“Why should I lie to you?”

He sounded so perfectly reasonable and yet none of this made sense. She hadn’t lived in Baraka for years. She’d had little contact with her father these past seven years. Why would he force her into an arranged marriage now?

And what about her father’s plans would bring Sheikh Nuri to her doorstep?

This was about business or economics, she thought, and she wanted no part in either.

“You’ve ulterior reasons for being here,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the party still in full swing. Sheikh Nuri was one of the richest, most powerful men in the world. He was the special guest. He was the reason her boss wanted her here tonight.

“Yes.”

“You wanted me here tonight, didn’t you?”

“You’re the only reason I’m here.” He extended an arm in her direction. “Shall we go and take care of business?”

She looked at him, the dim moonlight playing across the hard features of his face, and suddenly she felt sixteen again. Head over heels in love with a man easily ten years her senior and she knew their lives were so different but she wanted part of his world anyway.

“Business?” she repeated numbly, and for a moment she was that sixteen-year-old, the one who felt so painfully alienated in school, so dark and foreign compared to the beautiful English roses, the one that missed her ballet classes, the intensely disciplined world of dance, the one who never shared what she felt with anyone but kept all her secrets buried deep in her heart.

“The men invading your home.”

Sheikh Nuri had a car waiting. The interior of the car was dark, the tinted windows allowing little exterior light to penetrate.

She practically hugged the corner of her seat, her hand wrapped convulsively around the door handle.

Small spaces, dark spaces made her skin crawl and it took all of her concentration to keep from breaking into a cold sweat.

Nothing bad is going to happen…

You’re just getting a ride home…

But she shouldn’t have left her car at the stadium. If she hadn’t left her car she’d be driving herself home. She’d be feeling safer. More secure. She wouldn’t be sitting so close to a man she didn’t know anymore…not that she ever really knew him. But she’d imagined.

Those fantasies.

They rode in silence and then Kalen rolled the window down. “We’re almost to your neighborhood, aren’t we?”

In the dark Keira could see flashes of her neighborhood, a suburb of tidy blocks with neat little houses and groomed little gardens. In the front yards of each house pink and white and purple crepe myrtles still bloomed and the first of the Japanese maple had started to turn red.

Indian summer.

Her favorite time of year.

“Yes.” With one finger tip she traced the glass. She loved her little house, loved the hammock slung up in the backyard, loved the idea of owning something of her own, something that no one could take away.

And like that, they were there, reaching her quiet street with the dogwoods and Japanese maples and crepe myrtles she so loved.

“Your house,” he said, slowing the car, drawing to a stop in front of her house.

“Yes.” Heartbreak wrapped around her chest, tight, vise-like. Was her freedom over? Slowly she turned her head, looked at Kalen Nuri intently. “Tell me again, tell me you’re not an emissary for my father.”

“I’m not an emissary for your father.”

She didn’t miss the faint mocking note in his voice, nor the strength he exuded just sitting there. There was nothing rough or rustic about Kalen Nuri, just a strength she couldn’t place and the sense of power, unlimited power…

He could have been the Sultan. He could have worn the crown easily. If it weren’t for the fact that his brother Malik was first born, Kalen Nuri could have been king. He was certainly proud enough. Confident enough.

“But you’ve spoken to my father?” she persisted, dazzled by the gold in his eyes, seeing the gilded grains of desert sand beneath the blaze of North African sun.

“No.” The corners of his eyes creased. “There’s little love lost between your father and me. He’s forced to tolerate me because I am Malik’s brother, but I dislike him intensely. And he knows it.” A deep groove formed next to Kalen’s mouth. “And I am here because he would not like it.”

His words were met by silence, but there was nothing quiet between them, nothing still about the night. The night crackled with tension, electricity, like a dark sky before a storm but tonight the sky was clear. Just moon, and stars and beneath the moon and stars the tension grew.

Being near him like this, talking so, made her head spin, her body hum. She fought to clear her mind now. “You said I had to pick my poison.”

“Yes.”

“You, or them, you said.”

“I did.”

“Why are those my only two options?”

For a moment he didn’t speak and then his broad shoulders shifted, a careless shrug. “Because who else will take on your father? Who else will turn his world inside out to prevent this marriage from taking place?”

She was missing something, there was a piece to this puzzle she didn’t see, didn’t understand, and she desperately wanted to understand. “I don’t want a man,” she said after a moment. “I do not need a man.”

“Want and need are two different things. You might not want me, Miss al-Issidri, but you need me.” He paused for emphasis. “There are worse things than accepting my protection.”

“You mean like being forced home to marry Mr. Abizhaid?” Hot brittle laughter formed in her chest. “I think I’d rather handle this my way,” she said, reaching for the door handle. “Unlock the car. I’m getting out.”

She heard the doors unlock. “And you do know you have visitors in the house?” he answered calmly.

Three, he’d said and she glanced at the house but saw nothing amiss, just the light left on in the entry hall that she always left burning when she knew she’d return late. “I see no one.”

“They’re not going to hang a Welcome Home sign, laeela.”

Laeela. Darling, love. An Arabic endearment that was like the kiss of the silken Saharan sands. No one had ever called her laeela before.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She swung the door open, stepped out, slammed the door shut. “Thanks for the lift, Sheikh Nuri.”

The sedan’s door opened again just as quickly as Keira shut it. “You need my help.”

“No,” she said, backing away, “I need my car. If you really want to help me, help me get my car back from the stadium parking lot. That way I can get to work in the morning.”

He laughed softly, approached her even as she continued backing away. “You really think you’re going to work tomorrow?”

There was danger in his voice, a soft warning she couldn’t ignore and she stopped moving long enough to meet his gaze, hold it.

There was nothing threatening in his expression but there was something else.

Knowledge.

Cynicism.

Mistrust.

Despite his dark tailored coat and the expensive leather shoes on his feet, he was a man with the sun and the wind and the desert in his eyes. More Berber than Western. Sheikh not European.

He was everything she didn’t know, everything she’d never understood. Keira turned, took a panicked step toward her house, and then another, and another until she was running up the porch to the front door. Her front door swung open so abruptly that Keira barely had time to register the man standing in the doorway—her doorway—before he opened his arms and grabbed her, thick arms enfolding her.

It happened so fast she didn’t even scream. One minute she was running for shelter and the next she was imprisoned and her mind went dark, blank, the blank from years past when terror was too great, when physical pain overrode mental pain and everything went quiet. Still.

Helplessly she turned her head, looked toward the brick walkway and Sheikh Nuri was there. Watching.

If only someone had been able to help her. If only someone had done something. If only someone…

You’re not sixteen. You’re a woman. Fight, Keira, fight.

And finally her vocal cords opened and she screamed. She wouldn’t die, wouldn’t fade to nothing this time. She wasn’t going to disappear, wouldn’t become air and light, wouldn’t lose herself again.

Thrashing now, her fear turned her into a demon horse, all thunder and hooves. Then panic gave way to rage. She wasn’t going to be hurt again. She’d never let herself be hurt again and her body came to life, elbows jabbing at ribs, feet kicking, aiming for knees.

“Put me down,” she demanded, “put me down now. I won’t go.”

And still she kicked and jabbed and she knew she got her assailant at least once good and hard as she heard a soft oath from behind her, a hiss of air between clenched teeth. “I won’t go,” she repeated, swinging her legs wildly, trying to connect with his groin, or a knee.

Desperation laced her brain. Sheikh Nuri could stop this. He could help her. He’d said he would.

But he said nothing, he simply stood there and all she knew was that she wouldn’t go back to Baraka, she wouldn’t be returned to her father’s house against her will.

Her desperate gaze found Sheikh Nuri’s and she hated him and yet needed him and she sobbed his name. “Kalen. Kalen, help me.”

It was enough. It was all he needed.

“Put her down.” Kalen Nuri’s coldly furious voice sliced through the air.

The man holding Keira froze. “Your Excellency.”

“Put her down,” Sheikh Nuri repeated, speaking Barakan, and it was a direct command from a member of the royal Nuri family. His authority was unmistakable.

“But, Your Excellency, we have been sent to bring her home.”

Kalen Nuri was walking now, climbing the front steps with a grace that masked his strength. “You dare to take my woman from me?”

Deafening silence descended. All motion ceased, all talk stopped, even Keira went weak.

“Your woman?” The man holding Keira repeated.

“My woman.” Kalen’s voice thundered low and menacing like a roll of heavy thunder across the heavens.

The arms holding Keira loosened. She felt herself lowered, placed back on her feet. The moment the arms eased from around her Keira moved to Sheikh Nuri’s side.

Kalen extended an arm, but didn’t touch her. “Lalla al-Issidri is in my protection.”

“But we have been sent for her.” A different man spoke, the second one to appear from the house. Somewhere was a third. “Sidi al-Issidri was very clear.”

“Let me be just as clear,” the sheikh answered with mock civility. “She is mine.”

Kalen glanced at Keira and Keira felt his gaze, felt a peculiar current curl in her, heat and fear, dread and anticipation. And looking at her, his amber gaze glowing hot, possessive, he added, “Keira al-Issidri is my woman. She belongs to me.”

And then the three men were gone.

Magic, Keira thought, as the men climbed into the car and drove away. Kalen might as well have been a magician like Merlin from the days of King Arthur’s court.

But it wasn’t magic, it was power. And he had far too much of it.

Keira faced Kalen on the front steps as the car disappeared down the street. For a moment neither spoke. Keira stared blindly past Kalen and he made no effort to start a conversation. And yet his silence wasn’t easy. She felt his anger.

“So it’s begun,” Sheikh Nuri said, eventually breaking the silence.

She wished she could say she didn’t know what he meant. She wished she were as naive as he’d accused her of being but Keira knew exactly what Kalen meant.

What had just happened on the front porch of her house was huge.

Sheikh Nuri had just publicly challenged her father. Sheikh Nuri had usurped her father’s authority. And Sheikh Nuri could, because he was third in line for the throne behind his brother and his two nephews.

Her father would be livid. Livid and humiliated.

Keira pressed a hand to her brow, pressing against the ache that had taken up residence there. She’d rejected her father. Accepted Kalen Nuri’s protection. In minutes she’d turned all their lives upside down.

“I should call my father,” she said, voice husky, goose bumps covering her arms.

“I’m certain he’s already heard.”

She gave her head a faint shake. “I should at least try to talk to him.”

Kalen Nuri took a step toward her, closing the distance between them. He stared at her so long and hard that she shivered and looked away.

“He is my father, after all,” she added defensively.

“And what will your call achieve?”

Keira couldn’t answer and Kalen took her chin in his hand, tilted her face up to his. “What do you think you’ll do?” he repeated his question impatiently. “If your father intended to listen to you, to care about your opinion, to care about your needs, he would have listened to you already.”

She hated what he was saying, hated that he was right and she tried to pull away but Kalen wasn’t about to let her go.

“Your father was going to use you to further his own political ambitions,” he added roughly, his fingers too hard on her jaw, his tone too sharp. “To a man like your father you are merely an object, a possession to be used, bartered, traded.”

Each word was worse. Each word bit and stung. “But you’re the same, aren’t you, Sheikh Nuri?” Her throat was swelling closed and she had to force each syllable and sound out. “You’re using me, too. You’re using me to get back at my father. At least be man enough to admit it.”

She heard his soft hiss at her insult. His touch changed, shifted, fingers extending from her chin to her jaw, his fingers briefly caressing the width of her jawbone.

“You lack a Barakan woman’s good sense and quiet tongue,” he said, his thumb slowly sweeping beneath the edge of her jaw, stirring the nerves in the most tender of skin.

Her skin flamed, nerves tightening at the maddening touch. “I’m not Barakan.”

“Yet I’m beginning to think you deserve a Barakan husband. One who would teach you humility and a modicum of self-control.”

She ground her teeth, temper flashing in her eyes. “Hate to disappoint you, Sheikh Nuri, but some things can’t be taught.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, laeela. Anything can be taught. It just takes the right teacher.” A flicker of dark emotion shone in his eyes. “And you would need not just a good teacher, but a patient teacher.”

A hot stinging fizz went through her veins, so hot, so intense that her lips parted on a silent gasp of tangled pleasure and pain.

He made her feel.

He made her feel far too much. “I don’t want a man.” She felt wild, desperate. She’d had so many feelings for Kalen Nuri all those years ago and then everything bad happened, everything had come unglued. “I never want a man.”

“You will when you meet the right man.”

“There is no right man.”

He gave her a long, level look. “There used to be,” he said, tone pitched low, hinting at intimacy and she stiffened.

“Never.”

“There was. Once.” His eyes narrowed, black lashes concealing his expression. “Many, many years ago.”

She closed her eyes, hiding her alarm. He was bluffing. He knew nothing.

Kalen’s thumb caressed her skin, lightly, teasingly stroking from chin to the small hollow beneath her earlobe. “There is always a right man. There is always the one man that can turn a girl into a woman—”

Panting, Keira pulled away, tearing herself from his touch, his words, tearing away the web he was weaving.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. She headed into the house, trying to put fresh distance between them and yet Sheikh Nuri followed immediately. She heard the front door shut, the lock turn. They were alone in her house.

Odd.

Heartbreaking.

And for a moment Keira held her breath, nerves taut, senses too alive. “Pack a suitcase,” Kalen said, meeting her in the hall, just outside her bedroom door. He looked so incongruous in her small, snug house with the bright yellow painted walls and the rich oak trim. It was a sunny house. A happy house. “We need to leave soon.”

Pack. Leave. He was frightening her and nervously she reached up, smoothed tendrils of hair back, combing her long dark ponytail, the ebony strands falling over her shoulder. “I can’t just leave. I have a job, responsibilities—”

“You chose me, remember?”

His soft question silenced her. She didn’t know what to say. Nothing came to mind. Nothing about this was logical and logic was her cornerstone, her foundation. Logic was how she functioned. Logic. Order. Structure.

In her bedroom she grabbed at clothes, pulling shirts and blouses, skirts and slacks from hangers. Everything went into her suitcase, shoes and belts and underwear, too.

She emerged ten minutes later, silent. He nodded at her suitcase, the purse in her hand, the coat over her arm. “Good. Let’s go.”

In the back of his car she sat as far from him as possible. She stared at a point beyond the car window. Minutes passed. Nothing was said but clearly the driver was heading somewhere. There was a definite destination in mind.

“Where are we going?” she asked, forcing herself to speak.

“London.”

“London?”

“That big city in England.”

Years ago she’d had a crush on Kalen Nuri, had even imagined herself in love with him. Kalen Nuri had dominated every waking thought—never mind her dreams. Now she was horrified she’d wasted one thought on him, much less a single breath. “You do not amuse me.”

“Does any man amuse you?”

When she didn’t answer he laughed softly, and there was nothing remotely kind in his laughter. “You’re one of those man-haters, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t realize we’d become a species, Sheikh Nuri.”

He laughed again, even more unkindly than before. “It will be interesting having you in my protection.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“Too late. You’re in my car. In my care.”

“Stop the car.”

“And soon you will travel in my airplane.”

“I won’t—”

“You will, because you, Keira al-Issidri, cannot stop what you have started. It has begun. This. Us—”

“No.” Hysteria bubbled up, bubbling close to the surface. “I didn’t know what I was doing, I wasn’t thinking—”

“You knew at the time. You knew it was me, or them. You chose me.”

She could hardly breathe. Her chest constricted. Her lungs felt as though they were collapsing. Try another tactic, a little voice urged her, there must be another way to reach him.

She tried again. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your concern, Sheikh Nuri, but I’m twenty-three, nearing twenty-four. I live in Dallas, am employed here in Dallas, and going to London isn’t possible.”