Surrender in the Arms of the Sheikh

He picked her up in his arms and carried her towards the cool flagstones and the muted colours of a long, silken rug which softened it, lying her down on top of it. Sienna’s eyes fluttered open as if she had suddenly just come out of a coma and realised where she was.

‘What are you doing?’

There was a strange kind of startlement on her face which almost moved him—until he reminded himself that disingenuous questions like that one were sometimes asked out of habit more than necessity. Had she learnt somewhere along the line that men were turned on by innocence? But he would play along with the game if it eased her conscience.

‘What do you think I’m doing?’ he said softly, as he lay down beside her—he, the Sheikh, lying on the floor with a woman. ‘I am fulfilling my wildest dream and fantasy.’

And hers, too.

‘Really?’ she questioned tentatively.

‘But of course,’ he said smoothly, taking her into his arms, knowing that his embrace would dispel any lingering doubts. ‘I want you, Sienna. My beautiful Sienna. Indeed, I have never stopped wanting you. Did you not know that?’

She shook her head, her mind a whirl of confusing thoughts. ‘But you—’

‘Shh.’

His face was close to hers, his breath warm on her face, and all she wanted was for him to kiss her again. She felt the ground hard beneath her back, and the hard body pressing against hers, and fleetingly she wondered how and why she had allowed this to happen. But it was only very fleeting, and suddenly it didn’t matter. She couldn’t stop. She didn’t want to stop.

Once—a long time ago—Hashim had given her a taste of passion and it had branded and spoiled her for ever. The men who had tried to get close to her subsequently had had an impossible act to follow, even if they hadn’t been aware of it at the time. And might not this single act help her to exorcise a ghost which was all too real, to move on and break free of his enchantment?

She licked at her dry lips. ‘We do not have very long. Wh-what about the staff? The… the guests?’ she managed.

Hashim stilled, his eyes narrowing. If there had been any tiny vestige of guilt at his cold-blooded seduction then she had banished it with her words. She knew exactly what she was doing. She was sexually hungry, as he was, and probably almost as experienced. Well, then—let her see who was the most magnificent lover of all her conquests!

For he too had been enchanted by the sense of nearly. Of something unfinished and incomplete. In his anger—with himself as well as with her—he had sent her packing before he had properly had his fill of her, and that sense of aching and burning frustration had never quite gone away. Well, now it would— and it would be gone for ever.

‘We have long enough,’ he said, and the stark note of hunger made his voice sound hollow—as if it came from a long way away—and for a moment he scarcely recognised it as his own.

And hunger made his hands tremble, made his need to join with her overwhelm him with a desire which banished all his carefully conceived plans. Forgotten was his long-nursed wish to feast upon the magnificent breasts which she had displayed for all the world to see. Instead—unbelievably and inexplicably—he found that he didn’t want to wait. No—couldn’t wait.

With a groan, he rucked up her skirt and found himself ripping off the delicate panties. She made no protest, her legs parting for him instantly. His robes were not encumbered by belts or buttons or zips. He could slither off the light silk of his trousers with ease until he was free at last, sliding on the necessary protection with the impatient fumbling of a schoolboy. And then he was touching and nudging against her with a restrained and magnificent power. At last! Such sweet torture, this moment of expectation, but a torture to be treasured and savoured until he could bear it no longer.

‘Now,’ he whispered—not a question but an emphatic statement, and in answer her lips pressed into his shoulder, opening against him, closing around his flesh. He could feel the wet of her tongue and the sharp graze of her teeth and could contain himself no longer. He drove hard into her.

There was one moment before he realised, a split- second as he worked out what was happening but by then it was too late. He saw the screwing up of her eyes, the way her little white teeth bit down on her bottom lip, and then he knew. By the mountains and the rivers!

‘Sienna!’ The word was torn from his lips even while her body became taut, like a bow stretched around him, before the arrow of his desire pierced through to the very heart of her. ‘Sienna!’ he said again, but this time it was on a note of wonder.

‘Oh,’ she breathed, the word a little feather which drifted away as the pain became transmuted into a growing and indescribable wave of pleasure and he began to move inside her.

He had planned his own release with little concern for hers—not like the first time—but now it was different. Now it was a virtuoso performance. Never had he taken so much care with a woman as he thrust all the way inside her—but then, never had the weight of such responsibility lain so heavy on his shoulders.

He found himself being gentle with her—an odd and unfamiliar kind of gentleness which made what was taking place seem to do so in slow motion, like a film viewed through a gauzy lens.

‘Ah, Sienna.’ And her name came out on a long, shuddering sigh.

He was slow for as long as he needed to be, and then a little faster. He held back for as long as he needed to, and then he drove in again, harder and then harder still. He teased her when she breathlessly began to beg for more, relentlessly retreating to take her further along the inexorable path, and just when he thought that he could withstand no more of this exquisite self-control he felt her begin to convulse around him.

Her cries split the air, her legs splaying and her back arching as her sweat-sheened face fell back, and she was calling his name in wonder and in disbelief. And then—oh, sweet, sweet desire—then he let go himself, in an orgasm which rocked his world on its axis—which took him completely out of his body. It was a slow drift back to earth, and he fought it every bit of the way.

It had been the most mind-blowing sex of his entire life—but that should not have surprised him, not really.

After all, he had been waiting for this for a long, long time.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THROUGH the soft darkness Sienna became aware of her heart as it beat within her, strong and loud and steady. And then she became aware of another beat and another heart—so close to hers that it almost felt as if it was inside her. She felt warm and complete— as if she had been made whole at last—the slight aching deep inside her a glorious physical reminder of what had seemed like a perfect dream.

Opening her eyes, she took in the scene with something approaching disbelief. It had not been a dream. She was lying on a carpet in a dim, cool corridor in Hashim’s arms, her dress around her hips, and he was staring down at her. Impossible to read what was in those glittering black eyes, but his question gave her some idea.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked quietly, his voice as deadly as the silent snakes which glided around the foothills of Qudamah’s mountains.

‘Tell you what?’ she teased.

‘Do not play games with me! You are a virgin!’

She heard the accusation in his voice and the pink bubble of contentment began to dissolve. ‘I was,’ she corrected.

He shook his dark head. ‘I cannot believe it!’

‘I’m afraid you have incontrovertible evidence, Hashim.’

‘But… how?’

At any other time his incredulity would have been almost laughable, but now… now it just hurt. ‘Surely you don’t need me to tell you that?’ she questioned quietly.

His mouth tightened. He was still reeling from this one incredible piece of knowledge which had rocked his world just as surely as his orgasm had. For the fact of her innocence had blown all his preconceptions out of the water. And it had done something else, too….

From the start his instinct about her had been that she was innocent, but the existence of the calendar had convinced him that her innocence had been a sham. But if that instinct had been correct then what about the other ones which had crowded in on him at the time? The ones which had left him muddled and confused making him wonder if he had found in her something which he had not thought possible?

And hadn’t he been glad to abandon those feelings by seizing on her questionable past with something like relief? As if he found it easier to live in a state of cynicism rather than one of hope and longing, like other men.

He shook his head again, dazed and angry, too. ‘It should not have been like that.’

She wanted to tell him that it had been perfect, but something in his attitude was puzzling her. He was acting as if something shameful had just taken place—rather than the something wonderful it had been. She stared up at him. ‘What was wrong with it?’

‘Wrong?’ A frown creased his brow as he studied her face, rather as a scientist might intently bend over a test tube. ‘Nothing was wrong with it.’ How could she fail to understand? ‘But it would never have happened if I had known. Why did you not tell me, Sienna?’

Because she hadn’t been thinking of anything except the touch of his lips and the hard, strong embrace of his lean body. She had found it impossible to stop something she had wanted for so long—even though she had denied wanting it. Had told herself that it was wrong to want it.

‘We weren’t having much of a conversation at the time,’ she said, aware that her voice sounded flippant.

‘Your first time should not be with a casual lover on the floor of an anonymous house,’ he said, and his deep voice was tinged with regret. ‘Your virginity is a gift which you have clearly treasured, as every woman should. You should have saved it for a man you love. Who loves you.’

And with those sad words he smashed all her foolish hopes and dreams. He made her feel as if she had offered him fresh flowers at dawn—still wet with the morning dew—and he had taken them and carelessly tossed them into the gutter, to be ground underfoot into dust and crushed petals.

He seemed so far away, even though he was right next to her. A moment ago he had been kissing her over and over again, but he was not kissing her now. The hands which had wrought such sweet magic were not touching her now. It was done. Finished. And Sienna felt the dull ache of dawning realization, which eclipsed the deeper aching in her newly awakened body.

She had allowed… no, she had been a more than willing participant in allowing herself to be brought here. To lie with him on this hard stone floor and to…to…She would not use the words ‘make love’, for it had not been that. It had been nothing to do with love. He had just told her so.

So why were erotic and tender images still jostling for position in her mind? The way she had called out his name in breathless wonder. The way her body had shivered its pleasure, and the way that pleasure had grown and surged and taken her into a place where the senses reigned supreme. And she had stupidly allowed herself to believe that for him it meant more than simply pleasure. That his whispered words of encouragement and pleasure had been voicing some deeper emotion than mere desire—a longing more precious than lust. But in that she had been totally wrong.

Sienna swallowed, forcing the memories away, for they would soon bring nothing but pain. It was too late for regret, but not too late for pride. ‘Well, there’s no point in having a post mortem, is there?’ she said, hearing the false brightness in her tone.

He was silent for a moment, and then his eyes imprisoned her—searching and seeking to know. ‘Why has there been nobody else?’ he demanded.

It was a question she had asked herself many times—and, oh, how it would feed his monstrous ego if she told him what she suspected was the truth: that he was the only man she had ever remotely imagined making love to. Men had tried, but they had failed. Or was it she who had failed—to abandon foolish hope and try to make the best of an ordinary life?

‘You make it sound like a fault on my part that there hasn’t been,’ she said bitterly.

His eyes narrowed. ‘What happened between us that last time. The way I behaved. Did that put you off men?’

‘In a way.’ But not the way he meant.

‘You should have told me,’ he said, and now his voice was angry. ‘Back then you should have told me. But now—now when you are older and more independent, a true woman at last—you should have said something!’

‘Would you have believed me?’

Another silence.

‘Would you?’ she persisted.

‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘I guess I wouldn’t have.’ He felt like a man who had been swimming towards a familiar shore only to discover that he was headed for a strange land of which he knew nothing. None of it made any sense to him. How could it? She? Of all people? A virgin?

‘Because you’d already made your mind up about what kind of woman I was. The photos proved that I must be some sort of slapper!’

Hashim’s eyes narrowed, his English for once deserting him. ‘Slapper?’

‘The kind of woman who will just sleep with anyone. You didn’t look further than skin-deep, did you, Hashim? You just made a judgement about me. But people are a lot more than they appear to be on the surface. Not cardboard cut-outs but living and breathing flesh and blood, with flaws and strengths all their own! Don’t you realise that?’ she finished.

‘I’m afraid that my position sets me apart,’ he told her coolly, seeking a familiar refuge behind the invisible barrier of his royal status. ‘I do not have the luxury of the time to dig deep beneath the surface.’

‘Or the inclination to even try?’ she challenged.

‘Maybe not,’ he admitted, for it was impossible not to answer that lancing question in her green eyes.

Sienna nodded, forcing herself to voice the bitter truth. She had allowed passion to cloud her vision, but now that passion had passed it was achingly clear. ‘You see women as commodities,’ she whispered. ‘To be used for passing pleasure but little else, other than maybe one day motherhood.’ And she felt a stupid great yearning as she realised that Hashim would never put her in that category. Not in a million years. A woman who had allowed herself to be photographed in that way, a woman who had fallen oh-soeasily into his arms, was merely a woman to be discarded. And the aching sense of longing for something she could never have washed over her in a bitter tide.

He could feel her retreating from him—not just mentally, but physically, too, and that reawakened the desire which had been obscured by his startling discovery. He was used to calling the shots, and by rights he should have been the one to distance himself from her now. Or not.

‘Ah, Sienna,’ he murmured, and reached out his hand to cradle her face. ‘What is done is done. Is it not a little late in the day for words of recrimination?’

Involuntarily Sienna trembled—for the touch of his skin was soft and warm and exquisite to behold. It had the power to lure her back into that place of unimaginable pleasure. But at what cost? She shook his hand away and sat up.

‘Yes, you’re right, it is. I should have said all this before.’

‘But you could not!’ he breathed triumphantly. ‘For you were as much in thrall to me as I to you! What just happened between us was as inevitable as the passing of night through to day. I knew that.’

‘Well, we’re all entitled to make mistakes,’ she said woodenly. ‘And anyway, we’re wasting time, sitting around here talking. Your guests will be arriving very soon and I suggest that we both of us try to tidy up.’ She reached up her hand to feel the bird’s nest mess of her hair, wondering how the hell she was going to tame it down.

She was surprised that he wasn’t leaping around fretting. He hadn’t once mentioned the no-show of the staff. Or the fact that his guests would be upon them shortly. And then something else occurred to her—dripping into her thoughts like slow poison— something which in its way was almost as bad as what she had just let happen. She could feel the heavy plummeting of her heart as everything clicked into disturbingly sharp focus.

Oh, no.

How could she have been so stupid?

Slowly, she turned her head to stare at him. ‘But there aren’t going to be any guests—are there, Hashim?’

He met the accusation in her eyes but he did not flinch from it. ‘No.’

‘There were never going to be any guests, were there?’

‘No.’

She geared herself up for the next blow, knowing the answer to her question before she asked it. ‘And the staff? The staff I so carefully vetted and booked but who didn’t bother to show?’

‘I allowed them to prepare for the dinner, so that your suspicions would not be alerted, and then I cancelled them.’

‘You cancelled them,’ she said slowly, feeling sickened by the sheer cold-bloodedness of his plan. ‘Just like that?’

He shrugged. ‘It was not difficult. I paid them in full.’

‘You paid them in full?’ she repeated, her voice shaking, haunted by the thought that she had followed suit. Fallen into line and done exactly what Hashim had wanted. What he had planned. He had lured her into a sensual trap which she had embraced with all the enthusiasm of the convert. She felt the hot sting of hurt but she would not allow it to be converted to tears. She would not cry in front of him.

‘You snapped your fingers and everybody jumped, I expect. You and your damned money and your damned power,’ she whispered. He had tricked her into organising a party just so that he could seduce her—how low could a man sink? And how could she have let him? How could she? The true extent of his deception brought fire into her voice.

‘You think you can just pick people up and use them, move them around like pawns and then throw them off the board when you’ve finished with them?’ she raged.

Hashim listened, waiting patiently for the storm to pass. Let her rage be spent, and then afterwards let her see sense. Realise that what had passed between them had been magnificent and that to let it go would be a waste of the highest order. Why, he could take her upstairs to one of the magnificent bedrooms, where they could continue to take their pleasure. Her anger would soon be forgotten after a night in his arms!

‘Sienna—’

‘No!’ she said fiercely, pushing away from him and scrambling to her feet. She had seen the brief darkening of his eyes, and she might be new to this game but she knew exactly what it meant. And did she trust herself around him? No, she did not. Her spirit might be fighting all the way, but around Hashim her flesh was as weak as it could be.

She moved as far away from him as possible. There was no dignified way of adjusting her dress and her panties, but she did her damnedest, raking her fingers back through the hair which had tumbled in untidy tendrils all down the side of her long neck.

And at least she had the enjoyment of seeing Hashim get to his feet and begin to rearrange his clothing, his face now tight with obvious displeasure and a simmering kind of anger. Or was it merely frustration?

She walked out into the hall, all the warmth and comfort and pleasure evaporating from her body like raindrops on a scorching pavement. And then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and recoiled at the sight of her flushed cheeks and mussed hair— the definite look of someone who had been rolling around the place.

How could she? Oh, how could she?

She picked up her handbag and a silken voice stopped her in her tracks.

‘Where do you think you are going?’ he questioned softly.

Composing her face, she turned round, and suddenly she didn’t care what he tried to threaten her with. Just let him try. Nothing could be worse than what she had just allowed to happen, despite all her supposedly good intentions. ‘Home,’ she said crisply. ‘Where else?’

‘You could come home with me.’

Sienna almost choked. ‘I’d rather spend the night in a lions’ cage! And anyway—I wouldn’t call a luxury hotel suite a home! It isn’t yours, it’s anonymous —just like this place. There’s nothing of you there, Hashim. A luxurious room with no soul. And that’s your life. Empty.’

For a moment a dark shadow passed across his heart. She dared to say this to him? To accuse him of an empty life? He, who had palaces and oil fields and people scattered all over the world who were eager to do his bidding? No woman had ever dared say such a thing to him. She was daring to look at him and speak to him as no woman ever had before …almost as his equal. Again he felt the sensation of being on unfamiliar territory, and his mouth hardened in anger.

‘I forbid you to go!’

‘Well, you can’t. You don’t own me. You don’t even employ me any more. I’ve done what you asked and now I’m leaving.’

His eyes narrowed as he glanced around the carved wooden interior of the airy hall. ‘And what of this house and your obligation to it?’ he demanded.

‘It’s not my concern. Not any more. You sort it out! Here!’ And she flung the keys at him.

He caught them one-handed, realising that she meant exactly what she said. She was leaving! Walking out on him even though she had been sobbing out his name only moments before. And suddenly he was filled with a reluctant kind of admiration which only renewed the subtle throbbing of desire. ‘Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you look when you’re angry?’ he questioned softly.

‘Fortunately, most people have a more original line than that!’

‘But it is not finished yet, Sienna,’ he said evenly. ‘I tell you that quite unequivocably. You have but tasted the pleasures I can give you, and soon you will be greedy for more.’

‘Oh, but you’re wrong. So wrong.’ She stared at him. ‘After all, we’re even now. I deceived you, and now you’ve paid me back by deceiving me. We can call it quits. I just want to forget you and your fake party. In fact, I want to forget all about you.’

He shook his head and his mouth curved into a cruel smile. ‘You still don’t understand, do you, Sienna? Those are not my wishes—and the Sheikh always has his wishes fulfilled.’

He wasn’t listening to a word she said! Frustratedly, she turned away, and his dark laughter was still ringing in her ears as she slammed her way out of the front door, running down to where her beaten-up little wreck of a car was parked beside his smooth, dark sports model. And if she needed some concrete evidence of the insurmountable differences in their lives she had only to look at their two contrasting cars.

It’s over, she told herself fiercely.

So why did she look up into the driver’s mirror to see his tall dark figure, the silken pomegranate robes whispered by the breeze to caress that hard, honed body which had made such sweet and unforgettable love to her?

She turned the key in the ignition with an angry jerk. It was over.

CHAPTER NINE

HASHIM rang her. Repeatedly. Sienna kept the phone on ‘divert’, but once she picked it up without checking and heard his voice, and quietly terminated the connection with a trembling hand.

He sent her a cheque—such a grossly inflated cheque that the businesswoman side of her momentarily weakened, until she allowed her righteous fury to put it in an envelope and send it back to him. She supposed she could have torn it up—but returning it might help to get the message through loud and clear.

He even tried flowers—and for some reason those riled her more than anything. How dared he think he could buy her off with a bunch of flowers?

‘They’re lovely,’ Kat said wistfully, sniffing at the lily-of-the-valley and freesia and roses.