Shackled To The Sheikh

CHAPTER THREE

NICE, SHE REGISTERED vaguely as he swept her through the marble-floored lobby of one of the oldest and classiest hotels in Sydney. Very nice. People dreamed of spending a night at The Velatte—ordinary people, that was. Clearly the man at her side was no ordinary person. But then, she already knew that. No ordinary person had ever set her pulse racing just by his presence. No average garden-variety man had ever set fires under her skin merely with his touch.

And now it was anticipation of a night with this far from ordinary man making the blood spin around her veins and her knees feel weak.

The lift whisked them to a high floor, his arm wound tightly around her, another couple in the lift the only thing that kept him from pulling her into his kiss, if the heated look in his dark eyes she caught in their reflection in the mirrored lift walls was any indication—mirrored panels that also gave her the chance to steal a closer look at the man she’d agreed to spend the night with. The flash of strobe in the darkened bar had shown her a face of all straight lines and planes—the dark slash of brows, the sharp blade of his nose, the angles of his jaw—but now she could see the softer lines of his mouth and the fullness of his bottom lip and the curve of flesh over high cheekbones. The combination worked.

It was then she realised that his eyes weren’t black but the deepest, deepest blue, like the surface of the bottomless ocean on a perfectly calm day.

He was beautiful, way too beautiful to be by himself, and the good girl in her wondered why he was, while the bad girl in her—the newly found bad girl who drank cocktails in basement bars and threw herself at random men on a whim—rejoiced. Because right now she was the one here in this lift with him.

He opened the door to his room that turned out to be a suite because it was a sitting room they entered, decorated in modern classics in grey and cream and illuminated with standing lamps, lending the room a subtle golden glow. Oh, no, this man was definitely not ordinary. He was either loaded, or his employer’s accountant was going to have a heart attack when the expense-account bill came in.

‘It’s huge,’ she said, overwhelmed, wondering just who this man she’d met in a nightclub and with whom she’d agreed to a night with actually was.

‘I got an upgrade,’ he said dismissively, as if that explained a suite fit for a king, as he headed towards a phone. ‘Something to drink?’

Her mouth was dry but only because every drop of moisture in her body had been busy heading south ever since he’d asked her to spend the night. ‘Anything,’ she said, and he ordered champagne for two and put the receiver down, the fingers of one hand already unbuttoning his shirt.

‘The bedroom’s through here,’ he said as he led the way into a room with furniture in both gloss white and dark timber, with white louvre glass doors opening onto a terrace beyond. A super-king-sized bed with a plump quilted headrest and snowy white bed linen held pride of place against the opposite wall.

‘So,’ he said as he reefed off his shirt and tossed it onto a chair in the corner, exposing a chest that wouldn’t have looked out of place on her annual firefighters’ fundraising calendar. ‘Shower first?’

She stood transfixed, drinking in his masculine perfection, the sheer poetry of tightly packed muscle under skin, until his hands moved to his belt, and with a jolt she realised she should be doing something, too, not standing around ogling him and waiting to be seduced.

This wasn’t a seduction after all. Clearly he’d done his seducing in getting her here. This was more like getting down to business.

‘Oh, right,’ she said, her tummy a mass of flutters, the bad girl inside her overruled by the good girl who was suddenly aware of how far out of her league she was, and not just because this man came with serious money. Here he was, shedding clothes and shoes in a lighted room more easily than an autumn tree shed its leaves in the wind and no doubt expecting her to do likewise. She slid off her shoes, her fingers playing at her buttons as she remembered what she’d put on this morning, wishing she’d worn something a bit more exciting under her boring black skirt and shirt than her even more boring underwear. Not that she had a seduction collection, exactly, but she might have managed to wear something that at least smacked of lace.

She swallowed as she pulled the shirt free from the waistband of her skirt and eased it over her shoulders, feeling more self-conscious by the second as she stood there in her department-store skirt and regulation bra. ‘I didn’t dress for...’

He looked at her, a frown tugging at his brows, as he shrugged off his trousers, revealing denim-coloured elastic fitted boxers that fitted his hard-packed body so well, there were no bulges anywhere—except where there should be.

Oh, my...she thought, her stomach flipping over, her mouth Sahara dry, and she wondered how long the champagne would take to arrive. She didn’t need the alcohol particularly, but her mouth sure could do with the lubrication.

‘I’m not interested in your underwear,’ he said as he padded on bare feet towards her, his steps purposeful rather than rushed. He lifted her chin with the tips of his fingers and pressed his lips lightly to hers while his other hand eased the tie from her hair, making her scalp tingle, pulling it free so that her hair tumbled heavily over her shoulders. His fingers skimmed down her throat and to her shoulder, found the strap of her bra and curled a fingertip beneath, before slipping it away down her arm. He pushed the hair back and dipped his head and pressed his lips to her bare shoulder and breath hissed through her teeth. ‘I’m interested in what lies beneath.’

She shuddered on a sigh, her breasts achingly tight, as she felt his clever fingers at her back as he slid her bra away. And then her skirt was riding low and lower over her thighs before she realised he’d even unzipped it. ‘Very interested,’ he said, standing back to take her in, dark storm clouds scudding over the deep ocean blue of his eyes. He touched the pads of his thumbs to her bolt-like nipples and twin spears of sensation shot down deep into her belly, triggering an aching pulse between her thighs. Her groan of need was out before she could haul it back, but he didn’t seem to mind as he sucked her into a deep kiss that amplified the sensations.

‘What happened to the brazen woman who accosted me in a bar?’

She was a fraud. Tora swallowed. ‘She was angry. She was proving a point.’

‘Is she still angry?’

‘Yes, but now she just wants to forget why.’

‘Oh,’ he said, his eyes gleaming as he swung her into his arms and headed for the shower. ‘I can make you forget.’

* * *

Her stranger was true to his words. Granted, he had steam, a rainforest shower head and slippery gel on his side, but his clever hands and mouth had a way of making her forget everything besides being naked with a man she wanted to bed her with a compulsion and an urgency she’d never felt before—an urgency he didn’t seem to mirror.

When he’d turned on the taps and shucked off his underwear, she’d gasped at his size, not with fear, but with anticipation. She wasn’t a virgin. She knew how things worked and what generally happened and, if she was totally honest, she’d always wondered what it would be like to make love with a man so well equipped. But then he’d hooked his fingers into the sides of her underwear and pushed them down and she’d imagined that a minute or two of foreplay in the form of soaping each other’s skin, and they’d be making love right here in the shower.

Apparently he wasn’t in such a rush.

He kissed her again, long and deep, as she clung to his shoulders, while the torrent rained down upon them, his slippery hands in her wet hair, down her throat to cup her breasts before sliding down her sides, the touch of his long fingers relaying the dip of her waist in a way she’d never felt or seen so clearly in her mind’s eye before. Every curve his fingers seemed to find, every jut of bone explored on their seemingly leisurely but purposeful way south. It almost felt as if his fingers were mapping her terrain.

She gasped again, into his seeking mouth this time, when one hand cupped her mound. She felt his lips smile around hers before his mouth dipped to her throat, to kiss her shoulder and then worship her breasts on his way down to kneeling before her, his lips traversing her belly, his fingers deep between her thighs and the pulsing flesh that lay within.

Oh, God. She shuddered as he parted her legs, turning her face up into the spray as his fingers opened her to him. Exposed her to him. She thought she knew about sex. She’d thought this would be over in a minute. But she might just as well have known nothing. She felt like a virgin all over again.

She knew nothing at all, but...

Pleasure.

It came upon her in waves as his tongue lapped at her very core, teasing her beyond existence, beyond reason, as all she knew was sensation.

His tongue. The steam. The water cascading over her and his fingers teasing, circling her aching centre.

Right now there was nothing but sensation, and the inexorable build to a place a man had never taken her. A place she’d never believed it possible for a man to take her unassisted. This man was taking her all the way.

She felt his fingers stray closer until they edged inside her. She felt the tug of his mouth on her screaming nub of nerve endings and she felt the surge coming. She bit her lip to stop from crying out but there was no stopping the wave that washed over her and the cry that came all the same as her body broke around him.

* * *

He supported her before her knees could give way and she fell, and she felt him there, at her core.

Yes, she thought, because even on her way down from the highs he’d taken her to she still wanted this—wanted him deep inside her—more than anything.

But then, just as she thought she had him, just as her muscles worked to urge him in, he pulled away on a curse and slammed open the shower door.

She blinked as he pulled a towel from a rack and wrapped it around her, swinging her into his arms.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said, still trembling after her high and back to the virgin she wasn’t, fearful she’d done something wrong.

‘Nothing,’ he said as he deposited her in the centre of the big wide bed before pulling out a drawer, ‘that this won’t fix.’

He tore the top from the foil packet and rolled the condom down on him and suddenly it made sense and she was glad one of them was still thinking.

‘Now,’ he said, his face grim as he positioned himself between her legs, ‘where were we?’

And the virgin inside her turned wanton as she wrapped her hand around his bucking length and felt his power and his need within her fingers, and placed him at her core. ‘Right here.’

His eyes flared with heat as he growled with approval, and her heart skipped a beat as he took her hands and pinned them each side of her head, their fingers intertwined, and then with one long thrust he was inside her and sparks went off behind her eyes.

It was sex, she had to remind herself, just sex, because in that moment it had seemed that the world as she knew it revolved around that moment and that moment only.

He leaned down and kissed her then, so sweetly and reverently that she wondered if he’d felt it, too, this tiny spark of connection that went beyond physical, before he let go her hands and raised himself higher and slowly withdrew. She almost whimpered at the loss, wanting to hold him inside and keep him there, but then he was back, lunging deeper if that were possible, the slide and slap of flesh against flesh bringing with it that tidal flow of sensation, in and out and building each time until their bodies were slick with sweat. There was nowhere left to go, nowhere left to hide, and the next wave surge crashed over her and washed her away.

She clung to him as he went with her, tossed helplessly in the foaming surf of her undoing, gasping for air, not knowing which way was up.

He pressed his lips to her forehead before he slumped beside her. ‘Thank you,’ she heard him say between his ragged breaths, and she wondered if he could read her mind, for they were the exact same words she wanted to tell him.

* * *

He watched her sleep in the yellow-grey light, watched the slow rise of her chest and listened to the soft sigh as she exhaled, all the time wondering at a woman who had turned up exactly when he’d needed her. A woman who had made him forget the shocks of today so well that he’d almost forgotten to use protection.

When had that ever happened before?

Never, that was when.

He shook his head. He was more affected by today’s revelations than he’d realised if he could forget something so absolutely fundamental. There could be no other reason for it. Other than the way she’d come apart so furiously that he hadn’t wanted to wait, he’d wanted to follow her right then and there.

Propped up on his elbow, he lay alongside her, watching her eyelids flutter from time to time. Her hair splayed wild around her head and against the pillow. Tangled. Elemental. He touched a finger to one of the coils, felt the silk and steel within the shafts of hair and congratulated himself for walking down the stairs into that basement bar.

One night with a stranger had never been so desperately needed and so satisfying.

Almost.

He leaned over, pressed his lips to hers. Her eyelids fluttered open and momentary surprise gave way to a tentative smile. ‘Oh, hi,’ she said as her smile turned wary. ‘Is it time for me to go?’

‘No way,’ he said as he pulled her into his arms. ‘You’re not going anywhere just yet.’

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WAS STILL dark when her phone buzzed, only dull yellow street light filtering up from the street far below sneaking between the gaps in the curtains. Disoriented and aching in unfamiliar places, Tora took a while to work out where she was let alone manage to stumble from the bed and find where she’d left her bag. Groggily she snatched up her mobile and stole a glance over her shoulder. Behind her Rashid lay sprawled on his front, legs and arms askew as he slept. He looked magnificent, like a slumbering god, somehow even managing to make a super-king-sized bed look small.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, and listened while Sally apologised for calling her on her day off, but it was an emergency and could she come in?

She closed her weary eyes and put a hand to her head, pushing back her hair. How much sleep had she had? Not a lot. Not a good way to go to work, especially not when she had news to tell her friend—bad news—and she’d really wanted more time before breaking it. ‘Are you sure there’s nobody else?’

But she already knew the answer to that or Sally wouldn’t have been calling on the first day off she’d had for two weeks. ‘One more thing,’ Sally said, once she’d told her she’d be there in an hour. ‘Pack a bag and bring your passport. Looks like you might need them.’

‘Where am I going?’

‘I’m not sure exactly. I’ll fill you in on what I do know when you get here.’

Tora slipped her phone away and glanced once more at the man she’d left sleeping on the bed, the man who’d blown her world apart and put it back together again more times than she would have believed possible in just one night. She shouldn’t be sorry there wouldn’t be one more time, she really shouldn’t. No, no regrets. It was a one-night deal and now that night was over. She gathered up her discarded shirt and skirt and abandoned underwear and dressed silently in the bathroom.

Leaving this way was better for both of them. At least this way there was no chance of an awkward goodbye scene. No chance of anyone expecting too much or appearing hopeful or needy.

He seemed like the kind of man who’d be relieved she wasn’t going to hang around and argue the point.

She picked up her shoes and spared one last glance towards the bed.

One night with a stranger.

But what a night.

He’d done what he’d promised to do. He’d blotted out the pain and the anger of her cousin’s betrayal. He’d taken her from feeling shell-shocked and numb with grief and for a few magical hours he’d transported her away from her hurt and despair to a world filled with unimaginable pleasure.

He’d made her forget.

She let the door snick behind her.

It was going to be a hell of a lot harder to forget him.

* * *

He woke with a heavy head from too little sleep and with a dark mood brewing yet still he reached for her. There were things he had to do today, facts he had to face from which there was no escaping—headaches, each and every one of them—but the lawyer and the vizier and the headaches could wait. There was something he wanted more right now in this drowsy waking time before he had to let the cold, hard light of day hit him, as he knew it soon would. Someone he wanted more.

His searching hand met empty sheets. He rolled over, reaching further, finding nothing but an empty bed and cold sheets and not the warm woman he was looking for. He cracked open an eyelid and found no one.

Now he was wide awake. ‘Tora?’ he called. But there was no answer, nothing but the soft hum of the air conditioner kicking in as the temperature rose with the sun outside.

‘Tora,’ he repeated, louder this time, on his feet now as he checked the bathroom and the living room. He pulled back the curtains in case she’d decided to take coffee out there so as not to waken him. Morning light poured into the room, and he squinted against the rising sun, but the terrace, like every other part of the suite, was empty.

She was gone, without so much as a word.

She was gone, before he was ready.

Before he was done with her.

He growled, a vein in his temple throbbing while his dark mood grew blacker by the minute.

Until he remembered with a jolt the revelations of yesterday and his black mood changed direction. He glanced at the clock. He had a meeting to get to.

He’d been angry when the lawyer had told him that he’d arranged it—too blindsided by the lawyer’s revelations to think straight, too incensed that someone other than himself was suddenly pulling the strings of his life—but now he welcomed this meeting with this so-called vizier of Qajaran. Maybe he would have the answers to his questions.

Only then, when he was convinced, would he agree to take on this baby sister—no, half-sister—the product of a father who’d abandoned Rashid as a toddler, and a woman he’d taken as his lover.

Only then would he agree to take on guardianship of her, to take responsibility for her now that both her parents were dead, and to fill the void in her life, and wasn’t that the richest thing of all?

Because how the hell was he supposed to fill a void in anyone’s life when there’d been nobody to fill the void in his?

Thanks for that.

He cast one last glance back towards the rumpled bed as he headed to the shower, the bed that bore the tangled evidence of their lovemaking. How many times they’d come together in the dark night, he couldn’t remember, only that every time he’d turned to her she’d been there, seemingly insatiable and growing bolder each time.

No wonder he’d been angry when he’d found her gone.

No wonder he’d felt short-changed.

But one night was what he’d wanted and it was better this way. She’d more than served her purpose. He’d lost himself in her and she’d blotted out the shock and pain for a while, but now he needed a clear head and no distractions. He thought back to the night that was. She’d been one hell of a distraction and he would have been hard pressed to send her on her way. It was better that she’d saved him the effort.

* * *

Kareem was not as Rashid had envisaged. He’d imagined someone called a vizier to be a small man, wiry and astute. But the man the lawyer introduced him to in his dark-timbered library was a tall, gentle-looking giant of indeterminate age who could have been anywhere from fifty to eighty. He looked the part of a wise man, perfectly at ease in his sandals and robes amongst a city full of men wearing suits and ties.

Kareem bowed when he was introduced to Rashid, his eyes wide. ‘You are indeed your father’s son.’

A tremor went down Rashid’s spine. ‘You knew my father?’

The older man nodded. ‘I did, although our dealings have been few and far between of late. I knew you, too, as an infant. It is good to meet you again after all these years.’

The lawyer excused himself then, leaving the two men to talk privately.

‘Why have you come?’ Rashid asked, taking no time to get to the point. ‘Why did you ask for this meeting?’

‘Your father’s death raises issues of which you should be aware, even if I fear you may find them unpalatable.’

Rashid sighed. He was sick of all the riddles, but he was no closer today to believing that this man they were talking about actually was his father than when the lawyer had dropped that particular bombshell yesterday. ‘You’re going to have to try harder than that if you want to convince me. My father died when I was just a child.’

‘That is what your father wanted you to believe,’ the older man said.

‘Wanted me to believe?’

‘I take your point,’ the vizier conceded, his big hands raised in surrender. ‘It would be more correct to say that he wanted the entire world to believe he was dead. I did not mean to give the impression that he was singling you out.’

Rashid snorted. And that was supposed to be some kind of compensation?

‘And my mother?’ he snapped before the other man could continue. ‘What of her? Is she similarly living out a life of gay abandon somewhere else in the world, having tossed her maternal responsibilities to the winds?’

The vizier shook his head. ‘I almost wish I could tell you she was, but sadly no, your mother died while you were in infancy, as you are no doubt aware. I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I know this must be difficult for you, but there is more. Much more.’

Rashid waved the threat in those words away. ‘I already know about this so-called sister, if that’s what you’re referring to.’

‘Atiyah? Yes, she is on her way here now, I believe. But I was not referring to her.’

He frowned. ‘Then what? In fact, why are you here? What do you have to do with my father’s affairs anyway?’

The older man regarded him levelly, his eyes solemn. ‘I know you were brought up,’ he said, slowly and purposefully, as if sensing Rashid’s discomfiture, ‘believing your father to have been a humble tailor, killed in an industrial accident...’ He paused, as if to check Rashid was still listening.

He was listening all right, although it was hard to hear with the thumping of his heart. Today he’d expected answers. Instead all he was getting was more of the madness.

‘In actual case, your father was neither. Your father was a member of the Royal House of Qajar.’ He paused again. ‘Do you know much of Qajaran?’

Rashid closed his eyes. He knew the small desert country well enough—his work as a petroleum engineer had taken him there several times. It had a problematic economy, he was aware, like so many countries that he visited, not that he had paid this one much more attention than he paid any of them. He had learned early on in his career that it was better not to get involved in the affairs of state when one was a visiting businessman.

But for Rashid’s father to have been a member of the House of Qajar—the father he’d believed to be nothing more than a tailor—then he must have been a member of the royal family...

The wheels of his mind started turning. ‘So who was my father?’

‘The Emir’s nephew...’ the vizier paused again ‘...and his chosen successor over his own son who he judged as being too self-centred and weak.’

His nephew? His chosen successor? ‘But if what you say is true...’ Rashid ground out the words, still not convinced by the story he was hearing ‘...why was he living here in Australia? What happened?’

The older man took a sip of his milk and returned it to its coaster, every move measured and calm and at odds with the turmoil Rashid was feeling inside.

‘Your father was an accomplished polo player,’ the vizier said, ‘and while he was overseas competing in one of his polo competitions, the old Emir died suddenly.’ He paused on a breath, the silence stretching out to breaking point. ‘Some would say too suddenly, and, of course, there was some suggestion at the time that the timing was “convenient”, but nothing could ever be proved. By the time your father had arrived home, the Emir’s son had announced his ascension to the throne and moved the palace forces squarely behind himself. Your father knew nothing of this and was placed under house arrest the moment he returned to the palace. But your father was popular with the people and questions were inevitably asked about his disappearance—uncomfortable questions when all of Qajaran knew he was the favoured choice for Emir—and so Malik announced he was to be appointed special adviser to the Emir while deciding privately that it would be better to have him out of the way completely.’

‘So they exiled him?’

‘No. Malik was nowhere near that merciful. The plan was to kill him but make it look like an accident. A helicopter accident en route from the mountain palace to where the ceremony would take place.’

Air hissed through Rashid’s teeth.

‘Fortunately your father had a supporter in the palace. My predecessor could not stand back and let such a crime happen. They secreted bodies from the hospital morgue and when the time came, they parachuted to safety and the helicopter duly crashed, its cargo of dead burned beyond recognition, assumed to be the pilot and the true heir to the throne. Clothing from a small child was found in the wreckage, jackals assumed to have made off with the remains.’

Rashid felt chills down his spine. ‘A small child,’ he repeated. ‘Me.’

The vizier nodded. ‘You. The new Emir was leaving nothing to chance. But your father’s life came at a cost. To protect the lives of those who had saved him and his son, he had to swear he would never return to Qajaran, and he would live his life as an exile with a false identity. Your names were both changed, your histories altered, but, even so, as a father and son you would have been too recognisable together, and so, in order to keep you safe, he had to cut you free.’

Rashid’s hands curled into fists. ‘I grew up alone. I grew up thinking my father was dead.’’

The vizier was unapologetic. ‘You grew up in safety. Had Malik suspected even one hint of your existence, he would have sent out his dogs and had you hunted down.’

Rashid battled to make sense of it all. ‘But Malik died, what? Surely it’s a year ago by now. Why did my father keep silent then? Why did he not move to claim the throne then if he was still alive?’

The older man shrugged and turned the palms of his hands up to the ceiling. ‘Because he had made a solemn promise never to return and he was a man of honour, a man of his word.’

‘No, that doesn’t cut it. He still could have told me! He could have sought me out. Why should I have been denied knowing my father was alive because of a promise he’d made to somebody else years ago?’

‘I know.’ The vizier exhaled on a sigh. ‘Rashid, I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your father decided it was better that you never knew of your heritage. I sought him out after Malik died. I begged him to reach out to you—I begged him to let me reach out to you—but he refused. He said it was better that way, that you never knew the truth, that it couldn’t hurt you any more than it already had. He made me promise not to contact you while he lived.’

Rashid shook his head, his jaw so tightly set he had to fight to squeeze the words out. ‘So he decided to keep me in the dark—about everything. Even the fact my own father was still alive.’

‘Don’t you think it cost your father—to be cursed with only seeing his son from afar and searching the papers for any hint of where you were and what you were doing? But he was proud of you and all that you achieved.’

‘He had a funny way of showing it.’

‘He saw all that you achieved by yourself and, wrongly or rightly, he chose to let you remain on that path, unfettered by the responsibility he knew would come if you knew the truth.’

The sensation of scuttling insects started at the base of his neck and worked its way down his spine. He peered at the vizier through suspicious eyes and asked the questions he feared he already knew the answers to. ‘What do you mean? What responsibility?’

‘Don’t you see? You are Qajaran’s true and rightful ruler, Rashid. I am asking you to come back to Qajaran with me and claim the throne.’