One Night with a Seductive Sheikh: The Sheikh's Redemption / Falling for the Sheikh She Shouldn't / The Sheikh and the Surrogate Mum
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This was also the home he’d asked her to come to last week. In her case, “home” had been only a figure of speech.
She’d always known that. Even when she’d been deluded that he’d felt something genuine for her, Haidar and home had been two words she’d known would never belong together.
They’d always met on impersonal ground, arrived separately, left the same way. How ironic was it that this time, he’d invited her to a personal place for impersonal business?
She blinked back the pointless disappointments as the car passed through electronic, twenty-foot, wrought-iron gates, wound up a cobblestone driveway and approached the architectural work of art from the back. The grounds were so extensive that it took almost ten minutes to come to a stop by the thirty-foot-wide stone steps that led to the entrance patio.
She thanked the driver, got out of the car before he could open the door for her, stiffened her back and resolve as she climbed the stairs. She wasn’t waiting for anyone, starting with Haidar, to receive her or wait on her. She was here for business, would conclude it and leave.
She tried not to notice more about the place. She might have achieved that—had she been carried in unconscious. As it was, she absorbed every detail as she reached a wraparound terrace from which every aspect of the magnificent property could be seen.
The double doors of the house were open. No one was around. Seemed Haidar still didn’t believe in having people around.
She stepped into the house, and air squeezed out of her lungs.
Like the exterior, the interior married the unexpected in a seamless blend, old Arabia concepts with innovative themes, producing something unprecedented. Everything had been chosen with an eye for the comfort of both body and soul, blending sweeping lines and spaces with bold wall colors and honey-colored ceilings. Curved windows and doorways coalesced with sand-colored marble floors accentuated by vivid mosaic. Furniture both functional and artistic offset wide-open seascapes. A place of contrasts, from the sublimely relaxing to the vibrant and exotic, an oasis of the best nature and man had been able to produce.
And that was just what she could see of the foyer and sitting area. She didn’t want to know what … other rooms looked like.
“I named this placed Al Saherah.”
His voice hit her dead center in her heart.
Al Saherah. The Bewitching. The Sorceress.
She turned, found him filling an archway leading to another part of the house. All in white, a fallen angel masquerading as one of the good guys. Big, vital, painfully beautiful.
It was he who was saher.
She swallowed the ache the sight of him always struck in her heart. “This place is magical.”
He walked toward her, as majestic and potentially lethal as the feline he’d been named for. “But I’m thinking of adjusting the name to Al Naar Al Saherah. Or Al Saherah Al Nareyah. To describe its flesh-and-blood personification.”
Bewitching Fire. Or the Fiery Sorceress.
Her hand rose involuntarily to her hair. When had he learned to talk like that? Wasn’t it enough that he drove anyone with double-X chromosomes insane with lust just by existing? He’d picked up the deadly power of verbal seduction, too? Talk about overkill.
Declining to comment on this salvo of mind-messing flirtation, she cleared her throat. “So where is everyone convened?”
“We met in this awesome inside garden that has the most amazing aqueduct system running through it. Let me show you.” He grabbed her hand, tugged her behind him, his grin gleeful like a boy unable to wait to show off a discovery.
She hurried to keep up with him, blinking at his enthusiasm, at the adjectives and intensifiers.
Strange. She’d thought he was too jaded to appreciate material beauty. Or at least that he would be so used to this place, he wouldn’t even see its wonders anymore.
As they passed another sitting area, he turned to her. “I fell for this place at first sight.”
So. He fell for places. Felt for friends. That made sense. After all, this place was unique. And Rashid certainly was one of a kind. But when it came to women, Haidar was indifferent. She’d bet the only reason he wanted her now was the challenge she represented.
She’d better not stimulate his feline tendencies anymore. If she played dead, he’d get bored and go chase some other prey. But—
She stopped so suddenly that she wrenched her hand from the glove of his. He turned to her, eyes questioning.
“You said you met.” Incomprehension rose in his eyes. She whacked his arm as hard as she could. “They’re no longer here, are they?” His admission was a nonchalant shrug. She hit him harder, her hand stinging from the force of the smack. “You tricked me!”
He rubbed his arm, his eyes flaring, his lips filling. “I didn’t. You insisted on coming late.”
“There was no need for me to attend lunch, and I wanted you to have time alone with the others. My presence would have only been needed while you wrapped up the meeting.”
“And we had to conclude it earlier than expected. Businessmen don’t have their time under control. They had to leave.”
“You could have told me not to bother coming.”
“But I wanted you to come.”
His voice, his eyes as he said that …
Images exploded in her mind, sensations in her body. Of every time he’d demanded she come for him, of the last time she had …
She pressed her head between her fists, trying to stop the surge of madness, fury and frustration almost as fierce. “I get that no one walks out on you. Hell, no one is allowed free will around you, and you want to punish me for both transgressions. You headed to my place fresh off the plane with that in mind. So what will it take to satisfy you? Is ruining my career a must?”
“That’s the last thing I want, Roxanne.”
She staggered back two steps for the one he took closer. “Excuse me as I believe the proof of your actions instead.”
His gaze became serious, soothing. “Whatever I did that compromised you, or could have, I didn’t plan any of it.”
She huffed incredulously. “I wonder how that would hold up in front of a judge. ‘I didn’t plan to run the lady over, Your Honor.’”
His lips twisted. “Zain. I deserve that. And I have no defense. Premeditation isn’t better than negligence from the victim’s point of view. But I swear to you, I never meant you harm. And I will never compromise you again.”
She stared at him. “You mean you’ll leave me alone?”
“I mean I’ll be the essence of discretion as I do no such thing.” He reached for her as he spoke.
This time, she didn’t move away. This train would hit her. Why pretend outrunning it was an option?
“Roxanne …” He groaned as he enfolded her into his large body.
As if feeling her surrender, he crushed her to his hardness, making no attempt to temper the carnality of his response, of his intentions.
He wanted sex. Raw and raunchy. Dominant and devastating. No pretense of gentleness or emotion. He’d exploit her body and take his pleasure in every way he pleased, plumb her flesh for all the ecstasy she could withstand.
She wanted all that. She was disintegrating with needing it.
She pushed out of his arms.
It took all of Haidar’s restraint not to yank Roxanne back and down on any horizontal surface and caress her until he’d aroused her out of resistance.
Not that her reticence was physical. Her arousal cloaked him in echoes of their pleasure-drenched nights, slashed him down to the beast at his core. It had him an inch away from devouring her, riding her hard, shattering her with pleasure, so she’d never again contest his ownership of her flesh, of her every response.
“Roxanne …”
Her raised hand stopped him. What was she …?
Then both hands rose up to her hair, took the pins out. It cascaded in waves of flames down to her shoulders.
Before another neuron could fire a thought, a response in his brain, she was pushing her jacket off her shoulders, then unbuttoning her blouse, revealing the creamy globes of her breasts. Ya Ullah, she was … was …
She was stripping for him.
His lungs burned. His hardness passed the point of pain.
He heard himself choking on “While this might be a delight after I’ve taken you ten times or so, right now it’s agony not being the one undressing you.”
He reached for her again, expecting her to sweep him away, to continue punishing him with her striptease torture. Again she did something that shocked him into another detonation of arousal.
She grabbed him, climbed onto him, wrapped her legs around his buttocks, digging her high heels into his flesh as she bunched her hands in his hair and brought his lips crashing down on hers.
“Roxanne.” His growl was that of a predator at the end of his tether. She pushed against him, making him stagger back and sit down on a couch with her on top. Before he could drag in another breath, she was tearing open his shirt, sinking her teeth into his chest and sucking his flesh.
He bucked beneath her, the pleasure of each nip and suckle acute distress. “Roxanne, let me …”
She slipped from his hold, ended up on her knees between his splayed thighs, her hands as feverish as her lips on the buttons of his jeans.
He watched her, his brain, every inch of him overheating from the sight of her beautiful hands dragging down his pants, dipping into his briefs to greedily surround his erection.
His mind hazed, his body hurtled beyond his control with the first touch of her lips on the oversensitized head.
How he’d missed her touch, her mouth, her breath on him. How he’d hungered for her answering hunger, for her delight in him, in all the liberties he gave her with his body.
But this was spiraling out of control. He had to … needed to slow down, savor it, stop her …
Her hot, moist mouth engulfed almost half of him, the tip hitting the back of her throat.
“Ya Ullah, kaif betsawwi hada?” he raved, mindless now, his hands frenzied in her silken hair. “How do you do that? Make every touch ecstasy?”
She gazed up at him, let him see how she took him, loved it, how her lips and hands milked his hardness. A hot tide surged upward from his loins, outward to his every skin cell. His buttocks and thighs tightened with holding it back. He pulled at her, needing to have this completion within her, with her.
She moaned her refusal to let go, the vibration an electrocuting surge of stimulation from every inch she devoured to his every nerve ending.
He collapsed back, surrendered to her demand, liquid fire flooding from the depths of his loins. He froze in the intensity of the moment, trapped in the excruciating pleasure that had him on the verge of splintering into a million pieces.
Just before he exploded, he tried to wrench himself out. She held on, her lips and hands making insistent sweeps, inciting him to madness. And he lost the struggle.
He shouted her name, threw his head back, dug his hands in the depths of her silk fire and spilled his seed on her tongue.
She held his eyes as he bucked again and again into her hold, as she drained him to the last drop.
A long, long moment passed before she let him slip from her reddened, swollen lips. He lay there, gulping air, staring into the depths of her magical eyes and instead of satisfaction, passion roared again, consuming his body in a fiercer fire. Hers. She’d always been what ignited him. What satisfied him.
He tried to pull her up, bring her over him. She pushed his hands away. Before he could move, she stood up, her eyes smoldering down at him, her voice husky.
“I owed you one. Now we’re even.”
Then she turned and walked away.
Seven
Haidar’s paralysis lasted only seconds. Then he was on his feet, shoving himself back into his pants and bounding after her.
She was buttoning her blouse as she strode away, then finger-combing her tousled hair. He knew she heard him coming. She clearly had no intention of stopping, or letting him stop her.
He did. By taking away her means of walking.
He swept her off her feet, smiled down at her. “Though that was almost literally mind-blowing, who says we’re even? You owe me eight years’ worth of pleasure.”
“Eight minutes’ worth is all you get from this gal. Now put me down before I give your perfect nose some crooked character.”
He gathered her hands in one of his. “You have to regain the use of your hands first.”
He strode to the bedroom suite he’d picked as theirs, expected her to struggle, make good on her threat. She just looked up at him, her normally communicative eyes empty of expression.
How he wanted her. The pleasure she’d just given him had only intensified his need for her. His need to pleasure her in return was also reaching critical levels. He wanted her naked and hot and writhing beneath his hands, his lips, bucking under his body, convulsing around him, her release wrenching his from his depths.
He reached the bed he’d bought just for her, huge and firm and covered in sheets a darker shade of her eyes. He hadn’t thought she’d be here this soon. Someone out there must believe he deserved something fantastic for a change.
Laying her down, he descended on top of her, groaning at the feel of her cushioning him, the only flesh he’d ever felt a part of his own. His lips sought hers. She turned her face away.
He trailed his lips down her face, neck, down to the swell of her breasts. “Do you know how many nights I lay awake, craving to feel you like this? Hearing your moans, your sighs and cries, the memory of your body enfolding mine echoing in my cells until I felt they’d burst?”
Her answer was tight-lipped. “How many? Two?”
A spasm twisted inside his chest. “More like two thousand.”
“And did you feel that way on those nights, before or after you had sex with another woman? Or three?”
He rose on both arms, frowned down at her. “We’re not going there. What we did or didn’t do in the past eight years isn’t relevant. We’re going to enjoy each other now, as we are today.” His lips spread again at the sight of her beneath him, ripe and trying not to arch into him. “And from today onward, I am all for any kind of game you want to indulge in.”
She pushed at him. “The only game I want to try is hide-and-seek, where you hide, and I don’t seek you ever again.”
His frown returned. “You’re … angry?”
Her eyes spat emerald daggers at him. “Give the man a medal.”
“I thought it was part of this sensual game you started. You were always all for those, too.”
“Are you high on something? Like insensitivity and arrogance?”
He rolled to his side and watched in confusion as she scrambled away from him. “But I apologized and promised our liaison will never compromise you again.”
She rounded on him as she rose from the bed. “And as a first step in assuring this, you had your driver leave me with you in an empty house. The news will be all over Azmahar by now.”
“I flew Haleem in from Zohayd. He’s fully Zohaydan and wouldn’t reveal anything about you at gunpoint. It’s why I insisted you come alone. I told my visitors I had informed you they had to leave, so you ‘wouldn’t bother coming.’”
She tore her gaze away, looked around the spacious room as if noticing it for the first time. He tensed as he waited for her reaction. He’d spent most of last week preparing it.
It was he who felt rewarded. A wave of pleasure washed over him as she stood bathed in the gold-tinged lights he’d carefully installed to showcase her, framed by the color scheme of fire and emerald he’d meant to reflect hers. Gauzy curtains billowed at the balcony doors behind her like swirls of magic, and her hair stirred in the evening sea breeze like tongues of dark flame.
His fiery goddess in all her glory. At least, in her still exasperatingly clothed one. Soon he’d have all that voluptuousness displayed for his pleasure, his worship.
Thankfully, the sensual ambience he’d tailored for her had an as-clear effect on her.
She was more flushed, less steady as she turned to him. “You put a lot of thought and effort into this, didn’t you?”
If only she knew how much. Even he was still smarting from parting with that much cash. “Anything to help you relinquish your worries and inhibitions. And after what you just did to me while still suffering from both, I don’t know if I’ll survive when you let them go completely.”
Her face hardened. “This new discretion is for yourself.”
He exhaled, perplexed by her continued resistance. “It is also for me, since I get to have you. But—”
She cut him off. “You recognized you were being a self-defeating idiot. I bet it took seeing Rashid to make you realize that, and that the throne isn’t in your pocket no matter what scandals you cause. You have to clean up your act if you’re to have a prayer against him. Now you’ll play the committed, conservative contender and shove me back into the dirty-secret slot.”
He found himself on his feet, facing her across the bed, memories unraveling with a sick charge along his every nerve.
“What’s this? Anyone would think it’s you who have a grievance against me, that I’m the one who walked out on you. May I remind you that you are the one who left when I outraged your sense of independence, sinned in believing I was more than an ‘exotic fling’ to you? And are you pretending that keeping our relationship secret wasn’t exactly what you wanted, then and now? I’m giving you what you always wanted. No demands on my side, no obligations on yours, only no-consequences indulgence. What more do you want?”
Why? How?
She’d long known that he felt nothing for her. So why and how did getting confirmation of that tear her apart all over again?
He came around the bed, raven hair raining down his forehead, the shirt she’d torn hanging open to reveal the magnificent sculpture of his torso, which she’d barely had a chance to worship.
He stopped less than a foot away, bearing down on her with his overwhelming beauty and rising exasperation. “What kind of game are you playing now? What’s with the indignant act? According to you, we had only a sexual liaison, and you ended it. Now that it would be feasible and pleasurable for both of us to resurrect it, why are you behaving as if I once betrayed you? As if I’m degrading you and trying to take advantage of you?”
“Because you did. And you are.”
He stared at her as if she’d grown a third eye.
And everything she’d spent years holding back came flooding out.
“Being honest about how you’ll take what you want and give nothing in return doesn’t make you honorable. And it sure as hell doesn’t make you the wronged party here. It only makes you an unfeeling bastard who cares only about getting what you want, who would use anyone in the most horrible way for your own purposes, even the trivial one of telling someone ‘I told you so.’”
Every word fell on him with the visible effect of a slap. “B’ haggej’ jaheem, what the hell are you talking about?”
And she shouted, “I’m talking about your bet.”
He stumbled back, his face going slack with shock, reactions rioting across his eyes.
Then he finally rasped, “You know.”
It was a statement. An admission. At last.
She’d thought it would bring her relief. It didn’t.
Feeling hers eyes tearing, she tore her gaze away, looked feverishly around for her sandals.
She shoved her feet into them, tried to regain her shaky balance. “Thank you for not insulting me more by pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“You heard me and Jalal that night.”
The same conclusion Jalal had come to. She hadn’t refined his deduction.
She did Haidar’s. “That was only how I made sure.”
He blocked her path as she tried to head for the door. “How did you find out in the first place?”
“I don’t owe you anything, least of all an explanation. And if you want someone to play sexual games with, I can recommend dozens for you to pick from. I’m sure you have your own waiting list.”
He spread his arms, stopping her from circumventing him, his face gripped in urgency and frustration. “B’Ellahi, Roxanne, just tell me!”
Her chest heaved with the remembered humiliation, her eyes threatening to pour long-dried tears. “How do you think?”
Realization detonated in his eyes. Certainty. He dropped his arms, staggered away. “My mother.”
She let the entrenched fury in her eyes confirm.
“How did she know?” he groaned.
She shrugged. “She said she knows everything about you and Jalal. But especially you.”
Agitation receded in his eyes, determination filtering into its place. “I need to know everything she said.”
“I’ll tell you what my mother said. When you approached me at that ball expecting me to fall at your feet.”
Heated recollection overlapped agitation in his eyes. “Your words were cool but your eyes were incendiary. I could think of nothing but erasing your reluctance, making you admit that your desire was as instant and as powerful as mine.”
She backed away as if from the memories. “The jury will remain out on that similarity. But my mother saw you for what you are. She also saw that you had me blinded and realized that to stop me from falling for your seduction, she had to tell me a secret.”
“What secret could she have told you? I have none.”
“Of course you don’t. You keep your vices and transgressions proudly out in the open.”
That silenced him. His steel eyes, so like his mother’s, turned black. As if her opinion hurt.
She ignored the spasm of guilt at what she had to admit was a gross exaggeration. “It was a secret of hers. During her first stint in Azmahar. She was beginning her career, and she fell madly in love with a royal. She discovered his illegal activities, yet still couldn’t walk away. But he fabricated evidence against her, preempting her in case she attempted to expose him, forcing her to leave the kingdom in silence or she would have been publicly disgraced and prosecuted.”
His eyes narrowed. “Was that man your father?”
It was the first time he had asked her about her parentage. “No. My father was a one-night stand she had when she returned home from Azmahar heartbroken. But years later, that royal found himself in need of her support and got her an even better post in Azmahar. She was in no position to say no. That was when we came here. He tried to weasel himself back into her good opinion and bed, but she told him where he could put his lies and platitudes.”
He said nothing, waiting for the punch line.
She delivered it. “Moral of the story—don’t get involved with a royal. He will use you for his whims and abuse you for his benefit. And when I didn’t listen, worse happened to me.”
His frown turned spectacular. “What do you mean, worse?”
“You didn’t even notice that my life was being messed up and my future destroyed. The one thing that mattered to you was that I showed up for your scheduled sex sessions.”
“Are you talking about the setbacks you had in your studies?”
Her heart lurched. “So you knew. And you didn’t ask me about it, or even offer a word of concern or encouragement.”
His already black frown darkened. “Jalal informed me you’d started out so far at the top of your class, you were in one of your own. He made it sound as if I was the reason you were falling behind. I … didn’t know what to say. Or do.”
“You thought our liaison and the hoops you made me jump through to maintain its secrecy were taking their toll on me, but tough for me, right? You had your pleasure and your convenience, and to hell with me and my future.”