Pleasure: The Sheikh's Defiant Bride

SANDRA MARTON wrote her first novel while she was still in primary school. Her doting parents told her she’d be a writer some day, and Sandra believed them. In secondary school and college she wrote dark poetry nobody but her boyfriend understood—though, looking back, she suspects he was just being kind. As a wife and mother she wrote murky short stories in what little spare time she could manage, but not even her boyfriend-turned-husband could pretend to understand those. Sandra tried her hand at other things, among them teaching and serving on the Board of Education in her home town, but the dream of becoming a writer was always in her heart.

At last Sandra realised she wanted to write books about what all women hope to find: love with that one special man, love that’s rich with fire and passion, love that lasts for ever. She wrote a novel, her very first, and sold it to Mills & Boon® Modern™ romance. Since then she’s written more than sixty books, all of them featuring sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life heroes. A four-time RITA® award finalist, she’s also received five Romantic Times magazine awards, and has been honoured with RT’s Career Achievement Award for Series Romance. Sandra lives with her very own sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life hero in a sun-filled house on a quiet country lane in the northeastern United States.

Pleasure

The Sheikh’s Defiant Bride

The Sheikh’s Wayward Wife

The Sheikh’s Rebellious Mistress

Sandra Marton

The Sheikh’s Defiant Bride

Sandra Marton

PROLOGUE

The Kingdom of Dubaac, early summer:

THE sun poured like a ribbon of molten gold from a pale blue sky.

Beneath its brutal rays, a small band of men sat motionless on their horses, embraced by the endless silence of the desert.

All eyes were on the rider whose stallion stood apart from the rest, and on the hooded goshawk that clung to his leather-gloved wrist with lethal talons.

At last, one of the men softly urged his own mount forward until it stood alongside the rider and his stallion.

“It is time, Tariq,” the man said softly.

The man called Tariq nodded. “I know.”

He did know. It was time; his father was right but, somehow, this final tribute to his dead brother was turning out to be as emotionally torturous as Sharif’s funeral.

Who would have thought such an ancient custom would tear so at the heart? Tariq had been raised in Dubaac but he had lived away from the Nations for years. He was a modern, well-educated, urbanized man and this was just a symbolic gesture …

“Tariq?”

He nodded and lifted his arm. The hawk gave a little shudder of anticipation as it awaited the unlacing of its hood.

Instead Tariq undid the bird’s jesses. The tiny bells that adorned the slender leather streamers fastened around the bird’s legs tinkled as they fell to the sand. A second’s hesitation, and then he unlaced the hood and tossed it aside.

For the first time since its captivity and subsequent training, the hawk was completely free.

Tariq lifted his face to the scorched sky, his profile as fiercely elegant as the hawk’s.

“Sharif, my brother,” he said huskily, “I send Bashashar to you. May you and she fly together forever in the vastness of the skies above our homeland.”

Another hesitation. Then he swung his arm forward and the hawk spread its powerful wings, leaped from his gloved hand and flew unhesitatingly toward the blazing sun.

For a moment, no one moved or spoke. Then the sultan cleared his throat.

“It is done,” he said gruffly.

Tariq nodded. He stood with his face still lifted to the sky, though the hawk had disappeared from sight.

“Yes, Father.”

“Your brother is at peace.”

Was he? Tariq wanted to think so but Sharif’s sudden death was still too new. His plane had gone down on a routine flight; it had taken days to find what remained of Sharif after the crash and the subsequent fire …

“He was a good son,” the sultan said quietly.

Tariq nodded.

“Someday, he would have led our people well. Now he is gone and we must rethink our plans for the future.”

A muscle in Tariq’s jaw tightened. He had known this was coming, but not so quickly. Still, why put off what he knew had to be done?

“I understand, Father.”

The sultan sighed. “There is no time to waste, my son.”

Tariq looked at his father in alarm. “Are you ill?”

“Only if old age is illness,” the sultan said quietly. “But Sharif’s death is proof, as if we needed it, that Kismet rules our lives. You are my heir now, Tariq. I tremble at the thought, but if anything should happen to you …”

There was no need to say more.

The burden of succession had fallen to Tariq. And to ensure that succession, the unbroken line of rulers that stretched back centuries, it was now his responsibility to marry and produce a son.

If only Sharif had married and created sons.

If only Sharif had lived, Tariq thought, and felt the unaccustomed sting of tears in his pale gray eyes.

“Think of what has happened elsewhere in the Nations, when there has been a question about succession,” the sultan said, misinterpreting Tariq’s silence. “Would you wish that for our people?”

Tariq cleared his throat. “I don’t need convincing, Father,” he said gruffly. “I will do what must be done.”

The sultan gave a faint smile. “That is good. Come now. We shall ride back to the palace and celebrate your brother’s life.”

“You go on with the others. I—I want to be alone for a while.”

The sultan hesitated. Then he swung his horse around and signaled to his men. They rode off as they had come, single-file, in respectful silence.

Tariq dismounted. He patted the stallion’s arched neck, then looked once more at the sky.

“A wife, Sharif,” he said, quietly. “That is what I must find because of you.” He smiled; his brother, if he could hear him, would understand this kind of banter. They’d shared it since they were boys. “And how will I do that, hmm?”

The sigh of the wind was his answer.

“Shall I let Father and the council choose my bride? You know who she’d be. Abra, who would talk me to death. Lilah, who will surely soon outweigh me.”

The wind sighed again.

“Surely a man has the right to choose his own bride.”

Beside him, the stallion snorted and pawed the sand.

“Where shall I find her, Sharif? In the Nations? In America? What do you think?”

Of course, Sharif was not there to answer but it wasn’t necessary. Tariq knew what he’d have said.

The perfect wife would not be American.

There were only two kinds of American females: those who were flighty and interested in things of no consequence, and those who were headstrong and breathed the fire and brimstone of equality.

Neither would do.

Yes, he wanted a wife who would be attractive but there were other requirements. She would have a pleasant personality. She would be capable of carrying on appropriate dinner conversation in the circles in which he moved in a manner that would never be confrontational.

In other words, the perfect wife would understand her role as his consort but not as his equal.

A man who would one day ascend the throne needed such a woman. The truth was, any man would want such a woman. And the place to find her was here, among his own people.

The wind moaned and a tiny whirlwind of sand spun before him.

He had been educated in the States; he lived and worked there but from now on, his way of life would be grounded in the customs of Dubaac, where a man ruled his home and his wife.

A harsh cry rang out across the desert. Tariq shaded his eyes, looked up and saw Bashashar sailing high above him.

A sign, some would say. Not that he believed in signs. Still, the more he considered finding a bride, the more appeal he saw in confining his search to Dubaac and, if necessary, the other Nations.

The stallion nuzzled his shoulder. Tariq gathered the reins and mounted.

Problem solved. He would stay in Dubaac a week. Perhaps two, but no more than that.

After all, how difficult could finding a suitable wife possibly be?

CHAPTER ONE

New York City, two months later:

IT WAS not often that His Excellency Sheikh Tariq al Sayf, Crown Prince and Heir to the Throne of Dubaac, made an error in judgment.

Never in business. Even his enemies, who’d said he was too young for the task and had predicted failure when he’d taken over the New York offices of the Royal Bank of Dubaac four years ago, had to admit that the bank had flourished under his hand.

He rarely made mistakes in his personal life, either. Yes, an occasional former lover had wept and called him a cold-hearted bastard when he ended a relationship but it wasn’t his fault.

He was always truthful, if perhaps a bit too blunt.

Forever was of no interest to him. He went out of his way to make that clear to women. Forever meant a wife, marriage, children—things that he’d known he must have in the future.

But the future had turned out to be now.

And so he’d stood under the hot desert sun of his homeland and told himself he would find a wife in a week. Two, at the most. After all, how difficult could that be?

Standing at the wall of glass in his huge corner office, Tariq looked out over the Hudson River in lower Manhattan and scowled.

Not difficult at all, as it had turned out.

Impossible, was more like it.

“Idiot,” he muttered through gritted teeth.

Two weeks at home had stretched into three and then four. His father had hosted an elegant state dinner to which he’d invited every high-ranking family in the country that had an eligible daughter.

Tariq had found fault with all of them.

Next, his father had hosted a dinner and invited high-ranking families with eligible daughters from all the Nations of their world. Tariq still flinched at the memory. All those young women, lined up to be presented to him, every one of them fully aware of why she was there …

He’d said “hello, how are you?”; he’d kissed their hands, made inane conversation, watched them titter and blush and never look him in the eye because young women of good reputation would not do such an outlandish thing.

He’d bought horses this same way, he’d thought suddenly, and once that image had lodged itself in his head, that was how he’d viewed them all. As mares, docilely awaiting the stallion’s selection.

“Well?” his father had said impatiently, at the end of that second dinner. “Which one do you like?”

None.

They were too tall. Too short. Too thin. Too rounded. They talked too much. They didn’t talk enough. They were introverted, extroverted. Frustrated, angry at himself for failing to do what had to be done, Tariq had returned to New York a month ago.

Maybe he’d been wrong about American women. Maybe he’d find one here who would meet his requirements. When he thought it over, he’d realized he’d overlooked several things that might make them desirable choices.

On the whole, American women were attractive. All that sun, braces on their teeth in childhood, lots of vitamins and calcium …

Such things added up.

And they were socially adept, good at parties, conversant in the kinds of talk that kept people smiling but raised no hackles.

Perhaps best of all, they were in love with titles. The ones he’d met over the years had made it embarrassingly clear they’d do anything to snag a husband who had royal blood.

Of course, until now, the more obvious they’d made that, the quicker he’d fled … but that was before.

Now, an appropriate candidate’s eagerness to marry into royalty was an advantage.

At any rate, he’d decided, it would do no harm to extend his search. Look around New York and see what he could find.

The answer was, nothing.

Tariq had accepted endless invitations for sails on the Sound, summer parties in Connecticut and charity events in the Hamptons. He’d taken an endless list of women to dinner, to the theater, to the concerts in Central Park they all seemed to adore despite the bad acoustics and the sullen heat and humidity of Manhattan.

He’d dated so many women that after a while, he’d run the risk of calling them by the wrong names, and where had it gotten him?

“Nowhere,” he said aloud, his tone grim.

He wasn’t any closer to finding the proper candidate for marriage than he’d been two months ago.

As they’d been when he’d confined his search to his homeland, the women were too everything—including too eager to please. No downcast eyes here in the States but the intent was the same.

Yes, your highness. Of course, your highness. Oh, I agree completely, your highness.

Damn it, did he have a sign hanging around his neck declaring himself in the market for a wife?

Not that he didn’t want an obedient wife. He did. Certainly, he did. After all, he would someday be the leader of his people. It would not serve his purposes to marry a woman who was not respectful.

Tariq narrowed his eyes.

Then why, once a prospective candidate seemed attractive enough—though none, to his surprise, was quite the precise physical specimen a wife of his ought to be—still, once a candidate’s appearance was acceptable, why did he resort to what even he suspected were stupid tests?

He’d tell a joke that had no punch line. Make a foolish comment about world affairs. Then he’d wait, though not for long. Every time, the woman he was secretly vetting for matrimony would laugh merrily or nod her overcoiffed head like a bobble doll, and he’d look at his watch and say, “My, look at the time, I didn’t realize it was so late …”

On top of that—not that he was a prude—most of them were far too sexual. Well, not exactly sexual. Obvious. That was the word. A man wanted a wife who enjoyed sex but he also wanted her to have a certain amount of reserve.

And, yes, he knew that was sexist and chauvinistic but—

But, by Ishtar, he’d dug himself into one hell of a deep hole.

Maybe that was why, a couple of weeks ago, over drinks and dinner with his two oldest friends, he’d ended up telling them about his quest.

Khalil and Salim had listened, their faces expressionless. Then they’d looked at each other.

“He’s trying to find a wife,” Salim had said solemnly.

“But he can’t,” Khalil had said, just as solemnly.

Salim’s mouth had twitched. Khalil’s, too. Then they’d snorted and burst into laughter.

“The Sahara Stud,” Khalil had choked out. “Remember when that girl called him that at Harvard?”

“And he can’t find a wife,” Salim said, and they’d dissolved into laughter again.

Tariq had jumped to his feet. “You think this is amusing?” he’d said in fury. “You just wait until you have to get married!”

Shudders had replaced laughter.

“Not for years and years,” Khalil had answered, “but when the time comes, I’ll do it the old-fashioned way. I’ll let my father make the arrangements. A prince’s marriage has nothing to do with romance. It’s all about duty.”

Tariq sighed and stared vacantly out the window. True. Absolutely true. Then, what was taking him so long?

His brother was gone. His father was no longer a young man. What if something happened? To his father? To him? Anything was possible. Without an heir to the throne, Dubaac could be plunged into turmoil. And that must not happen. He could not let it happen… .

A knock sounded at the door. Tariq swung around as his P.A. popped her head into the room.

“The Five O’Clock Financial News is on CNN, sir. You wanted to watch …?”

He gave her a blank look.

“To see if MicroTech would announce their new acquisition …?”

No wife. No functional brain, either, Tariq thought bleakly, and nodded his thanks.

“Right. Thank you, Eleanor. Have a good evening. I’ll see you in the morning.”

The door swung shut. Tariq sat down at his desk, picked up the remote control and pointed it at the flat screen TV on the wall. A couple of clicks and he was looking at some set director’s idea of an office. Pale walls, dark floor, windows, a long table at which a middle-aged man in a dark blue suit sat facing three other middle-aged men in dark blue suits …

And a woman.

She wore a dark blue suit, too, but that was where the resemblance ended.

Tariq’s eyes narrowed.

It was difficult to tell her age, thanks to bulky, tortoise-framed glasses with darkly smoked lenses. The glasses lent her a look of severity. So did the way she wore her pale gold hair, drawn back from her oval face in a low chignon.

She sat straight in her chair, hands neatly folded in her lap, legs demurely crossed.

They were excellent legs. Long. Lean. Nicely toned.

His belly knotted with hunger.

He could see himself lifting the woman from her chair. Letting her hair down. Taking off her glasses so he could see if she was merely attractive or heart-breakingly beautiful …

Damn it.

He was not given to fantasies about women, especially ones he had never met. Was this what his search for a wife had reduced him to? Lust for a woman on television? A woman whose name he didn’t even know?

Tariq scowled.

This was what came of celibacy.

He had not been with a woman in two months. He’d thought it wise not to let a woman’s talent in bed influence him in his choice of a wife.

It had seemed a clever idea.

It still was.

He just had to stop fantasizing like a schoolboy.

Tariq tore his eyes from the woman. The program’s moderator, the Suit seated across from her, was speaking.

“. true, then, that MicroTech has acquired controlling interest in FutureBorn?”

The paunchiest of the Suits nodded.

“That’s correct. We believe FutureBorn represents the future. No pun intended,” he added with a thin smile. The two men seated with him laughed in hearty appreciation; the woman showed no reaction at all. “You see, Jay, as men and women delay childbirth, FutureBorn’s new techniques will become even more important.”

“But FutureBorn is in an already crowded field, isn’t it?”

Another thin smile. “So it would seem. Artificial insemination has been around for a long time, but FutureBorn’s new techniques … Perhaps our vice president for Marketing can explain it best.”

All heads turned toward the woman. Vice president for Marketing, Tariq thought, raising one dark eyebrow. An impressive title. Had she earned it? Or had she slept her way into it? He’d been in business long enough to know those things happened.

She looked at the camera. At him, his gut said, though he knew that was ridiculous.

“I’ll certainly try.”

Her voice was low-pitched, almost husky. He tried to concentrate on what she was saying but he was too busy just looking at her …

“… in other words, absolutely perfect for storing sperm.”

Tariq blinked. What had she just said?

“Can you explain that, please, Miss Whitney?”

Tariq sent a silent “thank you” to the moderator for asking the question. Surely the woman could not have said—

“I’ll be happy to,” the woman said calmly. “It’s true, as you pointed out, artificial insemination is not new, but the method FutureBorn’s developed to freeze sperm is not only new, it’s revolutionary.”

Tariq stared at the screen. What sort of talk was this from a woman?

“And the benefits are?”

“Well.” The woman ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. It had to have been an unconscious gesture but it turned his own mouth dry. “Well, one obvious benefit is that a man who has no wish to sire children at the present time can leave a specimen with us. A donation for the future, as it were, secure in the knowledge it will be available for his use years later.”

A donation, Tariq thought. An interesting choice of words.

“Or, if not for his use, then for use on his behalf.”

“In what way?” the moderator said.

“Well, for example, a man might wish to leave instructions as to how his sperm should be used after his death.” She smiled politely. “Frozen sperm, along with proper legal documentation regarding its use, could be a twenty-first century method of ensuring a wealthy man had an heir.

Or a crown prince had a successor.

Tariq frowned.

What if he left a—a—What had she called it? A donation. What if a test tube of his semen was set aside in case the unthinkable happened and fate intervened before he’d found a suitable wife?

Hell. Was he crazy?

Tariq aimed the remote at the screen. It went blank and he shot to his feet.

A real man did not make a “donation” to a test tube. He made it in the womb of a woman.

He had not looked hard enough, that was all. In this city of millions, surely there was a perfect candidate just waiting for him to find.

He’d been invited to a party tonight. His lawyer had bought a town house on the East Side and wanted to celebrate. Tariq, imagining all the long-legged women who’d undoubtedly be there, had at first thought it an excellent opportunity. Then he’d shuddered at the realization he’d reached the point at which he thought of such things as opportunities, and he’d sent his regrets.

Another mistake, he thought as he pulled on his suit jacket and strode toward the door. First, choosing celibacy that had clearly affected his concentration. Then, refusing an invitation to a place that might, indeed, provide excellent prospects for his search for a wife.

An old American expression danced into his mind. Three strikes and you’re out. It referred to baseball but it could just as readily refer to his quest. First, his search in Dubaac, then in the Nations.

Well, there wasn’t going to be a third strike. He hadn’t been looking hard enough, that was the problem.

And that was going to change, starting now.

“Okay, people. We’re off the air.”

Madison Whitney rose to her feet, unclipped the tiny black mike from the lapel of her suit and handed it to the waiting technician.

“Madison,” her boss said, “you did a fine job.”

“Thank you.”

“Excellent.” He laughed—ho, ho, ho, Madison thought, just like an actor doing a really bad interpretation of Santa—and leaned in close. “Suppose we have a drink and discuss things?”

Discuss what? she wanted to say. How you can figure out a way to get me into bed? But Mrs. Whitney had not raised a stupid daughter so Madison smiled brightly, just as she’d been doing ever since MicroTech had taken over FutureBorn and said oh, that would be lovely, but she had a previous engagement.

The phony smile of her very married employer turned positively feral.

“Now, Madison, it isn’t wise to say ‘no’ all the time.”

It isn’t wise to court a sexual harassment lawsuit, either, Madison thought, but she knew what he didn’t, that their uneasy alliance would soon be over.

It was enough to make another smile easy to produce.

“Some other time, Mr. Shields. As I say, I have a date.”

She felt his eyes on her as she walked away.

Twenty minutes later, she slid into a booth at a quiet bar on Lexington Avenue. Two things were waiting for her: a cold Cosmopolitan cocktail and her old college roommate, Barbara Dawson.