Exposed: The Sheikh's Mistress
Sharon Kendrik
‘I am choosing you to become mistress to the Sheikh.’
He made it sound so...mechanical. ‘Is there a new vacancy, then?’ Sienna questioned acidly. ‘Or will I be sharing the post?’
Hashim was so used to complete compliance—to grateful and eager acceptance from adoring women—that for a moment he was taken aback by her flippant attitude. ‘I do not think you realise the honour I am affording you,’ he said icily.
‘No, I probably don’t,’ said Sienna gravely. ‘Perhaps you could tell me a little more about what this exciting position entails?’
‘You will have an open charge account.’ His black eyes flicked disparagingly over her jeans and stained T-shirt. ‘And in future you will buy clothes that please you, and please your Sheikh. I should like to see you in silks and satins from now on.’
‘How delightfully simple you make it sound,’ Sienna murmured. ‘Anything else?’
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Dear Reader (#ue3ef24e6-1e58-55d6-ad4a-34c64ad203a5),
One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.
There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.
I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia to escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”
So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?
I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.
Love,
Sharon xxx
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.
SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…
Exposed: The Sheikh’s Mistress
Sharon Kendrick
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
With special thanks to Paul McLaughlin, editor of Kroll’s Report On Fraud—and a pretty mean writer himself!
CONTENTS
Cover (#u9e10ef67-d8e9-5e60-b1c3-b2c87be74ea6)
Dear Reader (#u39b01c5b-ea87-50eb-b3d2-b264c665c622)
About the Author (#u69c98ea9-3eca-562a-a0b7-6a4d84d8a4b8)
Title Page (#uf4451e0f-7d8c-5b98-8c65-d0733744c933)
Dedication (#u9c0fdb37-8517-5e9b-bfe9-af413a0e62a7)
CHAPTER ONE (#u1c9dd704-7384-5ef0-b5b8-89be0276ecfe)
CHAPTER TWO (#uc062c9c4-50fb-5596-8a05-e392b4f9c58a)
CHAPTER THREE (#uc9ff54f4-5ee3-5778-97e3-47caa1fce399)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ue3ef24e6-1e58-55d6-ad4a-34c64ad203a5)
IF ONLY there had been some kind of warning...storm clouds gathering on the horizon, perhaps, or a sudden chill wind which iced your skin. Like an omen. But the day was sunny and golden with not an omen in sight, and ‘if only’ were the two most useless words in the language—Sienna knew that more than anyone.
And even if she had known—what could she have done that would have made things different? Nothing. She was as powerless as a leaf torn from its branch by a cruel autumn wind.
Yet her mood was light as she slipped into the back entrance of the Brooke Hotel, via the garden. The ivy-covered walkway was her favourite way into the building, for when you stood in the secret courtyard it was difficult to believe that you were right in the centre of London—with the hubbub and bustle of the busy streets only a stone’s throw away.
Here the sounds of the city were muted and softened by the tall, waving branches of trees which acted as a haven for all kinds of birds. Bees buzzed drowsily around the flowers and little ladybirds landed on your bare flesh and sometimes nipped it if you weren’t looking. These days she was essentially a city girl, but this place reminded her of a country childhood which seemed another world away.
Sienna loved the Brooke. It was where she had fled to. Where she had been promoted. Where she had made the slightly scary decision to go freelance—but the hotel still provided the bulk of her work. As an events organiser, she organised weddings, birthday parties, book launches and bar mitzvahs—and her name was becoming well-known on the busy London social circuit. From fairly humble and untrained beginnings, she had certainly landed on her feet.
And if she ever stopped to think how she’d got here... Well, that was the whole point—she didn’t ever think about it. Thinking never got you anywhere. It took you to all kinds of dark and disturbing places and in the end it changed precisely nothing. In life you just had to learn from your mistakes. To get through the bad times in the hope that there would be some good ones waiting round the corner. And there were. Of course there were.
Today, the dark onyx reception desk was massed with startling orange Bird of Paradise flowers mixed in with black irises and red lilies. It was a dramatic look, and not one favoured by shrinking violets—but then those kind of people didn’t tend to stay here.
Money and power and a hungry desire for something ‘different’ were the driving forces behind the screamingly influential clientele of the Brooke. Film-stars. Entrepreneurs. Royalty. Anyone who was anyone.
They all flocked to the converted eighteenth-century mansion where there was never an empty room. Where, as a client, you paid through the nose for luxury and discretion.
Sienna rode up in the penthouse elevator. She was meeting a Mr Altair, and before she met a client she always allowed herself a little daydream about just what kind of party they would want. A themed affair, perhaps? Like the time she had decked out a marquee to recreate a French circus—and had only just managed to persuade the trapeze artist not to flounce off in a huff because he hadn’t had star billing!
Or the time she had crammed a ballroom with a thousand red roses for one of the most over-the-top engagement parties she had ever had a hand in.
Sienna smiled. Her job required that she had the organisational skills of an army general—combined with the smooth tongue of a career diplomat.
As the lift doors slid open, the door to the penthouse was opened by a tall, olive-skinned man. Some sixth sense should have told her then—but why would it? With his black eyes and the expensive suit which didn’t quite disguise the gun in his breast pocket the man looked like any other foreign ‘minder’. Which she supposed was the modern word for bodyguard—and she came across plenty of those in this line of work.
‘Hello.’ She smiled. ‘My name is Sienna Baker and I have an appointment with Mr Altair.’
A flicker of something she couldn’t quite put her finger on passed over his impassive features, but he merely nodded and pushed the door to the apartment open. He stood by to let her pass but did not follow her inside, and as the door clicked shut behind her Sienna felt inexplicably apprehensive. As if she was closed in. Trapped. Though agoraphobia would be the last thing she should be suffering from in a room of these dimensions.
She looked around her, her senses swamped by the sudden crowding of different sensations which began to jostle for supremacy in her mind.
For a moment she was dazzled by the sheer impact of the light which spilled in from the enormous windows, and she screwed her eyes up in confusion as the faintest trace of a disturbingly familiar scent began to drift towards her. The exotic smell both tantalised her and began to make her stomach twist painfully, and she couldn’t work out why.
And then she saw the man standing completely still with his back to her, silhouetted against the London skyline—tall and dark and lean and proud, as if he had been carved from some black and unforgiving rock—and Sienna felt the blood drain from her face as he moved, like a statue coming to life.
She sucked in a breath of disbelief as her eyes flickered over him, her mind screaming out its protest as she began to register every detail about him. The slick black hair with the faint wave to it. The broad shoulders and the long legs. The arrogant and autocratic stance. Oh, please, no. Please. No. But now the scent which pervaded the suite became more understandable—and wasn’t smell supposed to be the most evocative of all the senses?
Did she whimper or make a sound? Was that why he had begun to turn around? And now the breath caught in her throat as she began to issue a silent and heartfelt prayer. She prayed like she hadn’t done for a long, long time, since she had been begging some mysterious presence to take the pain away. If no one had been listening then, then let them be listening now.
Don’t let it be him. Oh, please don’t let it be him. But her heart plummeted like a stone as he turned to face her.
Hashim surveyed her with cold and glittering black eyes, acknowledging the heavy stab of desire in his loins with a grim kind of pleasure, remembering the splayed abandon of her legs the last time he had seen her, and the aching only increased.
He had long denied himself this moment because he had told himself that he could, but in the end desire had proved irresistible. Hashim despised the weakness which made him want her, yet he embraced it, too. And he intended to savour every moment of it. This woman who had deceived him would pay, and she would pay with her body!
He let the narrowed ebony gleam of his eyes linger on her figure, to see if time had marred its perfection, but it was as firm and as lushly slim as a prized young Saluki—the silky-sleek hunting dogs much favoured by the tribes of his native land.
It was hard to pin down what made her quite so desirable—for hers was not a fashionable look. She was too petite and curvy for modern tastes, yet her body was to die for. And if you added to that the ingredients of innocence and sensuality...
Innocence!
Hashim’s mouth hardened as he thought of what a sham appearances could be.
He let his gaze drift upwards, to her face. How white her skin was, he observed with impartial interest—and how contrasting the deep rose of her lips. Ah, those lips! One of the very first things he had noticed about her had been her natural pout, which some women spent thousands of dollars at plastic surgeons trying to recreate.
Now those same lips trembled under his scrutiny, and he longed to crush their petal softness beneath the hard, seeking warmth of his own. But that would have to wait...and the waiting would only increase his eventual pleasure.
‘Sienna,’ he murmured as the warm throb of blood beat between his legs.
The way he said it took her back to somewhere which was out of bounds, and her heart buckled with pain as she stared at the man she had once believed herself to be in love with.
He was both ugly and beautiful, his face unique—defined by hard contours and the ravages of warfare. An exotic, foreign face. The cruel beak of a nose and harsh slash of his mouth only added to his allure, and those clever black eyes could make a woman feel as if he was slowly stripping her bare...
Seeing him again was a moment she had lived out in her mind over and over again—though not much lately, it was true. But wasn’t it simply human nature to wonder how she would react if ever she saw him again? As time had passed she had convinced herself that the sobbing wreck of her early days had been replaced by a confident woman who would give him a cool smile and say, Hashim! Well, long time no see!
How wrong she had been. How very wrong and how very stupid. As if any woman could look at a man like that without wanting to melt into a helpless puddle of longing at his feet. But the longing was eclipsed by another emotion, and that was wariness...or was it fear? What the hell was he doing here?
‘Hashim,’ she whispered, like someone waking from a long dream. ‘Is it really you?’
‘It really is.’ His hard eyes mocked her, enjoying her discomfiture in a way he had not enjoyed anything for a long time. ‘You seem surprised, Sienna.’
‘Surprise implies something pleasant,’ she said shakily.
He arched heavy black brows in sardonic query. ‘And this is not?’
‘Of course it’s not!’ Nervously, she flicked her tongue over her lips to moisten them, and then wished she hadn’t, for his black eyes were drawn to the movement as a snake to the charmer’s pipe. ‘I’m shocked—like anyone would be.’
‘I disagree—a lot of women might be delighted to see a man who had once featured in their lives, but I guess it’s different in your case.’
Her eyes pleaded with him to stop, but he did not, and his hard mouth twisted into a cruel imitation of a smile.
‘I expect your past is always coming back to unsettle you in all kinds of ways—but you have only yourself to blame, my dear. If you didn’t keep so many unsavoury secrets, then you might be able to sleep a little easier.’ He allowed his eyes to linger on the exquisite swell of her breasts and the swift shaft of desire became blunted with the memory of betrayal. His mouth hardened. ‘Though I can’t imagine any man letting you sleep easy at night.’ Except maybe him. The mad, duped fool who had protected her and respected her. Who had cherished her as if she had been a delicate and priceless piece of porcelain.
And then seen her crushed into smithereens before his eyes.
But he was a fool no more...that day had gone...never to return.
Sienna wanted to tell him not to stare at her that way, but she knew if she did that then he would do it all the more. He was not a man to be thwarted or dictated to, and in his hard black eyes was the glitter of danger. She swallowed, terrified to ask the question because of what the answer might be. Until she told herself that this was just some horrible, unfortunate coincidence—it had to be...
Or was it? Suddenly she wasn’t so sure. Did anything ever happen completely by chance?
‘What are you doing here, Hashim?’
He thought how easily his name came to her lips. How little she realised the honour accorded to her by being able to speak it so freely where most women would dip their eyes in deference! Even the sophisticated women in his life—and there had been many—had always been slightly in awe of his power and position. He stared at her, and the anticipation of what he was about to do made his blood sing with pleasure. ‘You know very well why I am here,’ he reprimanded silkily.
For a second her world was suspended in a moment of disbelief as she was frozen by the stark sensual intent in his eyes. And it was as if just that one sizzling look had begun something which her unresisting body was powerless to stop. She shook her head, trying to stop the stealthy and hated shiver of desire. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Shame on you, Sienna—is this how you always react when you are booked in to have a business meeting? You are being paid to organise a party for me—remember?’
His soft, mocking words made her throat close over with fear and she swallowed it down. There was no way she could have any kind of meeting with him—business or otherwise. He must know that!
‘No!’ she said, as calmly as she could. But as she shook her head the heavy weight of her piled-up hair wobbled, as if itching to cascade down her back. ‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it!’ She looked around her with slight desperation, as if any minute now she would suddenly wake up and discover that the whole incident had been some ghastly nightmare. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting a Mr Altair! Not you.’
He gave a cold smile. ‘But “Mr Altair” is me, Sienna. Didn’t you realise?’ His smile grew even colder, even though the undulating movement of her hair made him ache to unpin it and set it free. Free to tumble onto the warm nakedness of his chest. And his belly...
‘Altair is one of my many aliases,’ he drawled. ‘Surely I used it when I knew you?’
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Ah. So much changes with the passage of time, does it not, Sienna? What else has changed, I wonder?’
She felt like a woman who had woken up in an alien place, where all the rules of survival had changed, and she knew that she had to take control—not just of herself but of the situation, too. She was no longer a young girl, besotted and completely fixated by a man who was light-years away from her in terms of experience. The wrong man, she reminded herself painfully.
With an effort, she gave him a smile. A rueful, grown-up smile. ‘Look, Hashim, I presume that now you’ve seen me you’ve changed your mind. We aren’t going to be able to do this—you know we aren’t.’
His eyes glittered with provocation. ‘To what...precisely...do you refer? What aren’t we going to be able to do, Sienna?’
She didn’t rise to the sexual taunt. If she kept it on a business level then she might be safe—but if she allowed the discussion to stray into the personal or—even worse—the past, then she really was in danger.
‘But what are you doing here?’ she questioned, still with the last vague hope that things were not what they seemed. ‘When you always stay at the Granchester?’
‘Maybe I find that the memories there are too tainted,’ he mocked. ‘Or maybe I find that I just can’t resist the attractions on offer here...’ Once again he let his eyes linger with insolent hunger on the swell of her magnificent breasts. ‘Your...reputation in the capital is growing, Sienna,’ he added silkily.
She didn’t suppose he was alluding to her backlog of satisfied clients. It was not a compliment at all, but a thinly veiled insult, implying...implying... Oh, she knew damn well what he was implying! Feeling as though her lungs had been scorched, she sucked in a breath to steady herself. ‘But presumably you’re not expecting me to work with you,’ she said quietly.
He gave a heady, husky laugh of anticipation. ‘For an employee you sure as hell make a lot of presumptions. It could get you into a lot of trouble if you’re not careful.’
She had forgotten what a curious mixture he was, of the ancient and the modern, the forward-thinking and the ludicrously old-fashioned. He was one of the most intelligent men she had ever met—so why the hell was he deliberately misunderstanding her reservations? ‘Oh, Hashim—don’t be so...dense!’
‘Dense?’ He tilted his chin imperiously and his eyes narrowed into glittering ebony shards. ‘You dare to address me—a sheikh—in such a way?’
In the past he had never pulled rank—but then he hadn’t needed to. She hadn’t cared about his position—hadn’t even known about it to start with. And by the time she did it hadn’t mattered. Or at least she’d thought it hadn’t—but that was yet another indication of just how out of her depth she had been. Because of course it had.
It had mattered a lot.
CHAPTER TWO (#ue3ef24e6-1e58-55d6-ad4a-34c64ad203a5)
SHE should never have met him, of course, for theirs were two such different paths in life—destined never to cross. But country girls sometimes went to live in big cities and became receptionists in super-smart hotels—the kind of places where you bumped into real-live sheikhs when you were on your way to work. Just like a fairy tale. And sometimes the fairy tale came true—but what it was easy to forget was that there was always a dark side to the story.
Sienna had gone to London for the usual reasons—and then some more. In the midst of crisis she had needed money and a solution. And after that... Well, after that she had needed to forget. And, as well as offering her anonymity, the big city had also offered her the opportunity to work her way up the ladder in the hotel industry—and to live rent-free in one of the most expensive parts of London. A perk which had made up for the long and unsociable hours.
The first time she had seen Hashim, Sienna had been on her way to the hotel for a late shift. It had been a beautiful day, and she’d been enjoying the sunshine.
She’d been wearing nothing out of the ordinary—a floaty kind of summer dress—but her hair had been down and she’d walked with the unconscious vigour of youth. In her daydream she’d barely noticed the slight commotion of people milling around the dark-windowed limousine of the world-renowned Granchester Hotel.
And then she had seen the figure emerging from the car. He’d been tall, with a natural autocratic poise, dressed in a coolly pale suit which had made the dark olive of his skin look so silken. It had gleamed soft gold and contrasted with the hard ebony glitter of his eyes.
For a split-second as they’d looked at one another it had been like something out of one of the old-fashioned films she’d always been a sucker for. As if she had been waiting all her life to see just that man looking at her in just that intent and interested way. His eyes had narrowed as a bodyguard had shot an arm out in front of her, bringing her to a halt.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she had protested, and the man had smiled a hard kind of smile, and then said something in a husky tongue which was foreign to her.
‘Let her pass,’ he clipped out, as if he was translating the command for her benefit, and the bodyguard grunted and moved aside. Sienna inclined her head.
‘Thank you.’ She walked off down the road, somehow aware that the black eyes watched her, burning into her back, branding her with their strange exotic power.
And then, a few weeks later, he came into the hotel and Sienna just froze.
He looked...she swallowed...he looked so vibrant...so different—as if someone had plucked a bright and very exotic bloom and placed it in a vase of white flowers. She could see people in the foyer giving him sly little glances, and others—women—giving not so shy ones. And his two bodyguards—ever-present in the background, solid as a brick wall and silently sending out messages to keep away.
Experience had made Sienna wary of men, and so her unexpected reaction to this one took her by surprise. When desire had never really touched you it was a bit earth-shattering when it did. ‘Um, um...’ She could feel her cheeks growing pink. How unprofessional! ‘I mean, good morning, sir.’
Hashim’s eyes narrowed with interest. It was the girl with the green eyes and the body! And what a body!
Carelessly, he flicked his hand to indicate that the bodyguards should remain where they were, and he moved forward to the desk himself, fully aware of the impact he was making as he stared down into her face. ‘Hello again,’ he said softly.
His accent was silky, rich and deep, and the tiny blush which had begun deepened to heat her cheeks. Her heart thumping in her chest as if it had just discovered how to beat, Sienna jabbed her finger at the booking diary. ‘Can I...can I help you, sir?’
The side of him which had been indulged from the cradle wanted to lower his head and whisper that, yes, she could spend the afternoon in bed with him—but her innocent blush meant that he had unconsciously moved her into a category of women with whom it was not acceptable to flirt outrageously.
‘I am meeting one of your guests here for lunch,’ he said instead.
‘And the guest’s name, sir?’ she questioned, looking down at her booking list and wishing she could stop blushing.
He gave it, and saw her eyes widen—for the politician he was meeting was well known, and Hashim knew very well the potency of power and connections. He had lived with them all his life.
‘He’s waiting at the table, sir. I’ll take you in to join him.’
She stood up to show him the way, and he enjoyed following her into the restaurant, so that he could watch her unobserved.
She was not tall, but he liked that—for he believed that a woman should look up to a man—and although her hips were narrow, her bottom was as curved as her breasts, and designed to be cupped by the warmth of a man’s hand.
But it was her green eyes, shaped like almonds, and the pinkness of her cheeks and the rose pout of her lips which stayed in his mind. During lunch he gestured for one of his guards to approach, lowering his head to give an instruction in his native tongue, and the guard was dispatched to the reception desk to acquire her phone number.
But Sienna refused to give it. What a cheek—sending his henchman! And in a way it just confirmed her rather jaundiced view of men. She wished she could go on her break right then, but it wasn’t for ages, and when he came out of the restaurant she was still sitting there.
She looked straight through him, as if he wasn’t there—something which had never happened to him before. But he was too intrigued to be outraged, and some alien emotion directed his steps towards her.
‘You wouldn’t give me your phone number,’ he mused.
‘You didn’t ask me.’
‘And was that such an unforgivable sin?’ he teased.
She turned her head away, unsure how to cope with him, this powerfully built and exotic man who was making her feel things she wasn’t used to feeling.
‘What is your name?’ he asked, without warning, and she turned back to find herself imprisoned in the blazing ebony spotlight of his eyes.
‘Sienna,’ she whispered, as if he had sucked the word clean out of her, without her permission.
‘Sienna,’ he repeated softly, and nodded. ‘So, are you going to have dinner with me, Sienna?’
Somewhere in the recess of her mind was the thought that staff definitely weren’t supposed to fraternise with the guests—until she remembered that he wasn’t actually a guest. And even further back was another thought—that she was rather good at getting out of her depth. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Why not?’ he questioned softly.
‘Because I don’t even know your name.’
‘Ah! Did not one of your finest poets once ask: “What’s in a name?’” His black eyes narrowed. ‘My name is Sheikh Hashim Al Aswad.’
Sheikh? Sheikh? Something in his eyes made her stare at him, aghast. ‘You’re not really a sheikh, are you?’
‘I’m afraid I am,’ he replied gravely.
Sienna stared up at him. Now his dark looks and foreign air and the unmistakable aura of authority made sense. ‘But what on earth would I wear?’
And he laughed. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said truthfully. ‘You are so young and so beautiful that you would look wonderful in anything.’ Or nothing, of course.
That night he took her to a restaurant which overlooked the silver snake of the river which wound its way through the city. The stars outside seemed close enough to touch. And the evening felt magical enough for Sienna to feel that she could.
She had thought she might feel awkward and out of her depth, but instead she was so—excited, and determined to enjoy every second of it. Even the simple little cotton dress she chose seemed okay, because her thick dark hair reached almost to her waist, and she wore it loose and saw the narrow-eyed look of approval he gave and knew she’d got it just right.
It felt like an old-fashioned date was supposed to feel. Hashim ignored the fact that there were two armed bodyguards seated a few tables away, and more outside. This felt different, and he wasn’t quite sure why. Because she seemed so transparently innocent?
‘So tell me about yourself,’ he instructed.
Sienna hesitated, wondering where to begin. Was this true lives or true confessions? She had once done something she didn’t feel too great about—but that one-off act didn’t define her as a person, surely? She’d probably never see him again after tonight—so why let him in on a secret which might ruin the evening?
She thought about what a man born to a sheikhdom would most like to hear. Well, she couldn’t compete on a material front, that was for sure! She leaned forward and clasped her hands on the starched linen tablecloth, and tried to paint a picture of a very different life.
‘I grew up in a little village. You know—a proper English village, with lambs gambolling around the meadows in the springtime and cherry blossom on the trees.’
‘And in summer?’
‘It rained!’ She wriggled her shoulders. ‘Well, actually, it didn’t—it just seems to now, whenever I go back. But maybe that’s because I’m an adult now. When I was little the sun always seemed to be shining and golden.’ She stared into his face, thinking that she had never seen eyes quite so black. ‘I suppose that most people’s childhoods are like that. We view them through rose-tinted glasses.’
He thought not. Certainly his own had been nothing like that, but he would not describe it, nor compare the two. He would not have dreamed of expressing his own thoughts about growing up. Privacy was second nature to him and always had been—drilled into him from the very beginning. Instead, he picked up on the wisftfulness in her voice. ‘If it was so idyllic, then why did you leave?’
Sienna fiddled with her napkin. ‘Birds need to fly the nest.’
‘Indeed they do.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘And is life outside the nest all you dreamed it would be?’
Sienna hesitated. It could be scary. It gave you opportunities, and they could be scarier still. ‘Well, you gain freedom, of course—but you lose stability. I guess that’s what life is like, though—gains and losses—hopefully it all balances out in the end.’
‘You have a very wise head on such young shoulders,’ he said gravely.
‘You’re making fun of me.’
‘No.’ He shook his head and gave a gentle smile. ‘No, I am not. I find your attitude quite charming, if you must know. How old are you, by the way?’
Would he think her too young? Too young for what, Sienna? ‘Nearly twenty.’
But he smiled. ‘Only nearly?’ he teased.
‘Now you,’ she said. ‘What on earth do sheikhs do?’
His mouth twitched. She really was irresistible. ‘Sometimes I ask myself the very same question. Mainly, they rule a country, and that involves much fighting and the quest for power—but they also oversee oil exports, which is why I am here.’ And they are surrounded by a wealth that most people couldn’t begin to comprehend. Especially not her.
Sienna crumbled a piece of unwanted bread. ‘So where’s home?’
For a moment he said nothing, and then gave an odd kind of smile. ‘Qudamah is my home—but I come from a race of nomadic people.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘We do not settle easily.’
If she had been older she would have recognised that he was defining boundaries—but as it was his romantic words simply fired up her already overworking imagination.
Later, in the darkened limousine, his hard thigh brushed against hers and Sienna could hardly breathe. But there was no kiss, merely the request—no, the demand that he see her again.
It all happened so fast—Hashim’s life slipped into a different timescale and he found himself experiencing something which was unknown to him: a tumult of feelings which he was too seasoned and too cynical to call love. Yet his ancestors had been poets and sages, as well as warriors, and he was prepared to acknowledge that somehow Sienna touched a part of him which had before gone neglected. It was as if her innocence and her beauty had begun a slow melt of something he had not known was frozen.
Maybe it was his heart.
She trembled when he kissed her, and he could feel the tension of both eagerness and fear when he took her in his arms. It seemed unbelievable—given her age and her liberal Western upbringing—but something told him that his instinct was correct.
One evening his eyes burned into her as he stared down into her flushed face. ‘You are innocent of men?’ he demanded.
‘Yes,’ she admitted in a low voice, wondering if that admission would drive him away from her. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Innocent virgin,’ he moaned as he kissed her. ‘My innocent virgin.’
Of course that changed everything. The knowledge of her purity filled him with delight, but there was also the certainty that he now bore a heavy responsibility towards her. For a man whose life had been burdened with responsibility, it was another he could have done without—and yet he found himself embracing it.
He saw her whenever he could, wondering if the frequency of their meetings would remove some of the magic, but the magic remained. He had spent his life avoiding any kind of commitment, yet now he saw that as a deficiency, not a blessing.
He took her to discreet restaurants and she showed him the hidden, secret places of the city. She made him feel alive. Never before had sex been denied him, but this was a self-imposed restraint, and he discovered that doing without something you really wanted could be unbearably erotic.
And yet her innocence made her suitable. Eminently suitable. Of course many bridges must first be crossed, and the first of those would be to introduce her to his family. But without pressure on either side. On neutral territory.
‘How would you like to accompany me to a wedding, sweet Sienna?’ he asked her one afternoon, looping his arms around her waist.
Sienna looked up into his black eyes. ‘Whose? Where? When?’
‘My cousin’s,’ he murmured. ‘In the South of France, next month. My mother and sisters will be there.’ He glittered a smile at her. ‘Will you come as my guest?’
Sienna knew that this was important. A statement. An indication that things were getting serious. She gave him a slow smile of delight. ‘I’d love to,’ she said simply.
Hashim spoke to one of his aides. ‘Will you arrange it, please?’
‘But, Your Highness, you are quite sure?’
Hashim frowned. He would not be dictated to! The history of his country was studded with examples of sheikhs who had taken commoners as wives...
But a couple of days later there was a rap on the door when he was working in his study, and Hashim looked up to see the Arctic dark eyes of his equerry, who was carrying what looked like a glossy magazine between his fingers, as if it was contaminated.
‘Yes, what is it, Abdul-Aziz?’ he demanded imperiously. ‘I am going out shortly.’
His equerry’s face was grim. ‘Before you do, Your Highness, there is something I must draw your attention to.’
For the umpteenth time, Sienna raked her hands back through her hair—fizzing over with a mixture of excitement and nerves.
Hashim was sending a car for her and they were having dinner at the Granchester Hotel, where he was staying.
She was still reeling from his invitation to the family wedding—so excited at the prospect of going public with him that she hadn’t had time to worry about what she was going to say to his mother.
She would just be herself, without artifice or airs, for that was who Hashim liked her to be. She gave herself a little shiver of excitement as she walked up the imposing marble stairs of the Granchester Hotel.
But Hashim was not there to greet her, and neither were any of his staff. Not even the hatchet-faced Abdul-Aziz. Instead, she got a message delivered with a rather knowing look from the receptionist as she was directed up to his suite.
It isn’t the way you think it is! Sienna wanted to say to her. Hashim has never treated me with anything but respect! But as she rode up in the private lift which led to the penthouse she wondered why he had changed the pattern of their meetings.
Hashim opened the door himself, and Sienna was taken aback when she saw him—for she had never seen him dressed like this before. Tonight he looked exactly as she had imagined a sheikh would look.
Gone were the immaculate hand-made suits he usually favoured—which contrasted with his exotic looks and made him such a tantalising combination of East and West. Instead he was wearing a pair of filmy silk trousers in a deep claret colour, with a silky top in the same material. The rich hue made the most of his exotic colouring, and Sienna felt the roof of her mouth dry—for he was barefoot and the shirt was open, and through it she could see his olive hair-roughened chest, darkened with contours of muscle and sinew.
She had never been confronted quite so vividly by his overt masculinity before, and her heart gave a startled little leap as she found herself wondering if he was actually wearing any underwear at all.
But it was more than his state of undress which unsettled her—for his eyes looked dangerous tonight. Steely and brittle. Like jet. Something stopped her from hurling herself into his arms in the breathless way which always made him laugh—and she wasn’t sure whether it was excitement or fear. But why on earth would she be frightened?
‘You look beautiful tonight, Sienna,’ he said deliberately.
Were nerves getting the better of her, or was there an odd undertone to his voice? ‘Thank you. I—’ But her words were lost beneath the hard, heady pressure of his mouth, for he had pulled her into his arms without warning and had begun to kiss her in a way which took her breath away. ‘Hashim!’ she gasped.
Her mouth opened up beneath his and it was enough to ignite all the fire and the fury which had been smouldering away inside him. He kissed her until she was melting and aching and moaning beneath his seasoned touch, and only then did he lift his head and glitter a hard, bright question down at her.
‘Hashim...what?’ he questioned huskily, moving his mouth to her throat to trace a featherlight kiss along its silken path.
It would be madness to protest that he had never kissed her like this before—not when she had spent hours wondering why.
‘Oh-oh-oh!’ She shuddered as he lightly drifted his hand over her breast.
A grim, silent smile of triumph curved his hard lips as his fingertips returned to whisper over their pert lushness. ‘Oh, what, Sienna?’ came the silken query. ‘Is that good?’
‘Oh! Oh!’ she gasped. ‘So good!’
A tiny pulse flickered in the centre of one tensed olive cheek. ‘Tell me what it is you want,’ he grated.
Instinct took over from reservation and sent the words spilling out of their own accord. ‘That,’ she sighed, as his fingers brushed fleetingly against the aching mounds of her breasts. ‘That’s what I want!’
He cupped the magnificent swell in his hand and rubbed a slow and deliberate circle with his thumb. ‘Like this, you mean?’
She nodded as pleasure constricted her throat into a tight, dry band.
‘I can’t hear you, Sienna,’ he urged softly.
‘Yes,’ she moaned. ‘Yes! Just like that. Oh, Hashim...’
How he had misjudged her! Oh, yes! He could feel her responsive body pressing close to his, and knew that if he put his hand up her skirt she would not stop him. How far would she let him go in public? Would she let him unzip himself and plunge right in? Probably.
‘You want that I should make love to you by the lift?’ he demanded hotly.
In some dim recess of her mind she was aware that he sounded almost...harsh...disapproving... But maybe that was because he had been holding back for so long. Didn’t they say that men had difficulty controlling their sexual hunger? Sienna drew back and swallowed breathlessly, lifting the palm of her hand to touch his rugged face, but it looked oddly cold and forbidding. Obviously he was holding himself tightly in check and she must not make him wait any longer—he had played the gentleman to her heart’s content. It was time.
‘Let’s go to bed,’ she whispered daringly.
His mouth hardened. ‘Yes,’ agreed Hashim, in an odd kind of voice. ‘Why don’t we?’
Without warning he shut the door with an echoing slam, then picked her up and carried her towards a vast double bed which was covered with a lavish embroidered gold coverlet.
‘Fit for a king!’ Sienna murmured with delight, but there was no answering smile in his eyes as he put her down on it.
‘Only a sheikh this time, I’m afraid,’ he responded tonelessly. ‘Are you disappointed?’
She wanted to ask him if something was wrong, but by then he had come to lie down beside her and her last reservations melted away.
‘Now, then,’ he said decisively, and began to unbutton her dress, a pure feral smile of hunger emphasising the deep lines around his mouth. ‘Ah...’ He sucked in a slow breath of pleasure as her breasts were revealed to him, spilling lushly pale from the pink lace which confined them. ‘So firm. So tight. So taut. Like two rich, ripe fruits. Beautiful. So very, very beautiful. You have the most beautiful breasts that I have ever seen, Sienna. What a lucky man I am.’
Something in his words unsettled her—but any slight anxiety she experienced was allayed with the expert motion of his fingertips, and Sienna closed her eyes.
‘Yes,’ he murmured approvingly. ‘Lie back and enjoy it.’
Oh, but he was so thoughtful. Beneath that steely exterior he cared for her own pleasure first and foremost. She felt him unclip her bra and give a shuddering sigh. Her eyelashes fluttered open and she surprised a look of almost...reluctance...on his face. But then he lowered his head towards her and she could feel the approaching warmth of his breath.
‘Hashim...’ She swallowed. She wasn’t sure that he’d heard her. ‘Hashim,’ she said again, almost desperately this time, for more than anything she wanted him to kiss her, to whisper sweet words to accompany these erotic gestures.
‘Shh,’ he instructed silkily, for he knew from experience that conversation could break the mood and concentration. He knew what he wanted and he was going to allow nothing—nothing—to stop him from achieving it.
Sienna squirmed on the cold coverlet and the expert movement of his hands made her need for reassurance vanish. Her breasts had never felt like this before. As if they had swollen to twice their normal size and were prickling with excitement—the blood coursing through them so that the slightest touch sent shafts of pure pleasure spiralling through her. She squealed as his tongue licked against the sensitised flesh.
‘You are very responsive for one so...innocent,’ he observed against her puckered nipple.
Another shaft of pleasure so acute that it bordered on pain shot through her, and she was aware of an empty, echoing longing, just crying out to be filled. ‘A-am I?’
‘Yes, you are. And now you will be more responsive still....’
Sienna’s breath caught in her throat, for his hand was moving downwards now, inching towards the heated clamour—the very heart of where she most wanted to be touched—and Sienna silently prayed that he wouldn’t stop.
‘I won’t,’ he said roughly, and she realised that she must have spoken the words out loud.
‘Hashim,’ she whispered, letting her lips rest against the soft furnace of his skin. ‘Hashim, I love you.’
For a moment he stilled, then shook his head very slightly, silencing her with his expert caress. He touched her molten and responsive heat with such delicate skill until she gasped in disbelief—like someone frantically seeking something only not quite sure what. Restlessly, her head moved from side to side as she stumbled towards a place of promise so beautiful that she was certain it could not really exist.
But it did. Oh, it did. She found it and fell into it, sobbing out her fulfilment, scarcely aware of Hashim pulling away from her. But, as reason and sanity began to seep back in, she realised that he was getting off the bed and moving away.
Over to the other side of the room and as far away from her as possible!
She blinked as she struggled to catch her breath. ‘Hashim?’ she croaked in confusion. ‘Is anything wrong?’
‘Wrong?’ He paused before answering her question, sucking in a deep breath as he sought—successfully—to bring his desire under control, to be replaced with the slow simmer of rage. ‘I think that we’re through with playing games, don’t you?’
Sienna sat up on the bed, aware that her clothing was in disarray, feeling somehow cheapened as she stared into the forbidding mask of his face. A Hashim she’d never seen before, and one she barely recognised. ‘Why are you behaving like this?’ she questioned in bewilderment. ‘Don’t you...don’t you want to make love to me? Properly?’
‘You think I would deign to contaminate myself by entering you?’ he questioned insultingly. ‘You who have fooled me!’
‘I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about!’ But some self-protective instinct made her begin to button her dress with trembling fingers.
‘The sweet little virgin!’ he ground out furiously. ‘Like hell you are! Sweet little virgins don’t take their clothes off and pose for pornographic photos!’
And then it all became horribly, horribly clear. That calendar. Those twelve photos. Oh, those wretched, wretched photos.
Sienna flinched and let out a shuddering sigh. ‘You’ve seen them?’
Had there perhaps been some insane part of him which had been hoping that it was all a mistake—that she had a secret identical sister waiting in the wings, perhaps? Because, if so, that futile thought was banished by the look of guilt on her face.
His hopes and dreams for what might have been now crumbled before his eyes like desert dust as he realised his mistake. He had believed her to be the woman he wanted her to be, not the woman she really was. He had been sucked in by her beauty and her air of innocence. Oh, what a fool he had been!
‘Yes, I’ve seen them!’ he grated, remembering that he had been about to introduce her to his family! That he had actually been entertaining thoughts of her as a future bride. Fool!
‘Hashim—please—it isn’t how it looks,’ she said desperately.
She had agreed to do the calendar as a one-off to get her mother the operation she’d needed. Her mother had been crippled with pain and facing ruin, and the badly needed operation had been expensive. It had been an unconventional way to get the money, yes—but the only way which had been open to her at the time. And surely if Hashim realised how desperate she had felt. How hopeless her mother’s predicament...
‘Please, Hashim...I can explain—’
‘What? How you came to be rubbing your breasts and simulating orgasm?’ he cut in brutally, but despite his disgust he nevertheless felt the hard leap of desire. For even though their existence destroyed any future between them, he was not hypocritical enough to deny that they were magnificent photographs. ‘You think that there is any acceptable explanation for that?’ he snapped.
‘It isn’t—’
But his rage was such that he barely heard her. ‘On the head of my camel you are a magnificent actress—I commend you for that! You have succeeded in fooling me. And you have lied to me,’ he added bitterly, remembering the way she had told him that she was a virgin—and that she loved him.
‘I did not lie to you! I just...’ She looked at him and shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘Couldn’t think of the right time to tell you.’
‘But there would never have been a right time! In my culture, such conduct from the consort to the Sheikh would be utterly repellent—surely you must have known that?’
Sienna stared at him. Of course she had. Was that another reason why she had buried it away? As if by doing that she could pretend it had never happened? So that she wouldn’t have to face the repercussions of her actions? Could carry on living in her little fantasy world with Hashim—untouched by the past and untroubled by the future? But had she ever imagined that the outcome would be any different from this? That there would be some magical, fairy-tale solution despite what she’d done?
No. Hashim would never forgive her.
The reality of seeing the contempt in his black eyes was almost too much to bear, and Sienna stood up and picked up her shoes, her hair falling down over her face, concealing her pain from him.
But she paused by the door, lifting her gaze to his, unable to suppress the tiny flicker of hope which stubbornly refused to die.
‘Is that it, then, Hashim? Is it...over?’
‘Over?’ His mouth hardened, for he wanted to wound her. To hurt her as she had hurt him. To destroy her dreams as she had destroyed his. ‘I think you forget yourself. Did you ever expect that it would be anything other than a very temporary diversion?’ he questioned imperiously. ‘For I am the Sheikh and you are but a commoner.’ His made his final thrust.
‘A true commoner.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ue3ef24e6-1e58-55d6-ad4a-34c64ad203a5)
How painful the past could be.
But as the mists of memory cleared, and Sienna looked into Hashim’s steely black eyes, the pain came flooding back as if the years in between had never happened.
She remembered the way she had stumbled from his suite that evening, the tears beginning to slip from beneath her eyelids. Somehow she had made it home and howled into her pillow like a wounded animal. She had never known that it was possible to cry that much. Or to hurt that much. To be revolted by the thought of food and want only to sleep—but sleep had never seemed to come, and when it had, it mocked her with images of the dark face she had grown to love so much.
For the first and only time in her life she had understood the meaning of the word heartbreak—and she never wanted to experience it again.
It had taken her countless months to put her life back on track, to rejoin the human race. But a lot had changed since then—and most importantly she had changed. She was no longer the innocent young girl who didn’t have a clue about life or how to handle men.
Just keep telling yourself that, she thought, with more than a hint of desperation as she met his glittering stare.
‘You’re remembering the last time we saw each other,’ he observed, an odd kind of note in his voice.
Had her face given her away? Maybe he had read in it her vulnerability and her anguish. ‘How could I not?’ she questioned, trying to keep her voice from shaking. ‘I only have to look at you and it all comes flooding back.’
He stared at her and his black eyes were as hard as jet. Did she imagine that it was any different for him? He felt the hard leap of desire. ‘So it does,’ he agreed softly.
‘Maybe we should try a joint counselling session,’ she suggested, trying to keep it light. ‘You know—like people who want to stop smoking.’
How flippant she sounded, he thought—and how cynical. Were those traits that she had kept cleverly hidden from him? And why not? Had she not been a woman adept in the art of concealment? ‘But maybe I’m not ready to stop,’ he said deliberately.
Sienna felt an odd kind of lump in her throat, and something both seductive and yet infinitely threatening hovered unseen and unspoken in the air. Now her voice did tremble. ‘And wh—what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, at least for you it was a...how shall I put this?’ A cruel kind of smile lifted the corners of his lips. ‘A satisfying encounter.’
His implication was very plain and very insulting, but it wasn’t even true—or at least not in the way that mattered. Maybe in one sense it had been satisfying—on a purely physical level, yes—but on an emotional one it had been as barren as one of the deserts in his homeland. Fulfilment without tenderness was never satisfying for a woman, and it had left her empty—as if he’d ripped out an essential part of her and carried it off with him. ‘Is that how you would describe it?’ she questioned bleakly.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ he mocked.
‘Not really, no.’ She looked into the cold black eyes and knew that he would never understand in a million years—nor even want to try. Why would he? Sienna shook her head, hoping to drive away some of the sadness. ‘Anyway, what’s the point in discussing it? Things have moved on.’
His face remained impassive, but inside he felt the flicker of anger mixed into a potent cocktail with sexual hunger and anticipation. She had fooled him once, but never again! Did she really think for a moment that now that he had her in his sights he was about to let her go? Did she not realise what he wanted? That he had come here to achieve just this?
But, like the expert hunter he was, he knew that there were many ways to play with your quarry. Had she too regretted the abrupt end to that meeting? Perhaps for her as well as for him there had been bitter regrets that their lovemaking had not been complete?
‘Yes, things have moved on,’ he agreed. ‘But they seem to have brought us back to the same place. I am here and you are here—so just what do you think we ought to do about it?’
He took a step closer to her. He was close enough now for her to study him properly, so that she could see how much he had changed—though none of the fundamentals had. He was still the most breathtakingly masculine man she had ever laid eyes on. As if he had stepped from another age and another time. His own particular scent drifted up her nostrils—a vital, spicy scent that spoke of raw virility and reached out to the most feminine side of her.
Briefly, Sienna closed her eyes in helpless recognition, and when she opened them again it was to see the warm ebony fire in his. She could feel herself drawn to him. Like a child who had been left outside in the cold for too long. He promised the certainty of warmth. Of comfort. And security.
She wasn’t aware that he had moved again, but he must have done—please God it hadn’t been her—because suddenly she was in his arms, her senses not giving her time to question her sanity as he bent his head to graze his lips across hers.
It was electric. Like fire. Ice. All extremes which could shock the system to its very core—that was Hashim’s kiss. It awakened in her something which had lain dormant, sleeping since the last time she had been in his arms. Back then she had—in her naivety—imagined that all kisses would press the button to instant sensual combustion, but in the interim she had discovered how way off the mark she had been.
His expert lips were both hard and soft, seeking yet commanding—and they tasted sweeter than the richest honey. Her own opened beneath them, to taste the warmth, to feel the seductive slide of his tongue into the moist interior of her mouth, and she gasped, buckled, so that his arms caught her against him, imprisoning her in an iron-hard grip which made her melt against him.
A great wave of longing swept through her. Physical—oh, yes—but something else besides. Something which was infinitely more powerful and far more dangerous. As if Hashim alone could fill some emotional space which seemed ever-constant inside her.
For countless seconds she felt the rush of blood and the clamour of response—the warm, primitive throb of blood as it centred and pooled at a place which made her ache. She felt one of his hands reach down to cup her buttock, and silently she begged him to move his fingers round, to delve into that secret place once more.
He seemed to read her thoughts—for he laughed as he moved his hand, teasingly drifting his fingers across her aching mound. She moaned in sweet response. He murmured something in a tongue which was foreign to her, but the mocking and triumphant tone of his words spilled over her heated senses like icy water and Sienna froze in disbelief.
What the hell was she doing?
With a wrenching effort she tore herself away, staring at him wide-eyed. Her breathing was ragged and her pulse was racing like a piston as she struggled to calm herself, smoothing down her dress frantically. Her face was on fire, and so, too—surely—was her heart. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
His smile was arrogant, though his eyes were cold. ‘Exactly what you wanted me to do.’
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