Possessed by the Sheikh

Several fires had been started in a clearing in front of some of the tents and dark-robed women were stirring the contents of cooking pots. The rich smell of cooking food made Katrina realise just how long it was since she herself had eaten, and her stomach growled hungrily.

Predictably, she felt, the tent her captor had led her to was set apart from the others.

A battered-looking utility-type vehicle was parked alongside it and behind that his horse was tethered, happily munching on some food, watched over by a young boy. But Katrina wasn’t given any time to study her surroundings; a hard hand in the middle of her back was already pushing her into the tent.

She had of course seen similar tents set up for display and educational purposes on a cultural education site in Zuran City, but she had never imagined she might occupy one of them! Several lamps cast a soft glow over the tent’s main living area, with its richly patterned carpets and traditional divan. There were several cushions on the floor and a low wooden table with a coffee pot on it.

All at once the events of the day caught up with her and reaction swamped her, causing exhausted tears to fill her eyes.

‘What are you crying for? Your lover? I doubt he is wasting any tears on you, to judge by the speed with which he abandoned you.’

Katrina stared at him. ‘Richard is not my lover! He’s a married man…’

‘But of course. Otherwise, why would he bring you to such a remote place?’ A cynical smile hardened the narrowed eyes.

‘I did not allow him. He…he forced me…’

‘Of course he did!’ he agreed mockingly.

Katrina lifted her head and looked challengingly at him.

‘Why are you pretending to be a Tuareg when it is obvious that you are not—?’

‘Silence!’ he commanded her angrily.

‘No. I will not be silent. I remember you from the alleyway in Zuran City, even if you don’t.’

She gave a small breathless gasp as his hand closed hard over her mouth, a menacing look glittering in his eyes as he bent towards her and said softly, ‘You will be silent.’

Katrina had had enough! She had been kidnapped, bullied, threatened, and now this! Angrily she bit sharply into the hand covering her mouth, more shocked by the salt taste of his blood than by the savagery of the oath he uttered as he wrenched away from her.

‘Woman, you are a hell-cat!’ he stormed as he frowned down at the tiny pinpricks of blood on the soft pad of flesh just below his thumb. ‘But no way will I allow you to poison me with your venom! Clean it.’

Katrina stared at him in disbelief, her face starting to burn. What she had done had shocked her. Outraged female fury stiffened her whole body. And yet shockingly there, deep down inside her, was a vagrant acknowledgement of intoxicatingly dangerous awareness of the sensuality of her own thoughts. Thoughts that mirrored her own actual desires? Desires she secretly wanted to turn into actions?

Absolutely not! She could feel his breath against her ear, and she took the cloth he was handing her, dipped it in the bowl of water next to her and dabbed the wound.

Abruptly he released her and stepped back from her, his voice both harsh and somehow distorted as he demanded thickly, ‘No! Why should I give you the opportunity to inflict even more damage?’

‘Why are you behaving like this?’ Katrina demanded tremulously. ‘Who are you? In the souk, you looked European.’

‘You will not say such things. You know nothing about me!’

She could hear the savage rejection and hostility in his voice. ‘I know that you are not a Tuareg,’ she persisted.

‘And you would know, of course,’ he taunted her, his anger replaced by mockery.

‘Yes, I would,’ Katrina confirmed bravely. ‘I have studied Zuranese history and culture and no true Tuareg male would ever uncover his face in public the way you did the other day in the alleyway…’

There was a small telling silence before he said quietly but oh, so menacingly, ‘If I were you, I would forget all about Zuran City and its alleyways.’

Katrina took a deep breath and then exhaled it raggedly. ‘So, are you going to tell me who you are?’

For a few seconds she thought he wasn’t going to reply. And then he gave a small dismissive shrug. ‘Who I am does not matter. But what I am does. Those of us who have given our allegiance to El Khalid have strong reasons for doing so. We live outside the law as you know it and you would do well to remember that.’

‘You’re a criminal?’ she guessed. ‘A fugitive?’

‘You ask too many questions and, I can assure you, you would not want to know who and what I really am.’

It was hard not to allow herself to shiver in reaction to those menacing words, and to demand instead, ‘Well, at least give me a name that I may call you. You cannot really want to be called Tuareg. I would certainly not want to be called English!’

To her astonishment he laughed.

‘Very well, then. You may call me…’ Xander paused. To give her his real name of Allessandro was impossible. It was far too easily recognisable. Here in the rebel camp, where a man’s lawful identity was respected as his own private business, he was known by everyone only as ‘Tuareg’ and had given himself the very common family name of bin Sadeen. But ‘Tuareg’ wasn’t the name he wanted to hear falling from this woman’s lips, although just why he should feel like that he wasn’t prepared to analyse.

‘You may call me Xander,’ he heard himself telling her. Xander was the shortened version of his name used only by those who were closest to him, his half-brother and sister-in-law, and so would not be recognised by anyone else.

‘Xander?’ A small frown etched Katrina’s smooth forehead. ‘That is very unusual. I do not believe I have heard it before.’

‘It was my mother’s choice,’ he told her curtly. ‘And what am I to call you?’

‘My name is Katrina Blake,’ she informed him, hesitating before finding the courage to burst out anxiously, ‘How long will it be before…before I can go back to Zuran City?’

‘I cannot say. El Khalid has given orders that no one is to leave the oasis until he permits it.’

For a moment Katrina was tempted to ask him what had brought them to the oasis, and indeed the question was already on the tip of her tongue, but cautiously she decided not to ask it. ‘Very wise,’ he told her coolly, as though he had guessed what she was thinking.

‘Stay here,’ he ordered her. ‘Do not leave the tent.’

‘Where are you going?’ Katrina demanded wildly as he started to walk away from her.

Turning round, he told her smoothly. ‘To my sleeping quarters to remove my soiled clothes.’

Oh! Katrina felt herself begin to blush.

‘Oh, your cuts,’ she remembered with guilt. ‘Shouldn’t you have them attended to?’

He shrugged carelessly. ‘They are mere scratches, that is all, and will heal quickly enough.’

Katrina suddenly remembered something. ‘Why was it Sulimen who lost the fight when you were the one who was injured?’ she asked him curiously.

‘The aim is not to carve slices from one’s opponent, but to disarm him,’ he told her dispassionately.

As he turned away again she looked towards the exit.

‘There are two hundred miles of empty desert between here and Zuran City.’

The clinically detached words sent a tingle of apprehensive hostility and despair zinging over her skin. The desert was its own kind of prison—a guard designed by nature to prevent her from escaping him, and he of course knew that. Did he also know how afraid she had been when Sulimen had claimed her as his trophy? How relieved she had been when he had stepped in? How complex and disquieting the tangled mass of her own emotions was? Her mouth compressed. She sincerely hoped not! He was already making her feel far more emotionally vulnerable than she knew was wise.

Determinedly she turned round to confront him. ‘You won’t get away with this, you know. Richard will alert the authorities and—’

‘We are in the empty quarter—beyond the reach of both your lover and the authorities,’ he replied chillingly.

‘Richard is my boss, not my lover.’ Katrina’s face burned as she saw the way he was looking at her.

‘So why else would you be at the oasis, together and alone? Though I’m not surprised that you should deny your relationship with him after the way he has abandoned you.’

‘He obviously thought it made good sense for him to go for help rather than for both of us to be taken hostage,’ Katrina returned shortly.

“‘Good sense”? Oh, of course, you are European!’ he taunted her. ‘Here in the desert it is not “good sense”. We are driven by our interactions with your sex, especially when we are bound to a woman, emotionally committed to them. But then, of course, your culture does not consider such things important, does it? I would rather cut out my own heart than abandon the woman who held it to any kind of discomfort or danger.’

Something in his voice was raising goose-bumps on Katrina’s skin and a dangerous burning sensation at the backs of her eyes. The intimate and intense images his words were conjuring for her were intruding on dreams she held so private and secret that just the sound of his voice was enough to bring them to the front of her mind. Hadn’t she always longed for such a man and such a love and hadn’t she told herself that she was hungering for something that did not exist? Hadn’t she strived to make herself put aside such foolishness and to concentrate instead on the realities of life?

Swallowing hard against the ball of emotion blocking her throat, she turned away from him.

‘Go if you wish,’ she heard him say carelessly from behind her. ‘If Sulimen does not take you, then the desert most surely will.’

Katrina made no response. How could she when she knew that he was speaking the truth?

Although she had her back to him, disconcertingly she knew immediately when he had left the living area of the pavilion and gone through to his sleeping quarters.

The rush of adrenalin that had given her the courage to speak so challengingly to him had gone and she felt weak and shaky. The pavilion and its owner were her prison and her guard, but they were also her place of safety and her protection, she acknowledged.

But she must not allow herself to forget just what he was! She could remember reading somewhere of the intense and dangerous emotional dependence a captive could end up having on his or her captor. She must not let that happen to her.

Because he had kissed her? Just because he had used her? Her head had begun to ache and she was beginning to feel slightly sick on the heavy mixture of adrenalin and anxiety unleavened by anything else.

She paced the soft carpet of the pavilion, checking and tensing at every alien sound, but she was still caught off guard when she turned round and saw that Xander had padded soft-footed into the room and was standing watching her.

He was wearing a clean soft white tunic that he was still fastening, his feet and head bare. In the lamplight she could see the golden gleam of his chest through the soft mesh of fine dark hair.

A feeling she couldn’t control exploded deep down inside her body, releasing an ache so shocking and intimate that it made her catch her breath on a betraying indrawn rattle.

His hair was damp and as he walked across the carpet towards her he brought with him the smell of clean skin and the subtle cologne she was already associating with him. Her heart did a neat double somersault inside her body and then just in case she had not got the message, it took a high dive on a trapeze that left her feeling as though it had somehow become lodged in her throat.

He was making her feel uncomfortable and very aware of the difference between his clean, fresh appearance and her own tired stickiness. But even without that he was making her feel uncomfortable, full stop, Katrina acknowledged mutely. She was trying desperately to drag her traitorous gaze away from the dark hand casually fastening the robe buttons and concealing from her the matt satin gold of his bare flesh.

In an attempt to cover what she was feeling she demanded sharply, ‘Just how long do you plan to keep me here?’

He shot her a look of cold arrogance. ‘For as long as I have to!’

She was finding it difficult to swallow. ‘What…what will you do?’ Could he hear the nervousness in her voice?

He gave her a look of narrow-eyed scrutiny and then questioned mockingly, ‘Do?’

‘Yes. I mean—’ She had to stop speaking to swallow again. ‘I mean, how will you let the expedition know that—?’

‘You ask far too many questions! There is a saying, isn’t there, in your country about curiosity?’

‘About curiosity killing the cat, you mean?’ Katrina managed to croak.

‘In your shoes I should concern myself more with questioning how willing your friends are to buy your freedom and at what price than how I intend to go about informing them of your whereabouts.’

Katrina could feel the panic biting into her, but she refused to give in to it. Her parents’ death had forced her into self-reliance at a young age and the habit of depending on herself and facing up to sometimes very unpleasant truths and realities was one she had forced herself to adopt.

And right now there was a very unpleasant question she had to have an answer to. Moistening her over-dry lips, she pressed him huskily, ‘And if my…if the company cannot pay the ransom demand?’

There was a small pause and a flash of something she couldn’t interpret in his eyes before he said softly, ‘Then in that case I shall have to take my goods to a wider market.’ When she looked blankly at him he derided her, ‘Who else will pay handsomely for a young attractive woman?’

Katrina’s eyes widened as she stared at him in appalled anxiety. He couldn’t mean what he was saying. Could he?

Without another word he pulled on his Tuareg headdress, slid his feet into a pair of sandals and, pulling back the heavy curtain, stepped out of the tent.

She was alone! He had gone! She could simply walk out if she wished. But walk out to what? She was pretty sure that a group of men such as these, bound together by their illegal activities, would post guards on their camp. If she tried to leave she would suffer the ignominy of being forcibly brought back, and even if she should succeed in escaping, she knew she could not possibly walk back to Zuran City. No, she had no option other than to wait tamely here, for him and whatever fate he chose to impose on her. And of course he knew that!

Whatever fate?

Supposing he himself should decide that he found her desirable? Her heart thumped heavily against her ribs, and a frisson of sensation that shamingly had nothing whatsoever to do with either fear or outrage stroked feather touches of liquid and dangerous excitement over her.

His dishonesty must obviously pay him well, she decided cynically, at least if the interior of the pavilion and its furnishings were anything to go by.

The carpets covering the floor and ‘walls’ were exquisitely worked and far superior to anything she had seen in the shops she had visited. She touched one of them tentatively, stroking her fingertip along one of the branches and then down the thick trunk of its richly hued tree of life. The silky threads felt as warm as though they were a living, breathing entity. If she closed her eyes she could almost imagine…

Her face was on fire as she snatched her hand back from the carpet as though she had been burned. The carved and gilded raised divan was draped with something dark and soft, jewel-coloured velvet cushions piled on top of it. The flickering oil lamps cast mysterious shadows, which echoed the sensual richness of the fabrics. A discarded lute-like instrument lay on the floor to one side of the divan, and behind them she could see a pile of leather-bound books.

Automatically she went over to them and picked one of them up. Its title was picked out in gold leaf, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam…A book of poetry. It seemed out of character somehow. She put the book back and sat down on one of the cushions. Her head was still aching and she felt both physically and emotionally exhausted. Tiredly she closed her eyes.

Pensively Xander picked his way through the tents towards his own, pausing to check on the mare he had been riding earlier. When she saw him she tossed her head and pushed her nose into his arm, begging for the tidbit he always gave her. The boy whom he paid to keep an eye on her sprang up from where he had been lying several feet away from her and then settled down again as he recognised him.

Katrina’s challenge to him about his European inheritance had rubbed against a raw place in his emotional make-up. His mother had been loved and respected by all of his Zurani family, with the exception of Nazir and Nazir’s late father. And, according to his half-brother, his mother had happily embraced the way of life of her husband. She had loved the desert and its people, as he did himself, but she had not been totally and completely desert blood, bone and sinew, just as he wasn’t himself. His father had chosen to have him educated in Europe, wanting him to experience his European cultural inheritance, and to keep the promise he had made to his dying wife, but Xander had never forgotten overhearing a conversation between his father and the British government official who had undertaken to escort him to his new school in England.

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