The Sheikh's Redemption

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Who was she kidding? It was irretrievable already. God.

She could think of nothing to say but “Shut up, Haidar.”

He looked down at her, eyes morphing from vapid porn-actor mode to a dozen devils’ cunning. “I’m a working dude, lady. Show me some respect. When I’m not on the clock, that is.”

Her neighbors’ expressions kept yo-yoing from the verge of bursting into laughter to wondering if their neighbor did have a kinky—or worse—side to her.

“You win, okay?” she grumbled for his ears only. “Now stop with the act, take your bows and let the ladies get on with their evening.”

He raised his voice for all to hear. “So you’ll pay extra if I start pretending I’m this Haidar guy right now?”

“Ooh!” She shoved him ahead of her across her threshold.

This time he surrendered to her manhandling, clung to the edge of the door, addressed them over her head. “Do you mind checking up on me in an hour’s time?”

She shot her flabbergasted neighbors another dying-of-embarrassment glance, dragged him away from the door, slammed it shut.

Then she rounded on him.

His grin lit up his impossibly gorgeous face. “I did warn you. Next time, give in gracefully.”

She stomped her heel over his foot. It felt like ramming rock-enclosed steel. Pain shot through her whole leg, had her hopping on one foot yelping.

He caught her by the arms, steadied her, chuckling. “Go put on your most lethal stilettos and we’ll try it again.”

Grimacing, she punched his chest, hard. “You reckless jerk.”

He groaned, definite pleasure darkening the deep, rich sound.

So the bastard hadn’t been lying about his predilections after all. The savage, dominating edge to his desire used to thrill her. But maybe he didn’t mind exchanging roles. Something to keep in mind …

The trajectory of her thoughts made her whack him again.

He bit his lip with what looked like intense enjoyment, his eyes sparkling like turbulent seas in a full moon. “Is that the political adviser’s indignation? How sweet of you to care.”

“I care about my effectiveness. As for you, by the time this gets out, and boy will it, you can kiss the throne goodbye.”

“Fair enough. As long as I can finally kiss you hello.”

He dragged her up until only her toes touched the hardwood floor, swooped his head down to hers and did just that.

At the first touch of his lips, she spiraled like a shot-down plane into the past. All her being was captured into a reenactment of that first kiss that had swept her away on a tide of addiction. He took her mouth with that same lazy savoring laced with coiled ferocity. Her body had learned then what kind of heart-stopping pleasure such deceptively patient coaxing would lead to, had burst into flames at his merest touch, fire raging higher with each exposure.

The conflagration was fiercer now, with the fuel of anger, of eight years of repression. This was wrong, insane. And it only made her want it, want him, more than her next breath.

Gravity loosened its hold on her, relinquished her to the effortless levitation of his arms. The world spun in hurried thuds, then she was sinking into the firmness of a couch as his weight sank over her. Her moans rose, confessions of the arousal that had fractured the shackles of hostility and memory and logic, drowned them and her.

The rough heat of him electrified her as her bathrobe and his shirt came undone. His chiseled, roughened steel flesh crushed her swollen breasts, teasing her turgid nipples into a frenzy. His bulk and power settled between her spread thighs, and he ground against her molten core, plunged into her gasping mouth.

She writhed to accommodate him, enfold him, the decadence of him on her tongue, lacing her every sense.

Suddenly he severed their meld. She cried out as he rose above her. His gaze scalded her, his lips tight with grim sensuality.

“I should have listened to what my body knows about yours and done this the moment you opened the door.”

His arrogance should have made her buck him off. But lust gnawed her, ruled her. Hunger for him, as he was now, memorized yet unknown, the same yet changed beyond comprehension, brimming with contradictions, seethed its demand for satisfaction.

He’d come here for this possession, this closure. She’d been aching for it, too. She’s only be hurting herself if she denied—

A slam sent the crystal on the mahogany table beside them emitting a harmony of hums, felt like being drenched in ice water.

Cherie.

“You won’t believe who I found waiting for me. Ayman in all his glory, wanting to talk. Why now, I ask you …”

Cherie’s prattling trailed off. Roxanne met her eyes over Haidar’s shoulders, would have giggled at her friend’s deer-in-the-headlights expression if she weren’t as distressed.

If Cherie had been any later, Haidar would have been buried deep inside her, thrusting her to oblivion.

Even now, with horror at her actions crashing over her, her body still whimpered for his completion.

“Cherie …” was all she could wheeze.

“Uh … I … God, I didn’t mean—” Cherie stopped, before spluttering again, “I never thought you’d … you’d …”

She’d never thought she’d find her cerebral friend beneath a lion of a man, naked and wrapped around him, in full view for her to see as soon as she walked in the door.

Haidar began to rise off her. She stared up into his face as it changed from ferocious lust to deprecating resignation.

“A flatmate, Roxanne? Seriously?”

“What am I doing still standing here?” Cherie babbled as she ran inside. “Sorry, guys. Please, carry on. I’m not really here!”

By the time they heard Cherie’s bedroom door slam, he was on his feet, buttoning his shirt. For one mad moment, she didn’t see why they couldn’t take Cherie’s advice.

Then sanity lodged back into her brain.

She scrambled up, pulled her bathrobe tight around her.

He shook his head at her far-too-late modesty as he turned away.

At the door, he half turned again, his eyes hooded with stillsimmering desire. “We’ll meet again, ya naari.”

She lurched. His fire.

She’d never thought she’d hear that again. From him. Or ever. She’d long thought her fire had been extinguished.

“But next time, it will be on my turf. And on my terms.”

He touched his tongue to the lip she’d bitten, as if tasting her passion. Then, with one last inflaming look, he whispered, “Until then.”

Three

“I’d give an arm to know your secret, Roxanne.”

Roxanne stared at Kareemah Al Sabahi. Hers was the third and last door she’d knocked on to explain away Haidar’s shenanigans.

She hadn’t been up to facing another day, let alone those who’d witnessed Haidar’s innovative blackmail tactics. But damn him to an as-novel hell, she had to live among them, as he’d said.

Kareemah was the only one who hadn’t needed explanations, having watched developments through her intercom camera. Cherie’s arrival had had her mind going into hyperdrive. But Haidar had left minutes later, aborting her visions of threesomes. She’d opened her door, hoping for an explanation, when he’d suddenly turned. In his real voice, he’d said he hoped she’d enjoyed the show, had her giggling like a fool as he’d bowed to her before he’d walked away.

“I mean, you’re gorgeous and all, but it can’t only be that. You have to have a secret. Women everywhere would kill for a tip.”

Roxanne shook her head. She wasn’t up to deciphering neighbors’ riddles. Now that Haidar had rematerialized in her life with the force of a live warhead and left promising further destruction, her brain was officially fried.

Either that, or Kareemah was talking gibberish. Which was an imminent possibility. The woman had been exposed to Haidar, too.

“So what do you do to get gods knocking down your door?”

“Uh, Kareemah, if you mean Haidar, I already explained—”

“And I might have bought you explaining one god away. But how do you explain another?”

Suddenly, she realized Kareemah wasn’t looking at her. Her eyes were glued to a point in the distance.

Someone was standing behind her.

She whirled around. And her heart hit the base of her throat.

No. Not another Aal Shalaan “hybrid.”

Jalal.

He was standing by the door she’d left open, in a charcoal suit with a shirt the color of his golden eyes, hands languidly in his pockets, looking as if he’d teleported off a GQ magazine cover.

That might not be far-fetched. She hadn’t heard the whir of the elevator or the fall of his footsteps.

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, one of the two men she never wanted to see again had managed to sneak up on her.

Kareemah tugged on her arm, made her stagger around. “Like we say here, ‘the neighbor takes precedence in charity.’ I anxiously await a glimpse at your methods.”

With that, she cast Jalal another starstruck glance and stepped back into her apartment.

Roxanne stared at the door Kareemah had just closed, her mind in a jumble.

“Koll hadi’s’seneen, kammetman’nait ashoofek menejdeed.” All these years, how I wished to see you again.

Her heart squeezed so hard she felt it would implode.

Suddenly fury spurted inside it, incinerating all shock and nostalgia. She wasn’t letting another Aal Shalaan twin mess her up all over again. She’d hit her limit last night.

She turned, hoping she didn’t look as shaky as she felt. “If it isn’t one of the region’s two most eligible bastards.”

The warmth infusing his face didn’t waver as he slipped his hands out of his pockets, spread his arms in a gesture that had always had her running into them. “Ullah yehay’yeeki, ya Roxanne.”

Ullah yehay’yeeki—literally, may God hail you, one of the not-quite-translatable colloquial praises he’d once lavished on her, usually when she’d said something that had resonated with his demanding intellect and wit. Which had been almost every time she’d opened her mouth. They’d been so alike, so in tune, it had been incredible. It had also turned out to be a lie.