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But she couldn’t move. Her limbs were frozen. Not only that, but Rashid al-Hassan also stood between her and escape....
CHAPTER SIX (#ueec0312f-d437-581c-a9ee-84c6e712effb)
SHERIDAN SUCKED IN a deep breath and pulled her robe tighter, even though it couldn’t protect her from the fury in his dark eyes. She thought of Fatima’s fearful look earlier today and wondered if perhaps this man was more frightening than she’d thought. Her blood ran cold.
“The door was open. I—I wanted to see outside.”
“You are in my quarters, Miss Sloane.”
Oh, dear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
He still hadn’t moved. He stood in the door, his broad frame imposing. She told herself not to look below the level of his chin. She failed.
“So you decided to wander in the middle of the night and open random doors?”
She twisted the tie of her robe. “Something like that. I’m on a different schedule than you, I’m afraid. Wide-awake and nothing to do.”
“Nothing to do.” His voice was somehow full of meaning. Or perhaps she imagined it.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
He still looked imposing and impossible. And then he shoved his hand through his hair and moved out of the doorway and onto the terrace. Sheridan stood frozen.
“You didn’t disturb me. I was awake.”
“You should try hot milk. It helps with insomnia.” Oh, no, she was babbling. Sheridan bit her lip and told herself to shut up. This man was dangerous, for heaven’s sake. Not at all the sort to put up with babbling in the middle of the night.
“I don’t need much sleep,” he said. “And I don’t like hot milk.”
“I don’t either, actually. But I understand it works for some.”
He went and leaned on the railing, near her. She thought she should take this opportunity to escape, and yet she was curious enough to want to stay. He made her nerves pop and sing. It was an interesting sensation.
“When it’s light, you can see all the way to the gulf from here,” he said. He lifted his hand. “In that direction, you can see the dunes of the Kyrian Desert. The Waste is out there, too.”
“The Waste?” She moved closer, reached for the railing and wound her fingers around the iron.
He turned his head toward her. “A very harsh, very hot part of the desert. There is no water for one hundred miles. The sands are baked during the day, and at night they give up their heat and turn cool. You can freeze out there, if you don’t die of heatstroke during the day.”
It was hard to imagine such a place in this day and age. “Surely there are ways to bring water into it.”
“There are. But there is no reason to do so. It would be cost prohibitive, for one thing. And who would live there? There are nomads, but the people who are accustomed to the cities would never go.”
“Have you been there?”
He didn’t speak for a long moment. “I have. There is an oasis midway. It was once part of a trade route across the desert. I went as a boy. It was part of my training as an al-Hassan.”
She could imagine this harsh, dark man out there now. But as a child? It seemed so dangerous and uncertain. “I’ve never been to a desert before. I’ve never been anywhere but the Caribbean. Until now, I mean.”
He looked at her. “Are you more comfortable now that you have a television and internet access?”
“It helps. But I’m still used to doing more than I have the last day. I like to be busy.”
“Consider it a vacation.”
“That would be easier if it actually were.”
“Miss Sloane—”
“Sheridan. Please.” Because she felt so out of place when he called her Miss Sloane. She needed him to acknowledge her as more than a random stranger. Because, regardless of whether or not there was a baby, they’d shared something incredibly intimate. Even if it had been clinical.
“Sheridan.”
She shivered at the sound of her name on his lips. Why? Because it sounded like a silken caress. “Thank you,” she said.
“I was going to say that I realize this is not easy for you. It is not easy for me, either.”
“I know.”
He turned to look out at the city lights and she watched the play of the wind in his hair and the soft glow of moonlight on his profile. He was a very beautiful man. And a lonely one. She didn’t know why she thought he was lonely, but she did.
“I have decided to give you what you’ve requested,” he said, and her heart thrummed. “I want your stay to be pleasant. If it pleases you to talk to me, then I will grant it.”
She was surprised and pleased at once. “I appreciate that very much.”
They stood there in silence for a long moment. “It is an extraordinary length to go to, to have a baby for someone else.”
She felt a touch defensive. “It’s not just for anyone. Annie is my sister.”
“I am aware of this.”
Sheridan sighed. The night breeze whipped up then, just for a moment, and she shivered. “She and Chris have tried and tried. They’ve seen doctors and been through one treatment after another. Nothing seems to work.” She gripped the railing tightly, staring off toward the flickering lights of the city. “There was one doctor who mentioned an experimental treatment in Europe. Annie wanted to do it, and Chris would do anything for her. But the cost... Well, it’s a lot. And there are no guarantees. They would have to sell everything and then hope...” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I offered to step in before they went deeper into debt.”
“So you would put your own life on hold to have this child for your sister. And then you would hand him or her over as if the previous nine months had happened to her instead of you.”
The lump in her throat wouldn’t go away. She hugged her arms around herself to keep from shivering. The air seemed colder now. “I didn’t say it would be easy, but it’s what you do when you love someone. You make sacrifices.”
He seemed very quiet and still as he watched her. She’d expected him to make some sort of remark, but he said nothing at all. It began to worry her, though she didn’t quite know why. She cleared her throat softly and told him the truth.
“I don’t quite know what to say to you,” she admitted. “I never know if you’re angry or if you’re just the kind of man who doesn’t speak much.”
He was looking at her with renewed interest. “I’m not angry. I’m frustrated.”
“We’re both frustrated.”
“Are we?”
“I...” She sensed that this conversation had moved out of her control somehow. His eyes glittered in the night. He seemed suddenly very intense. And very—dear heaven—naked. “Yes, uh, of course. Why wouldn’t we be? This is a frustrating circumstance.”
“I find it very interesting that you could be carrying my child, and yet we’ve never been intimate. I’ve never undressed you, never tasted your skin.”
She was growing hot now. So very hot. “Well, er...”
“Have you thought of it, Sheridan? After that kiss, have you wondered?”
Her heart hammered hard. Another moment and she would be dizzy. Yes she’d thought of that kiss. And she’d thought of her flesh pressed against his, nothing between them but skin and heat. She’d wondered what it would be like to be this man’s lover. This dynamic, incredible man.
“Of course I have,” she said, shocking herself with the admission. And him, too, if the way his muscles seemed to coil tight beneath his skin was any indication. He was like a great cat ready to pounce. The Lion of Kyr, indeed. “But that doesn’t mean I want to do anything about it.”
Liar.
“Then I think perhaps you should be more careful which rooms you wander into in the middle of the night.”
His voice was icy again, yet it was somehow hot, too. Not menacing, but promising in a way that had her limbs quivering.
“I didn’t know this was your room. And I didn’t come here for...for...”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. Her ears were hot, which was ridiculous because she wasn’t a naive virgin. She hadn’t had many lovers—well, only two, in fact—but that didn’t mean she didn’t know what happened when a man and a woman got naked together.
But it was the imagining that was killing her here. Rashid was beautiful, dark and dangerous and mysterious, and the idea of him completely focused on her body was more arousing than she could have imagined possible. She reminded herself that she didn’t like him, but her body didn’t seem to care. So what? That was the message throbbing in her sex, her veins, her belly. A relentless throb of tension and yearning that would only be broken if this man took her to his bed.
“Perhaps you did not,” he said smoothly, “but you want it nevertheless. I can see it in your eyes, Sheridan.”
She tried to stiffen in outrage. She was fully aware her nipples had beaded tight against the silk of the robe. Instead of trying to hide them, she wrapped her arms beneath her breasts and hugged herself against the chill air. Not that she was all that cold with Rashid al-Hassan looking at her like he might devour her. Which was a bit of a shock since she’d convinced herself that he wasn’t really attracted to her.
Apparently she was wrong....
“You’re being too polite, Rashid. You mean to say you can see it in my nipples, but the truth is it’s cold out here,” she said brazenly. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“I’m not the kind of man one issues challenges to, habibti. I have a pathological need to prove the issuer wrong.”
She took a step backward. “We don’t know each other well enough. Touch me and I’ll scream.”
He laughed. It was completely unexpected. She didn’t like the warmth dripping into her limbs at the sound. “You forget this is the royal palace of Kyr and I am the king. If I wish to tie you to my bed and have my way with you on a nightly basis, there is no one who will stop me.”
Her heart hammered. She wasn’t supposed to be titillated by the idea of being tied to Rashid’s bed. And yet she was.
He moved then, toward her, and she didn’t even try to get away. She was frozen like a gazelle, waiting for the big cat to strike. And strike he did. He tugged her against him, her body in the thin silk robe flush to his naked flesh, and spread his hands over her backside.
Yet he didn’t hold her tight. She could escape if she wished. She knew it and he knew it—and she didn’t even try.
He laughed again, softly, triumphantly. “Such a liar, Sheridan,” he said thickly. And then his mouth came down on hers.
If the kiss in her store had been surprising in its intensity, this one was downright earth-shattering. Rashid’s tongue traced the seam of her lips and she opened to him, tangling her tongue with his almost eagerly.
The sensations rioting through her were more intense than she ever recalled experiencing before. It was the hormones from the shots, she told herself—but it was also the man. He was more exciting than anyone she’d ever known. Which didn’t make any sense because he was also the least likable person she’d ever known.
Not to mention she didn’t even really know him at all. He was a king, a desert sheikh, an autocratic ruler accustomed to ordering people around and getting his way.
And she was giving him precisely what he expected.
But it felt so good. Their tongues fought a blistering duel, her skin grew moist and impossibly hot and wetness flooded her sex. Her limbs were weakened by the kiss and she lifted her arms to put them around his neck. The shock of his hot skin beneath hers made her whimper.
Rashid turned her until her back was against the railing—and then he untied her robe and slipped it off her shoulders. The next thing she knew, his hot mouth was tracing a path down the column of her throat while she threaded her fingers into his dark hair and clutched him to her.
His teeth bit down on her nipple through the silken fabric of her nightgown and she gasped. It wasn’t a hard bite, but it had the effect of sending pleasure shooting straight to her core. Her body clenched hard with desire as she gripped his shoulders and thrust her breasts toward his mouth.
She wanted him to remove the thin tissue of silk between his mouth and her body, but he didn’t. He licked her through the fabric, nibbled and sucked until she was wild with need. Her nipples were more sensitive than ever since she’d had the hormone shots. If he did nothing but this all night, she knew she would come from the stimulation.
But he had no intention of doing only that. He reached down and gathered the hem of her nightie, lifting it up her legs, exposing her. Sheridan thought she needed to protest, but some needy, wicked part of her really didn’t want to.
Rashid’s hands glided beneath her gown, up the flesh of her abdomen, until he was cupping her breasts beneath the fabric, his hot hands spanning her skin, making it burn.
His mouth claimed hers again. It wasn’t a tender kiss, or even a teasing kiss. It was a full-out assault on her senses. He stepped in closer, pinning her body to the railing with his much bigger, much harder one.
And that was when she felt him. That insistently hard part of him that pressed into her, letting her know that he was every bit as affected by the tension and heat between them as she was.
Sheridan acted instinctively. She reached for him, cupped her hands over that hard part of him she shouldn’t crave but did. It had been so long since she’d been with anyone and she was suddenly ravenous. Rashid made a noise, a growl of satisfaction or encouragement in his throat. A thrill shot through her.
She’d thought he’d be disgusted by her, but that clearly wasn’t the case. He wanted her. And, right now, she wanted him. It was insane, but nothing about this situation was normal. If she slept with him, what would change? Not a damn thing.
She pushed her hands beneath his briefs, cupped him in her hands. He was big and full and so very ready that it almost scared her. She didn’t know this man at all, and what she did know hadn’t been very pleasant up until this point.
He’d threatened her, taken her against her will and brought her here and treated her as if she was someone he’d hired to do a job instead of a woman caught up in a mistake not of her own making. He’d been angry with her, and he’d started this to prove a point, to punish her.
Now he was in her hands, his body hard and taut and ready. He broke the kiss and stared down at her, his eyes dark and deep and so fathomless she was almost frightened. But he was just a man, she reminded herself, and he’d not harmed her. He’d never given a single indication that he would force her to do anything she didn’t want to do.
“Sheridan,” he growled, his voice as tight as she’d yet heard it. “If you don’t mean to give yourself to me, you need to leave. Now. Because if you continue to touch me like that, I’m not stopping until I’ve tasted you as thoroughly as I desire.”
Sheridan bit her lip as her heart skittered recklessly in her chest. A sane woman would leave right this instant. A sane woman would not give her body to a man she barely knew simply because he made her feel more excited than she’d ever felt before.
She was not precisely sane at this moment. Maybe it was the heat of the desert, or the sand, or the opulent palace. She had no idea, but she wanted things she shouldn’t want.
“I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to stop touching you.”
With a groan, he swept her up into his arms and carried her through the door.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ueec0312f-d437-581c-a9ee-84c6e712effb)
SOMEWHERE ON THE trip to his bed, panic began to flood her system. But before she could react, he set her on the bed and stripped her nightgown from her body. And then he was hovering over her, kissing her until her fear melted and her body caught on fire again.
Oh, this was so wrong—and so right. Sheridan put her arms around him, ran her hands over his broad back, the thick muscles and tendons, down his biceps and over his pecs. He was magnificent, and he no doubt knew it.
He left her mouth to lick his way to her breasts again. He took his time, sliding his tongue around and around before he sucked one aching nipple into his mouth. Sheridan cried out with the intensity of the pleasure spiking through her.
“You are sensitive,” he murmured, his breath hot against her skin and yet cold where it drifted over her wet nipple. “So sensitive.”
Sheridan couldn’t speak. Her stomach churned with anticipation and, yes, even fear. Because what was she doing? Part of her brain kept wondering, but the rest refused to entertain any alternatives to what was currently happening.
