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To Tame a Sheikh

Olivia Gates

His Thirty-Day Fiancée

Catherine Mann

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Tame a Sheikh

Olivia Gates

“I wanted to be alone with you.”

“We could have been alone walking down the pier.”

“That did occur to me, but you’re not dressed for the cold night.” He lowered his gaze as if pondering the pattern his fingers were painting on her palm. He raised his eyes a moment later and she gasped. Gentleness and humor were gone, that grim god of the desert back. She shuddered with the fierceness of her response. “You know where I really want to be alone with you. In my place. In my bed.”

Dear Reader,

When I wrote “The End” in my first Desire^™ trilogy, THRONE OF JUDAR, I was already dreaming of a sequel in the neighboring allied kingdom of Zohayd. I am so excited to be realizing that dream and beginning my new trilogy, PRIDE OF ZOHAYD, starring princes Shaheen, Harres and Amjad.

The trilogy kicks off with the youngest brother, Shaheen, who is about to sacrifice his freedom for his kingdom in a marriage of state. Then he meets the woman of his dreams and everything changes. But like every profound love story, everything is against them, from his commitments to a brewing conspiracy that could topple the royal house of Zohayd and plunge the whole region into chaos. The worst part is that his beloved Johara and her father are the main suspects or at least seem to be pivotal instruments in his family’s plotted downfall.

Will his love stand the test of shocking revelations and discoveries? Will he and his brothers succeed in uncovering the conspiracy and defending their throne and kingdom before it’s too late?

I adored writing Shaheen and Johara’s story, and I hope you enjoy reading it! I would love to hear from you at oliviagates@gmail.com. You can also visit me on the web at www.oliviagates.com.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading.

Olivia Gates

About the Author

OLIVIA GATES has always pursued creative passions—singing and many handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career. Writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

To Mom, my daughter and Maria.

I hope you know how much each of you helped me

in writing this book. Love you all.

One

Johara Nazaryan had come to see the only man she’d ever love.

Before he married someone else.

Her heart sputtered on a mixture of anticipation, dread and despondence as her eyes scanned the throngs of top-fashion, highest-class denizens of the party being thrown in his honor.

There was still no sign of Shaheen Aal Shalaan.

She drew in a choppy breath and pressed deeper into her corner, hoping to continue avoiding attention. She was thankful for the extra time to compose herself even as she cursed it for giving her more of a chance to work herself up.

She still couldn’t believe she’d decided to see him after twelve years.

Oh, she’d drunk in every drop of news of him for all those years, had stolen glimpses of him whenever she was near where she’d heard he’d be from the time she’d started traveling on her own. But this time, she was determined to walk up to Shaheen and say, Long time no see.

Shaheen. To the world he was a prince of the wealthy desert kingdom of Zohayd, the youngest of King Atef Aal Shalaan’s three sons from the deceased queen Salwa. He was also a businessman who’d risen in the past six years to become one of the most respected powers in the worlds of construction and transportation.

To Johara he’d always be the fourteen-year-old boy who’d saved her life twenty years ago.

She was six then, on her first day in Zohayd, where she’d come to live in the royal palace with her family. Her Armenian-American father had been appointed first assistant to the royal jeweler, Nazeeh Salah. It had been “Uncle” Nazeeh, her father’s mentor, who’d suggested her name, jewel in Arabic.

During her father’s interview with the king, she’d slipped onto the terrace and ended up falling off its balustrade and dangling from the ledge. At her screams, everyone had come running. Unable to reach her, her father had thrown her a rope noose to slip around her wrist. As she’d tried to put it on, someone below her had urged her to let go. With panic bursting in her heart, she’d looked down.

And she’d seen him.

He’d seemed too far away to be able to catch her. But as her parents had screamed for her to hang on, she’d let go of the ledge and plummeted down the thirty-foot drop, just knowing he would.

And as fast and precise and powerful as the hawk he was named for, he had. He’d swooped in, plucked her from midair and welcomed her into the haven of his arms.

She still dissected those fraught moments from time to time. She knew she would have been able to slip the rope on. But she’d chosen to trust her safety to that magnificent creature who’d looked up at her with strength and assurance radiating from his fiery-brown eyes.

From that day on, she’d known. She’d always be his. And not only because he’d saved her. With every day that passed, the knowledge that he was the most incredible person she’d ever met had solidified, as he became her older brother Aram’s best friend and far more than that to her.

But as she’d grown older, she’d realized that her dream of being his one day was impossible.

Shaheen was a prince. She was the daughter of a servant. Even though her father had become the royal jeweler, who both designed new jewelry for the royal family and had the all-important responsibility of maintaining the nation’s highest treasure, the Pride of Zohayd royal jewels, he was still an underling, a foreigner who came from a poor background and had worked his way to his current position through his extraordinary talent.

And then, Shaheen wouldn’t have looked at her that way even if she were the daughter of the noblest family in Zohayd. He had always been incredibly nice to her, but when it came to romantic partners, he’d had the world’s most beautiful, sophisticated women falling at his feet from the time he turned seventeen. Back then, she’d been certain she possessed no beauty and would never attain any sophistication. But she’d found it enough to be near him, to love him.

For eight blissful years, Shaheen had offered her indulgence and friendship. To stay near him, she’d chosen to remain with her father when her parents had separated when she was twelve and her French mother had left Zohayd to go back home and continue her career in fashion design.

Then, suddenly, it was over. Just before her fourteenth birthday, Shaheen had abruptly pulled away from both her brother and her. Aram had told her that Shaheen thought it time to stop fraternizing with the “help” to observe his role as a prince of Zohayd.

Though she couldn’t believe it of Shaheen and thought Aram’s bitterness had other origins she couldn’t guess at, Shaheen’s sudden distance was still a wake-up call.

For, really, what did she have to look forward to but to love him, unrequitedly, until he one day entered the marriage of state that was his destiny? He might even have turned away from her because he suspected her feelings for him and was being cruel to be kind. His withdrawal had influenced her decision to leave. A few weeks after her birthday, she’d left Zohayd to live in France with her mother. She’d never returned.

Ever since that day, Johara had found comfort from the sense of loss only when she found news of Shaheen, saw that he was doing phenomenally well on every front. She’d felt she was entitled to hold on to that secret, onesided love.

But now, the blade was about to fall and she’d never again have the right to indulge her emotions, even in the privacy of her heart and mind. And she had to see him. Really see him. One last time … before he committed himself to another.

She’d slipped into the farewell party that one of his business partners, Aidan McCormick, was throwing for him in New York City. If anyone questioned her presence, she’d easily defend her right to be there. As a jewelry and fashion designer who’d been making a splash beyond France in the past couple of years, she was considered one of the glitterati who were expected to stud such a function.

But validating her presence wasn’t the difficult part. That was still to come. Working up the nerve to approach Shaheen.

She was praying one thing would happen when she did. That she’d find out that she’d blown him all out of proportion in her mind, and her feelings for him, as well.

Suddenly, a wave of goose bumps swept her from toes to scalp.

She turned around, the rustle of her taffeta dress magnified in her ears.

Shaheen was here.

For a long moment, she couldn’t see him. But the people-packed space receded into a void where his presence radiated like a beacon. Not from the entrance, where her gaze had been glued for the past two hours, but from the other side of the room. It made no sense, until she realized he must have used McCormick’s private elevator.

His aura, his vibe, hit her like a gut punch.

Then she saw him. Only him.

Everything stilled inside her. In awe. In confusion.

He’d towered over her before, though she’d been five foot seven at fourteen. Now she stood six feet wearing two-inch heels, and he still outstripped her by what appeared to be half a foot. Had she never realized how imposing he was?

No. This wasn’t the Shaheen she remembered. This was new.

He’d been twenty-two the last time she’d seen him up close. She’d seen him in the flesh half a dozen times since, most recently a year ago, across a ballroom in Cannes. But during those stolen sightings, she’d barely gotten more than an impression of vitality and virility, of class and power. She’d seen photographs and footage of him throughout the years, but it was clear that neither memory, nor sightings from afar nor photographic evidence had transmitted any measure of the truth.

Sure, he’d been like a god to her anyway, but it seemed there were levels of godhood. And his present rank was at the top of the scale. A desert god, forged from its heat and hardness and harshness, from its mystery and moodiness and magnificence.

His all-black formal silk suit and shirt clung to a breadth that was almost double his younger size. There wasn’t an inch of padding to his shoulders, no boosting of the power of his chest, no accentuation to the hardness of his abdomen and thighs or the slimness of his waist and hips. If he’d had the lithe power of a young hawk before, he now packed the powerhouse majesty of a full-grown, seasoned one.

And that was before taking the changes to his face into account. He’d always been what the media had called spectacular, with that wavy mane of deepest tobacco hair, those unique fiery eyes a contrast to his natural tan. Now, with every trace of softness and youth chiseled away to leave a bone structure to tear heartstrings over, he was breathtaking.

But it was his expression—and what it betrayed of his inner state—that sent tremors radiating through her.

Shaheen wasn’t happy. He was deeply dissatisfied, disturbed. Distraught, even. It might not be apparent to anyone else, but she could sense it as deeply as she felt her own turmoil.

All hope of reprieve, of closure, vanished.

If she’d found him serene, content, she would have been able to move on. But now …

At least there was one thing to be thankful for here. He hadn’t seen her. And he wouldn’t, if she didn’t go through with what she’d planned. And maybe she shouldn’t.

No. No maybes about it. Approaching him now would have nothing but terrible consequences. If he had this devastating an effect on her while unaware of her presence and standing thirty feet away, what would he do to her face-to-face?

Infatuated, immature moron that she was, she’d achieved only one thing by seeing him again. She’d compounded her problem and added more heartache to deal with. She could now only curtail further damages.

Cursing herself for a fool, she stepped forward to leave. And felt as if she’d slammed into an impenetrable force field.

Shaheen’s gaze.

The impact almost demolished her precarious balance as his eyes bored through her.

She’d always thought they resembled burning coals, even when he’d trained them on her with utmost kindness. But now, with the flare of recognition accompanied by a focus searing in intensity and devoid of gentleness, she felt their burn down to her bones. Her blood started to sizzle, her cheeks to steam.

She’d gravely underestimated the size of the mistake she’d made coming here. She now had no doubt it was one she’d regret for the rest of her life.

She stood, rooted, mesmerized as he approached her, watching him with the same fatalism one would an out-of-control car on a collision course.

Regret had swamped Shaheen the moment he’d set foot in Aidan’s sprawling penthouse. It intensified with every step deeper into the cacophony of forced gaiety.

He shouldn’t have agreed to come. He should have told Aidan this wasn’t a farewell party to him, but a funeral pyre.

And here was his friend and partner, coming to add to his misery with a blithe smile splitting his face.

“Hey, Sheen!” Aidan exclaimed over the skullsplitting techno music. “I thought you’d decided to let me look like a fool. Again.”

Shaheen winced an attempt at a smile. He hated it when his friends abbreviated his name to Sheen. His western friends did so because it was a more familiar name to them, and those back home because that was the first letter of his name in Arabic. He didn’t know why he put up with it. But then again, what was a nickname he disliked compared to what he would be forced to endure from now on?

Shaheen peered down into his friend’s grinning face, his lips twisting on his barely leashed irritation. “If I’d known what kind of event you were planning, Aidan, I would have.”

“You know what they say about all work and no play.” Aidan hooked his arm high up around Shaheen’s shoulder.

Shaheen almost flinched. He liked the man, and he did come from a culture where physical demonstrations of affection were the norm, contradictorily between members of the same gender. Apart from immediate family, he didn’t appreciate being touched. Even in sexual situations, he didn’t like women to paw him, as they seemed to unanimously wish to. His liaisons were about taking off an edge, not about intimacy. He’d made that clear, on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, to all the women he’d had such liaisons with.

He could barely remember his last sexual encounter. Such carnal couplings, devoid of any deeper connection, had lost their appeal and begun to grate, to defile. To be expected, he guessed, when the women he liked and respected didn’t arouse any carnal inclinations in him.

He stepped away smoothly, severing his friend’s embrace without letting him feel the distaste behind the move. “If being dull is the opposite of this … frenzy, I assure you, I prefer it.”

A disconcerted expression seeped into Aidan’s eyes, replacing the teasing. After six years of business partnership, the man had no idea what Shaheen appreciated. Probably because he kept Aidan, like everyone else, at arm’s length. But Aidan had set this up with the best of intentions. And though those usually led to hell, it wasn’t fair to show him how wasted his efforts truly were.

He gathered the remnants of his decorum. “But it’s not every day I say goodbye to my freedom. So the … fanfare is …” he paused before he forced himself to add “… welcome.”

Aidan’s face cleared, and his words came out in the rush of the eager to please. “It’s not like you’ll really lose your freedom. I hear these royal arranged marriages are the epitome of … flexibility.” Aidan added that last word with a huge wink and slap on the back.

Shaheen almost snapped his oblivious friend’s head off. It was a good thing Aidan turned away from him, exclaiming at the top of his voice to the people who’d flocked over to shake Shaheen’s hand.

Shaheen set himself on auto, performing as Aidan wished him to. No point in setting Aidan straight anyway. He wasn’t really all there with a few drinks in him. Shaheen should let him wallow in his rare surrender to heedlessness without dragging him into the land of harsh reality where he now existed.

His whole existence was about to cave in.

Not on the professional level. There, he’d never stopped soaring from one success to another. But on the personal level, things had been unraveling for a long time. He could even pinpoint the day when it had all started to go downhill. His fight with Aram.

Before that point, he’d lived a carefree existence where he’d felt his future was limitless. But things had gone from bad to worse since then.

He’d long known that, as a prince, he was expected to make a marriage of state, but he’d always shoved that expectation to the back of his mind, hoping that one or both of his older brothers would make a terrific political match. Then Amjad, his oldest brother and crown prince, had made such a match. And it had ended in disaster.

Amjad’s wife had come to the marriage already pregnant, had schemed to murder Amjad and pass the child as his, to remain forever a princess and the mother of the heir to the throne.

After Amjad had divorced her in a scandal that still resounded in the region, he’d torn through the world acquiring power until he’d become almost as powerful as all of Zohayd put together. No one dared ask him to make another political match. He’d said that, when it was time for him to become king, his brother Harres would be his heir. Failing that, Shaheen. Period.

As for Harres, he would never make a political match, either. It had been agreed that his marriage into any tribe in the region would compromise his position. He’d become the best minister of interior and head of central intelligence and homeland security that Zohayd had ever had, and no one wanted to see the belief in his impartiality tainted. So, if he ever decided to marry—which seemed unlikely, since he hadn’t favored any particular woman of the reported hundreds he’d bedded in his thirty-six years—Harres would nevertheless be free to choose his own wife.

So it fell to Shaheen to make a blood-mixing marriage that would revitalize the wavering pacts between factions. He was the last of the king’s “pure-blood” sons, born to a purely Zohaydan queen. Haidar and Jalal, Shaheen’s half brothers from the current queen, Sondoss, who was Azmaharian, weren’t considered pure enough for the unification the marriage was required to achieve.

For years now, he’d known there was no escape from his fate, but instead of becoming resigned to the idea, he’d hated it more daily. It felt like a death sentence hanging over his head.

Only days ago—the day following his thirty-fourth birthday, to be exact—he’d decided to get the suffocating suspense over with, turn himself in to the marriage pact. He’d announced his capitulation to his father, told him to start lining up the bridal candidates. The next day, the news that he was seeking a bride had been all over the media. As one of the most eligible royals in the world, his intention to marry—with the identity of the bride still undecided—was the stuff of the most sensational news.

And here he was, enduring the party his associate was throwing for him to celebrate his impending imprisonment.

He flicked a look at his watch, did a double take. It had been only minutes. And he’d shaken a hundred hands and grimaced at double that many artificially elated or intoxicated faces.

Enough. He’d make his excuses to Aidan and bolt from this nightmare. Aidan was probably too far gone to miss him, anyway.

Deciding to do just that, he turned around … and all air left his lungs. Across the room, he saw … her.

The jolt of recognition seemed to bring the world to a staggering halt. Everything held its breath as he met her incredible dark eyes across the vast, crowded space.

He stood there for a stretch that couldn’t be calculated on a temporal scale, staring at her. Hooks of awareness snapped across the distance and sank into him, flesh and senses, causing animation to screech through him for the first time in over twelve years.

There was no conscious decision to what he did next. A compulsion far beyond his control propelled him in her direction, as if he were hypnotized, remote-controlled.

The crowd parted as if pushed away by the power of his urge. Even the music seemed to observe the significance of the moment as it came to an abrupt stop.

He finally stopped, too, just feet away. He kept that much distance between them so his gaze could sweep her from head to foot.

He devoured his first impressions of her. Gold and bronze locks that gleamed over creamy shoulders and lush breasts encased in deepest chocolate off-the-shoulder taffeta the color of her eyes, the dress nipping in at an impossibly small waist then flaring over softly curved hips into a layered skirt. A face sculpted from exquisiteness, eyes from intelligence and sensitivity, cheeks from inborn class, a nose from daintiness, and lips from passion.

And those were the broad brushstrokes. Then came the endless details. He’d need an hour, a day, to marvel at each.

“Say something.” He heard the hunger in his rasp, saw its effect on her.

She shuddered, confusion rising to rival the searing heat in her eyes.

“I …”

Elation bubbled through him. “Yes. You. Say something so that I can believe you’re really here.”

“I’m … I don’t …” She paused, consternation knotting her brow. It only enhanced her beauty.

But he’d heard enough of her rich, velvet voice to know it matched her uniqueness, echoed her perfection.

“You don’t know what to say to me? Or you don’t know where to start?”

“Shaheen, I …”

She stopped again, and his heart did, too. For at least three heartbeats. He felt almost dizzy, hearing her utter his name.

A finger below her chin tilted her face up to him, to pore into those eyes he felt he’d fallen into whole.

Then he whispered, “You know me?”

Two

He didn’t recognize her?

Johara gaped at Shaheen as the realization sank through her, splashed like a rock into her gut.

She should have known that he wouldn’t.

Why should he? He’d probably forgotten she existed.

Even if he hadn’t, she looked nothing like the fourteen-year-old he’d known.

That was due in part to her own late blooming and in part to her mother’s influence. In Zohayd, Jacqueline Nazaryan had always downplayed Johara’s looks. Her mother had later told her she’d known that Johara, having inherited her height and luminescent coloring and her father’s bone structure and eyes, would become a tall, curvaceous blonde who possessed a paradoxical brand of beauty. And in the brunette, petite-woman–dominated Zohayd, a woman like Johara would be both a prized jewel and a source of endless trouble. If she’d learned to emphasize her looks, she would have become the target of dangerous desires and illicit offers, heaping trouble on her and her father’s head. Her mother had left her in Zohayd secure that Johara had no desire and no means of achieving her potential and would continue looking nondescript.

Once she’d joined her mother in France, Jacqueline had encouraged her to showcase her beauty and had done everything she and her fashion-industry colleagues could to help Johara blossom into a woman who knew how to wield what she was told were considerable assets.

As Johara became a successful designer and businesswoman herself, she learned her mother had been right. Most men saw little beyond the face and body they coveted. Several rich and influential men had tried to acquire her as another trophy to bolster their image, another check on their status report. She’d been fully capable of turning them down, without incident so far. Without the repercussions her mother had feared would have accompanied the same rejections in Zohyad.

So yes. She’d been crazy to think Shaheen would recognize her when the lanky, reed-thin duckling he’d known had become a confident, elegant swan.

And here he was. Looking at her without the slightest flicker of recognition. That instant awareness, that flare of delight at the sight of her hadn’t been that. It had been …

What had it been? What was that she saw playing on his lips, blazing in his eyes as he inclined his awesome head at her? What was it she felt electrocuting her from his fingers, still caressing her chin? Was it possible he …?

“Of course you know who I am.” Shaheen cut through her feverish contemplations, shook his head in self-deprecation. The flashes from the mirror balls and revolving disco lights shot sparks of copper off the luxury of his mane and into the fathomless translucence of his eyes, zapping her into ever-deepening paralysis. “You’re attending my farewell party, after all.”

She remained mute. He thought she recognized him only because he was a celebrity in whose name he thought she was here having free drinks and an unrepeatable networking opportunity.

He relinquished her chin only to let the back of his fingers travel in a gossamer up-down stroke over her almost combusting cheek. “So to whom should I offer my unending thanks for inviting you here?”

Her heart constricted as the reality of the situation crystallized.

She hadn’t even factored in that he might not know her on sight. But she’d conceded she shouldn’t have expected it. But that there was nothing about her that jogged any sense of familiarity in him—that she couldn’t rationalize. Or accept.

Her insides compacted in a tight tangle of disappointment.

His words and actions so far had had nothing to do with happiness at seeing her after all these years. There was only one reason he could have approached her, was talking to her, looking at her this way. It seemed absurd, unthinkable. But she could find no other explanation.

Shaheen was coming on to her.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, he seemed to tighten all of his virility and influence around her, dropping his voice an octave, sinking it right through to her core. “This will sound like the oldest line in the book, but even though you haven’t said one complete sentence to me yet and we met just minutes ago, I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

The music chose that second to blare again, as if accentuating his announcement, cutting off any possibility of her blurting out that he felt that way because he had.

At the deafening intrusion, he dropped his hand from her cheek, raised his head, his eyes releasing hers from their snare as he cast an annoyed look at the whole scene. He caught her again with the full force of his focus a moment later. “This place is incompatible with human sanity.” His eyes forged another path of fire down her body to where her purse was hanging limply from her hand. “I see you’ve got your bag with you. Shall we go?”

She gasped as currents forked through her from where his hand curved around her upper arm in courteous yet compelling invitation. “B-but it’s your party.”

His eyes crinkled at her as his lips spread, revealing the even power of his teeth. “Aih, and I’ll leave if I want to.” His thumb swept the naked flesh of her arm, causing a firestorm to ripple through her as though through a wheat field in a storm. “And how I want to.”

Her free fist came up, pressing against a heart that seemed to be trying to ram out of her chest cavity.

The world had always transformed into a wonderland when he smiled. But this was … ridiculous. There should be a law against his indulging in the practice in inhabited areas!

She blinked, her sluggish gaze drifting from his at the pull of something vague. And she blinked again. In disbelief.

She was no longer in the middle of the party. She was in a spacious marble hall, walking on jellified legs toward what she judged to be McCormick’s private elevator.

Had she really walked here? Or had he teleported them?

Suddenly it was all too much. His every move and glance stripping her of basic coherence, his very nearness inching her to the verge of collapse as she and the situation spiraled out of control. He didn’t have the slightest memory of her, was enacting this aggressive seduction based on her anonymity, confident of her availability.

Still, only when they stopped in front of the elevator did she manage to attempt to extract herself smoothly from his loose yet incapacitating grip. Her spinning senses made her stumble back instead, wrenching her arm away.

She could see astonishment reverberate through him as the spectacular wings of his eyebrows snapped together and his lips lost the fullness of intimacy, chiseling into harsher lines that accentuated their perfection. And showed her yet another side of him that she’d never been exposed to—the ruthless royal he could become when provoked or displeased.

So he couldn’t comprehend that a female would have the temerity to not fall all over herself to obey his decrees? Maybe this encounter would end in closure, after all. Just in a different way than she’d imagined.

She glared her disillusion up into his eyes. “You’re so certain I want to leave with you, aren’t you?”

Bitterness hardened her voice. She knew he heard it loud and clear, too.

The last of the heat in his gaze drained as stillness descended. “Yes, I am. As certain of my desire to leave with you.”

She huffed her fury. “You’re right. You are spouting the oldest lines in the book.”

His pupils expanded, almost engulfed his vivid irises. “I realize they sound like that, but they happen to be true.”

Her lips twisted, mimicking a fiercer contortion of her heart. “Sure they are.”

“You think I’m so lacking in imagination or finesse that I’d use something so hackneyed to express myself if it wasn’t the simple truth, and no other words would do?”

“Maybe you’re just too lazy, too jaded to think of something new. Or you can’t even fathom the possibility that you might need a new line. Or maybe you didn’t think I warranted the effort of coming up with something a tad more original, since you thought I’d fall flat on my back at the idea of your interest.”

He seemed more taken aback at every word firing from her lips, his scowl dissolving into a flabbergasted look.

She was as shocked as he was. Where had all that come from? It was as if pressure had been building up inside her, and disappointment was a blade that had slashed across the thin membrane holding it in, her feelings bursting out of containment.

She’d just loved him for so long!

She’d fantasized about how it would be if they met again, and reality had demolished every comforting scenario. His indiscriminating carnal purpose made a mockery of the soul-deep connection she’d been convinced they’d resurrect on sight. A connection, it seemed, that existed only inside her lovesick mind.

The insupportable deduction squeezed more resentment from her depths. “And didn’t it occur to you that the person you felt you owed unending thanks to for bringing me here might be my boyfriend, or even my fiancé or husband?”

All expression evaporated, leaving his face a hard mask. “No. It didn’t.”

“It didn’t, or the possibility of my being committed to another man didn’t seem relevant to you?”

“You can’t be. I would have felt something, from you, a connection with someone else, a disconnection from me. But—”

He stopped abruptly. That limitless energy that had radiated from him from the moment he’d caught her eye flickered, wavered. Then it blinked out. The gloom she’d thought she’d seen tainting his aura before he’d noticed her descended on him again like a roiling thundercloud, seeming to slump his formidable shoulders under its weight.

He closed his eyes, swept a palm over his eyes and forehead. His other hand joined in, raking up through his hair before rubbing down his face.

Then he let his hands drop to his sides, leveled his eyes at hers. The bleakness there shriveled her insides.

“I don’t know what came over me. I saw you across the room and I thought … No, I didn’t think. I knew. I was certain you looked at me with the same … recognition. That sense I’ve heard people experience when they meet someone who’s … right. It must have been a trick of the lights. Your recognition was of the literal variety, and I saw what I subconsciously wanted to see. I must be in worse shape than even I thought, imagining I’d found an undeniable connection at such a party. Or at all. I apologize. To you, and to your man. I should have known you’d be taken.”

His fists clenched and unclenched as he spoke, as if they itched with the same sick electricity discharging inside her limbs. Then with a shake of his head and an indecipherable imprecation, he turned away.

She stood feeling as if she’d been struck by lightning, watching his long strides take him away from her. All she could think was that he didn’t seem callous or indiscriminating, only hurt, and that the last thing she’d ever see of him was that look of despondency on his face.

“It was a hypothetical question.”

At her squeaking statement, he stopped. But didn’t turn. He only inclined his face so that she saw his profile, eyes cast downward, tension emanating from him in shockwaves.

She forced the explanation he was waiting for between barely working lips. “When I mentioned a boyfriend or fiancé or husband, it was only in a ‘what if’ scenario. I don’t have anyone.”

“You’re not taken.” His hoarse whisper shuddered through her as he turned toward her, animation creeping back into his face. She shook her head, had locks snaring in her trembling mouth. “You objected to me sweeping you away because—” he accentuated every other word with a leisurely step back to her side, each hitting her like a seismic wave “—you mistook me for a lazy, jaded oaf who doesn’t possess an original bone in his body to express his inability to wait to be alone with you, or a poetic cell with which to do justice to the wonder of our meeting.”

She was panting as he fell silent. “Okay, I hereby revise my opinion. You have nothing but original bones and poetic cells.”

The elation reclaiming his expression spiked on a guffaw. Her knees almost buckled. And that was before a hunger-laden step obliterated the last of the distance between them. Every hair on her body stood on end as if with a giant static charge.

Then he whispered, “Tell me you feel it, too. Tell me the almost tangible entity I sense between us exists, that I’m not having a breakdown and imagining things.”

This was the second time he’d alluded to his condition. The idea of his suffering spread thorns in her chest. She bit her lip on the pain. “The … entity exists.”

“I am going to touch you now. Will you shake me off again, or do you want me to?” She shook her head, nodded, groaned. Her teeth would start clattering any moment now with needing his touch.

He took both her arms in the warm gentleness of his hands. Then he pulled her to him. She stumbled forward, ended up with her head where she’d dreamed of having it since she’d been old enough to form memories. Where it had rested once before, during that moment that had changed her destiny. On the endlessness of his chest. He pressed it there with a hand that smoothed her hair, his rumbling purr of enjoyment echoing her own.

He finally sighed. “This is unprecedented. We’ve had our first fight and reconciliation before you’ve even told me your name.”

“It wasn’t really a fight,” she whispered as she pulled back a bit, so she could breathe, so her heart wouldn’t stop.

He smiled down at her, his eyes telling her she delighted him. “Not on my end, but you were about to claw my eyes out. And I would have gladly let you. But I’m not putting it off any longer. Your name, ya ajaml makhloogah fel kone. Bless me with its gift.”

He’d just called her the most beautiful creature in the universe. He probably didn’t realize he had spoken in his native tongue, or he would have tagged it with a translation.

“J …” Her voice vanished on a convulsive swallow as he drew nearer still, as if to inhale her name when she uttered it like the most pleasurable fragrance, like life-sustaining air.

And she realized she couldn’t tell him who she was.

If she did, he’d pull back. There would be embarrassment, consternation followed by distance and decorum. And she couldn’t bear to lose this moment of spontaneity with him.

It would be the last thing she had of him.

“Gemma.”

She almost slapped herself upside the head. Gemma? Did she have to go for a literal translation? How obvious could she get?

But then, she’d started to say her name, and he would have thought it suspicious if she’d gone on to say Dana or Sara or something. Gemma had been the only name that had come to her that started with a J sound.

Before she made it worse, she had to tell him how nice it was to meet him and walk away. Run away. Without looking back. She had the rest of her life to look back on this magical encounter.

He thwarted her feverish plans, pressed her head closer as he sighed his contentment. “Gemma. Perfect, ya joharti.” She lurched at hearing her real name. Before she could have a heart attack, he loosened his embrace, smiled his pleasure. “That’s ‘my jewel’ in my mother tongue. So, my precious Gemma, will you come with me?”

“Where?” she choked.

“As long as you’re with me, does it matter?”

It was clear by now that nothing mattered.

Not to Johara. Not when measured against wringing this opportunity to be with Shaheen of its last possible glance and smile, touch and comeback. Of the sheer unbridled joy of being the object of his interest, the target of his appreciation, the instigator of his desire.

Another breaker of pleasure frothed inside her as she beheld him, a vision made man, sitting across from her in the exclusive restaurant he’d made literally so for their dinner.

They’d been talking nonstop since they’d left McCormick’s penthouse. She’d answered his questions about herself without specifying names or places, and nothing she told him had rung any bells. That still rankled, but her thankfulness for this time out of time his unawareness afforded her with him surpassed any disappointment.

“Do you want to know what the maitre d’ told me after emptying the restaurant?” His eyes glittered at her as his hand covered her upturned palm with hypnotic strokes. “That such heavy-handed tactics wouldn’t work on a lady of such refinement as you.”

She giggled, surrendered her hand to his possession. “A very astute gentleman.”

He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I wish you had told me that before he emptied half of my supposed no-limit credit card.”

She giggled again at his mock woe. Even in her upheaval, the thrill rose. Her fantasies throughout the years had gotten it right. Their connection was there. And he was showering her with the delighted, delighting banter that had always textured and colored her life.

He remained the man she’d loved since she could remember. No, he was better than that man. Much, much better.

She sighed at the bittersweetness of it all. “But seriously, you shouldn’t have gone to any expense. I thought we’d agreed it didn’t matter where we were.”

“I wanted to be alone with you.”

“We could have been alone walking down the pier.”

“That did occur to me, but you’re not dressed for the cold night.” He lowered his gaze as if pondering the pattern he was painting with his fingers on her palm. He raised his eyes a moment later and she gasped. Gentleness and humor were gone, that grim god of the desert back. She shuddered with the fierceness of her response. “You know where I really want to be alone with you, Gemma. In my place. In my bed.”

She squeezed her eyelids shut as emotion tore through her.

She couldn’t handle this. She shouldn’t have sought him out …

His tough rider’s fingers smoothed over her eyes, making her open them, so that there was no escaping his fierceness, his intention. “I want you, Gemma. I never knew wanting like this existed, that I could feel anything of this intensity and purity.”

“Purity?”

“Yes. It’s unclouded, untainted, absolute. I want you, in every way. And you want me in the same way. I know I wouldn’t be feeling like this if you didn’t also. My desire surges from me as much as it stems from you. It flows to you and is reflected back at me exponentially, then back to you in a never-ending cycle. It’s taking on a life of its own, growing too powerful to deny. With every breath its power heightens, sharpens. Will you let me fulfill our desire? Will you let me worship you?”

“Shaheen, please—”

He suddenly pushed his chair back, stood up. Before her heart could stumble on its next beat, he was bending to pluck her from her chair and into his arms. Her head lolled back over his arm with shock as he tightened his hold behind her back, beneath her knees and buried his lips in the neck she exposed to him. “This is all I want to do. Please you. I never want to stop pleasing you.”

Voices yelled inside her head. Tell him who you are. He’ll stop this torment the moment he realizes your identity.

And he’d be furious with her for hiding it. She couldn’t let it end like that. With him feeling deceived. And hating her.

She had to say no. He’d abide by her refusal. She hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. From the moment he’d caught her eyes and zapped her control across the room, she’d been reacting without volition.

Then she opened her mouth and without any trace of it she whispered, “Yes. Please.”

Three

Johara hadn’t known what to expect when she’d said yes to Shaheen.

It certainly hadn’t been anything that had happened in the two hours since.

After he swept her into his arms and obtained her unconditional capitulation, he put her down, let her walk out of the restaurant and to his limo. He gave his driver an order in Arabic to take the most roundabout way home then sat beside her talking, about everything under the sun. All through the long drive to his penthouse, he didn’t touch her at all, except for resuming his thorough fascination with her hand.

For a stretch, he showed her family photos on his phone. He had a few of his father and brothers. They looked much like she remembered, just older and harsher towering specimens of manhood. But the photos were mostly of his aunt Bahiyah, his half sister, Aliyah, and his cousin, Laylah, the only three females born in their family in five generations straight. Shaheen said they were the only ones worth taking and keeping photos of, the vivacious centerpieces of their all-male family, splashes of beauty and grace and exuberance among the range of darkness and drive of what the ladies called their testosterone-compromised relatives.

Aliyah, who was three years older than Johara and who’d seldom been around in the eight years Johara had lived in the palace, had been thought to be King Atef’s niece. It was only two years ago that it had been revealed that Princess Bahiyah had adopted her and passed her off as hers from her American husband, when she was actually the king’s daughter from an American lover. Instead of causing a scandal, the discovery had aborted the looming wars in the region when Aliyah entered a political marriage with the new king of Judar, Kamal Aal Masood.

Aliyah looked nothing like the sallow, spaced-out girl she remembered. In fact, she looked the epitome of femininity and elegance. And bliss. It was apparent her forced marriage to Kamal had become a love match. Like Shaheen’s impending marriage would no doubt become. For what woman wouldn’t worship him?

She blinked away the mist of dejection and concentrated on Laylah’s photos. The twelve-year old girl she’d been when Johara had last seen her had fulfilled all the promise she’d shown of becoming a spectacular beauty. Johara had never had a chance to really know her, since Laylah’s mother, Queen Sondoss’s sister, had never let her mingle with the help, as Aram had put it.

Shaheen said Laylah was one of three reasons he forgave his stepmother for existing, since she’d married her sister to his uncle, the other two being his half brothers, Haidar and Jalal. He also said that the ladies reveled in giving their male family members—especially Shaheen and his brothers—a view of a life that didn’t have to bend to their wishes. Because of that, along with many other things he could see they shared with Johara, he was certain they would set the palace on fire getting along.

Everything he said alluded to his taking it for granted that her presence in his life would continue beyond tonight. But he must know there was no chance of that.

Yet not only had he already secured her surrender, so he had no reason to say anything more to encourage it, he seemed to believe in what he was saying, to have forgotten the marriage of state he’d announced his intention to enter only four days ago.

She guessed that the marriage was what had been weighing so heavily on him when she’d first seen him. He was loathe to succumb to duty. But it seemed to have slipped his mind since he’d seen her.

She wouldn’t remind him. They’d both remember harsh reality soon enough, live with it for the rest of their lives.

Tonight was theirs.

So here she was, standing in the middle of his extensive, austerely masculine foyer, watching him as he hung his jacket and her wrap with tranquil, precise movements.

Why was he wasting their precious time together?

She might not have known what to expect, but she’d thought he’d escalate the urgency he’d shown so far. She’d had visions of him carrying her to the limo, drowning her in kisses all the way here, pressing her against the door the moment they entered and showing her how eager for her he was.

Had he remembered his commitments and decided to cool things off, let her down easy?

She should spare him the discomfort, should leave. She shouldn’t have come at all, shouldn’t have said yes, shouldn’t have gone to that party …

Something whirred, flashed. She blinked in surprise, her left eye riddled in blue spots.

He’d snapped a photo of her with his phone. Now he walked toward her, big and lithe, gloriously male and impossibly beautiful. But it was his expression that made her sway, sending her heart swinging in her chest like a pendulum.

The lightness of the trek here was gone, sizzling sensuality replacing it, setting his eyes deeper on fire and his charisma to a higher level.

He stopped a foot away, reached for the hands he seemed so enamored with. “You looked so … pensive. And if possible, even more breathtaking. This photo is the stuff of the immortal masterpieces the old masters would have begged to portray.” He took her hands to his lips, giving each finger a knuckle-by-knuckle introduction to the cosseting of his lips, his eyes empty of all but seriousness. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“No.” The denial shot out of her, its fierceness mortifying her as it rang around them. But she had to know. “A-are you?”

He huffed. “The only thoughts I’m having are where to begin worshipping you and how to stop from swallowing you whole.”

So that was why he was holding back. He feared being too aggressive. She was being insecure again.

But who could blame her? All through the years, her love for him had been emotional, spiritual, with slight sensual overtones. She’d never imagined he could actually want her, and when she’d fantasized that he did, even in the freedom of her own imagination, he’d done no more than hold and kiss her. Yet she couldn’t breathe with wanting all he was willing to give her, with needing to experience him to the fullest.

She swayed closer, her heartbeats merging like the wings of a hummingbird with the enormity of what she was feeling, what she was about to reveal. “B-begin anywhere, Shaheen. J-just begin. And don’t stop your self. I don’t want you to stop.”

His eyes flared with her every faltering word. When she fell into embarrassed, panting silence, he entwined her hands in his, brought them to her face, twisting their embrace around so the backs of his hands stroked up and down her flaming cheeks.

“Then I’ll begin here. Your skin. It’s incredible, like every part of you. Lush, thick cream, free of paleness and fragility. It doesn’t flush with your emotions, no matter how strong, only becomes more vital, more vivid. It’s glowing now. Your eyes are gleaming like polished onyxes under spotlights, inundating me with an avalanche of expressions, each intoxicating in its clarity and beauty. And your lips. The way they mold to your every thought, the way they take the shape of your every emotion, the way they tremble to the frequency of each sensation … each tremor shudders through me until I am nothing but uncontainable hunger.”

She almost choked with stimulation. “I was right. You are made up of nothing but original bones and poetic cells.”

His lips twitched in a lethal mix of appreciation and predation as he touched the pad of his thumb to hers, stilling those tremors that so affected him. “It seems you didn’t hear my last words clearly.”

Her lips trembled even more as humor warred with anticipation and agitation. He rubbed his thumbs against them, his breathing becoming harsher.

She closed her eyes to savor the long-dreamed-about sensations. Her wildest imaginings hadn’t prepared her for reality. She moaned with the pleasure that corkscrewed through her, emanating from his breath, his nearness, his touch, to her every inch, her deepest reaches. Then her lips did what they’d been longing to do for most of her life—caressed the fragrant warmth and power pressed to them with a trembling kiss.

She heard his intake of breath. It sliced away more of the leashes of her inhibition. She opened her lips, grazed her teeth against his skin. Its texture, its scent, brought more moist heat surging from her core.

A fiercer inhalation expanded his chest until it pressed against her swelling breasts. She knew he could scent her arousal, felt the wildness it sent seething through him. It made her light-headed, the knowledge that she could do this to him, that he was doing this to her, that they had this to share.

Feeling bolder, she swept her tongue against his skin. Her knees did buckle at her first taste of him. He disentangled his other hand, caught her around the waist. She kept her eyes closed as she dove deeper into the sensations, her whole existence centering on his thumb against her tongue as he began to thrust it gently in and out of her mouth.

“This is extremely dangerous.” His bass hiss made her eyes snap open. His bore into them before moving to her lips with burning intent as he fed them his thumb, as they suckled it with increasing greed and abandon. She knew what he meant. He still elaborated. “That you want me as fiercely as I want you.”

She nodded, breath leaving her body under choppy pressure. She felt she was disintegrating with need for him.

He let go of her waist, grazed across her lower teeth as he slid his thumb lingeringly from between her lips, then dropped his forehead to hers, nuzzling her, inhaling her. “This is unparalleled. Agonizing but sublime.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Though she had no experience to back up her belief, she knew the protracted inflammation of their senses was far more satisfying than any frenzied mindless coupling would be.

He eased her away only to glide both arms around her back, to her dress’s zipper. He slid it down with torturous slowness, never letting go of her eyes as he went back up to unclasp her bra. She gasped as its constriction eased, and again at the spike of ferocity in his eyes as he monitored her reaction. He drew more gasps from her as he caressed her dress and bra loose, then in one silky sweep, freed her from their shackles.