Taken by the Sheikh

by Penny Jordan

  Innocent? he taunted himself. After the intimacy she had shown him? Intimacy, yes, but an intimacy full of desire and longing—the kind of intimacy that was devoid of skilled experience but which reached right to the heart of the man being shown it. And wasn’t that why he was feeling the way he was? Torn apart by a toxic mix of anger, rejection of what his heart was telling him, and the fear of having gone too far in a direction he couldn’t afford to take?

  Why didn’t Drax say something? Anything to show that he was listening to her, really listening to her and absorbing what she was saying.

  In desperation Sadie said fiercely, ‘Jack Logan is the kind of man who thinks that every women he meets ought to find him attractive. When I made it plain to him that I didn’t he started to see me as some kind of challenge.’

  She had tugged free some of the bedding and was now holding it protectively in front of her, to hide herself from him. The shame inside him drove deeper. For some reason her need to cover herself touched something sharply painful inside him. He wanted to go to her, and hold her, take the look of bleak pain and hurt pride from her eyes. He wanted to take her back in his arms and tell her how precious and rare what they shared was.

  He wanted to finish what they had started. But how could he now? Her reminder about the need for them to practise safe sex had brought him back to reality. If she wasn’t lying, if she was as untouched as she was claiming, then that meant…

  That meant she was Vere’s.

  The choice was his. He could take her back to bed, find out for himself if she was speaking the truth and then face the consequences. Or he could question her companion before he left the country. There was a sour, bitter taste in his mouth. His pride jerked against the thought of humbling himself enough to do such a thing. But he had to do it. He had to know. Not for his own sake, and not even for hers, but for Vere’s. The loyalty he owed his brother came before anything and anyone else.

  ‘Get dressed and go back to your quarters,’ he told Sadie curtly. ‘We’ll discuss this further later.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  WAS she really so weak that she was actually allowing Drax to treat her like this? Sadie derided herself angrily an hour later, as she sat alone in what should have been the tranquillity of the private gardens of the women’s quarters. Why hadn’t she objected when he had virtually ordered her to come here? Why hadn’t she refused and told him that she wanted to leave Dhurahn immediately? What was wrong with her?

  Did she really need to ask herself that? What was wrong with her was the same thing that afflicted every woman who had ever fallen in love with the wrong man for the wrong reasons.

  Fallen in love? Where had those words come from? She hadn’t fallen in love with Drax! No? Then what was the motivation behind her current driving compulsive need to be with him, to hold him and touch him, to talk with him and learn all about him, to open her heart and mind to him, to take his hand and cling to it while they walked together though the shadows of her past, to give him the intimacy of herself and to be given the same intimacy back from him? What was all that if not love? How could she deny to herself that this was how she felt? But how could she love him when she knew that he did not feel the same way? And how was she going to deal with that and protect herself from its pain?

  It had been a simple enough matter for Drax to delay the return flight to Heathrow carrying the young bankers and MBAs who had leapt so eagerly at the chance to come to Dhurahn. He was actually in the terminal building when the Royal flight bringing his twin home a day ahead of schedule touched down—although he was not aware of Vere’s arrival.

  Jack Logan wasn’t at all concerned at the delay in their flight’s departure—the only thing that hadn’t run to schedule in the whole of their superbly organised and tightly packed trip. He was quite happy to while away the time demanding more of the vintage champagne being served by the pretty hostesses, at the same time subjecting them to some heavily explicit flirtation. Nor was he too concerned when an immaculately dressed middle-aged official came to escort him off the plane. To the cat-calls, whoops and cheers of his companions, the older man explained to him that there was a small irregularity that needed to be dealt with.

  ‘Small, is it, Jack?’ one of his friends called out coarsely. ‘And there’s you always boasting that it’s six inches and rising.’

  ‘Nah—six inches without rising,’ Jack quipped back over his shoulder, grinning at the pretty hostess standing by the exit.

  By the time he was actually shown into Drax’s presence ten minutes later he was swaggering boastfully, and blustering out an arrogant demand to be told what the hell was going on.

  ‘Forgive me for the inconvenience,’ Drax apologised calmly. ‘I assure you that you will soon be free to rejoin your flight. You know Ms Sadie Murray?’

  Since Drax was now in western dress, and speaking very calmly, Jack had no sense of being in any danger. Nor did he make the association between the traditionally dressed man he had seen with Sadie and the urbane authority of this man seated in front of him. He immediately leapt to the conclusion that Sadie had lodged a complaint against him. The better part of a bottle of champagne had dulled his normally sharp awareness of how to protect his interests, and led him now to laugh and say unkindly, ‘Yes, I know her. She’s the type that acts like she’s wearing a chastity belt and enjoying it. As sexless as it’s possible for a woman to be.’

  ‘You saw her earlier on today, I believe?’ Drax continued, outwardly ignoring Jack’s swaggering manner but inwardly registering every betraying word and look.

  ‘Yeah, I saw her. Ms Don’t-touch-me,’ he told Drax mockingly, and then swore crudely before continuing, ‘God, but I really hate her smugness. If anyone has it coming to her, she does. Acting like she’s too good for me.’

  There was an ugly look in his eyes, and Drax had to swallow hard against the sour taste in his mouth as he realised the danger Sadie had been in. ‘You wanted to show her who was boss? Scare her a bit…punish her?’ he suggested.

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Jack was warming more and more to his interrogator by the second. ‘She deserved it. Turning me down like she did. I’d have been a fool not to take the opportunity to pay her back.’

  ‘So you slipped away from the others and followed her?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s complained about me, has she? That’s typical of her. Just because I gave her a bit of a scare. If I’d been that desperate I’d have found myself a woman who knows what it’s all about—not some prim, innocent virgin-type like her.’ He gave a contemptuous shrug. ‘Man, what a turn-off she is. But she owed me, and she had it coming to her.’

  How could he not have believed Sadie? Drax was torn between a need to walk—no, run from the small enclosed room and go straight to her, and a savage urge to grab Jack by the throat and tell him what he thought of him. Instead he had to conceal what he was actually thinking and ask pleasantly, ‘What do you mean, she had it coming to her?’

  Jack Logan grimaced. ‘She turned me down and made me look a fool, so it was payback time. Come on, mate, you must know what it’s all about when a woman acts that way.’

  ‘What way do you mean?’ Drax asked.

  ‘You know. She made out that I was some kind of pervert just because I made a bit of a play for her, and threatened to complain if I did it again. So I thought I’d pay her back for it.’

  ‘Frighten her, you mean?’ It was an effort for Drax to keep his voice empty of emotion and to offer Jack a small, man-to-man conspiratorial smile.

  Jack was starting to relax. This was a man’s man, he could tell—the type who understood what life was all about.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. Okay, so I grabbed hold of her and touched her up a bit. If she’s fool enough to make a big deal of it then that’s her problem. Anyway, don’t you have a law out here about women being guilty as hell if they get themselves raped?’

  Drax decided he would very much like to tear Jack Logan limb from limb and throw his body to the d
esert vultures to pick clean. But of course he could do no such thing.

  ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Logan,’ he said distantly. ‘You will now be escorted back to your plane.’

  Jack stood up and gave him a lewd grin.

  ‘Great—I’ve got one of those pretty little trolley dollies all set up, ready and waiting to go.’

  Drax made a mental note to make sure that the cabin crew were warned to keep a close watch on him on the return flight—but his thoughts were really on Sadie and how fast he could get back to her and apologise.

  Sadie hadn’t realised that there was another entrance into the garden until she saw Drax walking towards her from the opposite end to her own quarters. He was wearing traditional robes, the sunlight falling across his arrogantly handsome face.

  Her heart leapt and then abruptly stopped leaping, and then did nothing except beat in its normal way. Even when Drax was standing within a few feet of her, looking at her with that small, half curling twist of his lips that normally sent her heart-rate into overdrive and turned her weak with longing, she didn’t want him. She felt like pinching herself, just to make sure she could feel something and hadn’t somehow gone completely numb. How could she not feel anything? But she didn’t. Not a single throb of desire or an ache of longing, not a single inclination to run to him, not even the anger she had every right to feel after the way he had treated her. Which meant…Which meant that she didn’t love him after all. She was safe; she no longer needed to worry. And yet…

  ‘If you’ve come to apologise—’ she said fiercely.

  ‘I do owe you an apology, it is true.’ He was inclining his head slightly, his voice cool and remote, almost as though…

  ‘You aren’t Drax,’ she accused, not knowing really why she should say it or how it could be true, and yet at the same time utterly convinced that she was right.

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I’m not Drax. I’m his brother—Vere. And you, of course, are Ms Sadie Murray?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sadie said, suddenly feeling rather self-conscious.

  ‘I must congratulate you, Ms Murray. Very few people can tell Drax and I apart, even though they may have known us for years. You, on the other hand, perceived almost instantly that I was not my brother.’

  ‘I don’t know why I said that,’ Sadie admitted. ‘You look like him.’

  ‘Actually, he looks like me, since I am older. But, yes, we are identical.’ He smiled at her. ‘You will forgive me, I hope, if—having introduced myself to you and bade you welcome to our country and our home—I make my excuses?’

  ‘Yes. Yes of course.’

  The wonder wasn’t that she had realised he wasn’t Drax, but that she had ever imagined he might be, Sadie reflected as she watched him leave. They might look identical, but in character and manner they were very different. Vere was so much more formal than Drax, so much more reserved and withdrawn. Just as arrogant, no doubt, but stiffer, more wary and ‘ruler-like’. And, of course, not anywhere near so desirable as Drax. But she had already warned herself that she must not love him.

  How much more easy her life would be if Drax was more like his twin and she didn’t want him, Sadie reflected ruefully, as she watched the goldfish swimming lazily amongst the water lilies in the pond.

  On his way back to the palace all Drax could think about was Sadie. He had been wrong in refusing to believe her, but right in recognising that the real motivation for his anger hadn’t been so much that he had thought she was lying as the fact that he had begun to realise his true feelings for her.

  Vere, no doubt, would be highly amused when Drax informed him that he intended to take his advice and marry Sadie himself. But, instead of her being a temporary wife, he wanted her to be his permanent wife—his one and only wife, the wife of his heart.

  He drove faster than normal, anxious to get back to Sadie, and the first thing he did when he reached the palace was to make his way straight to the women’s quarters.

  Sadie had come inside, out of the heat of the sun, to have a cooling shower and drink the glass of mint tea Hakeem had brought for her. When she heard the faint tap on the door to her suite, she thought at first it must be the maid—until the door opened and Drax strode in, closing it firmly behind him.

  This time her heart knew exactly who he was. She longed to throw herself into his arms. But she hadn’t forgotten the cruel things he had said to her, so she stood tensely, watching him as he came towards her.

  ‘I’ve come to apologise,’ he said simply.

  Just the scent of his skin was enough to send her dizzy with longing and to reactivate the unsatisfied ache he had left deep within her body.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Jack Logan.’ Sadie watched as his mouth tightened and anger flashed darkly in the depths of his eyes. ‘He’s scum.’

  ‘But you were prepared to believe him when you wouldn’t believe me?’ Sadie pointed out quietly.

  ‘I was jealous,’ Drax said quietly. ‘I’m not trying to make excuses for myself, Sadie, but it maddened me to see you in his arms and to think—Jealous men do stupid things; they think stupid things as well. I was wrong, and I should have believed you. Can you forgive me?’

  Could she? She already knew the answer to that, and she saw from the way he was looking at her that Drax knew it too.

  He was walking very purposefully and determinedly towards her, and there was a gleam in his eyes that warned her of what he was going to do.

  ‘Well?’ he whispered huskily as he took her in his arms. ‘You haven’t answered me yet.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sadie whispered. She couldn’t stop looking at him, even though she knew he would read in her eyes how much she loved him. He was going to kiss her…

  ‘Drax—’ she began, but she knew she wanted her denial to be too late and ignored.

  He was still holding her, and he could feel the unsteady thudding of her heart. ‘Are you feeling what I’m feeling?’ he asked softly.

  ‘What…what do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean. I mean this.’ He pushed back the sleeve of her robe, stroking his fingertips the length of her inner arm until they rested on the furious race of her pulse.

  Sadie could feel her body yearning towards his, wanting him, wanting everything he had denied her earlier.

  ‘And this,’ he continued gently, as he raised his hand to brush his fingertips across her throat. ‘You love me, don’t you?’ he demanded.

  He was so self-assured, so arrogant, that part of her wanted to be able to deny his words, to shake her head and tell him that he was wrong. But she couldn’t. Not when he was teasing tender little kisses along the length of her collarbone, pushing back the neckline of her robe so that it slid off her shoulder, offering up the creamy swell of her naked breasts to his touch, showing him the eager dark flush of her nipples. No wonder he was cupping her breast and teasing her nipple into an even harder peak, tugging it gently with his thumb and forefinger so that it stiffened even more, when her longing arched through her from where he was touching her to the heat of her sex.

  ‘What happens if I say yes?’ Sadie asked huskily, made bold by the look in his eyes. A heady euphoria was taking possession of her, encouraging her to dare to tease him in response to that look. It was like learning to dance, Sadie decided a little breathlessly, and suddenly discovering that by some kind of magical empathy your steps were fitting together so well that you moved as one, without hesitation or awkwardness.

  ‘This,’ Drax answered her softly, cupping her face in his hands and then stringing tiny kisses along the line of her lips, alternating kisses with the words, ‘I love you, Sadie Murray,’ so that they became a paean of loving sensuality and desire that dissolved her doubts and melted her resistance.

  ‘In that case, perhaps I should say it,’ Sadie whispered back to him. ‘I like to hear you telling me that you love me.’

  ‘I think you’d like it even more if I showed you as well as told you,’ Drax murmured.

  Sadie b
arely felt the robe being slipped from her shoulders. It was all she could do to respond unsteadily, ‘You do?’

  ‘I do,’ Drax said, and then he gathered her up in his arms, almost crushing her to him as he kissed her with all the fierce passion she’d been longing for.

  The time for teasing and flirting was over.

  Could there be anything more heart-soaringly beautiful and meaningful than this? Sadie marvelled as she lay on her bed in Drax’s arms while he kissed and caressed her and whispered to her how much he loved her and how sorry he was for ever doubting her.

  ‘I love you so much,’ Sadie whispered back. ‘I want you so much,’ she added truthfully. ‘Take off your clothes, Drax, so that I can see you and touch you.’

  ‘You do it,’ he urged, taking hold of her hands and placing them on his body. ‘While I do this…’

  How was she supposed to concentrate on fabrics and fastenings when Drax was kissing his way down the slope of her breast and then sensitising the dark aroused flesh of her nipple to the point of such exquisite and unbearable pleasure that it made her cry out his name? Wildly Sadie arched up to his mouth, her fingers digging into the hard muscles of his arms as she shuddered in the vortex of the surges of erotic need induced by the sensation of his lips closing round her aroused flesh. She was lost, taken over, filled by the intensity of her own fierce desire. She wanted to hold his head against her breast; she wanted to arch up against him, naked flesh to naked flesh; she wanted to wrap her legs tightly around him and draw him down to her so that he was within her and she was holding him, possessing him, drawing him deeper into that place where she ached for him.

  But Drax wasn’t responding to her passionate nonverbal pleas. Instead he was smoothing her gently onto the bed and then kissing his way down her body, his hands on her hips, his tongue circling her navel. Shivers of the most exciting and erotic sensation radiated out from where Drax was caressing her. He stroked his fingertips slowly and gently over the tops of her thighs, brushing her skin so lightly and delicately that she immediately yearned for more, for a stronger, more intimate touch. Of their own free will her legs softened and parted, inviting the movement of his hand to cup her sex whilst she closed her eyes to absorb the warm intimacy of his touch.