Taken by the Sheikh

by Penny Jordan

  Somehow he managed to manhandle Sadie into the passenger seat. He had left the engine running, and as he put the vehicle in gear Sadie started to come round.

  She was with Drax. Sadie shuddered. Why had he come after her? Why hadn’t he just left her in peace? Was he so perverted that he would risk death rather than be denied his sick pleasure?

  Tears filled her eyes and spilled down on her cheeks.

  Drax reached out his hand to touch her, and immediately she cowered away from him, her eyes bleak with pain.

  ‘What are you doing here? Why did you come after me?’

  ‘Because I had no choice. I love you, Sadie. You are my life and—’

  ‘No.’ How dared he lie to her like this when she knew the truth? How dared he look at her with a pain in his gaze that said she was more precious to him than life itself?

  She started to laugh, almost hysterically.

  ‘Yes!’ he insisted. But Sadie shook her head.

  ‘You’re lying. You don’t love me. I heard you, Drax; I heard everything you said about me to Vere. About the two of you sharing me.’ She made herself say the horrible words and endure the poison of their taste. ‘I won’t let you do that to me, Drax. I’d rather die,’ she said wildly. ‘I won’t let you abuse me like that.’

  ‘Was that why you left the camp?’ Drax demanded.

  ‘You didn’t think I’d stay, did you, after hearing something like that?’

  Sadie gasped as the wind howled and screamed, buffeting the four-wheel drive and causing it to rock from side to side.

  ‘Sadie, it isn’t as it seems.’

  ‘How can it not be? I heard you.’

  ‘I know you did, but…’ Drax cursed under his breath as he fought to control the vehicle. ‘I love you, Sadie.’

  ‘Don’t say that! You’re lying.’

  ‘No, I’m not. What you heard me saying to Vere was—’

  His explanations would have to wait until they got back to the oasis, Drax realised, as the wind died abruptly and suddenly there was complete silence.

  ‘What—?’ Sadie began uncertainly, sensing that the unnatural calm had a dangerous malevolence about it.

  ‘The eye of the storm,’ Drax told her grimly. ‘If we’re lucky, very lucky, we might make it to the oasis before all hell breaks loose. There it is up ahead—see?’

  Sadie could. The camp had an abandoned, empty air about it; several of the palm trees had been uprooted, one of them having crashed down into the oasis itself. Drax brought the vehicle to a halt alongside the one remaining tent—Drax’s tent, Sadie saw.

  ‘Where are the others? Vere?’ Sadie asked, almost stammering over his twin’s name as she remembered what she had heard him saying.

  ‘Back in Dhurahn by now. You drove straight into the path of the storm. Quick,’ he commanded her, unbuckling his seatbelt and turning to unfasten hers. Sadie shook her head. She wanted to refuse to get out of the Land Rover, but the eerie silence was somehow more frightening than the thought of being with him. At least she knew that only he was here.

  She wouldn’t let him touch her, though, not even as she struggled through a deep drift of sand to cross the few feet that separated the vehicle from the entrance to the tent.

  ‘We are lucky that the generator is still working,’ Drax said once they were both inside. ‘At least for now.’

  ‘Maybe the storm is over and we don’t need to stay here? Maybe we should try to get back to the city?’ Sadie suggested. ‘And when we do get there I want my passport back, Drax. I won’t stay and be…abused.’ She lifted her chin and said fiercely, ‘If you and Vere want to play those sort of perverted games then you will have to find someone else to play them with.’ Her face was burring with shame and disgust.

  ‘Sadie—’ Drax groaned, but he stopped speaking abruptly as suddenly, out of nowhere, the silence was torn apart by an unearthly sound as the wind returned to howl and scream its fury whilst tearing at the fabric of the pavilion as though it were an alien life force.

  It was impossible to speak above its fury, but Sadie could see from Drax’s expression the danger they were in. ‘We’re going to die, aren’t we?’ she whispered.

  Drax must have read her lips, because he shook his head and mouthed back, ‘If we do it will be together. And I would rather die with you, Sadie, than live without you.’

  What was he saying? He couldn’t possibly mean those words. To her disbelief, she saw that he was coming towards her. She tried to evade him, but it was too late. His arms closed round her and his mouth came down on hers in a fierce, possessive kiss.

  She shouldn’t be letting this happen. But somehow she couldn’t stop herself from lifting her own arms to hold him close. Perhaps it was the knowledge that they might not survive that was fanning the embers of her need into such an urgent heat, making her return his kiss with equal hunger, urging her to take what there was before the darkness came down on them.

  Outside the wind shrieked, but all Sadie could hear was the frantic thud of her own heartbeat and the voice inside her that said nothing mattered but this need within her. Her body ached and yearned for Drax’s touch—and not just his touch, but his possession. She could feel her flesh heating, seeking a complete union with his, wanting at its most intimate level to draw him in and keep him there, to make him so much a part of her that there were no boundaries left between them and they were one perfect whole. This was all that mattered; it was all that she wanted to communicate to Drax.

  She pressed her body up against his, willing him to respond to her need, to answer her impatient hunger, to have him destroy the barriers between them, to answer the storm inside her and tear away everything that separated them so that they could be truly together, flesh on flesh, heart on heart, until she possessed him deep within her.

  Somewhere a small part of her registered that she was being driven by a form of madness, but her need scorned it. What was madness but a delicious form of intense reality? And nothing could be more real than this. She could feel Drax’s hands moving urgently over her body. She moaned with hot, hungry pleasure, sliding her own hand down his back and then over the curve of his buttock, and then between their bodies so that she could touch him intimately. She felt him shudder when her flingers closed over him, and she shuddered herself in response, lost mindlessly in the storm of her need for him.

  ‘Take me to bed, Drax,’ she begged fiercely. ‘Here and now, when it’s just the two of us. I want you so much…’

  ‘No.’ His denial was low and raw, the aching, tormented sound of a man refusing what he wanted most. ‘No, Sadie,’ he repeated, releasing her. ‘Not until I have talked with you. Explained everything to you.’

  ‘We might not live that long,’ Sadie said. ‘And if we don’t, I want my last moments with you to be in your arms, Drax. Not—’

  Drax gave her a small shake. You mustn’t say that. We are going to live. Now, let me explain—’

  ‘Not here.’ Sadie was being driven by an instinct she didn’t understand but could no longer fight. ‘Tell me in bed, Drax, while you’re holding me.’ What she meant was that a part of her didn’t want to see his face because she didn’t want to see that he was lying to her.

  ‘Very well,’ Drax agreed. ‘In bed, in my arms, you shall hear the truth and know my heart, Sadie.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THEY undressed quickly, feverishly almost, aware not only of their intense desire for one another and the unresolved issues between them, but also of the threat of the storm and its power to destroy them. The fine grains of sand brushed easily from Sadie’s skin as she stood staring at Drax’s naked body, unable to stop greedily absorbing the sight of him. She could feel the fine tremble of his hands when he reached for her, holding her so tightly in his arms that she could feel the rapid beating of his heart as though it were her own. She wanted him so badly, and to judge from his state of arousal his need matched hers. Would he think about his twin later, when he possessed her? Would he imagine th
at Vere was with them? Would he—?

  He touched her face gently and kissed her forehead. ‘Don’t look like that, Sadie. What you overheard wasn’t what you thought, although I can understand how damning it would sound.’

  ‘You can’t magic away the words you spoke, Drax.’

  ‘No, I can’t. But I can explain where they came from. The truth is that I spoke those words out of blind, driving jealousy and bitterness, Sadie. All our lives Vere and I have put our loyalty to one another and our relationship first. When I fell in love with you I discovered for the first time what it meant to hate my brother, to feel murderously jealous of him.’

  ‘Why should you feel like that? You knew how I felt about you.’

  ‘Yes, but the situation is more complicated that that. You see, I had promised you to Vere.’ Drax felt her stiffen and try to pull away from him. But he had anticipated her reaction and held her tightly, keeping her close to him.

  ‘You mean that you acted as a pimp for your brother?’ Sadie challenged him savagely.

  ‘No. Let me explain.’

  Quietly and openly Drax started to tell her about the potential problems that might have arisen from the desire of the rulers of their neighbouring states to tie them to their families via marriage.

  Sadie winced when she heard Drax repeating his mocking comment about virginal women falling in love with sheikhs, but Drax laughed softly and said, ‘What I hadn’t bargained for was that this sheikh was going to be the one falling in love, and that he would be so overwhelmed by the experience that he’d try to pretend that it wasn’t happening.

  ‘Vere guessed the truth, though. My brother isn’t like me. He is more reserved. He finds it less easy to talk of what he feels, even to me, and he guards his emotional privacy fiercely. So he waited for me to come forward and tell him of my feelings. He tried to encourage me by commenting that you would make a perfect wife, and in my jealousy I imagined that he was telling me that he too had fallen in love with you and wanted you as his wife. How could he not love you when you’re so loveable? How could I have so stupid as to not see that for myself the moment I set eyes on you?

  ‘Because he is my twin, and because of the vow I had made to find him a temporary wife first, I felt obliged to step out of your life. I had no idea that when he talked about you being perfect wife material he was referring not to himself but to me. It was the jealous outburst you overheard that enabled him to learn how I had misunderstood him. What you heard me saying to him was not, my darling, a description of what I wanted, but the anger of a bitterly jealous man. I hated the thought of Vere so much as looking at you, never mind touching you.’

  ‘But you were still willing to give me up to Vere, even though you knew I loved you?’

  ‘I reasoned that since Vere is the better of the two of us you would love him more. You have to understand, Sadie, that because of our obligations to our country Vere and I have always put our loyalty to one another ahead of everything else. But now both he and I know that our relationship can never be the same again, because my love for you means that you will now be the most important person in my life.’

  Sadie could hear the sincerity and truth in his voice.

  ‘I couldn’t bear what I thought I’d heard you say. I’d wanted to talk to you. To tell you that I wanted to return to England.’ She shuddered. ‘I shouldn’t have taken the vehicle like that, but I had to get away.’

  ‘And I had to find you.’

  ‘Oh, Drax, we could both die here, and it will be my fault.’

  He shook his head and smiled at her. ‘We aren’t going to die. Listen.’

  Sadie looked at him and frowned.

  ‘I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Drax said. ‘While you and I were battling our own personal storm, the one outside the tent blew itself out.’

  ‘We’ll be able to leave here and return to Dhurahn?’ Would he sense her disappointment and guess how reluctant she was to give up the chance of this precious time alone with him?

  ‘We could,’ he agreed. ‘But not tonight.’

  ‘Not tonight?’ Sadie repeated.

  ‘No, tonight.’ Drax repeated firmly. ‘Because tonight I want you to myself, so that I can prove to you just how much I love you.’

  ‘I’d like that. And I’d like it too if our child was conceived here tonight, Drax,’ Sadie told him softly. ‘Here, tonight, in the aftermath of the storm which could have destroyed us.’

  She could see from the smouldering look in his eyes just how much her words were affecting him. She leaned towards him, reaching out her hand to enclose him, trembling with anticipation and desire when her fingers encircled his hardness. His flesh felt hot, tempting her caress.

  ‘You know what’s going to happen if you keep on doing that, don’t you?’ Drax said thickly.

  ‘Show me,’ Sadie said, catching her breath as he lifted her hand from his body.

  He kissed her fiercely as his own hands mapped her body. When his hands cupped her breasts her nipples rose eagerly, seeking the touch of his flesh. His lips were against her throat, feeling the vibration of her moans of delight at the soft tug of his fingers and thumbs on her nipples. Sadie lifted her hands to his shoulders, pushing his head further down her body, wanting the erotic stimulation of his mouth against her breast. But when he obeyed her unspoken command the pleasure was shockingly sharper than she had anticipated. Drax slipped his hand between her legs as he drew her nipple into his mouth, the knowing stroke of his fingertip probing the folded outer lips of her sex mirroring the rhythmic tug of his mouth of her nipple.

  Sadie thought she would die from the pleasure building so intensely inside her—or explode, its tension was so unbearably arousing. She opened her legs and pressed up against his hand, hotly eager for him to probe deeper and more intimately at the slickness of her aroused flesh. He had found the source of her female pleasure and was caressing it, drawing it to its full desire-swollen sensitivity, so that every shallow breath she took seemed to rock her on the edge of the orgasm she longed to engulf her. But each time she reached for it Drax withdrew from her, until she reached for him in a frenzy of need, telling him fiercely, ‘Now, Drax. Now, please now.’

  It was heaven to feel the weight of him against her, to spread her legs and then wrap them around him tightly, arching up against him. He thrust carefully into her, but his care frustrated her.

  ‘Deeper, Drax, harder,’ she begged him, her eyes darkening with feral pleasure when he obeyed her and she felt her body accommodate the sensation of him within it. Experimentally she tightened her muscles around him, and heard him groan with pleasure.

  ‘How can you know how to do that?’ he demanded in between kisses.

  ‘How can I not?’ Sadie whispered back against his lips. ‘When it’s what I want to do…when I want to feel you and hold you…when I want…’

  ‘This?’ he suggested, thrusting rawly, rhythmically, faster and deeper, while she clung to him and gave herself up to the pleasure of his possession. His rhythm was taking her, driving her, towards the pinnacle that was now so enticingly within reach.

  ‘Drax…’ she appealed.

  He drove harder, filling her, making her move urgently against him, and she stiffened as the pleasure exploded inside her, surge after surge of it, in waves of exquisite pulsing sensation as her body gripped and caressed his and she felt the liquid warmth of him spilling into her.

  ‘Drax,’ she whispered, lifting her hand to touch his face.

  He captured it, pressing his lips to the palm of her hand and then saying rawly, ‘You are mine now. Mine for ever. My love and soon, I hope, my wife. You will marry me, won’t you, Sadie?’

  She was too overwhelmed by her own emotions to do anything more than nod her head and let him hold her close while her body still quivered with small aftershocks of pleasure.

  ‘Shouldn’t you let Vere know that the storm is over and that you are safe?’ Sadie asked drowsily. ‘He’s bound to be worr
ying.’

  ‘There’s no mobile signal out here, but don’t worry. Vere will know that we are safe.’

  ‘Because he’s your twin and he will sense it?’ Sadie asked him

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean he’ll know you’ve found me.’

  She could hear the love in his voice when he told her softly, ‘Yes, it does. Because I told him when I left that I didn’t intend to return from the desert without you.’

  They were married three weeks later—first in a civil ceremony, and then in the traditional manner of Dhurahn’s people, handfasted to one another by the tying of a silk scarf around their wrists as Drax held Sadie’s hand firmly in the grasp of his own, their fingers interlinked.

  It was Vere who officiated at the ceremony, as Leader of his people, and Vere too who welcomed Sadie with the kindest of reassuring speeches—a public reiteration of the private assurance he had already given her that he was happy to welcome her as Drax’s wife.

  It was a long day, with feasting and traditional dancing and singing, but finally they were alone.

  ‘I love you,’ Drax whispered as he took her in his arms in the privacy of their own quarters.

  Beyond the large window moonlight glinted on the pool from which she had seen him emerging naked and had wanted him so fiercely. She wanted him just as fiercely now. But now she was free to tell him so—and to show him. She looked up at him, her feelings illuminating her expression.

  ‘When you look at me like that, I know that I am the most fortunate man on earth,’ Drax told her softly. ‘If I have one hope left now it is that Vere will find someone to love and be loved, as I love and am loved by you, Sadie.’

  And then there was only silence, punctuated by the softness of Sadie’s long sighs of pleasure as he celebrated with her their commitment to one another.