Zahain’s eyes went dark again, his jaw tightening, and he slowly clasped both hands behind his own back so Samir wouldn’t see his fingers clench into fists tight enough to make the brown skin look white. Oh, Wendy, he thought. If only I had joined you in pounding this little devil into the floorboards . . .
But Zahain held his tongue yet again. In some ways Samir was right, wasn’t he? This was a game in a sense, wasn’t it?
A game, yes. But games have rules, and last night in Paris changed the rules suddenly. It changed the game. Perhaps it changed everything. Especially if . . . especially if . . . oh, God, Wendy.
“Oh, I forgot,” Samir said, his voice rising as he went on. “You must have already seen her tits, yes? After all, how could a lowly waitress resist the charms of the great and powerful Zahain, rescuer of women, the keeper of the—”
But Samir was talking to an empty room now, because Zahain had walked straight into the glass elevator and was already on his way down to the main palace. He knew there was only so much he could take before saying or doing something he might regret.
Samir had a hold over him that Zahain hated, but at the same time Zahain felt a deep responsibility to his small nation, to his land, his traditions, his people. It would be easy enough to tell Samir to go to hell, that Samir could be Sheikh and Zahain would happily step down. After all, Zahain would remain a billionaire regardless. But that sense of duty kept him holding on, taking the insults, walking away when a younger Zahain would have hit back without regard for the consequences.
Now he stepped out of the cool glass elevator, nodding as four attendants lowered their covered heads in respect, and within seconds the Sheikh cleared his mind as he smelled the dry desert air of his land, the dry desert air that seemed to carry a hint of lavender in it today.
19
The room smelled like lavender when Wendy awoke, and she blinked up at the powder blue sandstone ceilings that towered fourteen feet above her enormous four-poster bed. She could have sworn the room smelled like sandalwood incense when she went to bed.
Yes, she thought as she sniffed the air like a poodle, there is a hint of sandalwood still in the air. But the dominant flavor in the air was lavender, and Wendy took a deep breath as she closed her eyes and tried to ignore the gazillion thoughts that competed for primacy in her overloaded brain.
Lavender was her “safe” smell, and it had always been around her. Her Milwaukee apartment was packed with lavender candles, incense, potpourri satchels, and even some synthetic lavender cans for emergencies. Her body spray was lavender, the perfumes she used were lavender infused, and so were all the soaps and shampoos and body creams. She had found some kind of lavender tea which didn’t taste very good but smelled wonderful, so she had been buying it for years. And yes, she even tried to bake a lavender pie once. It sucked, and that’s where she had drawn the line: You don’t eat lavender.
But here it was, her safe smell, in this enormous, airy room with its powder blue ceilings that towered above her, light yellow walls, rough sandstone floors that were covered in the most intricately woven carpets Wendy had ever seen. The room was, in a word, palatial. It was goddamn palatial.
It had been dark when the Sheikh’s jet landed on the private airstrip in Farrar, and the truth was Wendy had been sleepy and dazed and she didn’t get a clear picture of the place as the Sheikh’s fleet of Range Rovers sped over the short distance from the airplane to the . . . the palace?! Oh, God!
And now the memory of that sparkling building came rushing back, like it had been a dream. Sandstone walls of soft pink and tranquil beige, towers and spires too numerous to count, marvelous high domes swollen and shining between the minarets, the alternating peaks and domes of the building complementing each other, highlighting each other, one making the other seem more like itself.
Oh, God, I’m in a palace, she thought as she swung her feet off the bed and wiggled her toes as if that would prove she wasn’t dreaming. She looked down at the carpet, admiring the intricate hand-weave of magenta and indigo and lime, and then she sighed and plopped back down on the bed, legs sticking off the side, toes still wiggling.
Less than three days ago I was serving mozzarella sticks to drunk locals in Wisconsin, she thought, and now I’m staring at a blue sandstone ceiling as I wiggle my toes in what has to be the most beautiful bedroom I’ve ever seen.
Well, she thought now as a wave of panic hit her and then dissolved quickly into the air as she thought about Paris, maybe the second most beautiful bedroom I’ve ever seen.
But that panic came back quick, and Wendy felt her entire body seize up, her gut wrenching as she whimpered and went into a fetal position on the bed. She tried to cry but there was too much adrenaline coursing through her veins, and she wondered if she was going into shock. Her stomach tensed up again as she rolled over onto her other side, and she wondered if she might throw up, and that made her think of morning sickness, and now she was really freaking. FREAKING!
“Wendy,” came the voice. It was his voice, Zahain’s voice, and it was calling to her, cutting through the panic that was twisting her inside out. “Wendy, are you all right?”
Wendy was rolling back and forth on the large bed, whimpering as she hugged a gigantic pillow for dear life, perhaps even mumbling as the thoughts refused to stop assailing her with their what-ifs and what-nows and holy-shit-you-might-be-pregnant-are-you-insane-you-bitch.
She opened one eye now, surveying the room—or at least the little she could see of it with just one eye. She was still half-buried in the swirl of silk and linen bedclothes, and that pillow felt very nice pressed up against the front of her body, holding her breasts tight. She couldn’t see Zahain, though, and now she wondered if it was in her head.
“Wendy,” he called out again. “Hey. Up here.”
The voice was coming from above, and now Wendy turned that periscope of her single wide eye up, almost yelping in shock when she saw the Sheikh looking down at her, an amused half-smile on his handsome brown face.
Zahain was casually leaning on what seemed to be the parapet of a balcony overlooking the main bedroom, and only now did Wendy realize that holy shit, this room actually has a second floor in it. This is a bedroom with a second floor in the bedroom. That doesn’t even make sense, she thought.
“Ever heard of knocking?” she called out, and the moment she spoke all the fear and panic and madness disappeared, and now she was looking into the suddenly-familiar green eyes of the Sheikh.
His smile broke full when he heard her speak, and Wendy was warm all over now, an overwhelming feeling of safety coming over her, a sense of this-is-insane-but-somehow-it’s-gonna-be-just-fine making its way to her just because of the way Zahain was looking at her, the way he was smiling at her.
He straightened up now, spreading his arms wide. He was in short sleeves, his thick, muscular arms on display, veins standing out in high relief against his deep brown skin, the edges of an old tattoo visible below his sleeve on the inside of his right arm. Arabic letters, it looked like. All black, gently faded. It looks cool, she thought.
“I cannot knock because there are no doors here, Wendy,” he called down to her.
Wendy looked around her level of the enormous bedroom, and sure enough, at the far end, where a door should have been, there was just a silk curtain of shining purple and gold flapping gently in the breeze. The “doorway” itself was large enough for an SUV to drive through, but the Sheikh was right: no doors.
“Well, that’s a bit disturbing,” Wendy said slowly, looking down at her bare ankles, her pinkish white toes that were still wiggling somehow, the purple nail polish looking like it needed a touch-up. “No trees to use for wood, huh?”
“What?” said Zahain, his voice sounding distant as he made his way along the elevated corridor and toward a set of stairs that Wendy hadn’t even noticed because they were so far away from the bed. “Trees?”
The Sheikh bounded silently, barefoot down the stairs, and with
in moments had walked briskly to the foot of her bed, and now here he was, tall and dark, thick black curls looking freshly cleaned and lush, his muscular, lithe body impeccably clothed in dark blue silk trousers and a light gray t-shirt of that same Egyptian cotton.
“The doors,” Wendy said, giggling for no good reason besides the fact that Zahain was very close to her now. “It’s a desert. No trees. No wood for doors. It was a joke. Never mind.”
Zahain smiled now, nodding quickly, raising and lowering his eyebrows as he volunteered a laugh that Wendy thought was directed more at her lame attempt than the actual quality of the joke. “Ah, I see. No, there is no shortage of wood if we want it. But the doors . . . well . . . see, when I became Sheikh I had all the doors in the Royal Palace removed.”
“Open door policy,” Wendy quipped. “Very popular in modern workplaces in America, I hear.”
The Sheikh laughed once and shrugged. “Something like that. I think of it as a no-secrets policy. You know, that everything should flow between people the way the wind flows between rooms. No secrets.”
Wendy frowned and closed one eye. “No secrets? How’s that going?”
Zahain laughed again, and now he touched the edge of her bed, running his finger along the shimmering white silk sheet as his eyes quickly and gracefully took in the outline of Wendy’s body beneath the bedclothes. He looked up at her face now, and Wendy caught him taking a sharp breath of air.
Perhaps he’s right, Wendy thought as she looked into his green eyes. I may not understand what’s happening or be able to explain it in words, but his eyes are telling me the truth, aren’t they? No secrets, right?
“Well,” the Sheikh said, blinking and looking away for a moment before glancing back at her. “A secret is something that is willfully, intentionally, purposely hidden. So just because we do not know everything about each other does not mean that we are keeping secrets from one another.”
“Zahain, it’s more than not knowing everything about each other. We know almost NOTHING about each other! And we’ve already . . . oh, God, Zahain. Oh, my GOD!”
He was on the bed now, one hand firmly on her knee, his body leaning in as he gently reached for her face, carefully moving a frazzled lock of brown hair away from Wendy’s soft round cheek.
“I know,” he said. “I know. It has been driving me insane as well.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” Wendy said, blinking hard as she tried not to hyperventilate. It took her a moment to calm down, but she was not going to break, she knew. She didn’t break.
“Why do you doubt that?”
“I read about you, Zahain. I’m not a moron. I googled your name the night before we left. You’ve probably slept with more women this month than I’ve served at the diner all year.” She knew that wasn’t true, but she said it anyway, a weird perverseness rising up in her, like she wanted to jab at him, to see if he’d flinch, like she wanted to hurt him just to see if he would get hurt.
Zahain frowned and looked down at the bedclothes for a moment. “All the tabloid articles from my younger days. They will haunt me forever, won’t they.” Then he looked back up, his eyes narrowed. “But if you believed it, why get on that plane with me?”
“You didn’t leave me with much option, did you now, Great Sheikh.” Her eyes blazed with intensity now, the fire at her core making itself known again. “Take my chances with your kangaroo court in Farrar, or be financially ruined in the United States by your brother and his team of lawyers.”
Zahain shrugged, his eyes going cold as he matched Wendy’s fire with his ice. “Still,” he said. “My brother did touch you first. Your reaction may have been over-the-top, but it was justified. You defended yourself, and chances are a judge would have seen it that way. You must have figured out that you had a very good chance to beat any cases filed, but still you chose to fly to a strange country in the Middle-East, a part of the world that Americans assume is filled with brutal, sword-wielding barbarians who stone women to death for the smallest of reasons.”
Now Wendy pulled away from Zahain, backing up on the large bed until she was sitting up against the wooden headboard. The dark old wood smelled faintly of lavender—but fresh lavender, like someone had lightly brushed some lavender oil on there while she slept—and it distracted her for a moment, but only a moment, because Wendy was not the type to back down from a fight, physical or verbal.
“The criminal case would have been fine—even a public defender would have managed to get me off,” she said. “But the civil case would have wiped me out before I ever stepped near a courtroom.” She tucked the bedclothes beneath her thighs and bottom and folded her arms over her chest, looking directly at Zahain now. “And I’m not some uneducated hillbilly, Zahain. I know that all countries in the Middle-East aren’t the same. And I did take the time to read about Farrar and its laws.”
The Sheikh raised an eyebrow, and now he pulled his legs up under him and backed up until he was sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, directly across from Wendy. “Really? And what did you discover about my backward little country?”
Wendy took a breath, looked past the Sheikh, and then focused back in on him. “That five years ago you made sweeping changes to the criminal laws of the country, making them fairer and more reasonable, doing away with all the barbaric physical punishments, eliminating the death penalty, penalizing minor criminals with community service instead of prison sentences. And you did all of it while still respecting the broad outlines of Islamic law as put forth in the Quran. You were praised by many liberal Muslim scholars, and by moderate Christian commentators as well. Journalists were saying that what you did could be a model for other Islamic nations, and could possibly bring the entire Middle East into the twenty-first century.”
Zahain looked down at his hands and then nodded slowly, a tight smile showing on his long brown face. He had not shaved, and Wendy could see the even shadow of a dark beard that would grow in thick. He looked up at her now, and in his eyes she could see the will of a leader, the confidence of a man who had done something with his life, who had made his mark. It made her feel small and inadequate for a moment, but that feeling passed quickly because it had no place in Wendy’s inner being. She herself had been through too much to have any serious doubts about the kind of woman she was, the kind of woman she was born to be.
The Sheikh nodded again, still looking down at his hands. “If you know all that, Wendy,” he finally said, looking up at her now. “Then you must also know that I personally exercise a high degree of control over the Royal Council. In a sense, you ARE at my mercy here, Wendy. Make no mistake, this is not a democracy. The Council is not much more than a group of advisors and administrators. I am the Sheikh, and I am in charge. You have figured this out, yes? So this isn’t about the liberal laws of Farrar or community service or anything else you might have read. You made a decision to take your chances not with Farrar but with the SHEIKH of Farrar. With ME, Wendy.”
Zahain moved to her now, and Wendy could feel his warmth beneath the bedclothes. Now his fingers were pulling at her toes, and Wendy shivered and drew her legs up closer to her, away from the Sheikh.
“With me,” he said again, inching towards her as a slow breeze moved the purple-gold curtains at the far end of the room, sending a hint of lavender over to the two of them.
“This is ridiculous,” she whispered as she realized she was backed up tight against the headboard, her legs drawn up against her chest, and now Zahain was directly in front of her, his hands rubbing her feet, her ankles, her calves, and he was getting closer, his heat getting more real, his passion hanging heavy in the dry desert air as Wendy felt herself weaken, felt herself sway, felt herself breaking, felt herself wanting to break . . .
“Zahain,” she whispered as the Sheikh rose up on his knees and leaned in slowly, his hands on her raised knees, his breath already hot against her neck as he got close, so close. “That night in Paris. What if I’m . . . I mean, I don’t take any . . .
and we didn’t use any . . .”
The Sheikh was kissing her neck now, and Wendy shivered as she felt his hard, tight body slowly press its weight against her chest, pushing her against the padded headboard, and she pulled at his hair as she allowed him to slide between her thighs as he continued to kiss her, his body slowly moving against hers.
Zahain pulled back for a moment and looked into her eyes, and he nodded now, nodded again, and with his lips so damn close to hers he whispered, “Yes, it has occurred to me too. And so I think we had better not leave any room for doubt.”
“What?” Wendy gasped, but now Zahain’s warm lips were on hers, smothering her words, driving her heat to boiling point.
“You heard me, Wendy,” Zahain growled in her ear as Wendy felt his hands slide along her hips and sides, caressing her up and down, pressing her breasts, plucking at her nipples as she shivered beneath him. “If we are going to have a child, then we had better be damned sure I get you pregnant, don’t you think?”
20
Ya, Allah, she is not stopping me, Zahain thought as he felt Wendy’s body move beneath his. He was kissing her hard, coating her lips with his clean saliva, nibbling on her earlobes, kissing her smooth neck with heavy, full-mouthed gasps, now moving down to her chest, fingers pulling desperately at the V-neck of her black nightgown until her beautiful cleavage came into view. He slid his tongue between her breasts even as he reached down along her body and caressed her heavy thighs, ran his hands along the full curves of her hips, clutched at her buttocks—oh, God, she was so smooth, so warm, her body so full in his hands, so damned perfect.
Curves for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 1) Page 7
