He’s not anything like Dan and you know it.
Lily swallowed, pulling open the door to the limo and stepping out into the suffocating heat of the airstrip.
No, perhaps he wasn’t exactly like Dan. But he was just as blind. Just as deaf.
A couple of the palace staff were fussing around with her luggage. Soon, it would all be loaded onto the jet and she would be away from here. God, she couldn’t wait.
Ignoring the heat, she strode across the tarmac to the steps that lead up to the jet’s doorway.
Put her hand on the rail.
You’re running away. Just like he is.
Lily stopped, staring at her hand on the smooth metal of the rail. No, she wasn’t running away. She was leaving. He was the one who had run. Not her. She’d laid everything down on the line for him, given him her body and her heart and he’d ground her gifts into the dust. Refused to deal with her just as he refused to deal with his past. So what was the point in staying? There was no point.
And yet, her feet wouldn’t seem to move.
Yes, there was a point. She had given him her body. She had given him her heart. And by walking away now, she was letting those gifts mean nothing. She was just standing there against the wall letting Dan touch her all over again.
A bucket of ice water tipped straight down her spine.
Her hand dropped from the railing.
No. She was a gold medal winner. A CEO. She was Lily. Free and powerful and strong enough to fight. Fight for the thing she wanted more than anything else in the entire world.
Isma’il.
“Ms. Harkness?” Umar, Isma’il’s chief advisor stood beside her. “Is there anything amiss?”
Lily turned round. “No, nothing. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to get you to unpack my luggage. Oh, and tell the pilot the jet will have to return to Sydney without me.”
Umar’s eyes widened in surprise. “Forgive me, but are you not going to back to Australia?”
“Not today. I’ve decided to stay in Dahar a little longer.”
The man looked a little flustered. “I . . . see. His Highness informed me that you were to—”
“His Highness can go get stuffed,” Lily said frankly, broadening her accent for effect. “But don’t worry, you don’t have to tell him that. I’ll tell him myself.”
Umar looked even more flustered. “But . . . but . . . he is not here.”
“I know. I’ll just have to wait until he gets back.”
“With all due respect, that could be a while.”
Lily smiled. “That’s okay. I have all the time in the world.”
It had taken her twelve years to fight back against Dan. She’d wait forever if that’s what it took to fight for Isma’il.
* * *
A week later, Lily pushed her chair away from the desk and leaned back, rubbing her eyes. She’d spent most of the day looking over some financial reports and the figures were now starting to blur on the page.
The sounds of the fountains in the palace courtyard outside the window were a calming counterpoint, but unfortunately she didn’t feel calm. She felt tired. And worry had started to sink its claws into her.
No one had heard from him. Not even his staff. She suspected the desert tribes might have an inkling about where he’d gone, but all the feelers she’d put out in that direction had come up against brick walls. It was starting to get to the point where she was seriously considering getting one of his security team to take her out in a helicopter to do some fly-bys.
“What a rude and troublesome sheikh you are,” she said to the empty room and the world in general. “I don’t know why your people put up with you.”
Neither the world nor the room gave her an answer to that, so slowly she turned her chair to face the gardens, looking out into the calming green.
Better to look at that than think of him lying dead in the desert, buried by sand.
A strange prickling feeling swept over her. As if she was being watched.
She inhaled softly, collected herself. Then, turned her attention to the doorway because someone was standing there. Looking at her.
An impossibly tall, broad, powerful figure.
Isma’il.
The fierce lines of his face were dark, his skin weathered and roughened by sun and wind, making the startling blue-green of his eyes more intense. He had a brilliant blue headscarf still wrapped around his head, the ends of it stained by sand and sweat and dirt, the same stains marking the loose black Bedouin robes he wore too.
Her heart nearly stopped, the weight of relief and joy crushing it.
“You’re back,” she said, her voice breathless.
“What are you doing here?” It was more a demand than a question.
Slowly, Lily pushed herself out of the chair, gathering her strength. This was one fight she was not going to lose. “You left without saying goodbye. I thought that was rude.”
“You stayed a week in my palace, without my invitation or my permission, merely because you wanted me to say goodbye to you?”
“Dahar is supposed to be famous for its hospitality. I expected more from its sheikh.”
His blue eyes glittered dangerously in his dark face. “My purpose is not to meet your expectations, Ms. Harkness.”
“No. Apparently your purpose is to continually run off into the desert like a frightened boy.”
She put her hands on the desk, so he wouldn’t see them shake. “But if you think I’m going to let you keep doing that, you have another thing coming, Isma’il.”
Something passed over his face, a ripple in the cold, mask he wore. “You do not let me do anything. What you should have done is got back on that jet of yours and gone back to Sydney like you were told to do.”
“Ah yes. Because I always do what you tell me, don’t I?” Lily straightened. “You should know me better than that by now, Sheikh.”
He moved, so swiftly and silently she was barely conscious of the fact he’d done so before he’d crossed the room, rounded the desk, forcing her right back against the hard edge of it. “You should not be here, Lily,” he said harshly. “I told you before that I have nothing to give you.”
The hot, dry smell of the desert was on him, underlain with the spicy, masculine scent that was all Isma’il. He looked brutal, uncivilized, a desert warrior, a stranger.
Lily looked up into his eyes. “Then, I’ll just have to stay here until you do. I’m not leaving, Isma’il. Don’t you see? I love you and I’m here to fight for you. And there’s nothing you can do that will stop me.”
Chapter Eleven
“Then you will have to stop loving me,” Isma’il said hoarsely, shock adding to the pressure of fury already spreading through him. Fury at her for being here where she should not. For reminding him of what a week in the heat of the desert hadn’t been able to erase—the need for her and the unrelenting knowledge that he could not have her.
Lily just looked him up and down, unflinching. “Don’t you dare tell me what I can and cannot feel.”
She was so close. The warmth of her, the scent of her, everything he’d been dreaming about for the past week. He came closer, unable to stop himself. Because he’d expected her to be long gone and she wasn’t. She was here. Right here with him.
A familiar heat lit in her dark eyes and he could feel her excitement at his anger, almost taste it in his mouth.
“I do not want your feelings,” he said viciously. “I do not want your love. I do not need it!”
An expression crossed her face, one he couldn’t read, and abruptly she reached up and took his face between her hands, her palms cool against his burning skin. “Yes, you do,” she said softly. “I know you do. I can see it in your eyes.” Her thumbs moved across his jaw and her touch felt so sweet that he didn’t stop her. “You don’t have to be afraid, Isma’il.”
He stared into her face, despair licking through him. Whatever she felt, it didn’t matter. As soon as he’d got back to the palace,
he’d felt the same old slickness on his fingers, the darkness of Khalid eating away inside him. Violence and pain staining him.
The desert hadn’t healed him. The desert hadn’t scoured him clean.
Nothing would.
And now here she was, telling him she loved him. Offering him something he wanted so badly he couldn’t speak. And he could never, ever have it.
The bleakness settled down in his heart and he reached for her, ripped away the tie that bound her hair, releasing the golden mass of it to fall over her shoulders. Then, he buried his hands in it, pulled her head back and covered her mouth with his own.
He would take this. Take her. One last, fleeting moment for himself. So selfish and wrong, but he didn’t care. She’d accused him of being just like Dan and he was. That’s the kind of man he’d been all along.
Lily made a sound somewhere between a moan and a gasp, and then her arms were around his neck and she began to kiss him back, as hungry and as desperate as he was. He let himself drown in the taste and heat of her, pushing her hard against the desk, his body against hers, feeling the softness of hers yield to hardness of his. She gasped his name in his ear as he pressed harder, then gave a soft cry as he hauled her up onto the desk and dragged the skirt she wore up around her waist.
That they were in an office where any of the palace staff could walk in at any moment didn’t matter. That he had no protection on him didn’t matter either. In fact, neither occurred to him. All he wanted was to be inside her and that was the only thing he cared about.
Her fingers gripped his shoulders, digging in as he pushed his hand between her thighs, gripping the lace of her knickers then jerking it away hard, material ripping. Lily’s breath hissed in his ear, as he pushed her thighs open. He didn’t ask her if she was okay with this. He didn’t ask her for permission. He jerked away the desert robe he hadn’t bothered to change out of, ripped open the trousers he wore underneath it, and reached for her. Dragging her to the edge of the desk. Thrusting into the tight, wet heat of her. Lily cried out, her nails digging harder into his shoulders. Then, she wrapped her legs around his waist, arching back on the desk, encouraging him deeper.
His mind blanked. She was so hot, hotter than the desert sand, hotter that the sun. Burning through him like a sunbeam refracted through a magnifying glass. And he let the heat of her burn away what the desert could not. The blood. The pain. The guilt. The fear.
Her nails found his skin, pushing hard beneath his shirt, scoring him. Branding him. He welcomed it, wrapping her hair around his wrist and pulling her head back to expose her throat. Kissing her, licking her skin, his teeth against the delicate cords of her neck. Marking her as she marked him. Wanting her to carry him with her when she left. Because she could not stay. He could not have her near him.
“God . . . Isma’il!”
He heard the desperation in her voice, so he put his hands between her legs, where they were joined, stroking the little hard bud of nerves at the apex of her thighs, giving her more pleasure. Pushing her over the edge. And when she sobbed in his ear, he let himself go.
Taking what he wanted. Another moment of complete and utter freedom.
For long minutes afterwards he couldn’t move, and it was only when her arms tightened around him that he realized he was shaking. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay and it never would be.
Isma’il wrenched himself out of her arms, stumbling back, putting his clothing back to rights with shaking hands.
She sat on the desk, a shocked expression on her flushed face. “Isma’il?” Her hair was down around her shoulders, her skirt up around her waist. She looked sexual, desirable, beautiful. Unbearable.
He turned blindly away, walking out of her office. She called his name again, but he didn’t stop. He just wanted to leave. Get away from her. Get away from the shame of what he’d done to her. Of what he’d taken.
The wide hallways of the palace echoed with the sound of his footsteps, echoed with too many memories. Memories he’d been suppressing for years that suddenly poured through his mind like water from a cracked dam. His father’s violent rages. His mother’s cries of pain. The stink of his own fear, his helplessness at being too small, unable to stop the monster.
He had no idea where he was going, he just walked. And it was only when he stepped through a particular doorway that he realized, with a cold shock, where his subconscious had led him.
Why this room? Why now?
Footsteps behind him, quickened breathing.
He turned sharply to see Lily coming through the doorway. Coming into the room where he’d beaten his father to a bloody pulp.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, dark eyes full anger. “You can’t tell me not to love you, have passionate sex with me on my desk, then walk away without a word. I won’t let you.”
“Go,” he ordered harshly. “You have a plane to catch.”
“No. I’m not going anywhere. I meant what I said, Sheikh. You want a fight? You have one.”
She began to come closer and the breath caught in his throat, because he didn’t want her in this room with him. Where all the memories were. All the horror.
“Get out. Get out of here!”
Lily just shook her head, coming closer and closer, brown eyes fixed on his. “I’m not walking away from you. I’m not running. There’s nothing you can do, nothing you can say that will drive me away.”
His heart twisted, a sudden, agonizing pain. “Do you know where we are, Lily? Do you know what this room is? It’s the dining room.”
She blinked at him, the crease between her brows appearing. “The dining room?”
“Yes. I haven’t been in here for years. Do you know why? Because over there is where I nearly killed my father.”
The words seemed to sink into the silence of the room like heavy stones, weighing everything down.
The look on her face froze. For a second, she stared at him. Then abruptly, she turned away and he couldn’t help feeling a certain savage satisfaction. But it wasn’t for long. Because instead of walking straight out the door, she went over to the spot he’d indicated and stood on it, looking down at the tiled floor. “Here? Right here?”
He didn’t want to look, because he could still see Khalid on the floor, still see the blood that stained his shirt. Still feel the hard leather of the crop in his hands. But he made himself do it. “Yes. There.”
Lily glanced down at the pale tiles of the floor. “Interesting,” she said after a long moment. “There must have been a lot of blood.”
“Yes.” So much of it. On the floor, on his hands, so slippery. Slick.
Lily swept the sole of her shoe across the tiles. “There,” she said, quiet. “It’s gone now.”
Icy shock slid down his back. “Gone?” he demanded. “It is not gone. It will never be gone. Don’t you understand? It will always be there. That is why you have to leave. That is why you cannot love me and why I cannot love you in return! Love isn’t possible for a man like me.”
But her dark eyes just held his, so certain. So sure. And she began to walk towards him again.
He wanted to run, turn around and walk away, away from the memories and the anguish, but something held him still. Waiting for her.
She stopped right in front of him, her eyes so dark. Looking at him. Into him. As if she could see every part of him, even the blackest corners of his soul.
“Give me your hands,” she ordered softly.
And he found himself raising them to her, felt her cool, forgiving fingers take them in hers. She turned them over, his palms facing up. Then, she bent her head and before he could move, she pressed a kiss to the center of each palm. “And it’s gone here now, too,” she murmured.
Shock expanded outwards, through his body, through his heart. Her mouth felt warm, her lips soft, making all his nerve-endings sing. His throat felt constricted and he tried to pull his hands away, but her
fingers locked around them, gripping them tight in her own. She lifted her chin, looking up at him, will burning in her eyes. A strong, stubborn will that would not be denied.
“The past is over, Isma’il. It’s gone. Wiped away. Let it go.”
Isma’il could feel himself begin to shake, a tremor deep inside him. “It is not that simple.”
“Yes it is. The boy you were then was only that, a boy. An angry, abused, teenage boy. He wasn’t bad. He wasn’t evil. He wasn’t tainted. He was angry and hurt and betrayed. That’s all.”
“It is not all. What I did cannot be forgiven.”
Her cool fingers wrapped around his. “I forgive you, Isma’il. What you have to do now is to forgive yourself.”
He could hardly speak. “I am afraid.”
The look in her eyes softened, as if she could see the war inside him. The hope battling with the fear. “I know. I was afraid too. But you showed me how much strength I had. How powerful I truly was. You gave me back so many things I’d thought I’d lost forever. Let me do that for you. Let me give you back the strength you lost. The belief in yourself that Khalid took from you.”
His voice sounded cracked and broken. “I do not know if I can let you.”
“You can. You are a strong man, Sheikh. A good man. And deep in your heart, I think you know this.” She raised his hands, kissed his fingers. “I see it. Every time I look at you, I see the man who set me free. The man who wants to heal his country. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Why Harkness is here in the first place? To fix what your father nearly broke. You want to make things better.” The look in her eyes was utter surety. As if doubt was something she’d never even heard of. “You’re not him, Isma’il. There is no stain in you. No taint. No violence. There’s passion and fire, but those things aren’t something to hide. They’re part of you.” She took a little breath. “And they’re part of what I love about you.”
Never Seduce a Sheikh (International Bad Boys Book 2) Page 15
