Mistress of the Sheikh

by Sandra Marton

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

  “And no wonder. He’s a fascinating young man. Charming, intelligent, Incredibly good-looking. And, I would think, very accustomed to getting his own way.” Marta smiled. “Actually, he reminds me of Jonas.”

  Amanda turned around. “Nothing’s going on between us,” she said flatly.

  “Oh, I think you’re wrong, sweetie. I think a lot is going on. You just aren’t ready to admit it.”

  “Mom—”

  “You don’t owe me any explanations, darling. You’re a grown woman. And I have every confidence in your ability to make your own decisions.” Marta reached for her daughter’s hands and clasped them tightly. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “Nick would never—”

  “There are different ways of being hurt, Mandy. Loving a man who may not be able to love you back in quite the same way is perhaps the worst pain of all.”

  “I don’t love Nick! I admit, I’m—I’m infatuated with him, but—”

  Marta had smiled and put her finger over Amanda’s lips. “Go on,” she’d said gently, “make yourself beautiful for your young man.”

  Beautiful? Amanda thought as she finished dressing. She wondered if Nick would think so. There’d certainly been more stunning women at the party last night, and she’d never be an eye-catching knockout like Deanna Burgess.

  But she wanted Nick to like what he saw tonight. Any woman would. That didn’t mean she was in love with him…

  And then she opened her door to Nick’s polite knock and knew, without any hesitancy, that she was. Everything her mother had said was true.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi yourself.” Her heartbeat stuttered. Amanda took a breath, dredged up a smile. “You’re right on time.”

  “Always.”

  He grinned, and she wondered frantically how it could have happened. She hadn’t been looking to fall in love. And if she had, it wouldn’t have been with the Lion of the Desert.

  “My father drummed it into me.”

  “What?”

  “The importance of being on time. Sort of the eleventh commandment. You know, ‘Thou shalt never be late.’”

  “Yes.” She swallowed dryly, fought to hang on to whatever remained of her composure. How? How could she have fallen in love so quickly? “Well, it worked. You’re certainly prompt.”

  His smile tilted. “And you,” he said softly, “are incredibly beautiful.”

  His words, the velvet softness of them, even the way he was looking at her, ignited a slow-burning heat in her bones.

  “Thank you. It’s my mother’s dress. I didn’t—”

  “I know. I should have anticipated that the Barons would expect us to dine with them.” A muscle danced in his jaw. He moved toward her, his eyes a burnished silver. “But I didn’t think of anything except you. Since last night I haven’t been able to think of anything but you.”

  “Nick…”

  Gently, he took her face in his hands, lifted it to his. He could feel her trembling with the same excitement that burned inside him.

  “One kiss,” he said softly, “just one, before we go downstairs.”

  “All right. Just—”

  His mouth closed over hers. Amanda moaned, closed her eyes, lifted her hands and laid them against his chest. His heart was racing, but no faster than hers. She moved closer to him, closer still, and he swept his arms around her, gathered her against him so that she could feel his hunger.

  “Nick,” she said in a choked whisper, “oh, Nick…”

  He took her hand from his chest, brought it down his body, cupped it over his arousal. He groaned, or maybe it was she who made that soft, yearning sound. It didn’t matter. Her needs, and his, were the same.

  “To hell with dinner,” he whispered. “Amanda, I want to touch you. To undress you. To bury myself inside you while you lift your arms to me and cry out my name.”

  “Oh, yes! It’s what I want, too.” She took a shaky breath, lifted her hand from the heat and hardness of him and leaned back in his arms. “But Jonas and Marta expect us to join them.”

  Nick bent his head, nipped gently at her throat. “I don’t give a damn what they want.”

  Amanda gave a breathless laugh. “Nick, that’s my mother downstairs.”

  He laughed, too, or made the attempt. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Of course it is. Okay. Just give me a minute. Then we’ll make our entrance, pretend we’re interested in drinks and dinner and polite conversation for a couple of hours—”

  “Only for a couple of hours.”

  He tugged her towards him and she went willingly, thrust her hands into his hair, dragged his mouth down to hers and kissed him.

  Nick felt the kiss pierce his heart like an arrow.

  * * *

  A couple of hours, he’d said. Since when could a couple of hours seem like an eternity?

  Drinks first, out on the deck, where they were joined by Tyler and Caitlin Kincaid. They lived nearby, Jonas said. He clapped Tyler on the back, gave him a proud smile and said Tyler was his son and Caitlin his stepdaughter.

  Any other time, Nick would have found that intriguing. A son who didn’t bear the old man’s name. A stepdaughter, but obviously not of Marta’s blood. Interesting, he thought—but then his curiosity faded.

  His only interest was Amanda.

  Still, he went through the motions. Made pleasant small talk. Murmured something about the excellence of the wine. Agreed that dinner was a masterpiece. He supposed it was. Everybody said so. The thing was, he couldn’t taste any of it.

  Nothing had any flavor. How could it, when the only taste that mattered was Amanda’s? That last kiss lingered on his mouth. The memory of it. The way she’d pulled his head down to hers, the way she’d initiated that all-consuming, hungry kiss…

  Ah, hell. Nick shifted uneasily in his chair.

  He was too old for this. Boys worried about their hormones making them look foolish, and he was far from being a boy. But just thinking about her…the heat of her in his arms; the sweet sounds she made when he kissed her; the way she fitted herself against him…

  Hell, he thought again, and cleared his throat.

  “…oil strike?”

  He blinked, looked around the table blindly. Everyone was looking at him.

  “Sorry,” he said, and cleared his throat again. “Tyler? Did you say something?”

  “I was just wondering about that oil strike in Quidar last year. Was it really the gusher our people said it was?”

  “Oh. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. The field was huge, bigger than…”

  Nick talked about oil. He talked about oil prices. And all the time part of his brain was doing such sensible things, another part was wondering what Amanda was thinking. She was seated beside him, and every now and then when he trusted himself to do it without pulling her into his arms, he looked at her. Her golden eyes were wide; her cheeks were flushed. And when he took her hand under the table, he could feel her tremble.

  Was she aching, as he was, for these endless hours to pass so that she could come into his arms and ask him to take her? Because she had to ask. He’d told her that she had to ask, and he was a man of his word, would remain a man of his word, even if it killed him. It would, if he didn’t have her. If he didn’t make her his.

  “Nick?”

  And if any son of a bitch tried to take her from him, he’d—

  “Nick?”

  Nick frowned. They were on the deck again, just he and Tyler Kincaid, though he had only the haziest recollection of finishing dessert and agreeing it would be great to go outside for a breath of air.

  “Yes.” Nick inhaled deeply, then let out his breath. “Kincaid. Tyler. I…hell, I’m sorry. You must think I’m—”

  “What I think,” Tyler said with wry amusement, “is that if you and Amanda don’t get behind a closed door pretty damn soon, the rest of us are going to be in for an extremely interesting night.”

  Nick swung toward him, eyes narrowed. “Wha
t’s that supposed to mean, Kincaid?”

  “It means that the temperature goes up a hundred degrees each time you look at each other,” Tyler said carefully. “And that if you think you’d rather work it off by taking me on, you’re welcome to try it.”

  The two men stared at each other and then Nick gave a choked laugh. “Sorry. Damn, I’m sorry. I just—”

  “Yeah. I know the feeling.” Tyler leaned back against the deck rail. “Amazing, isn’t it? What falling in love with a woman can do to a perfectly normal, completely sensible male?”

  “In…?” Nick shook his head. “You’ve got it wrong. I’m not—”

  “Tyler?” Caitlin Kincaid smiled as she came toward them. “Tyler, darling, it’s late. We really should be leaving. It was lovely meeting you, Nick.”

  “Yes.” Nick took her hand and brought it to his lips. “I gave your husband my card. Give me a call the next time you’re in New York.”

  Caitlin rose on her toes and kissed his cheek. “I think it’s wonderful,” she whispered.

  Nick felt bewildered as she stepped back into the arc of her husband’s arm. “What’s wonderful?”

  Tyler looked at Nick, started to say something, then thought better of it. “Well,” he said, and held out his hand, “it’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “Uh, Tyler? You’re definitely wrong. About what you said. I mean, I’m not—I’m certainly not—”

  “Of course you’re not,” Tyler said solemnly.

  Nick thought he heard Kincaid chuckle as he and his wife walked into the house. Not that it mattered. The laugh was on Tyler if he thought any rational man would ever confuse lust with love.

  After a while, the lights in the house went off. He straightened up, looked at the lighted dial of his watch. How long had he been out here? Had Amanda gone to her room? Had he misread what he’d seen in her eyes all evening?

  “Nick?”

  He turned and saw her standing in the doorway, a beautiful shadow in the soft light of the moon. The sight of her almost stopped his heart, but then, desire—lust—could be a powerful thing. Any thinking man knew that.

  “Nick,” she said again, and Nicholas al Rashid, the Lion of the Desert, stopped thinking, went to the woman he wanted, the woman he’d always wanted since the beginning of time, took her in his arms and kissed her again and again until he could no longer tell where she left off and he began.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE world was spinning out of control, the stars racing across the black Texas sky like a kaleidoscope gone mad.

  “Tell me, sweetheart.” Nick’s voice was hoarse and urgent. “Tell me what you want.”

  Amanda looked up at this man who’d turned her life upside down, this dangerous, gorgeous, complex stranger, and framed his face with her hands. “You,” she said softly. “I want—”

  Nick’s mouth closed hungrily over hers. His hands slipped down her spine, cupped her bottom, lifted her into his heat and hardness.

  Desire sparkled in her blood. She moaned, caught his lip between her teeth, bit gently into the soft flesh and traced the tiny wound with the tip of her tongue. His arms tightened around her and he whispered something in a language she couldn’t understand, but words didn’t matter.

  Not now.

  Nick drew back, just enough so he could see Amanda’s face in the pearlescent glow of the moon.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, and kissed her again, heating her mouth with his, parting it with his, feasting on the taste of her, on the little sounds she made as she returned his kisses. She was trembling in his arms, straining against him, fitting her body to his until nothing but the whisper of their clothing separated them.

  Nick knew he couldn’t take much more of this sweet torment.

  The moon slipped behind the surrounding hills. The silver-shot night swooped down, embraced them in a cloak of velvet darkness.

  He drew Amanda closer, settled her in the inverted vee of his legs. His erection pressed against her belly and she sighed his name.

  “Please,” she whispered, “Nick, please…”

  “Amanda.” His voice was raw. “Sweetheart, come upstairs with me.”

  “Please,” she said again, and kissed him, took his tongue into her mouth, and he was lost.

  He bunched the silk of her skirt in his fists and pushed it up her thighs. She was wearing stockings and a small triangle of silk. His brain registered that much and, in some still-functioning part of it, he thought about how exciting it would be to see her now, see those long, elegant legs, that scrap of silk, but then she moved her hips and he forgot everything but the uncontrollable need to possess her.

  “Amanda,” he groaned, and he slipped his hand between her thighs and cupped her, felt the heat of her, and the dampness. He moved against her, moved again, and she moaned.

  She slid her hands up his chest, shoved his jacket half off his shoulders, fumbled at his tie, at the buttons of his shirt, and put her hands on his skin. She felt her knees go weak. Oh, the feel of him! The hot male skin. The whorls of silky hair, the ridges of hard muscle.

  Nick caught her hands, held them against the thudding beat of his heart.

  “Amanda.” He dragged air into his lungs, told himself to breathe, to think, to slow down. He’d waited all these years for this moment. He knew it now, knew that he’d lived with the memory of the woman in his arms since he’d first seen her. Now, at last, she would be his—but not like this.

  She was as soft as the petals of a rosebud, as lovely as a dream. He wanted to pleasure her slowly, take her slowly, see her eyes turn blind with passion as he took her to the brink of ecstasy over and over again before they tumbled over the edge and fell through time, joined together for eternity.

  Nick shuddered.

  Unless she moved against him. Yes, like that. Unless she lifted herself to him like that. Just like that. Unless her delicate tongue searched for his. Unless she rubbed her hot, feminine core against his palm…

  A cry broke from his throat. He drew her closer into his embrace, deeper into the inky silence of the moonless night, and pressed her back against the railing.

  “Look at me,” he whispered, and when her eyes met his, he ripped away the bit of silk between her thighs, found the tiny bud that bloomed there. Touched her. Stroked her. And kissed her, kissed her and drank in her cries as she came against his hand.

  She sobbed his name, pulled down his zipper, found him, held him, stroked him, and then, oh then, she was a hot silken fist taking him deep inside her.

  Nick strove for sanity. Wait for her, he told himself, dammit, wait.

  Amanda trembled and arched like a bow in his arms, tore her mouth from his and sank her teeth into his shoulder. The sound, the feel, the heat of her surrender finished him. He stopped thinking, slid his hand around the nape of her neck, took her mouth with his and exploded deep within her satin walls.

  For long moments, neither of them moved. Then Nick let out a breath, pulled down her skirt and gently kissed her lips. “Sweetheart,” he whispered.

  She shook her head, made a weak little sound and tried to turn her face from his, but he caught her chin, kissed her again and tasted the salt of her tears.

  Nick cursed, damned himself for being such a selfish fool. He enfolded her even more closely in his arms, cupped her head and brought it to his shoulder.

  “Forgive me, sweetheart,” he murmured, rocking her gently in his embrace. “I know it was too quick. I meant to go slowly, to make it perfect.”

  Amanda lifted her head, silenced him with a kiss. “It was perfect.”

  “But you’re crying.”

  She gave a soft little laugh. “I know. It’s just…” It’s just that my heart is full, she thought. Full with love, for the first time in her life. She smiled, put her hand to his cheek. “Those weren’t sad tears,” she whispered. “This was—what we just did—I’ve never…”

  He felt his heart swell with joy. “Never?”
<
br />   She shook her head. “Never.”

  He kissed her again until she was breathless with desire. Then he put his arm around her, led her into the sleeping house and took her, at last, to bed.

  * * *

  Amanda awoke to Nick’s kisses just before dawn.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” he whispered.

  Safe and warm in the curve of his arm, she smiled up at him. “Good morning.”

  He bent to her, kissed her mouth with lingering tenderness. “You slept in my arms all night.”

  “Mmm.”

  “I liked having you there.”

  “Mmm,” she said again, and laced her fingers into his dark hair.

  He smiled, nipped gently at her bottom lip. “You’re not a morning conversationalist, huh?”

  Amanda laughed softly. “I’m not a morning anything. I don’t…“ Her breath hitched. “Nick?”

  “You see, sweetheart?” His voice roughened as he caressed her breast, licked the nipple and watched it bead. “It isn’t true that you’re not a morning anything. You just need to find something that appeals to you.”

  She caught her breath, lifted herself to his mouth.

  “Like this for instance. Or…” He shifted, moved farther down her warm flesh and gently parted her thighs. “Or this.”

  He loved the soft sound she made as he put his mouth against her, loved the sweet taste of her, like honey on his tongue. And the scent of her, of aroused woman, filled him with hot pleasure. How could he want her again? He’d had her endless times during the long, miraculous night.

  But he would never have her enough, he thought suddenly, and he rose above her, looked down into her passion-flushed face and spoke her name.

  Her lashes flew up. Her wide golden eyes looked into his as he entered her and he saw the blur of pleasure suffuse her face. He withdrew, slid into her again, drove deeper, saw her eyes darken and her lips form his name.

  “Yes,” he whispered, “yes,” and he caught her hands, laced his fingers through hers and stretched her arms to the sides, still moving, still seeking not just that incredible moment when they would fly into the sun together but something more, something he’d never known.