But what she felt didn’t match what she wanted to feel, and Elle couldn’t shake the tranquility she felt, the calm that seemed to have taken up residence in every inch of her body, the strange sense of confidence that flowed through her, the exhilarating sense of . . . of CONTROL that washed over her as those memories of last night came bursting through.
Two nights. Two unbelievable nights. Two nights that felt like two years, like twenty years, like two hundred goddamn years! Her body still tingled, her face still throbbed, her buttocks still burned, her thighs still trembled. But it was all right. It was all good. It was perfect, beautiful, unreal . . . unreal.
Now she swallowed hard as that fear threatened to rise up again, that sickness at what she had done, of what she had allowed him to do, of what she now knew she would do again, would allow him to do again, would BEG him to do again!
Elle went to the mirror now, suddenly anxious at what she would see, if there’d be marks on her face, bruises on her soft skin, a black eye, a split lip. But apart from a slight redness on her cheeks, she looked remarkably clean, shockingly whole.
The thought that Akbar knew EXACTLY what he was doing came through now as Elle lifted her sweater and pulled down her bra cup and checked her boobs. Red and raw, but no black and blue. Yes, he knew what he was doing, which meant he’d had a lot of practice . . .
Well, of COURSE he’s had practice, you moron, she told herself as she closed one eye and puffed out her cheeks, still holding her sweater up past her smooth round belly. And do you want to do something like that with a guy who DOESN’T know what he’s doing?
“Do something like that . . . ,” she said out loud as she walked away from the mirror and went into the private bathroom to pee. She shook her head as she came back out, wondering how the hell she could talk to him about what happened if she couldn’t even THINK about it without feeling ashamed, mortified, guilty, filthy.
Still, it didn’t escape Elle that she was two nights into this and she didn’t feel anything like she did after the first night, even though she had gone so much further. Though yes, there was still that nagging feeling of having done something wrong, something she wasn’t supposed to do, something that was dirty, something that women like her—good, decent, well-raised women—didn’t do, wouldn’t do, COULDN’T do!
Well-raised women, she thought again as she looked at the door leading to the hallway and realized she couldn’t face her mom right now, perhaps couldn’t face her mom ever again! Had Mom heard them? Yeah, her cabin was several rooms back from where she and the Sheikh had . . . had . . .
And now those nagging feelings came rushing to the forefront, those questions of what people would say if they knew, what Mom would say if she knew, what God would say if—
“Stop it!” she said out loud, forcing herself to laugh. “This is your Catholic guilt, and it’s silly and it doesn’t belong in the modern world and don’t let those voices of nuns and Sunday School teachers from years ago dictate how you live your life!”
But it wasn’t just nuns and schoolteachers, Elle knew as she sighed and reached for the shiny doorknob that looked like solid brass . . . if not gold. No, it was closer, deeper, more personal. It was Mom, and Mom mattered. She mattered. It had been just the two of them for years now, and Mom mattered.
And somehow the Sheikh knew it too, didn’t he? And THAT mattered, didn’t it? THAT meant something, didn’t it? Perhaps it meant more than anything else even! No man who can win over her mother could be all dark, all bad, all wrong, no matter what it looked like on the surface.
OK so he’s not all wrong, Elle told herself as she touched the door handle and readied herself to step out into polite society. Just don’t fool yourself into thinking that because he isn’t all wrong it somehow means he’s all right, that he’s right for you. After all, what have you really shared in two days? Some trivial flirting, two nights of sex, and . . . well, OK, one very unusual Christmas breakfast with him hugging your mother . . . and now ferrying all of you across three continents to his kingdom. His KINGDOM!
OK, she thought as she felt an excited giggle rise up in her when she remembered what her dear old mother had said about Akbar’s motives. OK, so maybe this isn’t exactly the way a one-night-stand goes, but it sure as hell ain’t how a marriage proposal comes about!
And suddenly, silently, swiftly, that golden doorknob turned in her hand, and the door swung open, and it was the Sheikh, face fresh and clean, eyes smiling and green.
“Good morning, my angel of light,” he said, and now he held up a little box as he stepped into her cabin. “I have a very important question to ask. And your answer will decide the future direction of our relationship, our very lives.”
“What?” she gasped as she suddenly felt faint as she stared at that little box in his hand. “What? Listen, I—”
“Stop talking,” he ordered, closing the door and locking it. He pointed at the long red sofa against the side wall of the cabin. “Just sit down and let me talk. Let me ask my question. And then you will answer.”
31
He watched her as she took several quick breaths before running her fingers through her hair and nodding. By God, she was beautiful in the mornings, was she not? Those full brown eyes, thick dark hair that seemed to have a mind of its own right now, the way it was all over the place like a little girl who just got off the roller coaster!
Yes, she was beautiful in the mornings, beautiful when she slept. And Akbar had watched her sleep twice in two nights. The first night one of enthralled torment, in that hospital bed when he yearned to have his way with her while she slept. But the second night, this last night, this night when he had carried her exhausted body back to her bed and placed her on the soft mattress, washing her gently with a lemon-soaked warm towel, putting clean panties on her, pulling her bra back down, straightening her ravaged sweater, caring for her . . . caring for her like she had cared for him . . .
Yes, this second night was different. Although the Sheikh couldn’t deny that just minutes after he lay beside her in that warm bed he was hard again, ready again, that animal inside whispering that he could do it and he should do it and why in Allah’s name was he NOT doing it? After all, she had slept with him twice. It was not like she would say no. Not a real no, at least . . .
“Stop or I’ll scream,” he heard her say in his mind that morning as he watched her sleep, as he carefully untangled himself and prepared to leave before she woke. “Stop or I’ll scream.”
And ya Allah, how she screamed last night! How she fought! Tooth and claw! Fist and paw! The animal inside her making ME roar!
Making me roar, but also doing something else to me, he thought now as he watched Elle sit carefully on that plush red sofa, glancing at the box in his hands.
Yes, doing something else to me, because I am sitting here with this, about to ask a question that indeed will decide the future of our relationship, the future of our lives, the future of the man I am realizing I am—or at least the man I want to be . . . want to be for her.
“What is it?” she blurted out, covering her mouth and glancing at him with wide eyes. “Open it!”
“You open it,” he said, placing it on the knee-high pinewood table that ran almost as long as the red sofa. He stood back, arms folded over his chest as he felt uncharacteristically nervous.
“I thought you had something to say to me first,” she said, looking up at him as she bit her lip and blinked.
“And I thought I told you to stop talking,” he said, a half-smile showing on his tense face.
“OK, so you talk while I open it,” she said now.
The Sheikh took a breath as he watched her tear open the brown wrapper and pull out the box from inside and open it and then blink three times as a mix of disappointment and amusement flashed across her face.
She held up the pillbox, tapping the understated white-and-blue label. “So I don’t speak French, but I think I know what this is. Thank you for remembering. I guess I s
lept through the—”
“I told you to stop talking, did I not?” he said now, reaching down and grabbing the pillbox and placing it square in the middle of the wooden table. “Must I gag you just to get a word in?”
“Speak, speak!” Elle said, spreading her arms out wide for a moment before crossing them and leaning back into the red sofa. “By all means, Sheikh Akbar. The floor is yours.”
“Thank you,” he said, that uncharacteristic nervousness creeping back in, a feeling alien to him, certainly when it came to women. But this was no ordinary woman, he reminded himself. Because if it were, you would not standing here today, about to say what you’re going to say, about to give her a choice that makes you feel so vulnerable, so exposed, so goddamn TERRIFIED that it must be madness, must be a dream, must be an extension of the fantasy that has been playing out ever since this curvy little American nurse stepped into your life, healed the wound on your body, but somehow exposed the greater wound in your soul, the void in your being, an empty space that seems to have been readied for her and no other.
“So clearly you know what this is,” the Sheikh said, clearing his throat as that feeling of being exposed, being vulnerable, giving up control made the words catch in his throat. But he pushed the words out, just like he had rehearsed in his private cabin for an hour before coming to her.
“Clearly,” she said, nodding and making a comically serious expression before raising a finger and putting it over her lips.
“What you do not know, however,” Akbar said, and now he felt that uncertainty leave him, the confidence rush back in, a confidence that as mad as this was, it was perhaps the sanest thing he had ever done in his twisted life. “Is that this is not just a simple pill, and the decision to take it is not a simple one.”
“Looks pretty simple to—” she began to say, but she stopped herself, the lightheartedness leaving her expression when she saw the seriousness in his gaze.
“This pill, my dear Nurse Easton,” he said, his voice low but steady, dead steady, “is more than a pill. It is a marriage proposal. And your decision to take it or not will be your answer. According to what it says on the label—and I can speak French—it must be taken within three days of unprotected sex. Today is the second day, which leaves you one day to decide. One day, Nurse Easton. One day to decide whether you are prepared to marry me.” He smiled tightly as he felt the color rush to his face. “And now I have said what I came to say. You may begin talking.”
32
Elle stared at the pillbox, which seemed to be shining in the overhead light, gleaming with the light of the morning sun, glistening with the irony that someway, somehow, her mother had been right!
But Mom was the last goddamn thing she needed to be thinking about now, Elle told herself as that dizziness came rushing back to her, her mind racing and spinning, stopping and starting, her breaths coming in short bursts, her eyelids fluttering like a nest of butterflies in mating season.
“Akbar . . . what . . . ,” she began to say before catching herself and swallowing hard and taking a deep breath so she wouldn’t pass out. She smiled now, doing her best to stay calm, to play it off as a joke, which of course it was, it had to be, had to be a joke, a prank, a fiction, another fantasy. “OK, very funny. Thanks for making such a big deal out of this. I’m embarrassed enough as it is, you know. You didn’t need to—”
“Look at me, Eleanor,” he said from above her. “Hey. LOOK at me.”
She blinked and looked up at him, her jaw tightening when she saw the intensity in his eyes, a look that said that if this was a fantasy, then everything was fantasy, and she was living in that goddamn fantasy, which meant it wasn’t a freakin’ fantasy. It was real. As real as anything. Perhaps more real than anything . . .
“What?” she said softly, shifting uncomfortably under his gaze, feeling small and powerless for a moment as he stood before her, stood above her, tall and dark, broad and imposing.
But as she held his gaze and saw just the briefest glimpse of uncertainty in his eyes, fear in those eyes, vulnerability in that gaze . . . yes, just then it occurred to her that she was not powerless at all, that he was giving her the power, sharing his power, perhaps YIELDING his power to her in a way that terrified him, exposed him, scared him out of his goddamn mind!
“Oh, God, Akbar,” she said softly. “I don’t really . . . I don’t really understand. Are you asking me to . . . Akbar, we’ve known each other for two days!”
“Well, it will be three days before you have to decide, actually,” he said.
“OK, listen, I’m totally twisted around, turned inside out, and just BARELY holding it together after what’s gone on the past two days. So if you’re not going to be serious, then—”
“Elle, I am serious. Listen,” he said, now sitting down next to her on that red sofa, his weight on the cushion making her slide down until she was tight against him. “Listen to me. I am serious. And here is what I am serious about. I am serious that what I have felt with you in two nights . . . it is something I cannot allow to pass me by. It is deeper and more real than anything I thought possible, and I believe you sense it too. Yes?”
Elle found herself nodding absentmindedly even though she couldn’t speak.
“And I know it seems like it came out of nowhere, pure chance, coincidence. And so now I want to throw it back to the realm of chance and coincidence, that place where destiny is supposed to live. So what I propose is this: If you decide to not take this pill, to take the chance that you are pregnant, to see if what happened between us is meaningless coincidence or mysterious destiny, then here is what goes with your choice.” He took a breath now, taking her quivering arm into his. “If it turns out that you are pregnant, then you and I will be married.”
Elle swallowed as she processed his words. She looked at that pillbox, then at her hand in his. “And what if I take the pill?”
“Then by your choice you are saying that what we share is sex and nothing more, will never be anything more,” he said flatly.
Elle snorted in disbelief, trying to pull her hand away but she couldn’t. “That’s ridiculous, Akbar! How can you know something like that in three days?!”
“If you do not know it in three days—bloody hell, if you do not know it in three MINUTES—then you will not know it in thirty years, Elle! It is only when two people do NOT know each other that they can truly know each other! When they are living in a shared fantasy, the trivialities and complications of the real world locked firmly outside, the expectations and manipulations far away from their thoughts, their bodies and souls speaking directly through actions, emotions, the way we make each other feel, the way we make each other . . . come . . . come . . . ya, Allah, come here. Come HERE, my woman!”
The Sheikh leaned in quick now, pulling her by the hand, and she could smell him again, the musk of man, and it smelled like HER man, her man in a way she couldn’t understand, familiar in a way that wasn’t possible, magical in a way that was silly because magic wasn’t real, destiny wasn’t real, fantasy wasn’t real, not as real as this, as real as this felt . . .
. . . and now wait, what was she saying, what was she feeling, what was fantasy, what was reality, wasn’t it the same, wasn’t magic just another word for love, wasn’t love just another word for madness . . . the madness of what was happening here?
Now she was twisted up and turned around, and she could feel her heat rising even though she wanted to pull away, talk this through, figure this out, sort it out with words and not feelings, with her brain and not her body, with her mind and not her . . . ohgod, he was kissing her now, kissing her hard, kissing her like they were old lovers again, kissing her in a way that seemed to make sense, seemed to make his words feel right, his logic seem sound, that goddammit he was right that if you didn’t know in three minutes you wouldn’t know in three years, three decades, three centuries . . . three minutes . . . three days . . . three generations . . .
And as the Sheikh pulled up her swea
ter and yanked down her bra, pushed her onto her back as he held her down and began to kiss her furiously, Elle came up for air and managed to get out one sentence before she couldn’t speak again:
“So,” she gasped as she felt those clean panties of hers soak in her fresh wetness, felt his fingers push their way down between her legs as she felt his hardness press against her something fierce. “So listen. I think I should talk to my Mom about this.”
33
“So let me see if I’m following,” Beth Easton said slowly and carefully as she watched her daughter shift in the white leather seat, Elle obsessively running her hand through her hair like she used to when she was nervous as a child. Beth took a breath now, swallowing hard as she congratulated herself on being able to offer a calm smile to her daughter, this wonderful, strong, gentle woman who was clearly in over her head. “It turns out I was right, after all. Your mother was right.”
Elle stared wide-eyed at her mother, letting go of her hair as her jaw opened wide. “That’s the first thing you say?! After I told you all that? Did you even HEAR me, Ma? Are your ears blocked from the air-pressure?”
“Oh, I heard you, hon,” Beth said, placing her hand on her knee and looking down once before glancing back up. “I just wanted to stall for time while I process the vaguely troubling news that my good, decent Catholic daughter has had pre-marital sex, might be pregnant, and is now contemplating marriage to a man she barely knows, a man who is not only not Catholic, but isn’t even a Christian, and in fact is Muslim.” Beth nodded once. “Just need maybe a moment to process that, hon.”
“You know what . . . this was a mistake,” Elle muttered, unbuckling her seatbelt as she tried to stand. But the plane took a little dip just then, and she flopped back into her seat as the fasten-seatbelt sign flickered on.
“Coming to me is the only sensible thing you’ve done through all this, Elle,” Beth said, an affectionately smug look coming to her face as she pointed at the seatbelt sign. “And God agrees with me. So buckle up and stop muttering and just listen for once.”
Stockings for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 5) Page 12
