Never Refuse a Sheikh

by Jackie Ashenden

  “Neither are you,” she pointed out. “You need me, your highness. Or had you forgotten?”

  His beautiful mouth hardened. “You would risk war for your own petty needs?”

  “You would risk it purely for the pleasure of refusing them?”

  The atmosphere in the car became dense with tension, like the air before a storm.

  Dangerous. He is dangerous.

  Yes. He was. But hadn’t she always liked a challenge? Hadn’t she always been excited to fight against an opponent who matched her?

  His eyes glittered. “And what is it that you want in return?”

  Her heartbeat had begun to accelerate, a surge of triumph going through her. About time. She needed a victory and to have gotten a concession from a man like him … well, that meant something. “Simple requests first. I want to be able to ride when I want. Have a place to practice with my weapons. I want access to information, the palace libraries, the Internet. I also want to be able to visit the city, to be able to travel overseas.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Impossible. A sheikha does not fight or take off whenever the mood takes her. Not even I have that luxury.”

  “I don’t care what luxuries you have. I also want to be able to study. Have a job that isn’t just sitting by your side on a throne looking pretty. What I want is the ability to decide my own future, sheikh. So if you want me to play princess, be your sheikha, those are my terms.”

  He stared at her. “Tell me why I should give you anything?”

  “Because it will cost you nothing.” She hoped her voice sounded firmer than she actually felt. “Because if you do not, I can make your life very difficult.”

  The silence in the car deepened and she could almost feel the strength of his will like a physical force, pushing at her. Relentless as the desert wind.

  But she didn’t back down, holding his gaze, showing him she was just as relentless as he was.

  “Very well,” he said at last, his tone expressionless, making the small surge of triumph inside her become a flood. Which promptly disappeared when he continued, “But if it is give and take you want, then you need to give me something too.”

  “You are already getting something.”

  “Freedom is expensive, princess. If that is what you want, you will need to offer more than just your presence at my side.”

  The look in his eyes had changed, a flickering golden heat melting the ice. The same look he’d given her in the tent, back at the camp. The one she’d thought she’d imagined. Hot. Possessive. Intent. As if the distance that had always separated her from other people was no longer there.

  Her heart raced, a sudden yearning gripping her.

  He was sitting close, the tan fabric of his trousers pulling tight over his muscular thighs, the white cotton of his T-shirt molding to his broad chest. There was a hole in the fabric where her knife had pricked, giving her a glimpse of taut, bronze skin.

  She wanted to put a finger to that hole, feel if his skin was really as hot as she suspected. She wanted to touch him. To feel another person’s skin against her own.

  No, not just another person’s skin. A man’s …

  A hot, raw ache gripped her, a feeling that was somehow both alien and familiar.

  Sometimes, alone in her bed at night, despite the life of the tribe going on around her, she’d felt like a ghost. Like she hardly existed. No one looked at her, no one touched her. She was a burden they had to carry around, a responsibility they hadn’t chosen any more than she had.

  And the night of the bride games, as she’d watched the young women of the tribe ride off on the horses of the young men who’d chosen them, she’d known that would never happen to her. That she would remain untouched. Unwanted.

  She would always be the ‘princess’, forever removed.

  Until now. Until this sheikh.

  This is not a bride game, fool. He only wants your name and your blood. Just like all the rest.

  Safira took a breath, clenching her hand in a fist, trying to stop herself from reaching out to touch, from revealing too much. “Offer you what?” she asked huskily, digging her nails into her palms.

  But those flickering, golden eyes were far too sharp and they saw everything. “I think you know what I’m talking about. I require more than your name on the marriage license, Safira.” There was a smoky darkness to his tone that sent a prickling heat washing over her. “This will be a marriage in every sense of the word.”

  She swallowed. Of course, she knew what marriage entailed, what went on between men and women in the privacy of the night. Living in close quarters with the tribes, it was difficult not to know. And sometimes she’d listened to the soft sounds of pleasure, getting hot and uncomfortable herself, wanting something she really didn’t have a name for, a release of some kind.

  No one had explained these feelings to her and there had been no one she could talk to about them. She had no mother, no friends. She only had Sayed and he would not discuss such things with her.

  She’d tried to tell herself it didn’t matter. But it did. It was yet another thing that set her apart. That made her feel as if she was an insect caught in amber, her life frozen, neither going forward nor going back.

  But now she was out of the amber and things were moving fast, because this was not a bride game and he was nothing like those young men. He wouldn’t take her to meet his tribe and return her at the end of the night. He wouldn’t wait for her consent or accept a refusal.

  She’d become his the moment he’d taken her from the tent and his she would stay.

  A strange excitement trembled to life inside her, half fear, half anticipation.

  “You mean you expect us to …” She broke off, not quite able to say it.

  “Share a bed?” he finished. “Yes.”

  Despite herself, a fiery blush swept over her. “You … You can’t be serious.”

  He didn’t move and didn’t smile. “I am deadly serious. I need heirs and I expect my wife to give them to me.”

  “But … I do not know you.”

  “You will get to know me.”

  “Yes, but surely you have other women who can—”

  “There are no other women. My children will be legitimate and they will have Kashgari blood in their veins so their claim to the throne will never be disputed.” The heat in his eyes began to die, replaced by the ice and stone of implacable determination. “This peace must last beyond my lifetime and I will do whatever it takes to ensure the security of that peace for future generations.”

  The excitement inside her began to die too. Because of course he didn’t actually want her. Why was she allowing herself to think such things?

  “What if I do not want to sleep with you?” she demanded, trying and failing to mask her anger.

  “Then you will have to adjust your preferences. Sooner or later, I will require your body, Safira, and I expect you to give it to me.”

  He was so arrogant, so utterly certain. It made her angrier. “Sayed warned me about men, the ones who take what isn’t theirs without permission. Would you do the same?”

  The temperature in the car abruptly plunged.

  “Be careful, princess,” he said softly. “Be very, very careful of what you say.”

  But she couldn’t stop herself. He’d taken all her weapons from her and she was so sick of being powerless. She had to fight back somehow. “You took a throne that wasn’t yours. What’s to stop you from taking anything else?”

  His hand came out, strong fingers gripping her chin and holding her fast. She froze, the heat of his touch like a spear, pinning her. She could feel it everywhere, the warmth of it running like a tide beneath her skin. Waking parts of her she didn’t know were sleeping. Feeding pieces of her soul she didn’t know were starving.

  She trembled. Because as well as mastery, there was gentleness in his touch, and she’d never had that from anyone either.

  He stared at her, the gold flame in his eyes burning. “I w
ill not take anything from you, Safira,” he said, still soft and dark. “I will not have to. Not when I can make you get down on your knees and beg for it.”

  The breath locked in her throat as something caught fire inside her.

  You want to be on your knees in front him. You want to beg him.

  No, that was madness. Why would she kneel for him? Why would she beg him for … that, let alone anything else?

  Confused, Safira ripped herself out of his grip. Yet he made no more moves toward her.

  “Think about it,” he merely said. “We can make this easy for ourselves or we can make this difficult. That is the only choice we get.”

  Chapter Three

  The journey back to Shara, the capital of Al-Harah, took forever.

  The sheikh was silent the whole way and at least in the helicopter that didn’t matter because of the noise. But as they approached the palace, and the white walls and distinctive spires came into sight, Safira felt something inside her shake like unsteady ground during an earthquake.

  She made herself look at the palace that had once been her home and tried not to pay any attention to the memories that brushed against the walls of her mind.

  The choking terror as she was forced into the arms of a man she didn’t know, a frightening man. The look of fear on her mother’s face as she’d tucked a blanket around Safira. A fear her mother had tried to hide, but that Safira had seen anyway—

  No, she didn’t want to remember any of it. It was too painful.

  Carefully she shut off that part of her mind as the helicopter touched down on a wide, sweeping lawn in the palace grounds, one that must have cost a fortune to maintain. They were met by a bevy of staff, including a woman in a white coat who insisted on Safira opening her mouth for a swab.

  “DNA sample,” the sheikh explained. “I need incontrovertible proof you are who you say you are.”

  There was no point in protesting and besides, she was too tired to fight. And when a couple of robed women came to take her to her new apartments she went with them gladly, desperate to get away from the sheikh’s disturbing presence.

  There were memories here in the palace’s hallways, memories of the childhood she’d had, the princess she’d once been. But as she moved through the corridors, Safira kept her mind blank deliberately, not looking around or taking any notice of her surroundings. And when they arrived at her suite of rooms—on the side of the palace that faced toward the desert—all she felt was relief that nothing familiar had jolted them.

  Luckily the rooms weren’t familiar to her either, but then as a child she’d always kept to the royal family’s apartments and those were on the other side of the palace. This one was certainly spacious, with tiled floors and curved, vaulted ceilings. A mosaic fresco ran around the plastered walls, red, gold and blue tiles in a complicated pattern, while a huge dark wooden bed stood against one wall, piled high with colored pillows and a soft-looking white quilt.

  It wasn’t at all like the tent she lived in with her foster family, with its dirt floor and cheerful, dusty rugs thrown over the top. This was luxury on a scale she only dimly remembered from when she was a child.

  After the women had left her alone, she crossed the white-tiled floor to the arching windows, staring out in the direction of the dunes. It was night now and a pale moon shone, and although she couldn’t actually see the sands from here, she knew where they were.

  A pulse of heartache went through her. She had nothing familiar with her, nothing of the desert but her robes, the knives Sayed had given her no doubt buried in the sands somewhere out there.

  She was alone again. In a place that wasn’t hers. Once again someone else’s pawn …

  Her jaw tightened. No, feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t help now. Besides, she’d made a stand in the car on the way here, shown this cold, arrogant sheikh that she too was a force to be reckoned with. That she wasn’t going to let herself be silenced, not anymore.

  As if you know how to deal with a man like him.

  She wrapped her arms around her middle, an unsettled feeling sitting in her gut.

  Fact was, she really didn’t know how to deal with a man like him. He was a force of fiercely controlled nature. Powerful. Full of a fearful strength that both disturbed her and yet … excited her at the same time.

  And that especially she didn’t understand, but then everything about this sheikh seemed to be a mass of contradictions.

  He was cold, ruthless, and yet the way he’d looked at her hadn’t been cold. There had been heat in his golden eyes, hints of something else beneath that emotionless exterior. Something hotter, passionate …

  I will require your body, Safira.

  She swallowed, her throat dry.

  Back in the car, he’d reached out and taken her chin in a firm, but gentle grip. As if he’d had the right, as if she was a flesh-and-blood woman who was already his, not a princess kept apart and protected for her own good. And the part of her that had been starved for contact had been thrilled by it and now craved more.

  Which scared her. She didn’t know this sheikh and she didn’t understand her own response to him. It made her feel vulnerable, and she hated that, because there were so many things in her life that made her feel vulnerable, that she had no control over, and this strange attraction felt like just one more.

  So deal with it.

  Safira stared out into the night, settling her unease through sheer force of will. Very well, she would deal with it. He’d given her no choice but to come with him, and if she cared about her country, she had no choice but to marry him too.

  That she would have to accept.

  Then again, acceptance wasn’t surrender.

  And she would never surrender to him. That much was certain.

  * * *

  Altair decided to allow Safira a day by herself to adjust to being back at the palace again. It would also to give him time to manage the media reaction to the news that the lost Kashgari princess had been found.

  At least, that’s the reason he gave himself for staying away from her. It had nothing to do with his out-of-character behavior in the car in the desert.

  Why one small, untidy desert woman seemed to be able to get under his skin so easily, he had no idea, especially when he’d never had any problems handling himself before. But that fact alone had been enough to stretch his temper to breaking point.

  And when his patience had escaped him and he’d ignored all his own warnings, he’d taken her stubborn chin in his hand to show her the dangers of pushing him. Of refusing him. To show her she shouldn’t challenge him.

  He’d needed her to back off in some way and if that involved frightening her then that’s what he’d do.

  Yet it hadn’t been fear staring back at him in the drowning blue of her eyes—no, it had been something else entirely. She’d felt the heat between them too.

  Which meant he’d been a fool to touch her, to get close to her and test it in such a way.

  It wasn’t only Safira who needed a day by herself. He needed one as well in order to find out where he’d left his self-control.

  As he’d expected, media reaction to her was intense, reaching even beyond their little corner of the world. A lost princess found after having been brought up by desert tribespeople was the stuff of viral news and the Al-Harahan immigration department was already being flooded by urgent requests for visas from various news agencies.

  Good. He wanted the news out there. Wanted it known that he had found her and that he would claim her. Public opinion was a strong force and if it was with him now that he’d found her, then that would hopefully preempt any saber-rattling from the rebel elements in the populace.

  With that in mind, he’d already had his aides organize a formal presentation of Safira to the court as not only their princess but also his fiancée. It would take place the following evening, which should give him a couple of days to get her ready, help her relearn palace customs and proper behavior for a princess
and his wife-to-be.

  He’d put together a small team of people to take her in hand—a stylist, a PR person, and one of his advisors who specialized in court etiquette—and had sent them to her apartments with orders to get her ready ASAP. He’d suspected they wouldn’t have an easy job on their hands, but what he wasn’t prepared for was them turning up back in his office not an hour later with complaints that the princess couldn’t be found.

  Another hour after that, with half the palace searching, she still couldn’t be located and the iron-hard grip he usually had on his temper had started to slip—as it seemed to do whenever Safira was concerned.

  By God, if she’d escaped and was halfway back to the Bedouin camp and Sayed, there’d be hell to pay.

  Joining in the search himself, some instinct drew him toward the one place no one had thought to look: the stables. Sure enough, when he stepped inside, the first thing he saw was Safira standing at one of the stalls, talking softly to the meanest stallion in the whole stable.

  It was obvious now that he thought about it, that she would be here. Hadn’t one of her “terms” been that she’d wanted to ride?

  He stood for a long moment in the doorway, watching her, conscious of a lurching sense of relief she wasn’t gone. Which was strange. He hadn’t felt relieved to see anyone in a long time.

  But then of course he was relieved to see her. He needed her. His country needed her.

  She was still in her sandy robes, clearly having ignored the clothing he’d had sent to her, and it looked like she hadn’t even bothered to wash properly, her hair now uncovered and hanging down her back in a thick, dusty-looking braid. She looked more like a dirty, feral desert urchin than a princess.

  Yet, for some completely inexplicable reason, as her long, slender fingers reached up to stroke the stallion’s velvety nose in a soothing motion, he felt heat gather inside him like the pull of the tide.

  It made no sense. Aminah, the wealthy widow who was his last lover, was polished and beautiful, sophisticated and restrained. She didn’t ask for anything but what he chose to give her, and that’s what he preferred. Yet what he felt for Aminah was not even close to what was burning in his veins now.