by Ella Brooke
“You shouldn’t, Snow White,” he said, kissing her cheek. “Perhaps you just let far too much pent-up anxiety out in one go. Maybe it’s not best to let all of your, ahem, freak flag fly, but it’s okay to have some fun.”
“I need to get this code working.”
He arched an eyebrow playfully up at her, and that damn heat was flaring through her again. Cemal could get her to do anything, feel anything, and a huge part of her was scared of the power he wielded over her, even after all this time.
“You said you were blocked.”
“I am, but if I keep staring at this screen and yelling at it, something will unjam. It’s an ancient coder secret.”
“I see, that seems to work great. How long have you been doing it?’
“About two hours.”
He smirked back at her. “So it’s going that well, is it?”
“It might be,” she huffed. “I just…I’m here to do a job. I don’t know if I can mix business and pleasure, even if I want to.”
“I do understand that we all see the world more clearly when we’re not so intoxicated.”
She flinched a little, but it was a fair point. Juliana had been so irresponsible, more than she ever would have been if she wasn’t still reeling from Phillip’s betrayal. “I am so sorry—”
He leaned down and kissed her, his tongue tangling with her own. She loved the way his tongue could dance and stroke hers, the veritable workout it gave her. It was enough to leave her panting when he pulled away. “Don’t be sorry. Just come with me. I’ve waited almost fifteen years to show you my country. Please let me do that for you.”
“I…”
“Just say yes.”
So she did.
Chapter Six
Juliana didn’t expect this. The camel race that Cemal had taken her to was one of the premiere events today in all of Jordan. The dust swirled around her and seemed to clog her throat, the hustle and bustle of the people around her filled her ears, and she often felt herself shoved from side to side by the overflowing crowd. The heat, itself, was stifling, and she wished that she could have worn just a tank top and jean shorts, but those were unacceptable outside of the private quarters of the palace. Instead, she wore a traditional kaftan of the Jordanian people, something made in a light, flowing silk that fell all the way to her ankles. While she appreciated the lovely shade of cerulean that Cemal had chosen for her, Juliana could still feel the sweat falling into her eyes and gliding down her shoulders and back.
If she ever thought her summer spent in Dallas, Texas was hot, then call her crazy. It had to easily be one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit outside, and it didn’t do much for the smell from the track either.
The camels lined up shoulder to shoulder at the line, but they weren’t ready to race yet. The announcer hadn’t given the command. It didn’t stop them from doing other things, however, and she had to choke back the nausea at the smell of fresh dung that grew more pungent under the Arabian sun.
It was definitely an adjustment from her regular life, from the almost prepackaged and fresh smells of the grocery store or mall back home. It was an overwhelming smell—especially of the camels—but it felt so real, so vibrant.
Beside her stood Cemal, regal in his native robes. She admired how they flared behind him in the breeze, giving a hint of the strong, masculine body underneath. She’d already felt a hint of that before, with his hardness pressing to her womanhood. He’d been an attractive teen, someone who made every girl gasp and all of them compete back at St. Paul’s. But it was nothing compared to the rugged, imposing man he’d become. As much as she wanted to blame the alcohol for her show the other night, Juliana knew that wasn’t true. Cemal moved her, always had. At first it was because a senior as cool as he was had seen something in the quiet, mousy computer team captain. Now it was because there was an inherent charm in the sheikh and any woman would cave for him.
She was striving to keep herself calm, to be just the specialist out from Simco Systems, but she was scared she’d lose that battle, especially when that hint of saffron and his own masculine aroma hit her nose as he leaned in to whisper in her ear.
“Are you ready for the race? I already put some money on the event. It will make it more memorable for us.”
“Isn’t that redundant? You’re wealthy beyond anyone’s imagination. Hell, didn’t they recognize their sheikh?”
He lifted his sunglasses off of his nose and winked at her. “I wore plain robes, there’s nothing special or expensive about them. In the midst of the crowd and with my glasses…it is doubtful they knew me. I wanted you to experience the races as the regular citizens do, to get that drama and full rush. If money is on the race, doesn’t that help?”
With that, he handed her a few sheets—tickets, she assumed—and Juliana looked down at them. She couldn’t read the text, but she wondered who she was betting on.
“And who did you pick for me?”
“The name translates as ‘The King’s Jewel.’ He’s actually from my family’s stock, and the offspring of one of the best camels we’ve ever had in our stock. He’s the one with the cobalt harness and—”
“The little backpack on?” she said, frowning at all the camels. She had expected the jockeys to already have mounted their, uh, noble steeds. So far, though, the camels were alone and seemed to be ready for the first day of school, including the tiny rucksack.
“No, that’s the robot jockey. They don’t have humans riding, as it’s too much weight, ruins the speed the beasts can run. But soon the race will start, and we’ll see if The King’s Jewel is worthy of the name.”
“You know, I really should be working on the system,” Juliana objected, even if she didn’t want to. The energy of the crowd contrasted with the stillness of the office she’d been working from, and it was helping to turn some wheels in her brain. One more hour with the code still snarling, no matter what she tried, and Juliana was going to go insane. “This isn’t why Ms. Grant sent me here.”
“And if you’ve hit a rut and can’t make the system work, then it doesn’t benefit either of us,” he said, draping an arm casually over her shoulder.
She tensed, not sure if she could trust herself with so intimate a gesture. It might make her want more, and with Cemal, that was always dangerous. Yet he’d been honest with her, at least she hoped he had. He’d told her about his parents dragging him back to Jordan. Although it had hurt her to lose him, could she really have expected a seventeen-year-old boy to fight all of that, the will of a kingdom, to be with her?
“What?” he asked, seeming to sense her rigidity.
“It’s just…I feel that I shouldn’t be so relaxed, that I haven’t earned it. Even if it’s not a setup…”
His amber eyes seemed to flash with frustration in that moment, even as his nostrils flared. “No, it’s not. I’m surprised, but pleasantly so, to see you.
“Then I need to stay focused on my job. I…we had something once before, and both our hearts were broken by it.”
“You don’t have your parents dictating what they think a ‘good girl’ should do. You’re almost thirty, and I’m in charge now. There aren’t the same barriers to tear us apart,” he continued, even as his hand crept lower to rub at the small of her back.
Except that wasn’t completely true. Her parents hadn’t been thrilled when her sister married a man who wasn’t a Baptist. It was probably all due to her mother’s upbringing in North Carolina. It was definitely why her mother had been so upset about any potential and deep romance blossoming between her and Cemal so long ago. Even if she was an adult now, Juliana felt she owed her family, felt that her mother’s wishes for her and her life did drive some of her own ambitions. It was insane that a king wouldn’t be good enough for her family, but one who practiced a different faith might be too hard for them to swallow.
Amber eyes bored into her own, and now it was Cemal’s turn to seem tense.
“Did I say something wrong? My father is
gone, and I know that Mother will love you when she gets to know you.”
“But I’m just here to fix the code. When it’s done in a week or so, I go home. It’s just…that’s the way it has to be.”
“Because you don’t care about me?”
She sighed and then shivered as he kissed her neck, his tongue laving over the pulse point in her throat. Already the heat was flooding through her body and she crossed one leg in front of the other. It was completely unfair how he could get to her.
“It’s not that. Let’s talk about all of this later,” she said, glad when the air horn sounded and the camels were off. “See, the race is on!”
She leaned over the railing and shouted her enthusiasm, her voice the one jolt of English amongst the native Jordanian and Arabic. But she was as excited as anyone. To see her camel, its cobalt pack prominent, pulling ahead of the others made her heart race.
“Come on King’s Jewel!” she screamed again, even as the camel in the red harness her camel’s strides. “You can do it!”
The camels were running so fast that she couldn’t make out all four legs at once, just a blur of motion now masked by the cloud of sand they’d kicked up. But she could see the camel’s long noses stretching out as they rushed into the final lap.
Juliana was carried away by the thrill of the race, the screaming bodies, and the pounding thump of the hoofbeats. Leaning against the railing, she screamed again.
“You can do it King’s Jewel! Move your ass!”
The tape tore as both camels pushed through it and she blinked at the flash of light that indicated a photo had been taken of the whole event. Juliana stood near Cemal, her breath held tight as she waited to hear the results.
Finally, a voice rang out and she watched as at least a quarter of the spectators swore and tossed away their tickets.
“Which one?” she asked, turning to Cemal.
He grinned and kissed her, his tongue threading in expertly with her own. “The Jewel has earned his reputation,” Cemal said as he pulled away. Then he took her hand in his and pulled her toward the betting tables. “You, my dear, have made an amazing bonus for the work you’re doing here.”
“How much?”
“Well, nothing for someone like me,” he said, as they approached the table.
“No, seriously. How much?” she asked, handing him back her claim tickets, suddenly anxious that Cemal had gone overboard with whatever gesture he’d come up with. Of course, it had all come down to chance. The red harness camel could have beaten her Jewel at the photo finish. Yet, she was only here for her job. If she suddenly had thousands of extra dollars, she wasn’t sure how to explain that. “Cemal, you have to tell me!”
He grinned and then presented the tickets to the betting master.
The man looked over the tickets and shook his head, breaking into an angry stream of Arabic or possibly Jordanian. Juliana frowned but drew in closer to Cemal, sensing that something was going wrong with the negotiations. As she watched, the head of the better table threw the whole thing over and barked orders to the three huge guards standing at either end of them. Shaking his head, Cemal grabbed her hand and yanked her as quickly as he could to the edge of the track.
Juliana ran, huffing a bit as she went. Her long hours in Silicon Valley hadn’t prepared her to be chased by gambling enforcers. Half the time, she relied on Cemal to pull her through the crowd, to help her weave in and out of the throng of bodies. Eventually they ducked into an alley not too far from the edge of the track’s entrance. Quietly, Cemal pulled out his cell phone and texted something.
After a few minutes, Juliana watched, relieved, as some of the palace guards, marked in the official crest she’d seen all over the sheikh’s abode, raced past them. She had a distinct feeling that the upset gambling coordinator and his goons wouldn’t be a problem any longer. Still, her heart was pounding in her chest and she was panting hard. Sweat poured down her forehead, and she couldn’t push away the high of the adrenaline flowing through her.
“What was that?” she breathed.
Cemal shrugged. “This was The King’s Jewel’s first run. He had twelve-to-one odds and I bet one hundred thousand dollars. Samir was displeased to lose so much money. That’s the risk of gambling undercover. People tend to not respect the authority of the king if you’re not actively using it.”
He said the facts to her with little inflection, but Juliana’s eyes went wide. There was no way he was telling her what she thought he was. At the twelve-to-one odds, she’d have won 1.2 million dollars. That was more money than she’d ever think she’d see in her lifetime. Even if her job paid well, the cost of living in Palo Alto ate right into her savings. To have that much capital at once would mean she could finally put enough money into her own startup.
“What?”
“Well, I could have done more, I know.”
She pressed the palms of her hand against his chest. There was no way he was saying what she thought he was. It just didn’t seem possible. “You bet a hundred grand for me for fun?”
“I have more,” he said casually as if he’d picked up the tab at a diner, not just won over a million dollars.
“I can’t even think about it.”
“Well, I should have known Samir wouldn’t actually pay up. He’s hardly honest, which is another reason I go to his races undercover. It would be unbecoming of me to go without a disguise. Mother and even Yasmeena would never let me hear the end of it.”
“A million?” she asked, knowing she was echoing her own words. Even after living in his home the last few days, she hadn’t yet comprehended how wealthy he was. He was talking about a massive sum (at least to her) as if he’d left lose change in his car. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Well, I doubt Samir will pay up, even if the guards try and impress that upon him. I’ll happily cover the debt, put you in the lifestyle you want.”
“I don’t want gifts like that,” she said, leaning against the smooth clay wall behind her. “Do you understand that? I don’t want to be bribed or wined and dined. I know that maybe you didn’t mean to hurt me so long ago…”
Cemal shook his head and put his fingers under her chin in an effort to force her to look up at him. “No maybe about it. You’re the only woman I want. You’re the one I’ve wanted my entire life. I’ve spent years going from woman to woman, looking for someone who could make me feel the way you did when I was just seventeen. No one has even come close.”
She blushed, thinking about the parade of women he’d had. While she wasn’t some blushing virgin, even with Phillip, she could count the number of lovers she’d had on one hand. How could she even hope to compare to the women he’d seen and enjoyed over the years? There was no way she could ever hope to compete, and she knew it. Besides, she didn’t get the fairy tale. She got the boys who ran away and the men who betrayed her. She had a man right here who made her pulse race but wasn’t at all who her family could accept.
Not ever.
Yet she felt that pull to him.
She was drawn to him, desperate to feel his kiss, desperate to make up for the opportunity they’d missed out on as teenagers. Maybe she could treat this week as Brigadoon, a magical period of time, just a blip, where anything was possible. Sure, it would disappear thoroughly once she made it back to the United States, but for now, they had each other.
“I want you,” she said, her voice shaking with need.
He nodded and kissed her then, his tongue dancing with her own for dominance, even as his hands roamed over her body. She matched his hungry motions, her hands rubbing over his shoulders and appreciating the raw strength in his powerful muscles.
“I’ve missed you so much, kitten. Having you back has been a dream,” he said, reaching lower and then pulling up the edge of her kaftan.
Juliana stilled long enough to press both hands to her hips. “I can’t just get naked in an alley.”
“I wasn’t thinking of it. You deserve both ways, to be made
love to like a princess, but right now I just need your body, every inch of you,” he said, his voice a silky purr.
“And?”
“I think I can give you some pleasure here before we go home, something to match the pulse of the adrenaline pounding in both of our veins,” he said, and she wondered if his words were more of a threat or a promise.
Did it even matter?
“Would you like that, kitten?”
She nodded, the heat in her body scorching now. There was nothing Juliana could do. It felt as if she’d combust without him, without the release she’d been wanting since her second night here and the dance they’d shared.
“I want anything you can give me, Cemal. That’s what I need.”
He nodded and continued to hike the skirt of her kaftan up. Juliana helped him by holding the hem to her body with one hand even as she rubbed her other hand through his thick, lush hair. Cemal slipped his fingers under the waistband of her panties and pulled—a deft tug that pulled the thin lace away easily. Then, he yanked them off of her and surprised Juliana utterly by shoving them in the pocket of his robes.
“Some trophies must be saved for later,” he said, his lip curving into a wry smile.
“But you can’t save everything for then, can you, my sheikh?” she asked even as she looked up into the same golden eyes that had haunted her for fifteen years.
“No, not everything,” he agreed, as he got to his knees.
Her eyes widened. She knew exactly what he had to be planning, but that seemed impossible. In her years of engagement to Phillip, he’d only gone down on her a few times, and usually after she’d begged him on her birthday. He’d always called it gross. Hell, she assumed most men found it disgusting. But that wasn’t what it seemed like now, not with the man she’d missed for so long staring up at her with naked want and passion in those amber eyes.
“You, uh, you don’t have to do this,” she offered.
He grinned wider and then ran both hands up her thighs, lightly squeezing them as he went. “Oh I want to.”
