“Incorrect,” the Sheikh said sharply. “They did not know me, so they could not have wanted me. Try again.”
Kathryn swallowed and blinked as a tingle ran up and down her spine. She felt like a schoolgirl suddenly, innocent and wide-eyed. The sensation took her by surprise, and she felt her buttocks tighten beneath those loose black harem pants. He’s drawing me in, she realized as she felt the color rush to her round cheeks. Into his game. Into his riddle. Into . . . him.
“They wanted . . .” Kathryn began to say, her voice trailing off as she cocked her head slightly and looked up at him. “They wanted what they thought you were. What they thought you represent.”
“That’s better,” said the Sheikh. “And what do I represent?”
Kathryn shrugged, a subtle confidence rising up in her. She folded her arms beneath her breasts, pushing up her heavy globes, showing a healthy crack of cleavage without really meaning to. She caught him glancing down and then quickly looking back up, and she almost smiled. This wasn’t a man who’d normally be shy about looking at a woman’s breasts, but something had made him flinch. If this was a game, score one point for her.
“What do I represent, Kathryn?” he asked again. “Not to you. To those other women.” He grinned, raising his chin and glancing down. “We will get to the question of you later.”
Kathryn took a breath. “Well, you represent . . . wealth. Power. Mystery.” She took another breath as a shudder went through her. “Fantasy,” she said. “Excitement.” Another long pause. “Danger,” came the last word.
The Sheikh’s green eyes were riveted on her, and Kathryn could have sworn they were shining like emeralds in the yellow light. For a moment she had no idea where she was, and she blinked and wondered what the hell was happening. Was he hypnotizing her instead?
“Why danger?” he said, beginning to slowly circle her like a beast circles its prey. With every breath she could smell his dark musk. His broad frame cast a shadow on her as he silently brushed against her, his circles drawing smaller until he stopped behind her. Right behind her. So close. So damned close. “I represent danger to you?” he whispered.
“Not to me,” Kathryn snapped, the words coming out quick as she tried her best not to turn. She knew if she turned to face him now, he’d see right through her. Her guard was down. Her defenses shaky. He was getting to her, and she had no goddamn idea why! “We’re not talking about me, remember? The others. I mean—”
“You know better than that, Ms. Kathryn Krane,” the Sheikh whispered, and she could feel his hot breath against her bare neck. Goosepimples broke out across her shoulders and arms, and she shivered but not because she was cold. She wasn’t cold. She was hot as hell. “You left medical school before taking your degree, but you studied enough psychology to know that we are always projecting our own feelings onto others, imagining that others see what we see, feel what we feel, want what we want.”
Kathryn gasped when she felt the slightest of movements against the thin, loose cloth of her red harem pants, right at the apex of her buttocks. He was hard, she suddenly realized. He’d gone hard and erect fast, right behind her. She could feel it in the subtle way his breathing changed. She could sense it in the way his body stiffened behind her. He hadn’t touched her yet, and a burning anticipation suddenly ripped through Kathryn as she felt movement beneath her own clothes as her nipples stiffened, her back arched, her sex tingled as those dark hidden lips opened to release their secret wetness into her panties.
She wanted to speak but she couldn’t. She wondered if she should turn and try to bring him under hypnosis, but she didn’t trust herself to pull it off. Successfully hypnotizing someone depended as much on the hypnotist’s state of mind as anything else, and Kathryn’s mind was a hot mess right now. Her mind, and her body.
“You’ve done your research on me,” she said, blinking and fighting the urge to back up against his hard body, rub her soft buttocks against his peaked crotch. Keep talking, she told herself, ignoring the sudden panic that whipped through her, mixing with the arousal to bring her to a heat that made her head spin.
“A little,” he grunted moving closer but still not touching her. “The most important research is yet to be done.”
Kathryn snorted. “Now that’s a one-liner worthy of a king. You come up with that yourself, Your Highness?”
Kathryn felt his breath catch behind her, and suddenly he grabbed her by the waist and spun her around, his other hand sliding into her thick hair, fingers gripping her brown tresses by the roots and holding her firm. “You know,” he growled, his green eyes sparkling with mischief. “In my kingdom I expect everyone to laugh at my jokes or else I have them flogged in the streets.”
Kathryn held the gaze even though electricity was shooting through her body at the way she’d been spun and how she was being held by her hair, firmly under his physical control. “Then your kingdom must see a lot of floggings, Great King,” she said. “Because your jokes are terrible.”
The Sheikh stared at her, his grip on her hair tightening to where she could feel the pressure on her roots and scalp. But she stayed locked into his eyes, and she held the gaze until finally he couldn’t control himself and the smile broke on his handsome face, those perfect teeth showing themselves like shining ivory against his dark lips. Then the Sheikh laughed, a booming, hearty laugh that seemed to shake the sandstone floor. “By Allah, yes,” he said, grinning wide and shaking his head. “It is basically a flogging festival every weekend in the kingdom of Sehaar. Prayers every Friday. Camel hunting every Saturday. And then on Sunday we do forty lashes each for the humorless bastards who don’t get my jokes.”
Kathryn scrunched up her face. “Camel hunting? Now is that where you hunt camels? That’s a little odd. I thought you desert folk rode camels.”
“We do,” said the Sheikh, holding a deadpan look. “But the camels of Sehaar are shifty buggers. Always hiding behind sand dunes. It takes all day Saturday to hunt them down and saddle them up so we can ride them during the week.”
“Huh. So it’s more like camel hide-and-seek,” said Kathryn, her smile matching his grin as she stepped away from his grasp and folded her arms beneath her breasts again, standing back on her heels and looking up at him. “I guess camels do sort of blend into the sandy landscape. What with camels and sand both being yellow.”
“Actually, the camels in the fantasy-land of Sehaar are bright pink,” the Sheikh said with a straight face. “The problem is, the sands of our desert are bright pink as well.”
Kathryn laughed. “Sounds like the fantasy of my ten-year-old niece.”
Hyder folded his arms across his broad chest, and Kathryn blinked when she saw how thick his forearms were as the half-sleeves of his white linen shirt moved up to reveal biceps bigger than her goddamn thighs. And her thighs were most certainly not petite.
“What’s that tattoo say?” she asked, touching his bare arm with her finger, right where a faded swirl of black stood out. The touch made her heart pound, and she swore she felt Hyder stiffen at the contact.
“It is a birthmark,” he said, glancing down at her hand, his gaze following her smooth bare arm all the way up to her shoulders, his eyes sweeping across her creamy skin, taking in everything from her naked shoulders to the curve of her breasts beneath that black tank top. “Show me yours.”
“Show me my what?” Kathryn said, blinking and suddenly feeling self-conscious at the way he was looking at her. He wasn’t just checking her out. There was something else. Something more.
“Your birthmark,” he said, reaching out and running his fingers along her bare arm, sending up a line of goosepimples once again. Carefully he ran his fingers beneath the strap of her top, tugging gently.
“What?” Kathryn said, gasping as she pulled away, instinctively covering her chest. Not that he could see the birthmark. That little raised dark red swirl on the underside of her left
breast. Nobody had seen that birthmark in years. Nobody who was still alive, anyway. Other than Mel, of course. “How? I mean, how can you know?”
“Why so surprised?” The Sheikh said, his voice low, his gaze steady. “You read my file, did you not? It is only fair that I read yours.”
8
THREE DAYS EARLIER
John Benson tapped his knuckles on the wooden desk and frowned. Then he looked across at Mel, who hadn’t taken her eyes off him for at least a full minute. Hell, Benson wasn’t sure she’d even blinked that entire time he’d been thinking about what they were about to do.
“This one is special, John,” Mel said. “She means something to me. You know it. Besides, I owe her.”
Benson shook his head. “You owe her nothing. She’s served her country, just like you and I have. The moment we start getting personally—”
“Don’t you even start with that, John,” Mel snapped, cutting him off. “You’re the last man in the agency to talk about not getting personally involved. This has to work. Kathryn is not disposable.”
Benson laughed. “We’re all disposable, Mel. That’s what it means to live and work in the shadows, remember. Hey, we signed up for this. She signed up for this. Besides, it was your idea not to tell her everything.”
Mel stood, and Benson’s breath caught as he watched her lithe figure storm across the room and stop at the soundproof oakwood door. She turned and looked back.
“She wouldn’t understand. She’s not ready to understand. My hope is after meeting him, she’ll someday be ready. If not . . .” Mel trailed off, shaking her head and closing her eyes as if trying to reset herself. “Look, are you going to do this for me or not? We need to leak her CIA file to his people. I want him to know.”
“But you haven’t spoken to Hyder in almost a decade. You have no idea if he’s the same man he was—neither of us does. I agree that he’s going to find out she’s CIA sooner or later. But if he finds out before he chooses her . . . hell, then maybe he won’t choose her! Maybe he’ll shut down this ten-day annual romp, and we’ll lose all access to him!” Benson retorted, leaning back in his leather chair. He hated this chair. He hated this office. Give me a warm wooden bench in a tea-house in Abu-Dhabi any day, he thought, instead of these cold leather chairs and endless goddamn meetings.
Mel took a breath. She glanced down at the floorboards and then up at Benson. “I think he will choose her,” she said quietly.
Benson snorted. “You don’t know that.” He took a breath and then snorted again. “What, the hypnosis thing? Does that even work.”
Mel shrugged. “Not always. But that’s not what I mean. I believe Hyder will pick her, hypnosis or not, leaked CIA file or not.”
This time Benson snorted so hard the goddamn chair moved. “And you say that because . . .”
Mel smiled. “Because Kathryn is the only one who can understand that man. And he will see that. He won’t pass up the chance. He won’t pass her up. He just won’t.”
Benson sighed and closed his eyes tight. Then he nodded, reaching for his secure cell phone and punching out instructions in an encrypted text message. “Done,” he said, tossing the black phone onto the desk. “I hope to hell you’re right, Mel. On all of this.” He narrowed his eyes and glanced out the window. The gray haze of London looked back at him, and Benson sighed again and looked over at Mel.
Mel grimaced but stayed silent. She turned to go, but Benson stopped her.
“Two questions,” he said. “Are you going to tell Krane that her file has been leaked to Hyder?”
“No,” said Mel. “He’ll tell her. I want her surprise to be genuine. Hyder will know if it’s not. He needs to know that Kathryn is being played.” A pause and that thin, almost regretful smile. “And Kathryn needs to know she’s being played.”
“They’re both being played in a way, aren’t they. Hell, I’m being played too, I think!” Benson said, almost laughing when he thought about how twisted this thing was getting before it had even really begun. Mel clearly still had it. All of it. “All right,” he said. “Then my last question is this: Are we going to give Hyder’s file to Kathryn?” He paused and blinked. “I mean his entire file. Including his time with us. His connection to you.”
Mel shook her head again, and she was halfway out the door before she replied. “No,” she said. “He’ll tell her that too. As and when he wants. In bits and pieces. Truth and lies mixed. He’s a master, better than you or I could ever be. That’s why we need him on our side forever. It’s not so much about Sehaar and its oil as much as it is about the man himself. Sheikh Hyder. He’s one in a million, John. And that's why I sent Kathryn. Because so is she.”
9
Should I tell her now, later, or never, thought the Sheikh as he tried to figure out whether the shock on this woman was real or made-up. He’d seen her file after his head of security alerted him to it. He didn’t need to ask where it came from. He knew where it came from: The same place she did.
“Alabama, USA,” the Sheikh said, looking into her eyes. “A real estate agent? That is a good cover, I suppose. At least the agent part is true.”
Kathryn stared up at him. Ya Allah, she was beautiful. Big brown eyes that were wise, wicked, and innocent all at the same time. What had those eyes looked upon in her travels? Would those eyes see him for who he truly was?
He blinked and looked away, frowning as he thought back to the way she’d moved her eyes side-to-side when he’d stood before her as he went down the line. He’d read the bit about hypnotism in her file. It sounded like a joke at first, but he’d felt something come over him when she’d pointed those mesmerizing brown eyes at him. Was he already hypnotized? Hah! Perhaps. Why else would he have blurted out that he already knew she was CIA?
“You really did not know, did you?” Hyder said when he saw how the color had left her round face for a flash. “That they leaked your file to me.”
Kathryn took a breath. She stayed silent, and the Sheikh felt his breath catch. How will she play this, he wondered.
“Of course I did,” Kathryn replied. “It was my idea to leak the file. Best to get it out in the open. If I’ve learned anything from Hollywood movies, it’s that having a secret life as an assassin really kills a relationship.”
The Sheikh’s eyes went wide and he tilted his head back and roared with laughter. He’d expected her to deny it. Perhaps even turn and run. But no, she took the hit and countered with a backhand that almost knocked him off his damned feet!
“Ya Allah,” he bellowed as the surprised laughter came hard and heavy. “You are too much. John and Mel sent me their best, did they not?”
Again he watched the shock pass through her, and again he watched her take it in and handle it. She didn’t know anything about him, did she. They’d sent her in blind. John and Mel were going all in, risking everything: Their careers, this woman’s life, and perhaps more. Much more. After all, they could not be sure how he would react, how he would play this. They took a risk, which meant they must believe in this woman—and that meant he should take her seriously. In every way.
“OK,” the Sheikh said, waiting a moment and speaking only after he saw Kathryn stay silent. “I will admit that I am indeed impressed with how you have handled yourself. You may pretend otherwise, but you did not know your file was leaked. And every ounce of color left your face when I mentioned the names John and Mel.”
“Mel would have been named in my file. Maybe Benson too, so saying their names means nothing,” Kathryn replied. “Pretending like you know them is a pretty good move, though. I’ll give you a point for that.”
Already she has composed herself, thought the Sheikh as an excitement he had not felt in years surged through his powerful body. Suddenly he wanted to play this game. He wanted to play with her. By God, he wanted her!
“Why, thank you,” Hyder said, smiling and crossing his ar
ms over his chest. He saw the way she glanced at his heavy pectorals, and he grinned wider. “How many points before I win?”
“You won’t win,” she retorted, crossing her own arms beneath her breasts and pushing them up in a way that made the Sheikh’s cock harden so fast he almost swayed where he stood.
“What does winning mean in this game?” said the Sheikh, dropping his arms to his sides and taking a step towards her. “What is the prize?”
Kathryn shrugged. “Well, if you’re still alive in ten days, that would be a pretty good start for you, I’d think.”
The Sheikh laughed. “So you are here to kill me, are you?”
“If you read my file, you know what I do for the CIA.”
The Sheikh nodded. “A long list of some very bad people.” He paused and rubbed his chin. “I knew a few of them, actually. Yuri Gorka, for example.” He paused again, taking a breath when he saw that Kathryn’s expression didn’t change one iota. She would not be taken by surprise again. She was ready for anything now. Goddamn anything!
“You seem to know a lot about me,” Kathryn said smoothly. “And so I’ll drop the façade. No, I didn’t know my file had been leaked. And yes, I was surprised when you mentioned Benson and Mel.” She blinked, and those brown eyes softened for a moment where they’d been cold and dead when he’d mentioned the name Yuri Gorka. A chill ran through the Sheikh, and he told himself to be careful. Damned careful. This woman had taken on powerful men before, and she was the one left standing. And the fact that John and Mel had sent her in blind meant she might actually kill him if it came to that! “But I know almost nothing about you,” she said, her gaze still soft. She smiled and shrugged. “And if I’ve learned anything from daytime talk shows, an information imbalance is death to a relationship.”
The Sheikh grinned. “I do not think too many daytime talk shows use the term information imbalance, but all right. Ask me anything you want. You want to know about my history with your CIA? Go ahead and ask. I promise to answer truthfully.”
Assassin for the Sheikh_A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel Page 4
