Читать книгу Taken by the Sheikh - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 7

‘ARE you all right, child?’

Sadie could hear the gentle voice of her employer’s husband, but somehow it was impossible to drag her imprisoned gaze away from the dangerous, almost cruelly handsome perfection of the man standing beside him. She felt as though she was having to bring herself back up to the clear light of day from the darkest depths of some secret hidden place.

‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine,’ she managed to gulp—even though she knew that both men must be perfectly aware that she was not.

She risked another look at Professor al Sawar’s much younger companion. To her relief, he wasn’t searching her soul with that too-intense glittering look any more, and some of the turbulence inside her subsided, allowing her to tell herself that she had over-emphasised his earlier effect on her—no doubt because of the trauma she had just experienced. Relief poured through her like cool, soothing water on over-heated skin.

She could see in the Professor’s face that both men had overheard Monika’s angry tirade. Her now ex-employer’s husband reached into his robe and withdraw a wallet. Normally such an incongruity as the sight of a modern wallet concealed within the folds of such a traditional garment would have made her smile, but now she was struggling too hard to rationalise the rush of unfamiliar sensations seizing her to do anything other than note vaguely that the older man was opening his wallet and withdrawing some money.

‘Please—take this…’ he was urging her.

Now she had to force herself to focus on him.

‘I don’t know how much my wife owes you, but…’

There was a look in the ice-green eyes that burned her pride. Her reaction was instinctive and immediate. Shaking her head, she stepped back mutely.

‘Please…’ the Professor was insisting.

‘No,’ Sadie refused fiercely. Whether his act was a kindness to protect her or a bribe designed to protect his wife, she didn’t know; all she did know was that she would not and could not take his money, his charity. She had earned her wages, and it was her wages she wanted—not the professor’s generosity.

‘No,’ she repeated in a calmer, more rational tone, even if her voice was shaking slightly. She grabbed hold of her suitcase and hurried towards the still open courtyard gates.

Drax watched her go, protectively shielding the intensity of his desire by lowering his eyelids to hood his focused concentration on her. The familiar, dry, sand-blown scent of the desert in the air he was breathing into his body was sharpened and flooded by the heat of his own arousal. Dismissively he mentally shrugged off the warning his body was activating. He was man, wasn’t he? And a man who had perhaps been voluntarily celibate longer than was wise. Drax didn’t take women to his bed on sexual impulse. His sense of his position was too strongly developed for that. Actions that potentially shamed him did not just shame him, they shamed Vere—and they shamed the reputation that had been handed down to them. Nevertheless, while it was not his habit to go in for casual serial partner sex, it was perhaps time that he found himself a discreet mistress.

The gates had been closed behind the young woman for several seconds when, as though she had been surreptitiously watching from inside the house, Drax recognised, Monika came into the courtyard, beckoning them both inside. Reluctantly following the Professor, Drax almost missed seeing the small maroon oblong lying on the ground. Bending to pick it up, he frowned when he realised that it was a passport. He opened it, flicking through. Sadie Murray, twenty-five years old, single, light brown eyes, dark blonde almost brown hair, her only distinguishing mark a small mole on the inside of her left thigh…

‘Vere—it is always such a pleasure to see you,’ Monika was gushing, causing Drax’s eyes to narrow as she hurried forward to envelop him in the overpowering strength of her scent. Tucking the passport away, he stepped back from her.

‘Sadly for both of us, I’m not Vere,’ he told Monika coolly. Over a decade ago, in the early days of her marriage to the Professor, when Drax himself had been a young man in his early twenties, Monika had offered herself to him. She would never forgive him for rejecting her, Drax recognised, and he would never forget that she had so easily planned to betray her husband.

‘I appreciate that you have your reasons for doing so, my dear, but, really—that poor child…to dismiss her like that…’ the Professor was saying with a worried frown.

‘She deserved it,’ Monika returned sharply. ‘She refused to carry out my instructions with regard to one of my clients, and in doing so cost me a great deal of money.’

‘But, my dear, she’s so young, and all alone in a foreign country,’ the Professor wavered unhappily. ‘And morally—’

‘Morally? Hah! It is her morals that have caused me so much of a problem. Why should I have to suffer the disadvantages of employing a young western woman who has chosen to behave like a traditional virgin?’

‘My dear…’

Drax could hear the distress in the older man’s voice, but Monika chose to ignore her husband’s shock.

Tossing her head, she continued sharply, ‘I need a female employee who knows how to persuade men to become my clients, not one who freezes them away.’

‘Sadie should surely be praised for her virtue, Monika?’ the Professor protested.

‘I did not employ her for her virtue. She is pretty enough, but plainly she doesn’t know how to use that prettiness to her own advantage.’ Monika gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Now she has to learn the hard way that that does not make good business sense.’

‘You have ensured that she has sufficient money to pay for her air ticket home?’

Drax watched as Monika’s mouth hardened. ‘That is not my concern. If she hasn’t, then it will teach her much needed lesson. Let me summon the maid and get her to bring you both some coffee,’ she told her husband, determinedly changing the subject.

As a Lebanese woman, Monika lived a far more independent life than that of a traditional Zurani wife, who would never have dreamed of even appearing in front of a male guest of her husband, never mind addressing him directly. She was certainly far too strident for his taste, Drax acknowledged, and he shook his head and refused. ‘Not for me, Monika. I’m afraid I can’t stay. I have an appointment.’

It might only be March, but Zuran did not have a spring. Its climate went straight from a welcome ‘cool’ winter temperature of around twenty-five degrees in February to a swiftly climbing forty-five-degrees-plus in the middle of summer.

For Sadie, having to walk all the way into town with her case, and without the hat she normally wore for protection, the rising temperature felt distinctly too hot. Her hair might be thick and long, its burnished light brunette warmed with natural gold highlights, but it was no protection against the sun. At least she had her sunglasses to shield her eyes from the harshness of the sunlight as it bounced off the white-painted walls of the houses lining the roadside.

No one walked in Zuran—which was no doubt why so many male drivers slowed down as they drove past her. At least, that was what she was going to tell herself, Sadie decided, gritting her teeth as she ignored yet another car driver crawling along beside the kerb, murmuring to her words she was relieved she could not understand before thankfully he drove off when he realised that she had no intention of acknowledging him.

Her dismissal was so unfair. She had been good at her job, she knew that, but no way had she intended to coax and tease men into signing up with Monika by hinting at providing them with a sexual reward that she was not going to deliver. Sadie loathed that kind of female behaviour, and she loathed even more the kind of men who expected it.

Perhaps she was naïve, but it had shocked her to discover that a female employer should expect it of her—especially out here in this predominantly morally conservative part of the world. About her reaction to the man who had been accompanying Monika’s elderly husband she did not want to think at all.

Drax was just about to put his foot down to join the fast lane of traffic when the car phone rang. He knew it would be Vere calling him. It was typical of Drax that he never questioned why or how he should know that without looking at his phone. It was just an accepted part of their twinship.

‘How did the meeting go with the Ruler?’ Vere asked.

‘Well enough—although I don’t think he was too pleased that I turned up in your place. And, speaking of people who weren’t as pleased to see me as they would have been to see you, I’ve just seen the Professor. Monika asked to be remembered to you.’

‘So you’ve been too busy to find me a wife, I take it?’ Vere responded, ignoring Drax’s dig about Monika.

Up ahead of him, in the dust of the roadside, Drax could see the lone figure of a young woman walking and dragging her suitcase behind her. She looked weary—forlorn, almost.

What was it Amar has said about her? That she was modest, the kind of young woman he would be happy to see his son marry. Drax remembered the passport he had picked up. By rights he should have handed it over to the al Sawars, because the girl would surely return there to look for it once she realised she had lost it.

She certainly wasn’t greedy, he acknowledged. He had seen that with his own eyes. And she had to be naïve if she’d let herself be persuaded into working for Monika.

‘Drax? Are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m still here, Vere. As to your bride—well, that’s where you are wrong, my brother. It just so happens that I may have found you the perfect temporary wife.’

Drax switched off his phone before Vere could say anything, and then started to cut the speed of his car.

Sadie could hear the now familiar tell-tale sound of a car braking to a crawl just behind her, but she refused to look round. However, this car didn’t pull away as quickly as the others had when she did not respond. Instead it continued to keep pace with her, casting a long shadow in front of her. She tried to walk a little bit faster, wishing she could move away from the side of the road, but the land beyond was too rough for her to wheel her case over it.

There was no need for her to panic, she assured herself. It was broad daylight and, even if he was being more persistent than the others, surely whoever it was would soon get bored when she didn’t respond, soon put his foot down to race past her in a cloud of sandy dust.

Only he didn’t. And out of the corner of her eye she could see a long black bonnet edging just ahead of her, then keeping pace with her.

She couldn’t walk any faster; she was panting slightly already, her skin soaked with perspiration caused not just by the heat now but by her anxiety as well.

‘Ms Murray?’

Hearing her name spoken in crisp accent-free English gave her such a shock that she froze. Just as he had estimated she would, she reflected bitterly several seconds later, when the car stopped, the driver’s door opened and the driver himself stepped out in front of her, trapping her between his body and his car.

‘You!’

Why had she said that? It had sounded so personal and so betraying somehow—as though she were deliberately creating an intimacy between them. And that hadn’t been her intention. She was just so shocked to see the man she had last seen standing in the Al Sawars’ courtyard with her employer’s husband standing in front of her.

Unlike her, he wasn’t wearing sunglasses, and something about the look she could see in his eyes made her feel like some poor creature of the desert caught in the predatory searching stare of a falcon.

‘If Madame Al Sawar asked you to come after me…’ she began uncertainly.

Before she could finish what she was saying Drax silenced her with a swift frown.

‘I can acquit you because you do not know me well enough to know that I do not act as an errand boy for others,’ he told her arrogantly. ‘But do you really know Monika so little that you think she’d show that kind of remorse?’

Sadie looked away from him. He was right, of course. Monika was not the type to suffer from second thoughts, much less guilt over what she had done.

‘I came after you because there is something I want to discuss with you. The Professor speaks very highly of you. He considers you to be a young woman of good morals and intelligence.’ Drax was not going to tell her that the Professor had also confirmed his own assessment that she was more inclined to think the best of others than the worst, and that this made her vulnerable to the selfish machinations of the unscrupulous.

Sadie could feel a pink flush heating her face as she listened to this praise.

‘You are fully qualified to work in the financial services industry, so I understand?’

His question startled Sadie. ‘I have a degree and an MBA,’ she acknowledged. She could see Drax nodding his head, as though her words had confirmed what he already knew.

‘It could be that I can offer you a job to replace the one you have just lost.’

Now he could see uncertainty and suspicion in her eyes, along with the kind of female wariness that made Drax congratulate himself again on his own intuition. She would be perfect for the plan he had outlined to his twin.

Sadie looked at him with a challenging expression. She wasn’t so naïve that she wasn’t aware that there was a certain type of Arab male who looked to western women to satisfy his sexual needs via a series of brief sex-only liaisons.

‘Thank you, but my plan has always been to return to the UK to work.’

‘But not without the money to pay your fare or your passport?’ Drax suggested.

Her passport? Sadie looked at him, and then looked down at her bag. But there was no need for her to look inside it, because Drax was already holding her passport in his hand.

‘What…?’

‘Why don’t you get in the car?’ Drax looked at his watch. ‘I can tell you about the job that’s on offer over a late lunch in the city.’

Did he really expect her to fall for that kind of line? She wasn’t that naïve. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not interested—in anything,’ she emphasised firmly, reaching for her passport.

Drax stepped back from her, sliding her passport out of sight somewhere within the folds of his dishdasha.

‘Very well,’ he said calmly, and turned back to his car.

‘My passport…’ Sadie protested frantically.

‘What passport? If, when I reach the airport for my return flight to Dhurahn, I find that I still have the passport I found lying on the ground in Zuran City, then I shall naturally see that it reaches the nearest British Embassy.’

‘What?’ This was getting worse by the minute. Not only had he got her passport, he was also planning to leave the country. ‘No, you can’t do that!’ Sadie told him wildly.

‘No?’ The ice-green eyes had hardened.

Ignoring the warning in them, Sadie tried to grab her passport back from him, crying out as she stumbled over a sharp piece of rock jutting out of the earth and then fell heavily against Drax.

Drax’s reactions were quicker than Sadie’s. He caught her easily, and could have held her away from him so their bodies didn’t come into contact, but for some reason he wasn’t prepared to explain to himself he didn’t. Instead, he wrapped his hands around her upper arms to steady her, and let her body rest against his own. He could feel the soft rounded swell of her breasts, and the temptation to slide his hands from her arms to her hips, to pull her more intimately against him, was so strong and instinctive that it startled him. She smelled hot and sweet, and her scent caused an unexpected surge of sexual awareness to grip him. It took him off guard.

What the hell was this? He didn’t normally react with this kind of easy arousal. A man in his position had to be careful about his sexual liaisons. Drax had learned that long ago. He had a responsibility towards the position he held. He and Vere had a shared duty to give their subjects a good example and to set high moral standards. Casual sex wasn’t something he indulged in, and yet here he was so stiffly erect that he felt downright uncomfortable—and all on account of this dusty young woman with her topaz eyes and her pale skin. A woman he had already decided to offer to his brother.

Which was, of course, why he was testing her moral standards. If she took advantage of their shared intimacy now to come on to him he would know there was no point in pursuing his plan. Neither could he afford to become sexually involved with her—it wasn’t for sex that he wanted her. She must be proved to be the kind of woman the Professor believed her to be. The kind of woman who was the opposite of women like Monika al Sawar and who would not try to institute sex with a man without being invited to do so.

After Sadie’s shock at being so unexpectedly close to Drax, with all its drugging excitement, came recognition of her vulnerability—and with it panic.

‘Let go of me!’ She sounded more pleading than assertive, Sadie recognised weakly, as she heard the emotion in her own voice. Being this close to this man wasn’t good for her, she admitted. It reactivated everything she had felt in the courtyard, and underlined her inability to override her physical response to him.

So why wasn’t she doing more to make him release her? Why, in fact, was she leaning into him as though she couldn’t stand without the support of his body? Did she really not care about the danger of her own actions? Not just via the casual sex with a stranger he might think she was inviting but, just as dangerously, via the effect her proximity to him was having on what she had always believed to be givens about herself. Givens like the fact that she wasn’t a woman who had strong sexual urges; like the fact that she wasn’t a woman who could ever be overwhelmed by desire for a man just by looking at him; like the fact that she was far too sensible to take risks with her sexual and emotional health.

It was the heat of the sun that was making her feel weak, she hurried to reassure herself. Nothing else. She certainly wasn’t entertaining the kind of fantasies she had heard some western women had about sexy Arab sheikhs—even if this man was everything that such a man should be, right down to the aura of danger surrounding him.

‘This is Zuran,’ she heard him telling her coldly as he thrust her away. ‘Here it is not acceptable for a man and a woman to embrace in public, no matter what you may be used to doing elsewhere!’

What she might be used to doing elsewhere? He was making it sound as though he thought she was coming on to him. Mortified, Sadie pulled away from him and stepped back. She was right about one thing. She had been out in the hot sun for longer than was wise, and her own sudden movement had caused a wave of faintly nauseating dizziness to swamp her.

The sight of Sadie’s suddenly too pale face accompanied by her soft gasp of shock had Drax reacting with instinctive speed as he recognised the onset of heat sickness. He bundled her into the car so quickly that Sadie didn’t have time to do anything more than make an incoherent protest. She could feel the car depressing as he slid into the driver’s seat and switched on the engine. She could hear too the sound of the doors locking as he set the car in motion and pulled away from the kerb.

‘Stop,’ she said frantically. ‘You can’t do this!’

‘What would you have preferred me to do—leave you where you were to suffer sunstroke?’

‘There’s plenty of shade in the city.’

‘You would never have made it that far,’ Drax told her bluntly, before adding, ‘And you needn’t look at me like that. You have nothing to fear from me.’

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Sadie retorted shakily. ‘You’ve practically kidnapped me, and—’

‘And now you’re worried that I might be carrying you off to my harem to have my wicked way with you?’ Drax mocked her, raising one dark eyebrow. ‘Do you really think that’s likely? Let’s be honest with one another—in today’s world, if I wanted to indulge myself sexually with a disposable partner I would hardly need to kidnap one, would I?’

Her eyes were the colour of clear warm honey, Drax noticed, her tawny hair as polished and silken as the coat of one of his cherished pure-bred Arab mares. He sensed within her the same pride that possessed his falcons—a pride he had the power and the skill to tame, so that they came to his hand as softly, as though they were doves.

Her skin was too pale, though, for the harshness of the desert’s midday sun, and she was paying for her folly in ignoring that fact now. Perspiration beaded her forehead and her head drooped on the slender stem of her neck. Drax guessed that in addition to her obvious apprehension at being bundled into his car she was probably also feeling slightly nauseous. She was certainly likely to be dehydrated.

He reached out and tapped open the centre console that separated their seats. ‘You will find a bottle of water in here. Take it and drink some,’ he advised her sternly.

Water! Until he had spoken she hadn’t realised how thirsty she was. Sadie’s tongue-tip flicked against the dry saltiness of her lips as she reached eagerly for the unopened bottle.

Removing the top, she lifted the bottle towards her mouth.

The traffic was heavy enough for Drax to slow down and watch her. Her lips were soft and full, and as she closed them around the head of the bottle she also closed her eyes, as though she was giving herself over to a much longed-for sensory pleasure. She drank quickly, the muscles of her throat contracting and expanding as she swallowed and then drank more deeply.

The arousal Drax had felt earlier returned, thrusting past the barriers of civility and necessity. Was she aware of just how intensely erotic her actions were? Drax wondered, as between one breath and the next he became trapped within the sexual urgency and immediacy of the images his own brain was creating from her actions. Inside his head the soft fullness of her lips clung eagerly not to the water bottle but to his flesh, greedily absorbing its texture and taste. A pothole in the road caused water from the bottle to trickle from her lips down her throat and beyond, filling the hollow at its base and then spilling from it. If he were to lap its wetness from her skin now it would taste of her flesh and her heat, and the taste would feed his tongue to taste her more intimate wetness, to…

The sudden sharp blare of a car horn somewhere up ahead of them wrenched Drax out of his fantasy and back to reality. His heart was the thudding in slow, heavy erotic beats as it urged his body to greater arousal. He reached for his own bottle of water, and drank fiercely from it, as though to quench the heat of what he was experiencing.

The air-conditioning was on, so why was she suddenly feeling aware of a heat so physical that it not only seemed to be filling the interior of the car, it also felt as if it was actually touching her, pressing against her skin as though in a caress? Because she wanted to be caressed? By him? What kind of craziness had possessed her? Was this some kind of heat-induced lust that was a by-product of too much exposure to the sun? Sadie’s thoughts spilled dizzily on top of one another, blocking her rational exit from them. She fought valiantly against them, making herself focus on the scenery outside the car.

‘We’re almost in the city,’ she told Drax. ‘It’s kind of you to think about offering me a job, but really there’s no need. If you give me my passport and drop me off—’

‘You’re rejecting the job without knowing what it is?’

Sadie’s words had aroused two very different and competing instant reactions inside Drax—one, that he should stop the car, give her the passport and forget that he had ever seen her; the other that there was no way he was going to let her go.

He pressed harder on the accelerator, swinging the car into the outer lane that led away from the city.