A Sulta's Ransom

by White, Loreth Anne

  “Paige, I can’t…I can’t let you—”

  She reached slowly up, removed the cloth that covered his head, dropped it to the ground. She feathered his jaw with her fingers. His heart melted into his stomach, and his brain turned to molasses.

  “You belong here, Rafiq,” she whispered. “And I’m sorry for what I said.”

  “That I’m a coward?”

  “I don’t know why you left Hamn, but I think I’ve come to know enough about you to believe that it had to be for a damn good reason.”

  Rafiq closed his eyes, the sweet pain almost too much. There was no disapproval in her voice. No explanation needed from him. Just her understanding. His chest ached sharply. In some way, it felt as if she’d just given him absolution—the absolution he hadn’t even known he’d needed so badly—absolution that had to come from the lips of a woman like her.

  A woman who could compare to his Nahla.

  In that instant, he wanted Paige Sterling more than anything in the world. He couldn’t even begin to find the words. And here, in her understanding, in her acceptance of him, she was pointing out they had two different roads to travel. And he knew damn well that they’d never meet again if he let her go now. He wasn’t prepared to do this. This was not the best way.

  “Rafiq.” Her voice grew grave, insistent. She really meant it. This woman had embraced his mission. She’d made it hers. And she’d set him free to settle his past. It was an overwhelming gift.

  “Tell Sauvage I’m coming alone. Have his men meet me. Tell him I must do this, because it’s my fault—”

  He cupped her face tightly in his hands. “No, Paige! This is not your fault!” He drew her body up to his, brought his lips close to her mouth, his hunger for her all-consuming. “You were used, Paige. Like Nahla.”

  She went dead still, and her eyes widened.

  Rafiq threw his head back to the sky and swore softly. He hadn’t meant to say that. Not now.

  “Was that her name?” Paige asked.

  He inhaled sharply, leveled his head, looked into her eyes. “Yes, that was her name.”

  “Tell me, Rafiq,” she said gently, touching his face. “Tell me what happened all those years ago.”

  22:07 Charlie, Venturion penthouse, Manhattan, Friday, October 3

  He consulted his watch. It was just after 3 p.m. in New York, and still no word from his man in Hamn. He paced restlessly along the length of the floor-to-ceiling windows, the lights of the city blurred by rivulets of autumn rain.

  He was in the dark, in more ways than one.

  His hit man had made it clear he never wanted to be bothered while on a job. Ever. He’d once said you can’t make a cat stalk faster once he has sighted his prey. You just had to wait. The kill would happen when the time was right.

  But this time was different. His man did not know what was really at stake here, nor did he want him to know.

  He grabbed a bottle of mineral water, twisted the cap off. He was losing control. He had to find out what was happening in Hamn. He swigged the water, stared at his reflection against the black pane.

  He had to do it. He had to call his man.

  He set the bottle down and reached for the phone, the special phone. He punched in the number, moistened his lips, waited…and waited. And waited.

  No answer.

  His heart began to race. His mouth turned dry. He quickly punched the number in again.

  And somewhere in the sands of Hamn a phone rang under the stars.

  Chapter 11

  23:39 Charlie, Asir Mountains, Friday, October 3

  Rafiq took a deep breath. “Nahla was my fiancée.”

  Surprise rippled through Paige. “I…I had no idea you were going to be married.”

  “Not many people did know. She was not my family’s choice for queen. Nahla was from Na’jif, and she was not born of royalty. She was—” he looked up at the night sky “…from the wrong side of the tracks, I guess you’d say.” He stilled, turned to look right into her eyes. “Do you believe in love at first sight, Paige?”

  She studied the shadows of his face. “There’s scientific basis for lust at first sight.”

  Rafiq laughed. “Is it always like this with you, always about science and logic? Never about the heart?”

  She looked away. “I never really thought about it. I think I’m afraid, of being hurt, abandoned.” She shook her head. “I think I shut down when my parents vanished. I don’t know that I ever really opened up again.” She shivered in the cool breeze.

  He put his arm around her, drew her into his arms, and together they gazed out over the desert.

  “Was it like that with Nahla?” she asked after a while. “Love at first sight?”

  “It was. I was nineteen, and I knew the minute I saw her in the market that I wanted her to be my queen. My only queen.”

  Paige smiled. “That would have made you something of a revolutionary, given your country’s history of many wives for one sultan.”

  He shrugged. “I was what my father called forward-thinking. And he embraced that in me, even groomed it. It’s why he sent me to Europe, to study global politics, law and economics at the Sorbonne. You see, he knew Hamn, as one of the last absolute monarchies in the world, could not continue to remain isolated. Our only trade, our only outside contact was with the Soviet Union, and with the demise of the Soviet empire, he knew we would have to start looking outward. He had high hopes that I would be the one to lead the country into the future, into global alliance, trade and even democracy.”

  “Your father had that vision?”

  “Yes, but where there is visionary thinking, there is also resistance. Much of the old-school council opposed the concept of change. They believed instead in upholding radical fundamentalist beliefs and archaic Bedouin custom. And that meant there was also opposition to me. And the fact that I was in line to take the throne did not sit well with my half brother, Sadiq. He was older, aggressive and power-hungry, and he wanted the throne for himself. But he was only second in the line of succession, being the first son of my father’s second wife. I was the first son of the first wife.”

  “What happened with Nahla?”

  “My father grew ill, and his mind and will grew weak. He started caving to the opposition. He said if we wanted to keep doing things our way, we would have to go slowly, and I would have to appease the council by keeping my relationship with Nahla secret. He said my transition to sultan would be easier that way. But I knew that he hoped I would simply forget about my ‘infatuation’ while studying in Europe.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Of course not. Our love just grew stronger. We wrote daily…” He fell silent for a while; the only sound was a slight whistle of wind up in the turrets. “We had great dreams for the nation, Nahla and I.”

  Paige felt a strange twinge she could only interpret as a feeling of envy. To be so deeply loved by a man like Rafiq… “What attracted you to her, that day you first saw her?”

  He smiled in the dark, his teeth glinting in the faint moonlight. “It was her vitality, the passion that danced in her eyes. And she was beautiful, in a natural, totally unaffected way. She also had brains and a vision that I came to love.” He glanced down at her. “You see, Paige, Nahla, too, was a revolutionary thinker. She had organized a small rally that confronted me when I visited Na’jif. I had been traveling around Hamn, getting to know the cities and towns, my future subjects.” He laughed softly. “And she wanted to let the future king know that the country needed to change.”

  “She organized a protest?”

  “You have to remember, even back in those days, it was better for Hamnian women than now. They were not obligated to cover themselves, they could work outside the home, they could travel freely.”

  “And that’s when you fell in love with her, that day?”

  “Absolutely. I courted her before I left for Europe and during my vacations. And I got to know her deeply through her letters. And the more I dis
covered, the more I wanted her to be my wife.”

  Paige clutched her arms over her stomach, against the chill, against what she suspected was coming next. “Sadiq did something terrible, didn’t he?”

  “Sadiq went into action in my final year of university, at the time my father was given only months to live. Sadiq had been courting the radical opposition faction for some time in a bid to stir trouble with me, and when he found out about Nahla—” a tremor ran through his body “—he did the unthinkable. And he did it to destroy me in the most fundamental way.”

  “He…killed her?”

  Rafiq tensed. “Cold-blooded murder wouldn’t have allowed Sadiq to become sultan under terms of the rules of succession. He found another way to destroy me, worse than death.” He stepped away from Paige, spun round, his eyes glittering fiercely in the moonlight. “He went to Na’jif. He dragged Nahla out into the desert and forced himself on her.” His voice cracked. “He knew it would set in motion a chain of events that would destroy us both.”

  Paige felt sick. She knew that rape in Hamn had always been considered the woman’s fault. Nahla would have been doomed. It would have fallen on the men in her family to take her life, or the entire family would be shamed and forever shunned, destroyed both economically and socially.

  She raised her hand to touch his face, stopped. She didn’t know what to do, how to ease the pain of his memory. She wished she hadn’t asked.

  “What…what happened to her, Rafiq?”

  “She wanted to save her family from shame. And she knew her chances of marrying me would be over. Hamnian law would not let me rule if the council learned I planned to take a wife that had been…. She took her own life, Paige. The night before I returned to Na’jif with a ring in my pocket.”

  Rage began to shake in Paige’s limbs. “So no one outside her family circle, and you, ever found out about Sadiq raping her?”

  “No!” His eyes glistened. “My father was the only other person who knew. Nahla protected her family from shame and ruin. She protected my right to succession.”

  She placed her hand on his arm. “Oh, Rafiq, I…I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how you could have borne the pain…the hatred—”

  “I didn’t,” he said through clenched teeth. “I rode through the night to Al Qatar. I stormed into Sadiq’s palace quarters. I found the bastard in bed with another woman, one of his wives. I was blind with fury. I hauled him naked from his bed, and I started to slice his throat with my sword. I wanted it slow. I wanted to watch his eyes. I wanted to feed off his terror and feel his blood flow hot over my hands. But his wife screamed and fetched the palace guards, and they hauled me off him.”

  He was silent, trembling. He looked at her, deep. “I have never spoken of this. Ever. Not since that night.”

  “Is that when you fled the country?”

  He nodded. “I wanted nothing more to do with Hamn. I think what was worse than not being able to kill Sadiq that night was having my father tell me I must just forget about what happened. He said I must protect my right to succession. He said if the council found out about Nahla, they would challenge my right to rule, and Sadiq would become king. Even in his weak state, my father did not want that.”

  “And you told him to screw it.”

  He actually smiled. He touched her cheek. “You’re good for me, you know that, Paige? Talking about this…it feels a little easier. And yeah, I told the old man to go to hell. I told him I wanted nothing to do with a country, a culture or a family that could endorse what Sadiq had done. I wanted to excise the whole damn place from my soul. I told him I was leaving, that Sadiq could have the throne, that they could all get what they deserved. My father was furious. He said if I left, I would be as good as dead to Hamn. He said he would claim I had died in battle with Sadiq, and he would hold a funeral for me. Because if Hamnians ever learned I had walked out on him and the council, there would be civil war. I told him to go ahead, do what he liked.”

  He stood silent a while, looking out over the desert. “I never saw him again, Paige. He died the day after I left the country, and Sadiq took his throne.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “That part you know. I joined the French Foreign Legion, where a man can bury his past and earn a new identity.”

  “Perhaps, Rafiq, it was your destiny to do so.”

  His eyes flashed to hers. “Do you believe that ridiculous legend?”

  She smiled. “I’m a scientist, remember, I’m not supposed to believe in that stuff. But these things do grow out of kernels of truth. Perhaps there was a leak that you did not really die. And that you might come back. I don’t think you can ever underestimate the power of hope, Rafiq.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  She shivered against the chill again.

  He took her hand. “Come, let us go back down, out of the wind. You must try and sleep a while. There is still a long ride ahead.”

  He led her down the crumbling steps, stopped at the bottom. “Perhaps you are my destiny, Paige. This mission—you—forced me to look into my past again.” He looked into her eyes. “And I want you to know that I will not turn my back on Hamn. I just have to get you to safety first, and then I will come back.”

  “I—”

  “No.” He placed his fingers softly over her lips. “I have to do this first. Getting you out, saving a woman I care about, deeply, a woman that has been used by a system that is evil—that will be my absolution, Paige. My way of rectifying the past, of protecting the future. And you can no more deny me that than deny me my soul. It is who I am.”

  And in that moment, Paige knew she’d fallen in love with the sultan of Hamn.

  Paige couldn’t sleep. She lay beside Rafiq, listening to him breathe, replaying his story in her mind, her feelings for him deepening each time she did.

  A love like the one he had for Nahla…it went beyond sexual, beyond hormones and body chemistry. It was spiritual. Sublime. It was something she didn’t understand, and something a woman could only dream about. Especially sharing it with a man like Rafiq. He had such a magnetic physical presence, such male power. Her body went warm just thinking about it, about him.

  She had to ask. Her mind was not going to let this rest. She propped herself up on her elbow. “Rafiq…did…did you date many women after…I mean did you sleep with anyone after—”

  He laughed softly. “I slept with plenty of women after I left Hamn. I drank too. I did all the things I never did in my own country. It was my way of thumbing a nose at a culture and heritage that had betrayed me.”

  All the things he never did in his own country. “You…you mean you never made love with Nahla?”

  “I never slept with anyone while I was waiting for her, either.”

  Paige flopped back onto the blanket. That was love. “You were a virgin,” she said to the sky.

  He laughed again, low and smoky and wicked. And so very sexy that she flushed. She was embarrassed for even allowing her mind to go there. She started to sit up, suddenly needing a bit of distance from him, cool air on her face.

  But he held her down, and he traced his finger over her face, from her brow, along her cheekbone, down to her jaw, and around until it rested on her bottom lip. She felt her mouth open under the subtle pressure, and heat spilled into her belly.

  He moved his finger inside her lip, ran it slowly along the exquisitely sensitive seam. “I made up for it.” he said with a low whisper, teasing her with his smile. “I made love to every woman I felt like seducing.” He pushed her lip open a little further, and she tasted the salt of him on her tongue.

  He leaned over her, his lips close to hers, his eyes watching hers, and he moved his finger harder against her tongue. Paige felt her vision begin to swim.

  “I drank what I liked.” His voice curled through her, and in a part of her brain she registered that he’d switched to soft, guttural Arabic. “I indulged in every sensual pleasure that came my way, embraced it as a conn
oisseur. I found physical pleasure.” He traced her teeth with his finger, pushing a little harder, and she curled her tongue around him, teasing him back, testing, tasting, slipping, her breathing becoming ragged, her belly hot.

  “But not once, Paige, did I ever make love with my heart,” he whispered against her ear, his breath hot in the cool night air. “Never with my mind. Only with the physical senses. Existing in the now. And making love that way can be pure primal pleasure, Paige.” He leaned forward, whispered over her lips. “Have you ever tried it that way, Paige?” The blood drained completely from her head, and she began to throb down below.

  Then she registered what he’d just said. She struggled to find her mind, her will, to fight her way back. She pushed his hand away, sat up, hurt in her heart, tears in her eyes.

  “You can’t seduce me, Rafiq.” The huskiness in her voice betrayed her.

  He leaned forward, brushed her lips with is. “Is that a challenge, Doctor?” he murmured.

  “I…” She felt her insides melt. It was biological reaction. She knew exactly what was happening to her body, where the blood was making her hot and swollen, how her breasts were responding to his words, his touch…and her mind was fading, the world receding to this instant alone.

  “Because I know I can arouse you. I’ve seen it in your eyes, Doctor. I have felt it in your lips. The cerebral scientist is not beyond physical pleasure is she?”

  “No,” she whispered. Aching. Feeling more human and alive and more conflicted than she ever had in her life.

  Then suddenly she pushed back, her mind clearing. She did not want this. Not after hearing about Nahla, of the depth of love this man was capable of. She didn’t want to be just a physical sensation to him, like all the women he’d bedded over the last fifteen years. But what did she want. More? Emotion? True love? This was garbage. Stupid. It was a reaction to stress. For both of them.

  She jerked to her feet, her eyes filling with hot emotion. What in hell was this sultan-warrior doing to her?