by Chloe Cox
The Sheikh was silent. His face had become very stiff. God, she must be a mess. She was possessed by a stinging need to try explain, if only so she didn’t sound completely and utterly nuts, and yet was sure that it was an impossible task. There was just no getting around it, and yet she had to try.
“It’s not just Robert, ok? This stuff…I mean, my dad left, too, there’s a lot of baggage around that. Oh God, I’m sorry,” Stella said, wiping at her face, and wishing she could take her hand back from the Sheikh. Why did he hold on to it? “You can’t possibly want to hear this. I don’t know what you saw in me, back at Volare. I’m sure this isn’t what you had in mind for the weekend, is it?” She laughed in spite of herself. “I just hadn’t felt a man look at me like that in so long. It was like they could all sense that I was…broken.”
Funny that the Sheikh, the man who saw through her more than anyone else ever had, couldn’t tell how broken she was. Life is just full of hilarious little jokes, she thought.
“Is that why you worked with the elderly?” the Sheikh asked. “With people who had no one to care for them? Who were alone, or had been left?”
Wow. She hadn’t expected anyone to figure that one out. She had only just figured it out herself.
“That hits a little close to home, yes,” she whispered.
“Why did you stop?”
“Because I got the position through Robert. A college buddy of his ran the charity, and after the divorce…he decided it was awkward.”
She looked back over at Robert and his date, only to see her ex give his new fiancée a piece of his food. It was like picking a scab, to watch them together. The truth was that she didn’t miss Robert, not anymore. She just felt the wound he’d left her with.
“Stella.” The Sheikh’s voice cracked the air, and the impact of it forced Stella out of her miserable head and back into the moment. Startled, she trained her eyes on him.
He continued, “I guessed that there was something to make you feel that way about yourself. Rather, it was clear to me that you did feel such things, but the details of what had brought you to that point were unknown to me. Now they are. Luckily,” he said, smiling devilishly, “I am prepared to deal with such inappropriate feelings.”
“What?” She had never been so confused.
“You will no longer think like this,” he said. “You will no longer feel these things about yourself, because you will learn to see yourself as you truly are. And you will begin tonight.”
Stella’s stomach did a few backflips. His voice had penetrated right to her core, turning her on, despite her emotions.
“I will?” she said.
The Sheikh reached into his coat pocket and placed a fine black box on the table. He still wouldn’t let go of her hand. Instead, his thumb traced maddening patterns on her skin, reminding her of the power he had over her body. That old tunnel vision was returning, and it was becoming difficult to think about anything but the Sheikh. And his hands.
“Take that to the bathroom,” he said. “Enter one of the stalls. Open the box. And follow the instructions inside.”
CHAPTER 21
The Sheikh’s voice still echoed in Stella’s mind as she walked unsteadily to the ladies’ room. He had used that tone again, that Dominant tone, and all of her obsessive, destructive thoughts had slipped right out of her head, leaving only room for sensation. She was riding the high of anticipation now, thinking about what it had felt like to be over his knee, and to be under his command.
She felt his eyes on her the whole way. It made her feel sexy, all over again. It made her feel wanted, even after she’d told him what had happened. It made her remember what he’d done to her just that day. The spanking, the locker room…
It was exactly what she needed. She didn’t even realized she’d nearly walked by Robert and his fiancée until she was almost at the ladies’ room, and then she didn’t care. She’d shown Sheikh Bashir her greatest vulnerability, her greatest wound, and he’d actually helped to make it better.
Stella felt freaking invincible.
She walked into the ladies’ room with her head held high and her hips rolling and the feeling that she was the sexiest woman in the building. Even the other women in the powder room, gathered around the mirrors like flocks of preening birds, all expensively dressed and delicately made up, even they noticed it. Heads turned to watch a proud, invulnerable Stella walk confidently past the wall of mirrors, down the long hall of doors leading to individual bathrooms, to the very last room at the end.
Stella closed the door behind her, and locked it. Then she took a deep breath, and opened the box.
Inside there was a note, resting atop…a toy.
Well, it wasn’t a toy, exactly, except in the very adult sense of the word. That is a vibrator, Stella thought. That is definitely a vibrator attached to a harness.
She almost didn’t even need to read the note. She did anyway, because Sheikh Bashir had told her to. And it was very, very clear: put on the harness under your dress, insert the toy, and return to the dinner table.
Return to the dinner table!
They were at a restaurant! There were other people everywhere. And yet the idea excited her immensely, just knowing she’d be doing it for him. That he would know what she had done, and no one else would. That she would constantly feel so full of him, of his will, reminded that she belonged to him throughout the whole meal…
Stella inspected the vibrator more closely. It had one of those little pieces that jutted up to make contact with the clit, but, more importantly, it had a battery compartment. Stella could only hope she wouldn’t accidentally set it off in the middle of dinner.
It wasn’t hard to insert the toy. She was already wet just thinking about the Sheikh, and what he’d asked her to do. The harness fit neatly, leaving no lines under her dress, pressing the vibrator snugly against her clit.
Oh my.
This was going to be interesting. She felt pleasantly full, and every movement gave her a little thrill as the toy rubbed against her clit.
Walking back to the Sheikh was very fun, indeed. Each step sent little tendrils of pleasure shooting out from her clit to the rest of her body, ratcheting up the tension coiled around her pussy. She had one brief moment of panic, walking in the crowded, classy dining room, when she wondered if everyone could somehow tell by the way she walked. She stopped herself, and pulled it together. Even if she did walk funny, no one would guess “secret Domination sex toy” as the reason why. They’d just think she had uncomfortable shoes.
She was sure she was blushing, though. And she damned well knew she was smiling.
Sheikh Bashir looked her over with obvious satisfaction as she returned to the table. In her absence, a waiter had brought wine, and Stella gratefully took a big, long drink.
“Are you perhaps nervous?” the Sheikh asked, a twinkle in his eye.
“No,” she lied. She shifted her weight, and the toy pressed hard against her g-spot. Stella sucked in a breath hard.
“It is specially designed,” the Sheikh said lightly. He seemed not at all concerned with her growing embarrassment. If this got much worse, she realized, everyone really would know.
“Do you remember, Stella, what I told you when I first evaluated you?”
But Stella was distracted. She had, in a moment of weakness, glanced back to where Robert had been sitting, at their old table. It was vacant now. There was no trace of Robert or his date. Had she really been gone that long?
“Stella!”
Oops.
“Yes, Sheikh,” she said.
“I asked you a question.”
Stella thought hard—as hard as she could with the toy pressing against all her most sensitive nerves. “You said a lot of things,” she said meekly.
He smiled indulgently. It made her nervous. Like he was planning something.
“Yes, I did,” he said. “One of those things was that I would train you to come at my command. Do you remember that?”
Oh, God…
“Stella.”
“Yes, Sheikh, I remember.”
The waiter arrived, bearing plates of carefully deconstructed traditional tapas, whatever that meant. The waiter was older, a career server who likely made good money at a place like this, not an actor or something who was only biding his time. He was a professional. Which is probably why he did not comment when Stella suddenly sat bolt upright, gripping the edge of the table with both hands.
The toy had begun to vibrate.
The Sheikh was smiling.
Sheikh Bashir thanked the waiter, and, while the toy pulsed inside Stella, he grinned and briefly raised his hand to show that he held a tiny remote control. He moved his thumb, there was an audible click, and the vibrations intensified.
Stella squirmed, then quickly decided that made it significantly worse. She looked at the Sheikh helplessly.
“Please,” she said. “Not here.”
“Exactly here.”
He clicked the remote. Now the part pushed up against her clit started to hum, and Stella closed her eyes.
“Oh, no, Stella, you don’t get to close your eyes,” he said. Reluctantly, she opened them. “If you close your eyes again, believe me when I say your punishment will be severe. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but—”
Stella broke off and bowed her head, unable to finish her sentence without moaning.
“Look up, Stella. I need you to look around you. Look at all the men looking at you.”
Stella pressed her lips together, afraid to make any sound at all, looking at the Sheikh imploringly. She couldn’t imagine this really happening. She felt like she’d been swept away on a fast river, hurtling dangerously toward a roaring waterfall, and she was entirely powerless to stop it. She could feel the orgasm building in her pelvis, like a massive storm cloud gathering electric charge, waiting to unleash a violent torrent. Except she was in a restaurant.
The Sheikh had no pity. He gestured for her to look around. Stella was afraid of what he might do if she refused, so she steeled herself for the embarrassment, and looked up.
The first man she made eye contact with turned around, sure she was looking at someone else. The second made no attempt to disguise his hunger for her; he’d been watching her longer than she’d been watching him. The third looked at her with a sort of fascination, as though he couldn’t quite figure out why he couldn’t look away.
The heat was spreading over Stella’s skin now, and she had begun to sweat. She looked back at the Sheikh, desperate.
“You can come silently, Stella,” the Sheikh said. “I know you can, for me.”
And he clicked the remote one more time.
“Come,” he ordered.
Stella groaned, and her fingers dug into the tablecloth, rattling all their fine silverware, nearly toppling her wine glass. The first contraction seemed to last forever, expanding slowly outward like ripples in a pool. By the time it was over, she was panting, weak, barely able to sit up.
“Look around again, Stella,” Sheikh Bashir said. “Do you see how every man in this place wants you? Some of the women, too. Every single one of them wants you. They are all jealous that I’m the one who gets to take you home,” he said, smiling. “As they should be.”
The incredible thing was, Stella believed him.
He made her come on command three more times before dinner was over, and with every instance, she began to understand just what his purpose was: to show her how desirable she was. To show her how wrong she’d been. To show her that she could stop thinking of herself as broken and unlovable.
Maybe even to show her that she was worth fighting for. As the Sheikh rose to give her his arm, Stella admitted to him how much easier the night had been for her once Robert left the restaurant. She didn’t like that it was true, but she didn’t feel right hiding it from Sheikh Bashir. She didn’t exactly expect him to smile about it.
But he did.
The Sheikh said, “He was removed. Tonight was the last night that he will be granted admittance to this place.”
“You can do that?” she’d asked, eyebrow raised.
“You can when you’ve bought the restaurant, yes.”
Um, what? That seemed like kind of a big deal, and though Sheikh Bashir seemed completely unruffled, he also didn’t quite meet her eyes as he said it. Stella knew better than to quiz him on it, but…well…he’d bought the freaking restaurant.
Which was maybe why, by the time they left, Stella couldn’t help but wonder if even the Sheikh could love her.
Is this the night? she wondered as the Sheikh escorted her to the car. She was still weak, still needed to lean on him heavily, and yet she hadn’t been this giddy about a sexual encounter in…ever, actually. She hadn’t even felt like this when she’d lost her virginity. In just a few days, actual sex with Sheikh Bashir had become…well, she didn’t want to build it up too much, but it was true that she hadn’t ever been with someone who she’d been so emotionally intimate with. Even with Robert, she realized, snuggled against the Sheikh’s chest in the car, she hadn’t ever really let him fully in. There had always been a protective wall.
The Sheikh had knocked down that wall without any apparent effort. He’d just bulldozed on through. And still she felt completely safe.
But when they finally arrived at Stella’s now familiar suite, he didn’t follow her in.
She didn’t know what to say. She stood there, the door open, yet remaining a symbol a distance between them she hadn’t known was there, and tried to think of how to get him inside.
“Good night, Stella,” Sheikh Bashir said quietly.
“Wait!”
He cocked an eyebrow, and she remembered her tone. “Haven’t I…” she said, already hating how pathetic she sounded, “haven’t I done enough? Haven’t I submitted completely? I promise you…I’ll beg.”
Stella had never been so shocked by anything she’d ever said, and yet it was one hundred percent true.
He stood tall, filling her temporary doorway, and reached out to cup the side of her face in his large hand. He slipped his fingers into her hair, and grabbed it, just enough to jerk her head back slightly, and he captured her mouth with his. Her body flared at the suggestion of force, even after her exhausting night, and she whimpered when he pulled away.
“Almost, Stella,” he said, a smile on his sensuous lips. “We’ll see how you do tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 22
Bashir was certain that he was losing his mind.
Where before he had only had an intellectual sympathy for addicts or the mentally ill, or anyone with an affliction that stole their will and left them at the mercy of some force outside of themselves, now he had an almost bitter empathy. No, not entirely bitter—he could never fully regard it as a negative thing. But he understood. He understood the passion, the near physical affliction, the build-up of a rudderless energy that threatened to consume all if it did not find release.
For him, Stella held the key to that release.
Obviously, he was already a madman. To walk away from her the previous night… He was actually still in awe that he had been able to do it. With every passing intimacy between them, every laugh, every erotic moment, every shared wound, his desire for her had grown. After her confession—and subsequent performance—at Rococo, it was now almost an intolerable, continuous torture. It reminded him a great deal of when he was a boy, when he had been caught spying on the serving women getting dressed, and his nanny had boxed his ears. He’d heard a high-pitched ringing for weeks. Nothing would soothe him.
Stella was worse.
The thought of having her, the way he knew he could, watching her voluntarily laying down every last defense, giving up each sensation, every thought, every scrap of will, to him…
He would settle for nothing less now, after all of this. That is, if he could hold out without going completely insane. Just the idea of what he’d planned for her made him instantly rock hard
. Not so much execution of it as what it would represent for her, and, hopefully, for him.
It all made him feel slightly abuzz, on the edge of chaos, as though his skin were the only thing preventing the crazed, almost violent desire that swirled within him from leaking out into the world and causing havoc. Well, almost prevented it: he had bought a restaurant. Not a bad investment, actually, given the establishment, but not a particularly good one, either. It didn’t matter; money was immaterial.
Of course, he hadn’t bought it as an investment. He’d bought it, through his lawyer, on impulse—on impulse! Him!—at a cash price the owner chef simply could not refuse, just to take a jab at Stella’s ex-husband. Just to preserve the Rococo restaurant as a place that Stella Spencer could still call her own, a place she could enjoy whenever she felt like it.
No, he obviously had gone insane some time ago, and was only just now realizing it.
And what if she took the money he had promised and decided never to see him again? Wasn’t that the whole point of paying her, that she would not feel obligated? Or, he supposed, that her obligations would be very clear, very specific, very well delineated, and that he would know her motivations for a fact, and not have to rely solely on his training, on intuition, on the inconstancy of emotion? Didn’t he want her to take the money and go back to her life, so that he might go back to his?
Only a few days ago, that had seemed a very rational plan. Now it was a complication that clouded the situation rather than clarified it. Bashir could not help but smile at the irony. What was the old saying? ‘When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.’
Indeed.
He wanted to soothe every one of her wounds with the ways he wanted to care for her. He wanted to prove to her that she was not just worthy of adulation and love, but that she was probably more worthy than anyone else he had ever met. He couldn’t necessarily have provided a cogent argument to this effect; it was just something he knew in his bones.