Taken by the Sheikh

by Penny Jordan

  The pulse of her own need was hot and heavy, so fast and urgent that it was consuming her, making her arch up against his hand, small sounds of longing escaping from her lips until Drax took them from her in a possessive kiss. The tip of his tongue probed gently between her lips, almost mirroring the movement of his fingertip, stroking apart the swollen heaviness of the soft lips that protected her sex. First one and then the other parted in eager welcome, urging him to deeper intimacies. Whilst his tongue meshed and danced with hers, weaving a pattern of erotic enticement, his fingertip stroked the same message of promised delight along the wetness of her sex, until it reached the tight, excited centre of her pleasure.

  She cried out, a muffled, almost disbelieving sound, riding the rhythmic storm of her pleasure as it possessed her, leaving her quivering in awed delight in the shelter of his arms.

  ‘I want you, Drax,’ she whispered passionately to him. ‘I want you inside me. Now…’

  His arms tightened around her. She could feel the hard urgent throb of his erection, and her fingers reached eagerly for it so that she could stroke and caress him. But even though she could feel him growing ready beneath her touch, even though she moved invitingly against him, he did not cover her and take possession of her. Instead, he kissed her tenderly and told her softly, ‘Not yet. I love you, Sadie, and I want our first time to be a special pleasure. I want you to marry me, Sadie.’

  ‘Oh, Drax.’

  ‘Is that a yes?’ Drax demanded.

  When Sadie nodded her head, Drax kissed her tenderly.

  ‘You never told me your brother was your twin,’ she accused him as he released her, suddenly remembering that she hadn’t yet told him about seeing his brother. ‘At first when he walked into the garden I thought he was you. He looks like you. But I knew somehow that he wasn’t you—even before he spoke to me.’

  ‘Most people can’t tell us apart even when they’ve known us for a long time.’

  ‘Maybe it’s because I love you that I can?’ Sadie suggested softly. ‘Not that it wasn’t a bit of a shock to discover that you hadn’t warned me that there are two of you.’

  ‘Vere is so much a part of me that I tend to take it for granted, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re very close, then?’

  Sadie was guiltily aware that a part of her almost wished that Drax wasn’t a twin. Why? Was it because knowing he shared such a close relationship with someone else who had been there for him all his life somehow threatened her own relationship with him? How could that happen? She was looking for problems where none existed, she told herself firmly. After all, hadn’t Drax just told her that he loved her and wanted to marry her?

  ‘I don’t want to leave you, but I’d better go and find Vere.’

  ‘To tell him about us? Me?’ Why was she asking that? Did she feel some kind of need to test Drax?

  ‘To tell him about you, yes,’ Drax agreed. After all, it was the truth.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘VERE! I didn’t realise you were back until Sadie told me she’d seen you. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.’

  Drax embraced his twin warmly. Vere would be amused when he told him that he had taken his advice and that he was going to marry Sadie himself, Drax admitted. Not that he intended to tell him yet. For the first time in his life Drax was experiencing an emotional need to separate himself slightly from his twin and keep the discovery of his love for Sadie within the special circle of intimacy that belonged to those newly in love. Yes, part of him wanted to tell not just Vere but the whole kingdom how he felt—that he had found the woman with whom he wanted to send the rest of his life—but another part of him wanted to hold Sadie close while they got used to the sensation of the world rocking slightly beneath their feet, reaching for mutual support at the awesome mystery of loving and being loved. The truth was that a part of him was so jealously protective of Sadie and their love that at the moment he didn’t want to share its existence with anyone other than Sadie herself.

  Because he wasn’t entirely sure of that love? No. He was sure beyond any kind of doubt about his own feelings. But not Sadie’s? Sadie loved him. He knew that.

  ‘Drax, I was just about to come and find you. I want to talk to you about Sadie, and to offer you my apologies for not listening to you when you first spoke of her to me. She is charming. Quite irresistible. Delightfully so,’ Vere emphasised softly, with a gleam in his eyes that turned Drax’s stomach and filled him with an unfamiliar and furious jealousy.

  Vere found Sadie attractive? He wanted her? He hadn’t let himself think that this might happen, that Vere might want Sadie. But why not? Why shouldn’t Vere recognise how wonderful she was, just as he had done?

  ‘A beautiful young woman,’ Vere continued approvingly. ‘You were right to bring her to Dhurahn, and I was wrong. She is indeed perfect wife material.’

  Vere was smiling expectantly at him, but the last thing Drax felt like doing was smiling. Murderous probably came closer to describing his feelings, he admitted bitterly. But he couldn’t blame his twin for recognising, now that he had spoken with Sadie, just how lovable and wonderful she was, and acting to stake a claim on her. After all, he had been the one who had been stupid enough to suggest that Vere should marry her. And he was the one who had refused to accept his own reaction to her within minutes of having blackmailed her into getting into his car. He should have acted then, instead of being too proud to admit that he had fallen head over heels in love with her. He should have told Vere then. Not that he had found the perfect temporary wife for him, but that he had found the perfect, the only, permanent love for himself.

  ‘Drax?’

  He could hear the concern in his brother’s voice, as well as see it in his eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Drax said shortly. ‘As you say, she will make a perfect wife.’

  ‘You don’t look very pleased that I’m agreeing with you. I expected you to be more enthusiastic than this,’ Vere told him lightly.

  Was there a subtle warning in Vere’s words? A hint, perhaps, that he was on the verge of guessing his feelings? A reminder that Vere, as the elder twin, had the right to ‘first choice’? Drax could taste the acid bitterness of his own jealousy. He could feel its burning heat and its savaging pain. He had never imagined he could harbour such feelings toward his twin, nor had he imagined that there would come a day when his love for a woman would be so intense and so total that she and it would eclipse the bond he had with Vere.

  But he was, Drax reminded himself, a man of principle. It wasn’t, after all, Vere’s fault that he too had fallen for Sadie. They shared the same genes, so why shouldn’t they love the same woman? But only one of them could have her. And he had already promised her to Vere.

  Why didn’t he tell his twin that he had changed his mind? That he had already declared his feelings to Sadie and that she, in turn, returned them? an inner voice urged him. He was tempted to listen to it and take its advice—but how could he? He was a man of honour, a man of his word, and he had already given Vere a promise that he should have Sadie. How could he tell him that he had changed his mind and now wanted her for himself? How could he force his twin to suffer the dark bitterness of the emotions now gripping him?

  So he was prepared to sacrifice his love for his twin, and he was prepared to sacrifice Sadie as well, was he? After she had told him she loved him? Was that fair to her? No, Sadie might believe she loved him, but Vere was more worthy of her love, Drax decided bleakly. Vere’s were the shoulders that carried the greater burden of responsibility for their country. How could he, his twin, who knew him better than anyone else, see him denied the love and companionship of a woman as unique as Sadie? And she would learn to love Vere. How could she not do so? She would love him, and bear his children, and in time he—

  The savagery of the pain that gripped him almost made him cry out. These were thoughts of a future he could not and would not endure. Sadie was his! Less than an hour ago
he had only just stopped himself from making her his. If he hadn’t done so, right now within her there could have been the life force that would create their child…

  The darkest of thoughts stormed through his mind, both tempting and threatening his loyalty to his twin. The Drax who was so deeply in love with Sadie wanted to destroy anything and anyone who might come between them and take her from him. But the Drax who was Vere’s twin fought against the dark pull of those feelings.

  As he struggled to overcome them, Vere watched his twin with a small frown. Drax’s reaction wasn’t what he had been expecting.

  ‘Drax, if there’s a problem you want to discuss with me…?’ he began.

  This was Drax’s opportunity to confide in his twin, to ask him to step back and allow him to claim Sadie, but a mixture of loyalty and pride refused to let him do so. Even if Vere agreed that he should have Sadie, how could he ever be sure that Vere might not regret his decision and…and what? Blame him for taking Sadie from him? Try to steal her away from him? How could he ever feel the same way about his twin? How could there be that bond of absolute trust and loyalty between them there had always been? How could he trust himself not to betray it? Drax wondered bitterly. And yet that knowledge couldn’t make him regret what he and Sadie had already shared. He would carry the memory of that sweetness locked away within himself until his dying day.

  ‘No, there isn’t a problem. Why should there be?’ he asked Vere flatly.

  Drax was withholding something from him, Vere sensed, but his pride would not allow him to press the point and insist on an explanation. They were grown men now, after all, not children and each was entitled to his privacy.

  As always when he was hurt Vere retreated into the austere aloofness that Drax normally coaxed him out of.

  For once Drax was too caught up in his own feelings to notice Vere’s deliberate emotional withdrawal from him.

  ‘The Minister of State wishes to remind us that it is the anniversary of the creation of our country as an independent state next week.’ Vere’s clipped voice broke the heavy tension of their shared silence. ‘He has made arrangements for the normal celebratory visit to the Oasis of the Two Doves. I take it you will be going?’

  ‘Yes.’ Drax’s voice was as terse as Vere’s.

  ‘And Sadie will also be attending, I hope?’

  Just hearing his twin say Sadie’s name was like having a knife twisted in his gut.

  ‘If that is your wish,’ Drax replied woodenly.

  ‘Given the circumstances, it certainly seems appropriate to me that she should be there,’ Vere told him quietly. Couldn’t Drax see how much he was hurting him by shutting him out like this? Or was it that he simply didn’t care? Vere had never felt more isolated and alone. ‘Indeed, I don’t think it merely appropriate, I consider it very necessary that she should be a recognised part of the Royal party,’ he added.

  ‘If you say so,’ Drax agreed curtly.

  ‘I do.’

  They were almost on the verge of falling out—and over a woman. Not just a woman, Drax told himself, but the woman…his woman. The woman he must now give up. How was he going to bear it? And Sadie? What of her feelings? She had, after all, given him her love. She was sexually innocent, yearning to be loved and to give her love in return. If she could love him after the way he had initially behaved towards her then surely she could and would love Vere? Would she close her eyes in Vere’s bed and think of him? The torturous images that sprang to life fully formed inside his head shocked him. He must not allow them to take root there. He must put Vere first. He must!

  Sadie looked uncertainly towards Drax. It hadn’t been until the early hours of the morning that she had finally given up hoping that he would come to her and had gone to bed. As a consequence, even though it was now mid-morning, she was heavy-eyed with lack of sleep and the weight of a growing certainty that something was wrong.

  For a start, Drax was ignoring all her desperate attempts to make eye contact with him. For another thing, the only contact of any kind she had had with him since he had told her he loved her had been the arrival of the maid this morning to tell her that she was to be formally presented to Vere and that she should dress accordingly. Nothing else. Not a word nor a gesture. Nothing.

  She couldn’t remember a time when she had felt more emotionally insecure and abandoned, Sadie admitted. She actually felt worse than she had done when her parents had divorced. In the space of a few hours she had gone from feeling so high on happiness and love that she couldn’t imagine her life being any more perfect, to feeling so insecure and anxious that it was hard for her to believe that Drax had actually told her he loved her. Even worse, she was beginning to find it all too easy to imagine that Drax, having almost taken her to bed, was now regretting whatever it was that had driven him to desire her. If he did love her, as he had claimed, then as far as she was concerned there was no way he wouldn’t have made at least some effort to make sure that she knew he meant what he had said. If he did love her then surely he would want to let her know how much he longed to be with her instead of virtually ignoring her?

  Was he behaving like this because he was afraid that his twin might not approve of their relationship? Sadie frowned. She didn’t want to think of the man she loved being someone who needed to have the approval of someone else to validate his love. However, she was trying to be logical, and to accept that Drax and Vere were twins and that twins had a special relationship. Which was why she was here right now, wearing the cream suit Drax had told her he wanted her to wear for her first meeting with his brother. She looked longingly towards Drax, but he still wasn’t looking at her. Deliberately?

  His twin, on the other hand, was most certainly looking at her. Studying her silently, his expression withdrawn and austere.

  Being treated like this by Drax wasn’t just humiliating, it was also unbearably painful. When he had left her the previous day she had been on an emotional and sexual high. Then it had been easy to believe that he had meant what he’d said—that he did indeed love her. After all, she loved him. She had even got as far as wondering about names for their first baby before she had begun to feel the chill wind of her own anxiety. Then she had sat in her room, counting the minutes, aching to see Drax and to be reassured that she had not simply imagined what had happened between them. But Drax hadn’t appeared. And so eventually she had gone to sleep, hugging to herself the memory of the precious time they had shared instead of hugging Drax.

  Now, of course, it was abundantly plain to her what that happened. Drax had got carried away by sexual desire and had said things to her that he had later regretted. The distance he was deliberately creating between them now was his way of making sure that she realised how he felt—or rather how he didn’t feel. Mingling with her pain was anger. Was he keeping his back towards her because he was afraid that if he looked at her she would behave like a complete fool and fling herself into his arms, begging him to tell her he loved her? Well, she might feel like doing that, but she had some pride. Certainly enough to make it plain to him that he had nothing to fear from her.

  Determinedly Sadie kept her own back towards him as she answered the questions Vere was asking her. He was so different from Drax. Being with him, looking at him, listening to him and talking with him, did not cause her heart to pound with the force of the love-induced adrenalin surging through her veins. There was no sense of breathless awareness, no stomach-clenching tension, no fevered and tormented longing to rip off Vere’s clothes and greedily satisfy her need to possess him. Vere was just a very pleasant man, with a kind smile, who looked like the man she loved. There was no chemistry between them—nothing other than a curiosity about him because he was Drax’s twin.

  She already knew without having to turn round that Drax had moved and was standing closer to her. She could feel the heat coming off her body and she yearned to step back into him, to turn around so that she could touch him, kiss him. The pain of not being able to was so savage that it
contorted her body and stopped her breath.

  Drax took a step towards Sadie. She wasn’t looking at him. She was too busy smiling at Vere. He knew that she had looked at him when she had been escorted into the Presence Chamber, but he had not allowed himself to look back at her, knowing that if he did so he would not be able to stop himself from claiming her. He couldn’t bear to give her up, but at the same time he couldn’t allow himself to break his vow to give his first and total loyalty to his twin. The fault was his own. If he had not made that boast to Vere that he would find him a wife, if he had not offered Sadie to Vere…But he had done those things, and it was not Vere’s fault that he too had recognised how special she was. Just listening to the soft warmth in her voice as she answered Vere’s questions filled Drax with such a surge of murderous jealousy that when it subsided he felt physically sick with self-disgust. He loved her. How could he endure not just a future without her but seeing her happy with his twin?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘SO THIS oasis is where the agreement was signed?’ Sadie was forcing herself to smile and appear lighthearted as she waited for Vere to answer her.

  It had been Hakeem who had come to her, two days after Drax had told her he loved her and then turned his back on her, to tell her excitedly that she was to join the Royal party at the traditional annual celebration to mark the original signing of the agreement when Dhurahn had become part of the newly formed union of independent Arab states at the Oasis of the Two Doves, on the edge of the desert’s empty quarter.