The Sheikh's Convenient Bride

by Sandra Marton

  His bride was clinging to him because he was the only familiar thing in her life, and he could only think how incredible it felt to hold her…

  And how badly he wanted her.

  So badly that he was going to give himself away, if he let her lean against him much longer.

  Carefully he clasped her shoulders and tried to put some space between them. Megan shook her head and burrowed closer.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured. “You’re safe. I’ll always keep you safe.”

  She sighed. He felt the flutter of her breath on his skin. Caz swallowed hard and reminded himself that this was all about offering comfort.

  “Shall I get you a drink of water? Some coffee? I can slip downstairs…”

  “Coffee’s the last thing I need right now,” she said with a little laugh. “Please, just—just stay with me.”

  Megan slipped her arms around his waist. Her cheek pressed against his chest. God, what was she doing to him? He had to think about something else. The night. Tomorrow’s weather. Would it be okay? The helicopter…

  “Caz?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She was sorry? He held her away from him again, just enough so he could see her face. “For what?”

  “Everything. I screwed up your meeting.”

  He smiled. “Livened it up, you mean.”

  “And I’ve put you at odds with Ahmet.”

  “I’ve always been at odds with Ahmet.”

  “Yes, but now…Is he angry? Because you and I are…because he thinks you and I are…”

  “On the contrary.” His smile tilted. “He’s gained respect for me. I’ve got the girl he wanted.”

  That put an answering smile on her face.

  “Better?” he said softly.

  She nodded.

  “No more tears, then.” He plucked a silk scarf from the back of a chair and gently blotted her eyes. “A woman shouldn’t weep on her wedding night.”

  “Actually…” She gave a little laugh. “Actually that’s the reason I was crying.”

  “I understand. When you agreed to come to Suliyam with me, you never imagined you’d end up being forced into marriage with a stranger.”

  “You’re not a stranger,” Megan said quickly. “In some ways, I feel as if I’ve known you all my life.” She took a breath. “I was crying because I was thinking back a few weeks. One of my brothers just got married and the ceremony was, you know, filled with emotion.”

  “Ah. I understand. Our ceremony had to be an alien—”

  She silenced him by putting her fingers lightly across his mouth. “You don’t understand.” Her voice softened. “It was a wonderful ceremony.”

  Caz’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah?”

  She smiled. A minute ago, he’d sounded like the exalted sheikh of Suliyam. Now, he sounded like a guy she might have met in the States.

  “Yeah,” she said gently. “The words that sounded so solemn, the bells, the dancers, and then, at the end, all those people sending up that wild cry…”

  “They were happy for us.”

  “I know.” Her smile dimmed. “And that’s why I was crying, you know? I thought of how happy everyone was at my brother’s wedding, and how happy they were at our—at the wedding today, and I felt, I don’t know, guilty, maybe, because what happened wasn’t real and…”

  “You’re a good and generous woman, Megan O’Connell.”

  “I’m a woman who’s complicated your life.”

  Caz tilted her face up to his. “You’ve enriched it,” he said softly. “And you honored me enormously by becoming my bride.”

  “I am, aren’t I?” Megan whispered. She could feel her blood humming. “Your bride, Caz. Your bride for this night.”

  They stared at each other. The sounds of the night, the sigh of the wind…everything faded away. There was nothing on the earth but this room. This moment.

  “Caz?” Her voice flowed over him like liquid silver. “Do you want me?”

  “Want you?” He made a sound that was half groan, half laugh. “Kalila, you’re all I think about. You fill my mind, my soul, my heart.”

  “Then take me, Caz. Make me your wife tonight.”

  He looked down into her face and thought of a dozen reasons to kiss her and put her from him, to walk out of here and into the chill mountain night. He was a king. A man of honor.

  But he’d never wanted a woman as he wanted her. And on this one night, he would be a man, not a king.

  A man who would make love to his bride.

  He gathered her into his arms and took her mouth with his. She moaned his name and wound her arms around his neck.

  “I want to taste you, kalila. Every part of you.”

  Oh yes. It was what she wanted, too. All the arguing. The battle of words and will. Had it all been pretence to hide the truth? She sighed as Caz kissed her mouth, bent and nipped at her throat, brushed his lips over the straining silk that covered her breasts.

  How could she have gone all these days without his touch? She’d wanted him from the beginning, wanted him, wanted him, wanted him…

  “Turn your back to me,” he whispered.

  She did, and he pushed her hair aside and pressed his mouth to the nape of her neck. Her eyes closed; her head fell back as she felt his fingers at the tiny buttons that went from the top of her gown to her waist. He undid them one by one, turning it into an exquisite torment, pausing to kiss each bit of skin as he revealed it.

  When he was done, she was trembling.

  She began to turn toward him but he stopped her, slid the gown down her arms, lowered his mouth to the delicate juncture of shoulder and throat and pressed his lips there.

  She moaned. Whispered his name. Reached back, took his hands, cupped them over her breasts.

  Caz groaned as he felt the luscious weight of her breasts in his palms. Slowly he ran his fingers over her nipples, felt them bud and rise at his touch, heard her soft cry of pleasure. She leaned back against him, moved against him, and he slid his hand down to her belly, to the softness between her thighs, pressed her, hard, against his straining erection.

  “Megan,” he said, his voice low and rough. “Megan…”

  She swung around in his arms and he slipped the gown from her shoulders, watching as it pooled at her feet. The gown had been Suliyam; what she wore beneath it was pure, unadulterated twenty-first century seductress, bra and panties of sheerest ivory lace.

  “God,” he whispered, “you’re so beautiful.”

  Eyes locked to his face, she reached behind her. Undid the bra. Let it fall to her feet.

  He felt every muscle in his body tighten with desire. Beautiful? No. The word wasn’t enough. His bride was like a dream. Her face. Her eyes. Her mouth.

  Her breasts.

  They were small. High. The nipples were the deep pink of summer roses, already budding in anticipation of his kiss. A kiss he gave hungrily, bending to her, cupping her breasts, bringing them to his lips so he could lave the sweet, taut centers with his tongue and suck them deep into his mouth.

  She sobbed out his name as he scooped her into his arms, carried her to the bed and laid her on it.

  “Now,” she whispered. Caz, please. I want you now.”

  She reached for him, ran her hands over his muscled shoulders, the soft hair on his chest, luxuriated in the race of his heart under her palms.

  “Please,” she begged, but when she touched his belt he caught her hands in one of his, raised them high above her head.

  “Not yet,” he said, and watched her face as he cupped his palm over the bit of lace between her thighs.

  Her cry tore through the night, and when he slid his fingers under her panties and found the hot, passion-dampened flower of her womanhood, she exploded beneath him.

  Megan sobbed his name; tears glittered in her eyes but now he knew they were tears of joy. They were for him, for what he made her feel, for what was happening to them both. The realization drove him
higher than the mountains, the moon, the stars. He pulled down the scrap of lace, tore off his clothes and knelt between her thighs.

  “Megan. Look at me.”

  Her eyes opened and filled with him.

  “Who do you belong to?” His voice was a hoarse rasp; he barely recognized it as his own. “Who?” he demanded, and she lifted her arms to him.

  “You,” she whispered. “Only to you, Qasim.”

  He parted her thighs, touched the engorged tip of his penis to the soft portal that guarded the entrance to her body, her heart, her soul. She cried out and arched toward him, and Caz entered her.

  God, oh God.

  She was hot and wet and tight. So tight.

  He gritted his teeth, forced himself to hold still. He didn’t want to hurt her, he didn’t want to hurt her, he didn’t want to hurt her…

  She sighed his name.

  “Qasim. Qasim, my husband.”

  And he was lost.

  Groaning, he thrust into her. Filled her. Slid his hands under her bottom and lifted her to him.

  “Caz?” she said, her voice a breathless whisper. “Caz. I never knew…”

  He drove forward until he was deep inside her. Drove again and again while she sobbed his name and rose to him. And when her body convulsed around him, when she screamed and bit his shoulder, Caz shuddered with a pleasure so intense he thought it might kill him.

  But death would have been a small price to pay for what he felt as he fell over the edge of the universe with Megan, with his bride, in his arms.

  The moon dipped behind the mountains and still they lay tangled in each other’s arms, insulated from reality in their silk cocoon.

  At last, Megan stirred. Caz gave her a long, tender kiss and rolled off her. She made a little sound of protest and he kissed her again as he drew her against him. She sighed, settled her head against his chest and laid her arm over his belly.

  “I thought you were going to get up,” she murmured.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Um.”

  He smiled. “That’s it?” he said, nuzzling a curl back from her throat and leaving a kiss in its place. “Just, ‘um?’”

  He felt her lips curve against his damp skin. “Were you hoping for applause, your highness?”

  Caz laughed softly. “Well, if you’re asking about wedding night traditions…”

  Megan nipped at his shoulder. “Don’t push your luck, my lord. You’ll have to make do with ‘um.’” She sighed, stroked her hand over his skin. “That was—”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Yes.”

  “Amazing.”

  She smiled. “That, too.”

  Caz propped his head on his hand, stroked a tangle of soft curls from her face and his smile faded.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean—’

  “I know what you mean. And I’m fine.”

  “You were so tight…I was afraid I’d hurt you.”

  “No.” She caught the tip of his finger between her teeth as he stroked it over her mouth. “I just…I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.”

  Why should that make him feel so happy? “Are the men in California blind?”

  She laughed softly. “It’s not them, it’s me. I’ve been so focused on my career. You know. College. Grad school. Scrambling up the corporate ladder—”

  “Difficult, I’d bet, when some men are busy sawing through the rungs.” Megan’s surprise showed on her face, and Caz tapped the tip of her nose with his finger. “Now who’s being a chauvinist, kalila? Don’t you think I know that it’s tough being a woman in a man’s world?”

  “Do you, really? I thought—I mean, from the things you said that day in my office…”

  “What I said was the truth. Most of my countrymen aren’t prepared to see women as equals. Not the ones who live in—what do you call it? The sticks. Not them.”

  “And you want to change that.”

  “Yes. Absolutely. I have changed it, at least a little, in Suliyam City.”

  “But not in your palace.”

  “There, too.”

  “No way.” Megan sat up and pulled the blankets to her chin. “You put me in the harem, remember? There’s nothing equal about that.”

  “That was tradition.”

  “And that’s a clever way of saying one thing and doing another.”

  “Hey.” Caz grabbed her and tugged her down next to him. “Are we going to quarrel?”

  Were they? She looked at him and the little sparks of anger that had come to life died away. How could she quarrel with this man now? She was in his arms again, looking up at him, seeing her reflection in his eyes…

  And feeling an emotion so overwhelming it terrified her.

  “No,” she said, on a deep sigh. Smiling, she reached up and pushed his dark hair back from his forehead. “No, we’re not going to quarrel.”

  Caz smiled. “Good. Because there’s nothing to quarrel about, kalila. The tradition I referred to has to do with the king bringing an unmarried woman to live under his roof.”

  “Not good, huh?”

  “Not good if that same king is about to set off on a tough selling job to a difficult audience.”

  Megan nodded. “Roads. Schools. Hospitals. All badly needed, and all requiring an infusion of capital.”

  “Foreign capital, and even the thought of foreign investors having a stake in Suliyam’s resources makes some of the old tribal chieftains shudder.”

  “So, how will you manage?”

  “I’ll show them facts and figures. They’re tough, but they’re reasonable.”

  “Unlike Ahmet.”

  “Very unlike Ahmet.” Caz smiled. “Amazing.”

  “What?”

  “That in all the years I’ve dealt with financial advisors, accountants and auditors, I never once ended up in bed with one of them.”

  She laughed. “Not so amazing, considering your last financial wizard was a sixty-year-old man.”

  Caz tried to look horrified. “You checked up on me?”

  “Of course,” Megan said primly. “Would T, B and M take on a client without knowing something more about him than you can read in the gossip columns?”

  “Damn those columns.” Caz rolled onto his belly, bent over her and kissed her mouth. “Half what they print are lies and the other half are exaggerations.”

  ‘‘Ah.’’

  “Ah, what?”

  “Ah, no women beating down your doors?”

  “No!” He chuckled. “Well, maybe a few.”

  “No big-spending, easy life?”

  “I sowed some wild oats,” he admitted.

  “Because you could,” she teased.

  “Because I grew up hearing how I’d some day be king, and the job description didn’t sound much like anything a man would want, given half a choice.”

  The humor had gone out of Caz’s voice. He rolled on his back and folded his arms beneath his head.

  “Hey,” Megan said softly, scooting closer, folding her arms and resting them on his chest. “I was only joking.”

  “Yeah. I know.” He looked at her and smiled. “Would you be shocked if I said being emperor of the universe isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?”

  That was what she’d called him. The memory made her blush, especially now that she’d seen him in action among his people.

  “I’d never be shocked at anything you said,” she murmured, and brushed her lips against his.

  Caz put his arms around her. “No?”

  “No.”

  He cupped the back of her head, brought his mouth to her ear and whispered to her. She caught her breath and drew back.

  “See?” he said huskily. “I did shock you, after all.”

  Megan smiled and gave a catlike stretch so that every inch of her body moved against his.

  “On the contrary, my lord. You haven’t shocked me. You’ve fascinated me. I just wonder…can two peopl
e really do that?”

  Caz felt his body quicken. “Why don’t we find out?” he whispered.

  He rolled her beneath him. She wrapped her arms around his neck. And by the time they’d answered the question, the room was tinted with the rosy glow of dawn.

  They fell asleep, still close in each other’s arms, and were awakened by a knock on the door.

  “My lord? It is I. Hakim.’’

  Caz sat up and yawned. “What is it?” he called.

  “You said you wished to awaken early. It is almost six.”

  “Six?” Megan whispered in disbelief.

  “Hakim’s a literalist,” Caz whispered back, leaning over and kissing her.

  She giggled. Giggled, she thought, and giggled again. Last night, she’d felt as if the world had come to an end and now…

  Now, she was so happy it frightened her.

  “My lord? I have brought coffee.” The doorknob rattled and Megan dived under the blankets. “Shall I—”

  “No!” Caz shot from the bed, searched for his trousers and settled for a silk coverlet he wrapped around his waist. “Leave it in the hall.”

  “But highness…”

  “Leave it,” Caz said sharply.

  “As you wish, sir.” Hakim paused. “I’ve told your pilot to be ready in an hour.”

  “Yes, yes.” Caz glanced at the bed and opened the door just enough to take the tray. “Thank you, Hakim. That’s’ all.”

  Hakim followed Caz’s eyes. “I trust your plans are unchanged, Sheikh Qasim,” he said coldly. “That we are, indeed, leaving this place this morning and not lingering for further…festivities.”

  “Watch yourself,” Caz said sharply.

  Hakim flushed. “I have only your interests at heart, lord.”

  Caz elbowed the door shut. “The hell you do,” he muttered, and slammed the tray on a table near the bed. After a minute, he sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “Sweetheart? He’s gone.”

  Megan sat up slowly. Her face was pink; the look in her eyes started his anger all over again.

  “Kalila,” he said, and went to her. “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head, pulled back as he tried to embrace her. But Caz was persistent, and the need to be close to him won. Sighing, she put her arms around him and rested her head against his chest.

  “Hakim hates me.”