Surrender to the Sheikh

by Sharon Kendrick

  But, strangely, Khalim found that he was enjoying the unaccustomed pleasure of anonymity. Normally he would not sanction such an intimacy—and particularly not from a waitress in a rather basic restaurant.

  And yet Rose looked incredibly relaxed—even in the cool linen dress which gave her the outward appearance of an icemaiden—and he wanted to relax with her. Not to pull rank.

  ‘Thank you,’ he murmured.

  Something about the way he spoke made the waitress narrow her eyes at him, for she suddenly looked rather flustered and led them to what was undoubtedly the best table in the room.

  The only one, thought Rose rather wryly, which was not sitting right on top of its neighbours!

  He waited until they were seated opposite one another and had been given their menus, before he leaned forward.

  ‘So was this some kind of test, sweet Rose?’ he wondered aloud.

  She caught the tantalising drift of sandalwood and fought down the desire to let it tug at her senses. ‘Test?’

  ‘Mmm.’ He looked around. ‘Did you think I would baulk at being brought to such spartan surroundings?’

  She raised her eyebrows and gave him a considering look. ‘Oh, dear me,’ she murmured back. ‘You may be a prince, but must I also classify you as a snob, Khalim?’

  A rebuke was almost unheard of. He could not think of a single other person he would have tolerated it from. But coming from Rose with that quietly mocking tone, it was somehow different. And to Khalim’s astonishment, he found himself tacitly accepting it as fair comment.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ he returned smoothly. ‘Was it some kind of test?’

  Why not be honest? Wouldn’t a man like this spend his life being told what he wanted to hear, rather than the unadulterated truth?

  ‘I thought that you might have had your fill of fancy restaurants,’ she observed. ‘I mean, surely luxury must grow a little wearing if it’s relentless? I thought of bringing you to a place you would be least likely to eat in, had the choice of venue been yours. And so I brought you here,’ she finished, and lifted her shoulders in a gesture of conciliation.

  Guileless! he thought, with unwilling admiration. ‘How very perceptive of you, Rose.’

  The compliment warmed her far more than it had any right to. ‘That’s me,’ she said flippantly, picking up her menu and beginning to study it, only to glance up and find him studying her. ‘Shall we order?’

  Khalim’s black eyes narrowed. He had never had a woman treat him like this! Did she not realise that she should always defer to him? He felt a renewed tension in his body. Strange how such insubordination could fuel his hunger for her even more.

  They both ran their eyes over the menus uninterestedly and ordered salads and fish.

  ‘Wine?’ questioned Khalim. ‘Or would you prefer champagne?’

  ‘But you rarely drink alcohol,’ pointed out Rose. She crinkled a smile up at the waitress. ‘Just fizzy water, please.’

  ‘Or a fruit punch?’ suggested the waitress.

  Rose opened her mouth to reply, but Khalim glittered a glance across the table at her, and she shut it obediently.

  ‘Fruit punch,’ he agreed, and he began to imagine what it would be like to subdue her in bed.

  When they’d been left on their own once more, Rose felt distinctly uncomfortable under his lazy scrutiny.

  ‘Do you have to stare at me like that?’

  ‘Like what?’ he teased.

  As if he would like to slowly remove her dress and run his hands and his lips and his tongue over every centimetre of her body. Rose shivered with excitement. ‘You don’t need me to spell it out for you. It’s insolent.’

  ‘To admire a ravishing woman? Rose, Rose, Rose,’ he cajoled softly. ‘What kind of men must you have known before me if they did not feast their eyes on such exquisite beauty?’

  ‘Polite ones,’ she gritted.

  ‘How very unfortunate for you.’ He saw the threat of a glare, and retreated. ‘Are we going to spend the whole lunch arguing?’

  Arguing seemed a safer bet than feasting her eyes on him, though maybe not. Didn’t this kind of sparring add yet another frisson to the rapidly building tension between them? Rose felt a slight touch of desperation. Where were her ‘people-skills’ now, when she most needed them? ‘Of course not,’ she said, pinning a bright smile to her lips. ‘What would you like to talk about?’

  She sounded as though she was conducting an interview with him, thought Khalim, with increasing disbelief. By now she should have been eating out of his hand. ‘Are you always so…’ he chose his word carefully ‘…arch with men?’

  ‘Arch?’ Rose took the question seriously. ‘You think I’m superior?’ Her eyes glinted with amusement. ‘Or is it just that you aren’t used to women who don’t just meekly lie on their backs like a puppy, where you’re concerned?’

  ‘Not the best analogy you could have chosen, sweet Rose,’ he murmured mockingly. ‘Was it?’

  And to her horror, Rose started blushing.

  He saw the blush. ‘My, you are very sensitive, aren’t you?’

  Only with him! ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m a big girl. I live in the real world. I have a demanding job. If I can’t cope with a teasing little comment like that, then I must be losing the plot.’ And that was exactly what it felt like. Losing the plot. ‘Perhaps I was being a little arch. Maybe it’s a reaction. I just imagine that most women allow you to take the lead, just because of your position.’

  ‘Again, very perceptive,’ he mused. ‘It makes a refreshing change to have a woman who—’

  ‘Answers back?’

  He had been about to say have a conversation with, but he allowed Rose her interpretation instead. His own, he realised, would surely have sounded like an omission. What kind of relationships had he had in the past, he wondered, if talking had never been high on the agenda? He nodded. ‘If you like.’

  The waitress chose that moment to deposit their fruit punches in front of them, and they both took a swift, almost obligatory sip, before putting the glasses down on the table, as if they couldn’t wait to be rid of them.

  Rose leant forward. ‘So where were we?’

  Confronted by the pure blue light of her eyes, Khalim felt dazed. He wasn’t sure. With an effort, he struggled to regain his thoughts. ‘I suspect that it’s time to find out a little about one another. One of us asks the questions, while the other provides the answers.’

  ‘Okay.’ She nodded, thinking this should be interesting. ‘Who goes first?’ she asked.

  By rights, he did. He always did. It was one of the privileges of power. But, perversely, he discovered that he wanted to accede to her. ‘You do.’

  Rose leaned back in her chair. She spent her whole life interviewing people and she knew that the question most often asked was the one which elicited the least imaginative response. So she resisted the desire to ask him what it was really like to be a prince. She was beginning to get a pretty good idea for herself. Instead she said, ‘Tell me about Maraban.’

  Khalim’s eyes narrowed. If she had wanted to drive a stake through the very heart of him, she could not have asked a more prescient question. For the land of his birth and his heritage meant more to Khalim than anything else in the world.

  ‘Maraban,’ he said, and his voice took on a deep, rich timbre of affection. He smiled almost wistfully. ‘If I told you that it was the most beautiful country in the world, would you believe me, Rose?’

  When he smiled at her like that, she thought she would have believed just about anything. ‘I think I would,’ she said slowly, because she could read both passion and possession in his face. ‘Tell me about it.’

  When he was distracted by the intuitive sapphire sparkle of her eyes, even Maraban seemed like a distant dream, Khalim thought. Did she cast her spell on all men like this?

  ‘It lies at the very heart of the Middle East,’ he began slowly, but something in the soft pucker of her lips ma
de the words begin to flow like honey.

  Rose listened, mesmerised. His words painted a picture of a magical, faraway place. A land where fig trees and wild walnut trees grew, its mountain slopes covered with forests of juniper and pistachio trees and where dense thickets grew along the riverbanks. He spoke of jackals and wild boar, and the rare pink deer. A place with icy winters and boiling summers. A land of contrasts and rich, stark beauty.

  Just like the man sitting opposite her, Rose realised with a start as he stopped speaking. Dazedly she stared down at the table and realised that their meals had been placed in front of them, and had grown cold. She lifted her eyes to meet his, saw the question there.

  ‘It sounds quite beautiful,’ she said simply.

  He heard the tremor of genuine admiration in her voice. Had he really spoken so frankly to a woman he barely knew? With a sudden air of resolve he gestured towards the untouched food.

  ‘We must eat, if only a little,’ he said. ‘Or the chef will be offended.’

  Rose picked up her fork. She had never felt less like eating in her life—for how could she concentrate on food when this beautiful man with his dark, mobile face made her hungry for something far more basic than food?

  ‘Yes, we must,’ she agreed half-heartedly.

  They pushed the delicious food around their plates mechanically.

  ‘Tell me about yourself now, Rose,’ he instructed softly.

  ‘Essex will sound a little dull after Maraban,’ she objected, but he shook his head.

  ‘Tell me.’

  She told him all about growing up in a small village, about catching tadpoles in jam-jars and tree-houses and the hammock strung between the two apple trees at the bottom of the garden. About the life-size dolls’ house her father had built beside the apple trees for her eighth birthday. ‘Just an ordinary life,’ she finished.

  ‘Don’t ever knock it,’ he said drily.

  ‘No.’ She looked at him, realising with a sudden rush of insight that an ordinary life would be something always denied to him. And wasn’t it human nature to want what you had never had? ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘You have brothers and sisters?’ Khalim asked suddenly.

  She put her fork down, glad for the excuse to. He really did seem interested. ‘One older brother,’ she said. ‘No sisters. And you?’

  ‘Two sisters.’ He smiled. ‘All younger.’

  ‘And a brother?’

  ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘No brother.’

  ‘So one day you will inherit Maraban?’ she asked, and saw his eyes grew wary.

  ‘Some far-distant day, I pray,’ he answered harshly, aware that her question had touched a raw nerve. Reminded him of things he would prefer to forget. Things which simmered irrevocably beneath the surface of his life. His father’s health was declining, and the physicians had told him that he would be unlikely to see the year out. The pressure was on to find Khalim a wife.

  He stared at the blonde vision sitting opposite him and his mouth hardened. And once he married, then sexual trysts with women such as Rose Thomas would have to stop.

  Rose saw the sudden hardening of his features, the new steeliness in his eyes. She shifted back in her seat, knowing that the atmosphere had changed, but not knowing why.

  Khalim’s breath caught in his throat. Her movement had drawn his attention to the soft swell of her breasts beneath the armoury of her linen dress. She could not have worn anything better designed to conceal her body, he thought, with a hot and mounting frustration—and yet the effect on him was more potent than if she had been clad in clinging Lycra.

  In Maraban, the women dressed modestly; it had always been so. Khalim was used to Western women revealing themselves in short skirts or plunging necklines, or jeans which looked as though they had been sprayed on.

  But Rose, he realised, had somehow cut a perfectly acceptable middle path. She was decently attired, yet not in the least bit frumpy. Contemporary and chic, and so very, very sexy…

  He felt another swift jerk of desire. He must rid himself of this need before it sent him half mad. The sooner he had her, the sooner he could forget her. ‘Shall we go?’ he asked huskily.

  Rose stared at him. The black eyes seemed even blacker, if that was possible, and she knew exactly why. The waves of desire emanating from his sleek physique were almost palpable. Her mouth felt suddenly dry; she knew instinctively what would be next on the agenda. She must resist him. She must. He was far too potent. Too attractive by far. Did she want to be just another woman who had fallen into Khalim’s bed after a brief glimmer of that imperious smile?

  No!

  ‘Why, certainly.’ She smiled. ‘I have a lot of work back at the flat which needs catching up on.’

  He ignored that, even though her offhand attitude inflamed him as much as infuriated him. She would be much more cooperative in a moment or two. He had not misread the signs, of that he was certain.

  And Rose Thomas wanted him just as much as he wanted her…

  He stood up, and Philip appeared at the door of the restaurant almost immediately.

  ‘Come,’ said Khalim.

  ‘Aren’t you going to pay the bill?’

  ‘Philip will settle it.’

  Rose walked out to the car, where the chauffeur was already opening the door. It was unbelievable! Did none of life’s tedious little chores ever trouble him? ‘I suppose you have someone to do everything for you, do you, Khalim?’ she offered drily, then wished she hadn’t. For in order to answer her question he had barred her way, and she could see the light of some glorious sexual battle in his eyes.

  ‘I have never exercised my right to have someone bathe me,’ he returned softly.

  ‘Your right?’ she questioned in disbelief. ‘To bathe you?’

  ‘Why, of course. All princes of Maraban have a master…or mistress of the bathchamber.’ He shrugged, enjoying the spontaneous darkening of her eyes, the way her lips were automatically parting. As if waiting for the first thrust of his tongue. Yes, now, he thought. Now!

  ‘So where do you want to go from here, Rose?’ He dipped his voice into a sultry caress, allowed his mouth to curve with sensual promise. ‘Back home to work? Or back to my suite at the Granchester for…coffee?’

  His deliberate hesitation left her in no doubt what he really had in mind, and as she met the hard glitter of his eyes Rose couldn’t deny she was tempted. Well, who wouldn’t be? When every pore of that magnificent body just screamed out that Khalim would know everything there was to know about the art of making love and a little bit more besides.

  But self-preservation saved her. That, and a sense of pride. One lunch and one arrogant invitation! Did he imagine that would be enough to make her fall eagerly into his bed? She stared into a face which had ‘heartbreaker’ written all over it.

  ‘Home, please,’ she said, and saw a moment of frozen disbelief. ‘I have a mountain of work to do.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE intercom on her desk buzzed and startled Rose out of yet another daydream involving a black-haired man in silken clothes, throwing her down onto a bed and…

  ‘Hel-lo?’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘Rose?’ came the voice of Rose’s boss, Kerry MacColl. ‘It’s Kerry.’

  ‘Oh, hi, Kerry!’

  ‘Look, something rather exciting has come up and I need to talk to you. Can you come in here for a moment, please?’

  ‘Sure I can.’ Trying to project an enthusiasm she definitely wasn’t feeling, Rose pushed away the feedback form she had been completing and went out into the corridor towards Kerry’s room, which was situated on the other side of the passage.

  Headliners was one of London’s most successful small head-hunting agencies, and Rose had worked there for two years. It specialised in placing people in jobs within the advertising industry and was famous for its youth, its dynamism and eclectic approach—all highly valued qualities when it came to dealing with their talented, but often temperamental clients!
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br />   Their offices were based in Maida Vale, in a charmingly converted mews cottage. It had been deliberately designed so that their workplace seemed more like a home from home, and was the envy of the industry! The theory was that relaxed surroundings helped people do their job better and, so far, the practice was bearing out the theory very nicely.

  Rose could see Kerry working at her desk and walked straight in without knocking, since she had always operated an open-door policy. And although, strictly speaking, Kerry was her boss—she was only a couple of years older than Rose—she had never found the need to pull rank. Headliners eight employees all worked as a team, and not a hierarchy.

  She looked up as Rose came in, pushed her tinted glasses back up her nose, and smiled. ‘Hi!’

  Rose smiled back. ‘You wanted to see me?’

  Kerry nodded and fixed her with a penetrating look. ‘How are you doing, Rose?’

  Rose forced herself to widen her smile. ‘Fine.’ She nodded. And she was, of course she was. Just because she had spent the week since her lunch with Khalim thinking about him during every waking moment—it didn’t mean there was anything wrong with her. And even if when she went to bed there was no let-up—well, so what? Maybe sleep didn’t come easily, and maybe all her dreams were invaded by that same man—but that did not mean she was not fine. She wasn’t sick, or broke, or worried, was she?

  She had tried displacement therapy, and thrown herself into a week of feverish activity. She had spring-cleaned her bedroom—even though it was almost autumn!—and had gone to the cinema and the theatre. She had attended the opening of an avant-garde art exhibition and visited her parents in their rambling old farmhouse.

  And still felt as though there was a great, gaping hole in her life.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said again, wondering if her smile looked genuine.

  Kerry frowned. ‘You’re quite sure?’ she asked gently. ‘You’ve seemed a little off colour this week. A bit pale, too. And haven’t you lost weight?’