At the Sheikh's Bidding

by Chantelle Shaw

  Nothing would sway the King from his belief that marriage between his remaining son and his dead son’s widow was an excellent plan, and Zahir’s hints that Erin might not be quite as saintly as she appeared had brought only a heavy frown from his father.

  ‘I am convinced that her love for the boy is genuine, and that is all that matters,’ King Kahlid had stated, with a finality that had ended further argument.

  For a second Zahir had been tempted to reveal the facts his personal assistant had discovered about Erin’s past, but he had kept quiet. His father was old and frail, and it was clear he wanted to believe she had made Faisal happy in the last months of his life. But Zahir did not share the King’s belief that she was all sweetness and light, and as he stared down at her flushed face, and the lush mouth that would tempt a saint, he gave a harsh laugh.

  ‘You are the last woman I would choose to be my wife, I assure you. But my father is anxious for Kazim to have a stable upbringing, with two parents who will take the place of his own.’

  Of course it was for Kazim’s sake, Erin acknowledged, her heart beating so fast that she could barely breathe. And she knew why King Kahlid might have made such an outrageous proposal—if she married Zahir he could adopt Kazim and she would never be able to take him back to England. She would be stuck here for ever, trapped in a marriage made in hell, with no possible means of escape unless she left Kazim behind.

  ‘Trust me, you’re not my Mr Perfect either,’ she snapped. ‘But we can both breathe easy, because I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on the planet.’

  ‘Is that so? Lucky I have no wish to marry you, then,’ Zahir said silkily. ‘I just want to bed you.’

  ‘How dare you?’ His deliberate crudity fuelled her temper, but at the same time she felt a curious pain in her chest, as if he had stabbed her through the heart.

  Before she could demand that he go to hell, he bent his head and brought his mouth down on hers in a statement of absolute possession, his tongue thrusting between her lips as if he was determined to prove his dominance over her. Erin tried to clamp her lips together, desperate to resist his mastery, but the need to fight him was being superseded by another, more primitive need—a hunger that only this man could arouse and only he could appease.

  ‘Zahir—please!’ When he finally broke the kiss she dragged oxygen into her lungs and made one last feeble plea, knowing that if he kissed her again she would be lost.

  ‘Oh, I will please you, Erin,’ he said softly, but it sounded like a threat rather than a promise, and she twisted her head wildly and bucked her hips—until she realised that her actions were having a profound effect on his already aroused body. ‘Don’t stop,’ he mocked, when she ceased the frantic movements that had brought her pelvis into direct contact with the solid ridge of his throbbing manhood. ‘But you’re wearing too many clothes.’

  With deft movements that proclaimed his expertise in the art of undressing a woman he one-handedly unfastened the row of tiny buttons that ran from Erin’s throat to her waist, and pushed the edges of her blouse apart to reveal small breasts cupped by a gossamer-fine bra. Her nipples were clearly visible beneath the sheer fabric and he brushed his thumb-pad delicately across one peak and then the other, until she was desperate for him to caress her naked flesh.

  His gaze locked with hers as he unhooked the clasp at the front of her bra and bared her breasts. With her wrists still pinned above her head, she was totally exposed to his hungry gaze, and a tremor of excitement ran through her when she saw the blaze of feral hunger in his eyes. ‘This is what you like, Erin,’ he taunted, his voice husky with sexual promise, and he flicked his tongue across one dusky pink crest.

  The sensation was so exquisite that she gave a moan, half-pleasure half-shame. She couldn’t fight him any longer, and when he drew the tight peak fully into his mouth she arched her back, her doubts and inhibitions swept away on a tidal wave of bliss.

  Her innocent body recognised its tutor, and a quiver of longing racked her when he moved his mouth to her other breast, his wicked tongue lashing her nipple, stroking back and forth, until she sobbed his name and he relented, closing his lips fully around her aureole and sucking its sensitive tip. He must have sensed her total capitulation, because he released her wrists and she immediately curled her hands around his neck, burying her fingers in the silky hair at his nape.

  Now both his hands were free to explore her, and he muttered something beneath his breath as he dragged her skirt up so that it bunched around her waist—and discovered that her sheer hose were in fact stockings, edged with a wide band of lace that held them in place around her slender thighs.

  Thank the Almighty he hadn’t known she was wearing stockings during their audience with the King—he doubted he’d have been able to keep his hands off her! But now he did not have to, and a bolt of white-hot need ripped through him as he slid his hand up one silk-covered leg until he reached the satiny strip of bare flesh revealed above the lace stocking-top. He felt the tremor that ran through her, heard her soft gasp when he moved his hand higher still, and his gut clenched as he eased his fingers beneath the edge of her knickers and stroked, gently but insistently, against her tightly closed lips.

  Slowly, tentatively, she opened for him, and Zahir’s breath hitched in his throat as he probed her sticky wet heat, slid deeper and felt her muscles contract around his fingers. She was unexpectedly tight, and he frowned as he felt the burgeoning length of his arousal quiver with impatient need. He wanted to strip her and spread her beneath him, ready for his possession, but Erin had tensed, her eyes tightly closed and her lush mouth slightly parted. He could feel her frantic little jerks against his hand, inciting him to increase the intimacy of his caresses, and he pushed deeper into her velvet folds, realising with a jolt of shock that she was about to climax. He quickened the pace of his fingers while he rubbed his thumb-pad delicately over her clitoris.

  The effect was explosive, and Erin gave a sharp cry, her body as taut and arched as an overstrung bow, her fingers clawing at Zahir’s shoulders as she surrendered to the tidal wave of pleasure that ripped through her. She was ready for him—and he couldn’t wait, Zahir acknowledged, excitement and an urgent need to bury his shaft deep inside her eager body making his fingers clumsy as he fumbled with the zip of his trousers. He had lost all sense of time and place—driven by a primitive urgency for sexual release…

  ‘Your Highness…forgive me…I did not realise…’

  The sound of Omran’s shocked voice smashed through the sexual haze that fogged Zahir’s brain. Slowly he lifted his head and stared across the room, his chest heaving as he fought for control. He spoke in Arabic, barked a furious command to his personal assistant to get out, but the interruption had brought him to his senses, and he stared down at Erin, his face twisting with self-disgust.

  What spell had she cast over him that had caused him to abandon his dignity and self-respect—let alone the respect of his staff—and had seen him behave like a rutting dog in the gutter?

  Erin had blanched at the sound of Omran’s voice, and her grey eyes were no longer smoky with passion but huge with shock. The faint shimmer of her tears filled Zahir with a mixture of guilt and fury. She had been with him all the way, he reminded himself. But now she looked young and gut-wrenchingly vulnerable, her vibrant red curls contrasting starkly with her paper-white face.

  He had to get away from her before he gave in to the fire still coursing through his veins and pushed her back down onto the cushions. Despite his scalding embarrassment that his personal assistant had caught him in such a compromising situation, his urgency to possess Erin had not faded. But with a jerky movement he leapt to his feet and stared down at her, every muscle in his body clenching with sexual frustration.

  ‘Cover yourself,’ he growled, looking away from her while she dragged her blouse over her breasts with trembling fingers. ‘The answer to your request to take Kazim to England is a resounding no,’ he ground out harshly. ‘H
is place is here. But yours is not. I suggest that for both our sakes you go back to the house on the moors that you worked so hard to acquire.’

  He swung away from her, his conscience prickling as he thought of Kazim. The little boy loved Erin and regarded her as his mother. Would it be fair to separate him from the woman who had cared for him since he was a couple of months old? Zahir thought back to when his own mother had left Qubbah, to how desperately he had missed her and longed for her to return, and his heartbreak when he learned that she was never coming back. How could he allow Kazim to suffer the same sense of abandonment that had haunted what had remained of his childhood after his mother had gone?

  But Kazim was younger than he had been, he reassured himself. He would soon forget Erin. He would have to, Zahir decided. Because the alternative was for her to remain at the palace indefinitely, and his hormones would go into meltdown.

  He strode over to the door, but could not resist looking back at her. His desire for her had escalated to an agonising craving that was beyond anything he had ever felt for any other woman. She was forbidden to him while she remained Faisal’s widow—but if she was his wife he would have exclusive rights to her exquisite body.

  Marrying her would solve a number of problems—not least his unbearable sexual frustration, he acknowledged grimly as he turned his back on her and slammed out of the room. But was he really prepared to sacrifice his freedom and marry a woman he had good evidence was a gold-digger simply because he was desperate to take her to bed?

  Erin scrambled to her feet and stared after Zahir’s retreating form. Reaction was setting in: her legs were shaking and she felt sick with humiliation. She didn’t know what was worse—being caught making love with Zahir by his personal assistant, or the look of utter contempt in Zahir’s eyes when he had stared down at her half-naked body, spread before him like a concubine awaiting her master.

  She couldn’t stay here for another day, another hour, she thought wildly, burying her face in her hands in an effort to blot out the images of Zahir’s hands on her body. The memory of his intimate caresses made her cheeks flame. Her first ever orgasm had been mind-blowing, but she shuddered when she recalled how she had sobbed and writhed in his arms. She would rather die than have to face him again.

  ‘I have to get away from here,’ she muttered to the empty room, and then gave a startled cry when a voice from behind her replied.

  ‘I think that would be a most wise course of action,’ Omran murmured, stepping into Zahir’s office and closing the door behind him. As usual he was excruciatingly polite, but behind his deferential smile Erin caught an insolent gleam in his eyes, and she blushed when his knowing gaze slid over her dishevelled hair and swollen mouth. ‘His Highness Prince Zahir’s interest in you is merely a temporary aberration,’ he continued silkily. ‘You can never be more than his mistress. One day he will marry a highborn Arab bride, and then your position here at the palace will be untenable. It is perhaps better if you leave now.’

  Erin gave a tight smile. ‘You really know how to make a girl feel good about herself, Omran,’ she muttered sarcastically.

  Zahir’s personal assistant was almost as high and mighty as his employer—and that was saying something. She was tempted to tell him of the King’s suggestion, that Zahir should marry her, just to wipe the smug smile off his face. But what was the point? she thought dispiritedly. Omran clearly believed she was less worthy of his royal master’s attention than a pile of camel dung—a belief no doubt shared by Zahir himself.

  ‘How can I leave?’ she queried miserably. ‘The palace guards tail my every move.’ She broke off, thinking of the guard she had accidentally punched on the nose. It had not been the most edifying moment of her life, and it was small wonder that Zahir had accused her of being unbalanced. He was a royal prince, born into unimaginable wealth, and he could have no comprehension of her deprived childhood, during which she’d learned early on to fight to survive.

  ‘The guards are under orders to protect young Prince Kazim. They have no interest in you if he is not with you,’ Omran told her bluntly. ‘The road from the palace leads across the desert to the capital, Al Razir. There is a fleet of four-by-fours parked in the courtyard in front of the staff quarters.’

  Startled, Erin stared at him, her heart thumping. Omran was offering her a chance to escape—but he did not realise that she would never leave Kazim behind. ‘Where would I find the keys to one of those cars?’ she whispered.

  In reply Omran walked over to Zahir’s desk, pulled open a drawer and calmly took out a set of keys. ‘This conversation never took place,’ he murmured as he dropped them into her hand, and before Erin could utter another word he had turned—his long robes billowing behind him—and swept from the room as silently as a snake in the grass.

  A few hours later Erin glanced in the rearview mirror of the four-by-four, hardly able to believe that she was not being chased across the desert by palace guards. She was amazed that her plan to smuggle Kazim out of the palace had worked so well, but guessed that Omran had had something to do with the absence of the guards who usually patrolled the fortress gates.

  She had done it—she was free. All she had to do now was somehow locate the British Embassy and beg them to send her and Kazim home.

  ‘Where we going, Erin?’ Kazim’s voice piped up from the rear seat.

  ‘We’re driving to the town, and maybe later we’ll go on an aeroplane again. Would you like that?’

  The toddler nodded his head vigorously, and she was assailed by guilt. He was so trusting—an innocent pawn caught up in a battle between two people who loved him—and, much as she despised Zahir, she had to admit that he seemed to adore the little boy almost as much as she did. She knew too that Kazim hero-worshiped his uncle. How was she going to explain to him that Zahir was not coming back to England with them? Was she really acting in his best interests—or her own?

  Soon the walls of the fortress were no longer visible, and the desert seemed vast and intimidating. The sun was sinking below the horizon, and the streaks of gold and red that stained the sky were fading to purple as night fell with surprising swiftness. Erin’s palms were clammy as she gripped the steering wheel. She switched on the headlights and stared intently through the windscreen. Omran had said that Al Razir was ahead, but he hadn’t mentioned that the road forked, and she had no idea which way to go. It had to be straight on, she reasoned. She had no recollection of turning from one dusty track to another on the way to the palace, but if she was honest the journey to Zahir’s home had been an endless blur of sand.

  After driving for another half an hour it became obvious that she had taken the wrong road. The lights of Al Razir should surely be visible by now, but instead the blackness was thick and oppressive, and the road had changed from a reasonably flat surface to a narrowing track which twisted tortuously between boulders that loomed out of the dark. She was lost, and the only thing to do was turn around and go back to the fork where the road had separated, Erin decided, fighting her feeling of panic.

  She braked and selected reverse gear, but as she turned the steering wheel she heard a sickening crunch of metal against something hard, and when she accelerated forward the car did not move.

  ‘Wait there,’ she ordered Kazim, trying to keep the tension from her voice as she opened the door and jumped out onto the sand. A hurried inspection revealed that one of the back wheels had become tightly wedged between two rocks; the metal rim was buckled, and even if she could free it, it was clear that the vehicle would be undriveable. She was trapped in the vast, dark desert where the temperature had already plummeted.

  She saw Kazim shiver, and knew in that moment that she had made the biggest mistake of her life. What had she been thinking of? The desert was an alien environment to her, and she must have been crazy to have risked driving across it alone. She had put Kazim’s life at risk, and now she felt sick with fear and guilt. Zahir had said he thought she was insane, and right now she could offer no
defence against his accusation.

  ‘Erin, I want to go back now.’

  Kazim sounded tired and Erin hastened to reassure him. ‘We will, soon,’ she said soothingly as she opened the rear door and wrapped her jacket around him.

  ‘Zahir and me are going to play trains when we get home.’

  ‘That’ll be great.’ She smiled at the little boy, anxious to hide her fear from him. She certainly couldn’t reveal that she had no idea how they were ever going to get back to the palace.

  Soon Kazim’s breathing slowed and he fell asleep. Erin curled her arm around him and stared at the twin beams of light that shone from the headlights. She knew she risked flattening the car battery by leaving them on, but she couldn’t bear sitting in the pitch-black. There was nothing she could do until daylight, but as time slipped slowly by she acknowledged that Zahir must have discovered by now that she had gone, and he would be desperately worried about Kazim.

  Something suddenly caught her attention. She screwed up her eyes and peered into the night, her heart leaping when she realised that the lights in the distance were not a figment of her imagination. They were coming closer, and soon it was clear that they belonged to vehicles which were speeding across the desert; she could make out three sets of headlights and she felt weak with relief. Zahir must have organised a search party. But mixed with her joy at being found was trepidation. He was going to be furious with her—and she deserved every bit of his anger.

  Minutes later the four-by-fours halted, and Zahir sprang from the lead vehicle. His expression was unfathomable as Erin quickly alighted from her car, but she caught the blaze of molten fury in his eyes and shrank back while he reached inside and lifted a still-sleeping Kazim into his arms. Members of the palace guard grouped around her, dark and unsmiling, and Zahir spoke to them in Arabic before he placed the toddler in the back of the second four-by-four, where the nanny was waiting.