That explained a lot. "It must have felt good to have control over something. Over anything."
He nodded. Then he began to cut his jacket.
Soon, the coat was cut from tailored hem to flawless cuff. He cut the jacket along the underside of his arm, which meant the garment wasn't completely useless.
Ithnan was about to attack his fine cotton shirt when she stopped him. "What are you doing?"
His imperious nose went in the air. "Removing my shirt as well."
"Why? Leave it on. It'll be wet and heavy, but at least you'll still have a shirt."
His brows knitted in confusion, but he put down the scissors. "I do not understand what you mean. Show me."
"Here." She stepped in front of him and began to undo his buttons, working her way down.
When she hit the fourth button, revealing a smattering of chest hair over his well-muscled chest, she realized what she'd been manipulated into doing. He'd conned her into undressing him. Plus, he'd gotten her to stop objecting to a) getting into the water naked, and b) him joining her.
He'll eat you alive. In her head, Thale gloated. Warned you.
Well, she could be mad, or she could relax and enjoy the sight of the hard male body he offered. He had a point about no one else needing to know. Who would ever find out?
She worked her way down the buttons of his shirt, undoing each to reveal another few inches of skin. He had a little more hair than most women would probably like, but it suited her fine. She appreciated foliage on a guy. So masculine, so different from her own body.
She tugged the shirt up from his trousers to unfasten the bottom buttons. Then she reached up to pull the shirt off his shoulders, revealing his naked torso. The shirt hung uselessly off the chain of the handcuffs, by one sleeve.
"See," she said, as if he hadn't planned the whole thing from the start. She couldn't resist a dig at him. "Pretty silly of you not to figure that one out on your own. I thought you were smart, mister."
"Yes, I am very... silly." He gave her a languid look from under half-lowered eyelids, and reached for the zipper at his fly.
Her mouth went desert dry as his trousers and underpants hit the stone floor. She had to look away.
"Gwendolyn, you will be my wife in mere hours. I think you may look at me as you wish."
"I'm not your wife yet." She stuck her thumb under the elastic in her pajama bottoms and peeled them off as quickly as she could. Then, moving fast, she stepped into the pool.
She was into the shivery-cool water before he could protest, fully covered in the t-shirt that went down well past her butt. It floated up, but he wouldn't be able to see anything.
"Are you coming in?" she asked, pleased with her escape.
She made the mistake of looking up. He had great legs, strong and lean. The hair on his legs thickened at his crotch. Out of it jutted a sculpted cock, thick and masculine. Despite the coolness of the water, heat blossomed deep in her belly.
His nakedness made him look like a hunting beast ready to pounce. And she was the only thing to pounce on. Except she had started to think being pounced on wouldn't be so bad. Okay, maybe "think" was the wrong verb for that sentence. Her brain had less to do with it than her hormones did.
He took his time padding to the edge of the pool on big male feet, all confidence. He slid in, barely disturbing the water.
"So," he said, once he had settled himself mere inches away from her, "you will look at me when you are my wife?"
"Huh?"
"You said you did not wish to look at me because you are not my wife yet. You are waiting until the sun sets before you do such things, then? Do you not believe in sex before marriage? Are you a virgin?"
Her spine straightened. "Just hoping we'll be rescued before then."
"So you have been with a man."
"Yes," she said. "Have you?"
"I have the bad fortune to be straight," he told her, without blinking at the question. "Perhaps if I was not, I would not have to deal with women who dance around honest questions."
"I don't have any obligation to answer your questions," she blasted at him.
"I did not say you did. However, I am interested in your life, Gwendolyn. I am especially interested in why you are not already married." He lounged back against the natural rock lip of the pool. He stretched his arms, displaying lean muscles in an open embrace.
Her awareness blazed, reminding those out-of-control hormones that all she had to do was make one little move and she could be sitting on his lap, facing him, his skin against her own.
Instead, she hugged her left arm across herself, as if she could gather in her unruly hormones.
"Never found the right guy." No point in lying. Except for the part where it made her sound pathetic. Poor little rich girl. Blegh. "I run into two kinds of men. Corporate Dude mostly wants to get close to my father or to my father's company through me. They're usually toned and have amazing hair and nice suits. They carry the latest smartphone and are constantly texting clients or colleagues. Networking for results."
"I suppose I am Corporate Dude."
"Why would you—" But she saw what he meant. And he was not wrong. "Because you planned to use me to get my father to put the pipeline in Zallaq. You are way closer to Corporate Dude than Normal Guy."
"Normal Guy. No, I am hardly that," he conceded. "Have there been many men who wanted the company?"
She swirled her hand through the water in front of her. This place was extraordinary. Beautiful and private. The darkness made it easier to share her secrets.
"I learned quick after the first couple," she told him. "Worked out okay, though. One of my exes is the vice president of the European division now."
"Why are you not vice president of human resources? Or on the management track, training for your position as CEO when your father can no longer fill the role?"
"I like what I do, finding jobs for people and people for jobs. For now. I'll be CEO one day." She'd begun to look at MBA programs. "But before that, I think it's important to have a solid understanding of what makes our company run. Our people. When I'm CEO, I might make all upper-level management do a stint in HR."
Of course, he returned to the subject of her love life. "And Normal Guy?"
"Runs screaming when he finds out who my father is. He doesn't want a woman he has to escort to galas and diplomatic events in a tux. He wants to watch football and have barbecues."
"Is what you want as well? You realize you could obtain what you wish if you moved away from your father."
Her jaw clenched with tension. The normal life appealed to her, but wasn't in the cards. Not for Sullivan Devoe's daughter. "I know. You're totally right. But I won't move."
"You have an excellent relationship with him."
She nodded. She owed him everything. He was the best father ever. Most of the time.
"Yet you never call him 'Dad.'"
"What? Sure I do."
"No, you do not. You show him a great deal of... respect."
She tried to remember calling him Dad. Ithnan was right. She never had.
"You are loyal to him, but you maintain a certain distance. There is some conflict between you." His casual words pricked her.
"My father loves me." At least, she thought he did.
"I did not mean to imply otherwise. He looks at you as if you are an angel from heaven. Therefore, the conflict must be on your side. Do not see yourself as having a normal life because of him? This does not bode well for your opinion of me when you are queen."
"Won't come into play," she insisted. "We're going to get rescued and I'm not going to be queen of anything."
"Certainly," he agreed. "Now I will ask something of you."
"You've done nothing but ask me stuff since we got in here," she pointed out.
"Will you wash my back for me? Of course, I am used to having my slave girls perform such tasks." He reached into the pocket of his tuxedo, which lay not too far away, and pulled out one of the b
ars of soap. The soap. The underground spring cleared up the soap mystery.
"Funny guy." She took the bar from him. "Turn around."
"I will do yours for you next." He presented his back.
She faced his sculpted back. He spent some time with a personal trainer. Or maybe he worked out on his own. She couldn’t imagine anyone yelling orders at Ithnan and living to tell the tale.
His skin looked flawless, but as she ran her fingers over his back, she found small imperfections. Flat scars she could barely feel. She was about to ask him if he'd had some kind of skin condition when she remembered...
There were punishments, he'd said.
Feeling the scars drove his history home for her. What he'd survived was incredible. She couldn’t help picturing a wounded ten-year-old boy writhing in pain, but using the experience to make himself stronger. He'd risen to rule an entire country out of his pain, taken revenge on the people who had hurt him. Did he make himself physically stronger from a determination to keep anyone from ever hurting him again? No wonder he kept himself closed off, kept people at arm's length. How would you trust anyone after what he'd been through?
Her heart stuttered. She clamped her lips tight to keep any sound from escaping.
Fascinated, she ran a single finger down the largest of the scars, an angry raised line over his kidney. Under her touch, his back stiffened.
Every instinct screamed she'd made him uncomfortable. Without even thinking, she turned her fingernails in and turned the touch into a scratch. She dragged her nails up his back lightly.
She was rewarded with a moan of pleasure.
"You like that?" she purred over his shoulder.
"Harder," he urged.
She obliged, turning her hands into claws and raking them over his skin.
A long groan of pure sensuality escaped him, echoing off the grand ceiling above them.
"Thank you for bringing me down here," she told him. "Even if the circumstances are very odd."
"Zallaq has surprises beneath its surface. I should like to show you all of them." He seemed to have recovered some of his composure. "I have never brought a woman here. I did not realize how romantic this place is."
"Liar," she accused. "Of course you realized. Didn't you bring me down here to romance me? If we weren't in danger for our lives, it might even work."
A vise grip closed over her wrist. She felt herself pulled like a wet scarf through the water. Without warning, she found herself kneeling over his lap, her thighs on either side of his.
Heat shot through her. Amazingly, the once-chill water didn’t boil around them.
His wet skin seared her own where they touched, which seemed to be everywhere. His arms held her close, her belly clamped to his.
No longer held down with her own weight, her t-shirt floated to armpit height, leaving her breasts bare. Bare, and crushed against his solid chest. His moist chest hairs rubbed against her smooth skin, creating a zinging sexual friction through her body.
Her heart pounded at the base of her throat. Her free hand wandered up his shoulder to the hair at the nape of his neck.
"Our lives are not in danger now, Gwendolyn." He whispered, even though no one on Earth was close enough to hear them. Or see them. Or ever, ever know what they'd done here.
She could kiss him, she realized.
No one would know except for her. And Ithnan.
Ithnan. He would know.
Some instinct screamed at her, pulled her out of her mesmerized state. The hormone-induced sex haze cleared in a snap.
Ithnan would know they'd slept together, even if no one else did. That might be more dangerous than anything.
She did the only thing she could think of to get out of his hold. She shoved away from him and ducked her head underwater.
When she rose up again, the chilly pool had worked to clear her head.
"Gwendolyn." His tone held more than a little warning.
She put on a brightness she didn't feel as she grabbed the soap. "I guess I have to wash my hair with this. Oh well."
Ithnan watched her with predatory amber eyes as she undid her braids.
SEVEN
Ithnan fought frustration as they hiked back up to the cave mouth. He wanted her as badly as he'd ever wanted any woman. Perhaps because he'd never let any woman so close to him. She now knew more about his history than any person alive. Perhaps even anyone dead. Uncle Sulaiman had given him the space to recover from his wounds, but he had never probed those wounds, nor wished to know how deep they went.
Why had he allowed her so deep into his life? Some things she knew could be used as weapons against him. Even now, he did not know why he'd revealed them.
Learning of her experience with men had opened his eyes. He had once thought her innocent, yet she had experienced the betrayal of men who only pursued her for her connection to her father. Very strange. How did she still trust people?
A man of logic and reason, he couldn't even explain the situation to himself, but he'd felt a shift in his mind. He had no reason to do so, but he had to face the fact. Despite everything, he trusted Gwendolyn Spencer.
***
Ithnan felt an uncharacteristic melancholy from her as they sat at the mouth of the cave and watched the sun set. He did not share her bleak mood. In fact, as the sun turned to spectacular hues of crimson and orange through the heat haze boiling from the desert, he could not have been more elated.
Gwendolyn was truly his now. According to the laws of Zallaq, they were wed. No matter what else happened, he could keep her with him.
He preferred that she chose to stay with him of her free will. He wished her to decide to be with him, to devote herself to him from her heart. With the loyalty of a woman like Gwendolyn behind him, a man could do anything he chose.
For now, he knew she felt those choices ripped from her. He was a man who planned in advance, and he understood the map of life she saw for herself would have to be redrawn. In time, and with his persuasion, she would see the possibilities before her now.
For the moment, she sat with her chin on her knees, as if trying to make herself as small as possible. She seemed to watch the sun going down as if part of her life was ending.
"Come, Gwendolyn," he said. "Is our situation truly so bad?"
She turned her cheek to her knees, looking to him for reassurance. "No one knows, right? We'll be able to hide the marriage, won't we?"
Time to switch his tactics with her. She would come to see the good in the marriage in the days to come. Starting now.
"Perhaps I would consider being married to you the best thing that has ever happened to me."
"You're kidding me right now."
"Not at all." He reached for her hand. "I have never met a woman like you."
"One who wears Tom the Toad pajamas to a kidnapping?"
"One who can find humor in the darkest things." With caution, giving her plenty of opportunity to object, he maneuvered his arm around her. To his surprise, she allowed the intimacy, even leaned in to his side. "But you have had to, have you not? Living in poverty with your mother, her death, then being thrust into a world you did not know. And still you have a positive spirit."
"I never said we lived in poverty." In the circle of his arm, she shrugged. "Things suck whether you joke about them or not. They suck a little less if you don't take them too seriously."
"Then perhaps you should not take our marriage too seriously," he suggested. "Allow me to do so for both of us."
Gently, he placed one finger under her chin and guided her mouth to align with his.
"What are you doing?" she asked, but she didn't resist.
"On your wedding night, you should be kissed."
"I don't—"
He did not allow her to finish. He touched his lips to hers. He kissed her carefully, with none of the desire flaming inside him. The kiss was nearly chaste, a light brush of softness against her mouth. When he broke the contact after mere seconds, he noticed her ey
es had closed.
A very good sign.
"Why not?" he whispered to her. "Do you not like being kissed?"
She shook her head. He stroked her cheek and gazed into eyes the color of a darkening sea. She should be kissed well, he thought, and often. She turned into a sensual picture, the apples of her cheeks a pink contrast to her pale skin, her tongue darting between white teeth to moisten her lips in anticipation of more to come.
"No one will know, Gwendolyn," he lied. "When we get return to the palace, you can resume your life. We can deny anything happened between us and acquire a quick annulment. Everything will be the same as before, if you desire. But I do not desire us to go back to the way we were before."
"What do you want?" she asked.
"You to remain in Zallaq and explore what we offer each other." Though he had lied to her since the beginning of their supposed kidnapping "adventure," he spoke the truth now. He was surprised to realize how much he wanted her to accept his proposal, to choose to stay with him instead of being forced.
"Like how I offer you a pipeline," she said.
His jaw clamped. Did she suspect him? Acquiring the pipeline was still his goal. If he had to choose one or the other, he would be forced to take the pipeline over Gwendolyn. But why should he have to choose?
"The pipeline is to be built in my brother's country, not mine. I accept the fact. Though you and I have begun our relationship under strange conditions, you cannot deny the attraction between us. I believe we suit each other."
She gave a quiet snort, but a ghost of the smile he was coming to know so well passed over her lips. "It only seems that way because we're the only two people here."
"I am aware there is no one else with us. The privacy allows me to do this." He kissed her again, trying to communicate to her with his body the logic of them being together. He parted his lips and treated himself to a taste of her mouth as he cradled the back of her neck in his hand. She tasted like sweetness, with a bitter edge, like honey and strong tea.
Handcuffed to the Sheikh, Too Page 10