CAROL MARINELLI - Desert Hearts - Sheikh Without a Heart / Heart of the Desert / The Sheikh's Destiny

“It wasn’t—it wasn’t the way you make it sound.”

“I’ll bet it wasn’t.” He caught her chin, forced her to look into his eyes. “Was he flush with winnings when he first bedded you?”

Rachel’s hand shot up. He caught it, caught both her wrists and imprisoned them against his chest.

“How much did you cost him? How much did it take to overcome your hatred, habibi ?”

“You bastard! You miserable bastard! You don’t know anything about me. Not a damned thing—do you understand? Not one single damned—”

His mouth closed over hers.

She fought him. Struggled. And then, as before, the earth tilted beneath her feet and her mind emptied of everything but the taste of him, the feel of him, the way his arms closed around her.

He lifted her off the floor, his mouth angling over hers, plundering hers, and she tunneled her fingers into his hair as he drew her hard against him.

“I hate you,” she whispered against his mouth even as she kissed him, even as she gasped at the feel of his hands cupping her bottom. “I hate you, Karim, I hate you …”

A bell rang. It rang again, and then the pilot’s disembodied voice announced that they’d be landing in five minutes.

Karim set her on her feet. His face was all planes and angles; his eyes were dark.

Her own eyes stung with tears.

“If you ever do anything like that again …” she said, and then she clamped her lips together.

She was as much to blame as he. He’d started the kiss but she had fallen into it.

Tears of rage stung her eyes. At him? At herself? It didn’t matter. This wouldn’t happen again.

She wouldn’t let it.

She spun away, took a seat and belted herself in. The wheels kissed the runway. As soon as the plane came to a stop she undid her seat belt and got to her feet, but not in time to prevent the Sheikh from clasping her shoulder and pulling her to him.

“Welcome to New York, habibi,” he growled. “And do not make promises you won’t be able to keep.”

He bent his head to hers. Captured her mouth. She groaned, felt her body flush with heat …

And she bit him.

Bit his bottom lip hard enough to make him jerk back and let her go.

A spot of crimson bloomed against his flesh. He touched his finger to it, looked at her, and then his eyes narrowed.

“If you want to play games,” he said softly, “I’ll be happy to accommodate you.”

She wanted to respond, to make some clever remark, but her brain refused to function.

Karim kept his eyes on hers as he lowered his head again, kissed her again, a slow, lingering kiss. She tasted the salt of his blood, the heat of his hunger. She wanted to tear her lips from his but she didn’t, she didn’t—

He raised his head, looked into her flushed face with a hot glint of triumph in his eyes.

Then he brushed past her on his way to the exit door.

A chauffeured black Mercedes was waiting for them.

The driver held the door open.

The interior of the car was handsome and urbane—except for the baby seat.

The man had thought of everything.

How far was it to the hotel?

Rachel was exhausted, as desperate for sleep as she’d ever been in her life. She needed a long, hot shower, some sleep and then—

Then, freedom.

The Mercedes merged onto a multi-lane highway. What time was it, anyway? It was too dim in the car to read her watch properly. Did it say four p.m.? That was the time in Nevada, and this was New York, which meant it was—

“It’s seven,” Karim said. “In the evening.”

Rachel looked at him. “Thank you,” she said coolly, “but I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t have to. I know you’re probably feeling disoriented.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Your Highness, but I’m not.”

“Of course you are.”

What would she gain by arguing? Instead, she stared out the window. The ride into the city seemed endless, but finally they were on a wide street, tall buildings on one side, what seemed to be a dense park on the other.

Where was the hotel?

She turned toward him. “How much further to the hotel?”

“What hotel?”

“The one where you’re stashing Ethan and me.”

He laughed. God, she wanted to slap his face!

The Mercedes pulled to the curb. The door swung open. The hotel, Rachel thought. But the man who bent down and peered into the car wasn’t a hotel doorman because what hotel doorman would all but click his heels and say, “Welcome home, Your Highness. I trust you had a good trip.”

“Home?” Rachel said. Her voice rose. “Home?”

“My home,” Karim said coldly. “My little piece of Alcantar.”

Ethan began to wail. Karim reached for him. Rachel tried to stop him. Ethan screamed louder.

“Let go of the boy,” Karim said quietly, and, really, what choice was there?

She let go, watched her baby all but disappear in the arms of the only man she’d ever hated more than she’d hated Rami, more than she’d hated the endless chain of men who had tromped through her mother’s life.

The doorman stared at her. Then he held out his hand.

“Miss?”

She slid across the soft leather seat, ignored the extended hand and marched to the lobby door. The doorman rushed by her and managed to open it just as she reached it. She breezed past him, past a high desk with another uniformed flunky seated behind it.

“Miss,” he said, as politely as if this kind of circus took place here every day.

Karim was waiting for her, standing beside an elevator with Ethan in his arms.

A smiling, gurgling Ethan.

Traitor, Rachel thought, as she stepped inside the elevator car.

Unless she was willing to walk away from her baby—and that would never happen—she was now, to all intents and purposes, the Sheikh’s prisoner.

SOMEWHERE around three in the morning, even New York City finally slept.

Not Karim.

He stood at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows in his darkened bedroom, bare-chested, wearing only gray sweatpants that were a leftover from his days at Yale. Behind him, the rumpled bed offered mute testimony to the hours he’d spent tossing and turning.

Ridiculous.

He should have been exhausted.

He hadn’t slept at all last night, and his day had started with the discovery that his brother had a child. Add in his confrontations with Rachel, the five-hour flight from Nevada to New York, the hours spent in his study, trying to catch up with the messages and emails on his cell phone and his computer …

He’d fallen into bed somewhere after midnight. Sleep should have come quickly.

It hadn’t.

Instead, he’d envisioned Rachel in a guest suite down the corridor. What was she thinking? What was she doing? Had her anger at him eased or was she still breathing fire as she had hours earlier, when she’d found out he wasn’t taking her to a hotel but to his home?

The memory almost made him laugh.

He’d never seen a woman so furious. And she hadn’t been shy about letting him know it.

He couldn’t think of another woman in his life who’d have objected to spending the night with him—but, of course, she wasn’t really spending it with him.

If she were, he wouldn’t be asleep now, either. He’d be in his bed with her in his arms …

“Hell!”

Karim strode into his bathroom, turned on the sink faucet, bent his head under the flow of cold water and took a long drink while the water cooled his face. He toweled off with impatient strokes and then went back to the window again.

He was not a man given to erotic imaginings. Why would he be, when there was always a woman eager to offer the real thing?