ALEXANDRA SELLERS - Sheikh's Honor

“Then they understand nothing.” He drew closer, and she felt the heat of his arm encircle her back, his firm hand at her waist. His breath touched her cheek as his eyes challenged hers. She felt the look deep inside her, stirring the depths of her self.

He stroked the skin that she had so foolishly left bare between her short top and low-cut shorts. Sensation skittered down her body to her toes. Under the thin top, her breasts shivered.

Suddenly she was angry with herself. This was the man she had sworn only days ago would be always her enemy!

“What do men do in the desert?” she demanded cynically. “Grab whatever they see? Well, of course they do!” she told herself brightly. “You proved—”

“In the desert we first make sure that a woman longs for the kiss, and then we kiss her without asking.”

The sheer male arrogance of such a statement caused angry fire to leap in her chest and abdomen. She clamped her teeth together, because she could hardly prevent herself from shouting at him that he was an arrogant barbarian. But he had warned her….

His hand was moving against her spine. His other hand touched her neck, and his thumb traced her jawline.

Her mouth felt swollen—not that she wanted any kiss from him! But he was as mesmerizing as a snake, he really was. She flicked her eyes up to his.

The naked desire she saw there shook her to the core. She had thought him attracted, but not as powerfully as this! He looked at her like a starving man. Clio’s heart tripped into an unsteady rhythm. Feeling she didn’t recognize roared through her.

“Then you will never kiss me,” she said, finding her voice.

His hands stilled their motion. The heat was too much. She felt burned.

“Do you challenge me, Clio? When a woman challenges a man, she must beware. He may accept her challenge.”

She had no idea why his words created such sudden torment in her, or what that torment was. Her whole body churned with feeling. She felt faint, almost sick. She wished he would get away from her, so she could breathe.

“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you hear the word no as a challenge?” she asked defiantly.

His thumb tilted her chin, bringing her face closer to his full mouth, and her heart responded with nervous, quickened pulse. He smiled quizzically at her.

“But I have not heard the word no, Clio. Did you say it?”

Bee-bee-bee, bee-bee-bee.

They were both jolted by the high, piercing sound. Jalal frowned and looked around, and Clio tried to gather her wits.

“Is it a fire alarm?” he asked.

She finally identified the noise. “Oh, my God, it’s an intruder alarm!” Clio cried, and as he released her she ran to the monitor panel above her father’s desk in an alcove. A dozen lights glowed steady; one was flashing its urgent beacon. She bent down to read the tag.

“Solitaire!” she breathed. “It can’t be Dad, he wasn’t going there today.”

He watched as she opened a small cupboard and snatched up a set of keys, then stood back out of her way as she whirled and lightly ran to the screen door of the kitchen and opened it.

“Ben!” she called.

Jalal followed her as she ran along the wooden porch and down onto the dock. When she reached the boat, he was right behind her. She quickly untied the stern rope, and when Jalal bent to the bow, Clio clambered aboard and started the motor. Meanwhile Rosalie and Donnelly raced towards the dock from further along the beach.

“The intruder alarm has gone off at Solitaire! It’s probably a raccoon!” she cried, as Jalal came aboard with more grace and expertise than his first effort. Clio swung the boat in a wide arc, and as they passed the end of the dock, she continued to Ben and Rosalie, “You’d better call Dad! Tell him I’m on my way there and I’ll call him if there’s a problem.”

Rosalie stood holding Donnelly’s hand, and all three were nodding. “Be careful!” And then Clio booted up the motor and the boat obediently climbed up out of the waves and planed across the surface at top speed.

“What is Solitaire?” Jalal asked, settling beside her.

She blinked and seemed to see him for the first time. “Oh, hi!” she said. It had seemed so natural for Jalal to be there that it was only now she actively registered his presence.

“One of the rental cottages,” she said. “It’s kind of isolated.”

He knew the family owned and rented cottages on the lakes. He had visited a couple with Brandon, doing repairs. “Will your father meet us there?”

Clio shrugged. “He might not bother unless I call to say it’s something really bad. It depends where he is, I guess. Ben will tell him you’re with me.”

“What weapons are on this boat?”

Clio blinked. “What, you mean like a shotgun?” She shook her head. “Nothing that you could call a weapon. We aren’t going to kill the raccoon, just open the door and scare him out. The point is to get there before he tears the place to ribbons.”

Jalal eyed her calmly. “You are certain that it is a raccoon?”

“Well, unless a deer got frightened and jumped through the picture window. That’s been known to happen. More likely a window got broken somehow and a raccoon got the screen off. Solitaire is empty this week.”

He had a vision of a mysterious little animal with a black mask over its eyes. Take a screen off a window? Well, he would like to see that.

“And what if it is not a raccoon?”

“Well?”

“You are setting out to challenge intruders in a remote place, not knowing their numbers, without weapons of any kind?”

Clio blinked.

“And you were surprised to see that I was aboard,” he continued ruthlessly. “If I were not here, you would have gone alone on this mission?”

How to explain that she had known he was with her, but half unconsciously? How to say that, maybe because she had felt safe with him there, she forgot to stop and consider?

She hardly noticed the curious fact that her unconscious mind was so very far from considering Jalal the enemy.

“Why not?” she said, since that confession was impossible.

He was angry, she could see.

“I’m sure it’s a raccoon,” she said, half placatingly. “We have to get there fast before he wrecks the place. Raccoons can be worse than thieves half the time.” He nodded, unconvinced. “Are you afraid? People around here aren’t usually violent, they just rob.”

He shook his head. “How many times have you challenged people who are just robbing a cottage?”

She was abashed. She really had acted too quickly, but that was probably Jalal’s fault. If he hadn’t had her in such a confused state to begin with, she probably wouldn’t have been so hasty. He was right—what if it wasn’t a raccoon? She looked at the powerful shoulders under the snug-fitting polo shirt and unconsciously relaxed.

“I think Dad surprised some guys once, but they heard the boat and got away before he landed.”

He didn’t make any comment, instead began looking around him at the boat. “Where is the storage?”

“Some in lockers below, and some under the bench seat at the stern.”

He stepped to the stern, and she noticed, not for the first time, how lightly he moved. His body was muscled and well-knit, and when he shifted from one position to another all his muscles seemed to regroup and rebalance. A hunting cat, a panther, she thought, with the promise of power in every economical movement. The tiger had been an appropriate choice of plaque, though she knew he had chosen it only to irritate her.

Meanwhile he moved around, opening lockers. He found a paddle, and his fist closed around it and he hefted it testingly. Satisfied, he returned to the cockpit and slipped into the seat beside her.