Trish Morey - Surrender in the Arms of the Sheikh - Exposed - The Sheikh's Mistress / Stolen by the Sheikh / Fit For a Sheikh

She walked out into the hall, all the warmth and comfort and pleasure evaporating from her body like raindrops on a scorching pavement. And then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and recoiled at the sight of her flushed cheeks and mussed hair— the definite look of someone who had been rolling around the place.

How could she? Oh, how could she?

She picked up her handbag and a silken voice stopped her in her tracks.

‘Where do you think you are going?’ he questioned softly.

Composing her face, she turned round, and suddenly she didn’t care what he tried to threaten her with. Just let him try. Nothing could be worse than what she had just allowed to happen, despite all her supposedly good intentions. ‘Home,’ she said crisply. ‘Where else?’

‘You could come home with me.’

Sienna almost choked. ‘I’d rather spend the night in a lions’ cage! And anyway—I wouldn’t call a luxury hotel suite a home ! It isn’t yours, it’s anonymous —just like this place. There’s nothing of you there, Hashim. A luxurious room with no soul. And that’s your life. Empty.’

For a moment a dark shadow passed across his heart. She dared to say this to him? To accuse him of an empty life? He, who had palaces and oil fields and people scattered all over the world who were eager to do his bidding? No woman had ever dared say such a thing to him. She was daring to look at him and speak to him as no woman ever had before …almost as his equal . Again he felt the sensation of being on unfamiliar territory, and his mouth hardened in anger.

‘I forbid you to go!’

‘Well, you can’t. You don’t own me. You don’t even employ me any more. I’ve done what you asked and now I’m leaving.’

His eyes narrowed as he glanced around the carved wooden interior of the airy hall. ‘And what of this house and your obligation to it?’ he demanded.

‘It’s not my concern. Not any more. You sort it out! Here!’ And she flung the keys at him.

He caught them one-handed, realising that she meant exactly what she said. She was leaving! Walking out on him even though she had been sobbing out his name only moments before. And suddenly he was filled with a reluctant kind of admiration which only renewed the subtle throbbing of desire. ‘Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you look when you’re angry?’ he questioned softly.

‘Fortunately, most people have a more original line than that!’

‘But it is not finished yet, Sienna,’ he said evenly. ‘I tell you that quite unequivocably. You have but tasted the pleasures I can give you, and soon you will be greedy for more.’

‘Oh, but you’re wrong. So wrong.’ She stared at him. ‘After all, we’re even now. I deceived you, and now you’ve paid me back by deceiving me. We can call it quits. I just want to forget you and your fake party. In fact, I want to forget all about you.’

He shook his head and his mouth curved into a cruel smile. ‘You still don’t understand, do you, Sienna? Those are not my wishes—and the Sheikh always has his wishes fulfilled.’

He wasn’t listening to a word she said! Frustratedly, she turned away, and his dark laughter was still ringing in her ears as she slammed her way out of the front door, running down to where her beaten-up little wreck of a car was parked beside his smooth, dark sports model. And if she needed some concrete evidence of the insurmountable differences in their lives she had only to look at their two contrasting cars.

It’s over, she told herself fiercely.

So why did she look up into the driver’s mirror to see his tall dark figure, the silken pomegranate robes whispered by the breeze to caress that hard, honed body which had made such sweet and unforgettable love to her?

She turned the key in the ignition with an angry jerk. It was over.

CHAPTER NINE

HASHIM rang her. Repeatedly. Sienna kept the phone on ‘divert’, but once she picked it up without checking and heard his voice, and quietly terminated the connection with a trembling hand.

He sent her a cheque—such a grossly inflated cheque that the businesswoman side of her momentarily weakened, until she allowed her righteous fury to put it in an envelope and send it back to him. She supposed she could have torn it up—but returning it might help to get the message through loud and clear.

He even tried flowers—and for some reason those riled her more than anything. How dared he think he could buy her off with a bunch of flowers?

‘They’re lovely,’ Kat said wistfully, sniffing at the lily-of-the-valley and freesia and roses.

‘Have them—they’re yours!’ And Sienna unceremoniously dumped the monster bouquet into her bemused lodger’s arms.

Her work, which had previously fulfilled her, suddenly seemed a chore, and her life felt like a punctured balloon, coloured grey. Kat had taken to asking if she was sickening for something, and Sienna knew that she really was going to have to snap out of it. She had a business to run and she couldn’t divert her phone for ever. And Hashim seemed to have got the message at last, since he had left her alone for nearly a week.

She was sitting in her minuscule office, trying to concentrate on an engagement party which seemed to mock her with its celebration of love, when the telephone on her desk rang. Tiny hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle as she heard a disturbingly familiar dark, silken voice, and she wavered for a second. She could hang up, of course—or she could have the courage to tell him to leave her alone. And she couldn’t keep running away for ever.

‘What can I do for you, Hashim?’ she questioned coolly.

‘Why have you failed to cash my cheque?’ he demanded.

‘Because I don’t want your money!’

‘Ah, Sienna,’ he purred, like a trainee lion cub. ‘Don’t you realise that resistance turns a man on?’

Especially a man who wasn’t used to being resisted. ‘That isn’t why I’m doing it,’ came her icy reply.

He knew that. As a ploy it would have failed, because he would have seen through it. As a genuine wish it excited him. Greatly. ‘I want to see you,’ he said softly.

Images of his dark mocking eyes swam into her unwilling memory. ‘Well, you can’t.’

Did she not realise that he could hear her breathless note of hesitation—and the reluctant longing which matched his own? His voice dipped into a mocking caress as he felt the hot, hard jerk of desire. ‘Then say it like you mean it.’

Sienna closed her eyes, but that only made it worse. Now the images were of a hard body entering hers with almost heartbreaking sweetness. ‘There’s no point,’ she said wildly.

‘On the contrary. There is every point. I have a proposition to put to you.’

‘A proposition?’ Suspicion crept into her voice. ‘Planning another fictitious party, are you?’

He gave a low laugh. ‘Now, that’s an idea! Meet me and I’ll tell you all about it.’

‘Have you listened to a word I’ve been saying? I don’t want your phone calls or your flowers, and I certainly don’t want to see you, Hashim!’

‘Yes, you do,’ he murmured. ‘You know that and I know that. You are unsettled and so am I. Why keep fighting it? Your work will suffer, for a start.’

And he was right, damn him! She had almost more work than she could reasonably cope with, and—ironically —no inclination to do it. It had taken every bit of concentration she had to prevent herself from sitting staring into space and thinking about the dark Sheikh, trying to school herself away from wanting him, but in reality…Oh, the reality was so different.

‘If I meet you, will you promise to leave me alone?’