TO DEFY A SHEIKH Page 6

  “I think it’s time it grew a little, don’t you?”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked, turning to look at him.

  It was a good question, and he knew she didn’t mean why had he improved his country, but why was he showing her. Why was he trying to change her mind about him.

  It had less to do with self-preservation than he’d like to believe.

  Perhaps it was because he wanted to return something to her that, no matter how justified he thought it might be, he’d taken from her.

  Perhaps it was simply a desire to see some of the sparkle return to her dark eyes.

  Or maybe it was just that he truly didn’t want a wife who had more fantasies about killing him than she had of him in bed.

  Would he truly make her his wife? In every sense of the word?

  He looked at the elegant line of her neck, her smooth, golden skin, dark glossy hair. And her lips. Red or plain, they were incredible. Lush and perfectly shaped. He had not looked at a woman in this way in so long. He hadn’t allowed himself to remember what desire was. What it was to want.

  So dangerous. So very tempting.

  If he married her, it would be his duty. His heart rate quickened, breathing becoming more difficult.

  Yes, he would make her his wife. In every sense. He was decided.

  She would be perfect. Because of who she was. Because she knew. She knew about the danger of passion. She would be the kind of wife he needed. The kind of wife that Khadra needed.

  “Have I suitably impressed you?” he asked.

  She nodded slowly. “In some ways. It cannot be denied. But I find I’m in need of…something.”

  “What is that?”

  “I’ve been idle for too many days. You promised me a sparring match. I think I will have it now.”

  He looked at the lovely, immaculate creature sitting across from him, her elegant fingers clasped in her lap as she asked him to spar with her in much the same tone she might have used to ask him to afternoon tea.

  He thought of what she would look like if they sparred. Her hair in disarray, sweat beading on her brow. He gritted his teeth and fought to suppress the rising tide of need that threatened to wash him away.

  “If you think you’re ready, Sheikha.”

  “Only if you think you are, Sheikh.”

  * * *

  Samarah was surprised to discover that Ferran had provided her with clothes. Well, he’d already been providing her with clothes, so she didn’t mean it that way. But the fact that he’d provided her with clothes for the gym was surprising.

  A pair of simple black shorts and a matching tank top. After all the layers she was used to—for protection on the streets, for her disguise in the palace, and then…with all of her beaded gowns now she was in position as Ferran’s…whatever—she felt nearly naked in the brief clothing.

  She opened the door to her chambers and saw Lydia just outside. “How do I get to the gym?”

  “The general facility or Sheikh Ferran’s private facility?”

  “I…assume the sheikh’s private facility.”

  “Near his quarters. Down this hall, and down the staircase, all the way at the far end. It’s the last set of doors.”

  Dear Lord, he’d put her a league away from him. Probably because he feared for his safety. The thought made her smile as she started the trek down to his quarters. That she had succeeded in unsettling him would do for now. It wasn’t revenge, but it was in the right vein.

  She moved to the red double doors and pushed them open slowly. And stopped cold when she saw Ferran, his back to her as he punched the large bag hanging from the ceiling.

  He wasn’t wearing a shirt. The only clothing on his body was a pair of black shorts that looked a lot like hers. Though, they covered more of his legs.

  His back was broad. Shockingly so, tapering down to a slim waist. Everything on him was solid. Ridges of muscle shifting beneath skin as gold as desert sand.

  She’d known he was strong. She’d come up against him already and seen just what a worthy opponent he was, but seeing him now…she could see why her hesitation had meant the end of her plan.

  She could see it in every line of his body as his fist hit the bag and sent it swinging. He was powerful. A weapon. That was the basis upon which she admired him. What warrior, what martial artist, would not appreciate such a finely honed instrument? That was why she stared. It could be the only reason.

  Samarah took a breath and assumed her stance, raising her leg high, bringing it down softly between his shoulder blades. A muted outside crescent kick.

  He whirled around, reaching out and grabbing her wrist, tugging her forward, her free arm pinned against his solid chest.

  “You’re here,” he said, cocking his head to the side, his eyes glittering.

  “You had your back to the door.”

  “So I did. I suppose I deserved that.”

  “I could have hurt you,” she said. “I didn’t skim you on accident.”

  “I understand that,” he said, his breath coming in hard bursts from the exertion, fanning hot across her cheek.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Just quickly.” He released his hold on her and ran his hands over her curves, light and fast. Her heart slammed against her breastbone when his fingertips grazed the sides of her breasts. “I had to check,” he said.

  Her breath escaped her throat in a rush. “Check what?”

  “To see if you had a weapon.”

  “I have honor,” she said. “If I was going to kill you, it wouldn’t be during a planned sparring match.”

  “I see. You’d do it while I slept then.”

  “Honor,” she repeated.

  “Clearly. Shall we go to the center of the mats?”

  He gestured to the blue-floored open room and turned away from her again, walking to the center of the mats.

  She followed and took her position across from him, her hands up, ready to strike or block. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “When you are.”

  “Are you giving me the handicap because I’m a woman?”

  “No, I’m giving you the handicap because you’re tiny and I must outweigh you by a hundred pounds.”

  “I’ll make you regret it,” she said.

  She faked a punch and he blocked high. She used the opportunity to score a point with a side kick to his midsection and a follow-up palm strike to his chin. She wasn’t hitting with full force, because she honored the fact that this was for points, not for blood.

  He blocked her next hit, gripping her arm and holding it out, miming a blow that would have broken her bones at the elbow if he’d followed through.

  One for him, two for her. Her mental score sheet had her in the lead, and she was happy with that, but unhappy that, in reality, that would have been a disabling hit. Points aside, had it been a real battle, she would have crumpled to the ground screaming.

  They hit gridlock, throwing hits, blocking them, then one of them would slip a blow through.

  He was using a mixed fighting style, while she was true to her discipline. Her training was more refined, but his was deadly.

  She was faster.

  Only a few minutes in, she had him breathing hard, sweat running down the center of his chest, between hard pectoral muscles. She watched a droplet roll over his abs, and she was rewarded with a swipe of the back of his hand across her face.

  She let out a feral growl and turned, treating him to a spinning back kick that connected with the side of his cheek. It wasn’t as pulled as she’d meant it to be, and his head jerked to the side, a red mark the lingering evidence of the contact.

  He growled in return, gripping her forearm and flipping her over his back. She hit the soft mat and rolled
backward, coming to her feet behind him and treating him to a sweep kick under his feet so that he kissed the mat just as she’d done.

  He got to his feet more slowly than she had, and she was facing him when he came up, her breathing coming sharp and fast now. She hadn’t fought anyone this hard in a long time. Maybe ever. Sparring in the studio had never been quite this intense. There had never been so much on the line.

  She wasn’t sure exactly what was happening here. Only that it seemed essential she show him who she was. That she was strong. That she wasn’t someone he could simply manipulate and domesticate. That no matter that she was, for now, going with his plan, he should never take for granted that she was tame.

  It was a warning to him. A reminder to herself. She might have put on some beautiful dresses this week; she might have been impressed with the changes he’d made in the city. She might enjoy the soft bed she had now.

  But she could not forget. She was not a princess anymore. Life had hardened her into more. She was a warrior first. And she could never forget that.

  She prepared to strike again, and he reached out, his hands lightning fast, his fists curled around her forearms, pushing her arms above her head.

  She roared and pulled her hands down, twisting them as she did, but he was expecting it. She’d done this to him once before, and she wasn’t able to break through his hold. She pulled her kiai from deep inside her, her voice filling the gym. The sound startled him enough that she was able to pull one hand free, and she used it to land another palm strike against his cheek.

  He twisted her captured arm behind her back and propelled her forward so that she hit the thankfully padded wall.

  She was pinned.

  She twisted, scraped her foot along his instep—somewhat ineffectively since she was barefoot. But she was able to use his surprise again to free herself and reverse the positions. His back was to the wall, his arms in her hold. But that wasn’t what kept him still, and she well knew it.

  It was her knee. Poised between his thighs, ready to be lifted and to connect hard with a very delicate part of his anatomy.

  “I would keep still if I were you,” she said.

  “We’re sparring,” he said, his chest rising and falling hard with each breath. “You’re not supposed to do full contact hits.”

  “But I could,” she said, smiling.

  He leaned forward, angling his head and she stopped breathing for a moment. He was making eye contact with her, and it made something in her feel tight and strange. She looked down, her vision following a drop of sweat again, this time as it rolled from his neck, down his chest.

  She found herself fascinated by his chest. By each cut muscle. By the way the hair spread over his skin. So unique to a man’s body. These shapes, the hair, the hardness of the muscle.

  She looked down farther. At the well-defined abs, the line of hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his shorts. And she nearly choked.

  She’d never been this close to a man. Not for this long. She’d fought them off before, but this was different.

  She looked back up at his face, breathing even harder now. Her limbs tingling a bit. From the lack of oxygen, she was certain. Since she was breathing hard. And there was certainly no other explanation.

  He leaned forward and bit her neck. It wasn’t painful, the sensation of his teeth scraping against her skin. It was something else entirely. Something that made her flail, stumble and fall backward onto the mat.

  “I say we call it even, little viper,” he said, looking down at her.

  Rage filled her and she popped back to her feet. “Of course you’d say that because I won. That was…not a move I recognize.”

  “You didn’t say no biting.”

  “One shouldn’t have to say that!”

  “Apparently one did,” he said, breathing out hard, the muscles in his stomach rippling.

  “I demand a rematch.”

  “Later,” he said, “when I can breathe again. You are a fierce opponent. And considering I do have a major size advantage, I cannot overlook the fact that, were we the same size, you would have destroyed me.”

  “I very nearly destroyed you as it is,” she hissed.

  “Very nearly.”

  “Don’t sound so dry. I could have ended you.”

  “But you will not,” he said. “Not now.”

  “You don’t think?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Because I can offer you life. Ending me means ending yourself, too.”

  Her throat tightened, her palms slick. “I was prepared for that.”

  “I understand,” he said, his tone grave. “But I think now that you’ve been given another opportunity you might see things differently?”

  She looked down, hating that the war inside her was transparent to him. Hating that he could see her weakness. That he could see she wanted. That his poisoned apple was indeed shiny and tempting.

  A future. One with power. One where she wasn’t starving, or freezing or afraid.

  One where she lived.

  Yes, she was starting to want that. But what it came with…that she wasn’t sure of. But the cost would be her honor. The cost would be letting her enemy into her bed.

  If it’s for the greater good?

  That was hard. She’d never much thought of the greater good. Only her own. That was what survival mode did to a person.

  But this served the greater good and her personal good.

  Weakness. Are you certain this isn’t just weakness?

  It very likely was. But then, she was tired of being strong. At least in this way. Tired of having to be so strong she didn’t care for anything but living to the next sunrise, but living long enough so her life could end in Khadra when she’d ended Khadra’s ruler.

  Perhaps, in the end, that was the weakness. To aspire to nothing more than revenge, because wanting anything more had always seemed impossible. Too far out of her reach.

  She shoved that thought aside.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “You have to admit, life is a very enticing reward.”

  “It is,” he said. “I was personally prepared to beg for it sixteen years ago.”

  She blinked. “Were you?”

  “It turned out I didn’t have to,” he said. “I simply hid…and I was able to escape.”

  She nodded slowly. “That’s what I did.”

  “You were a child.”

  “You were young.”

  “I did my best to atone,” he said. “Though, in the end it was too late.”

  “You couldn’t have saved them. If your father wasn’t strong enough to save them, a boy of fifteen with no fighting skills certainly couldn’t have.”

  It was nothing more than the truth, and she wasn’t sure why she was speaking it. Wasn’t sure exactly why she wasn’t letting him marinate in his guilt. Only that, from a purely logical standpoint, he was wrong. Because, had he not hidden, as she and her mother had done, he would not have lived.

  She took a sharp breath and continued. “It would have done your country no good to have you killed that day.”

  The left corner of his mouth lifted. “Perhaps not. But it would have saved you a trip.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT WAS TIME for him to announce his impending marriage. And Ferran could only hope his viper bride cooperated with him.

  She’d been in the palace for nearly a week, and their contact had been minimal since that day in the gym. Partly because he’d found the physical contact a temptation he did not need.

  It had put a fire in his blood that he didn’t like to remember existed. When he’d been a boy, he’d been all about himself. All about pleasure. Lust, and satisfying that lust.

  But then he’d seen the devastation such things
could bring. So he’d stopped acting that way. He’d stopped indulging his flesh.

  Now Samarah was unearthing feelings, desires, best left buried.

  Her father wasn’t the only man he’d killed that day. He’d destroyed everything he’d been, everything he’d imagined he could be, in that moment too.

  His rage had been regrettable but no matter how things played out, the end would have meant death for her father. But he had never been able to forgive himself for the deaths of Samarah and their mother.

  Finding out she was still alive gave him a chance to soothe parts of him he’d thought would never heal.

  But attraction, like the kind he’d felt in the gym, sparring with her, biting her…that had no place in this arrangement. They had no place in him.

  They would have to consummate, and they would have to have children, but beyond that, Samarah would be free to live as she chose, and to be the symbol he needed.

  He hardly needed her in his bed. He ignored the kick of heat that went through his body at the thought. When they’d fought, she’d been passion personified. And it had been beautiful and terrifying in equal measures. Because there was more conviction in her movements than existed in his entire body.

  But then, he didn’t need conviction. He just needed to do right. He needed to do better than his father. He needed to do better than he’d done at fifteen.

  He’d lied to Samarah when he’d spoken of her father’s fate. When he’d spoken of simple justice and black and white. So much of that reasoning had come from rage.

  Ferran curled his hands into a fist, a spike of anger sending adrenaline through his veins. When he thought of his mother…cold and lifeless… Innocent in every way.

  And then he thought of the spare moments before that. When Samarah’s father had wrapped his fingers around her throat and Ferran had acted. For his mother. And for him.

  But he had been too late. His violent rage utterly useless. In the end, none of his life was the same. Nothing of those whom he loved remained. Not even the good pieces of himself.

  That day had destroyed so many things. And it was why he had to guard his emotions, why he must never allow his demons free rein. Ever again.