The Sheikh's Captive Mistress (3 page)

“Yes, I’ve been told it can be most stressful to wait for the delivery of certain types of packages.”

“You don’t approve?”

“Actually, sir, she’s quite spirited. I enjoy her attitude and, frankly, the way she cowed your brother was impressive. She’s an American, however, and the sooner she’s out of here and back with the senator, the better. We just need the treaty to go our way, and I see the wisdom in that.”

Munir stilled, unsure of how to continue. He knew he couldn’t get the guards and his brother to go along on the mission – after all, most days they still deferred to his ailing father – if he’d told them the true extent of what he’d been planning, they wouldn’t have obeyed. No one wanted an American on the throne as his queen, not a Western infidel. Munir still had no idea how to explain to his father that he had no intention of returning Emma – ever.

“Sire?”

He sighed and ran his hand over one of the red silk pillows on the bed before him. “Do you really like her?”

“For an American, she has spine.”

Munir nodded. It was the closest thing to a compliment he could honestly expect for her. “What if she stayed, Naseem?”

The older man did well to conceal his shock or perhaps his poker face was enhanced by his wounded eye. Who knew? “Then I would say that it’s the sheikh’s decision. I cannot tell you what path to pick, merely help you travel it.”

“So that’s your way of saying, Old Friend, that I have to make my own mistakes, am I right?”

“I think you’re wise and have vision your father still lacks. If you see something in this girl, even though I am skeptical, then I at least will give your wishes a chance.”

Munir shook his head and took his friend and counsel’s hand, giving it a firm shake. “I appreciate your trust in me, Naseem. Now what else did you want?”

“Your father was calling you. He’s very interested in your guest. It’s very important to him that the negotiations for the treaty with the United States go as we plan.”

“So he wants to see how Ms. James is our pawn,” Munir said, his voice coming out more as a growl.

He desperately wanted to let his father in on his real desires, but to do so would be madness. After all, his father didn’t care. Americans weren’t to be trusted, and they were destined to be dominated and run ragged. It was nothing that Munir, himself, believed.

“Well, I wouldn’t keep him waiting, my sheikh. You will need what goodwill you can muster.”

“If I could muster any, Naseem, things would be different between us. You might as well ask me to create a wonderful oasis outside.”

With that, he gathered his courage and stormed off to his father’s quarters.

***

The former Sheikh Shadid Yassin had caviar tastes, literally. With the oil money his family controlled as the ruling family in Yoman for generations, his father had always had every whim catered to. One of those was having fresh Beluga flown into their home at least once a month, more costly than gold once they got it out to their high sun desert. That taste for finer things, to be fair, had rubbed off on Munir. Not as far as a harem. That was his father’s prerogative or it had been before his heart started failing and that activity was cut off from his daily priorities.

Still, there wasn’t any harm in liking the finer things or loving delicacies he could now shower on the woman he loved.

It contrasted sharply with Kashif. He wanted to fight, to take his boiling aggression out on their enemies. That ruthlessness was something his father had prized; still Kashif was never seen reveling with the harem or eating fresh quail. Funny how different two sons could be, and Munir suspected it had little to do with their different mothers and more to do with what parts of their father they reflected back to him.

His father’s quarters were impressive, befitted with the most expensive and luxurious electronics. Ironically, even if his father loathed most of the West, he was a fan of classic Westerns and spent his waning years watching them on a massive 72 inch screen. The furniture was the best, most luxurious leather, and his desk set made of the finest ebony. Not that his father attended to business often. No, like today, he was more likely to find his father in his king-sized bed, eating oatmeal and watching The Duke. It was odd to hate America so and yet love her exports.

Munir stopped at the foot of his father’s bed and bowed to him. Even if he’d been the official sheikh of Yoman for almost a year, nothing would change the first thirty years of his conditioning, of the rules of his life. Shadid must be obeyed, and those were the rules he’d learned, often under his father’s palm or a fig switch.

“Father, you look well.”

His father wheezed and took the oxygen tubes from his nose. Once, the former sheikh stood as tall as Munir did. He was broad-shouldered like both his sons and strong. Intimidating. Now the heart failure was consuming him. He was more wizened than ever, seemingly bowed down by even the weight of his snowy white and gray beard. In the last few months, he’d lost a lot of his former bulk and no matter how much soup or pudding he tried to keep down, couldn’t keep any weight on, either.

It was a pathetic, draining end for a man that still stood larger than life in Munir’s memory.

His father coughed again and regarded him. “You know I look terrible.”

“I know no such thing. The doctor must be doing well; there’s a rosy glow to your cheeks.”

“Now I know you lie. Has the girl been taken yet?”

He nodded and approached his father’s bedside, the need for supplication passed. “Ms. James is with the harem now, being properly attired. I’ve had Naseem contact the Washington office of her father. The plan is already taking shape.”

“You don’t need the American bitch to dress differently. She can wear what she came in until her father caves.”

“I thought it would be nice for her to wear something not covered in her blood. Kashif and she fought and he butted her jaw with his gun. Her shirt was spotted. If we need to, ahem, send proof she’s alive to Senator James, it will go better if she’s cleaned and her wounds appropriately cared for.”

“I suppose,” his father finished, pulling out a file from his nightstand.

As he flipped through it, Emma’s picture fell out. Munir knew that image. It was the first recon had ever sent back. It was her with her friends laughing in the quad at school. The way the sunlight hit her hair, making it seem to shimmer, had been the first thing to truly draw him to her. To say he’d studied it long and hard was an understatement.

“She’s one of those self-indulgent American cows.”

Munir clenched his jaw and forced himself to breathe more carefully. There was no point in engaging his father right now. It would take time to make him see the queen he saw inside of Emma. “She’s different from our women.”

“A pig. I can’t wait to trade her back to James, to show the Americans our true power and ingenuity.”

“Yes, father,” Munir said, slipping out of the chambers and back toward the main halls.

The dining room was being prepared for a feast for him and Emma. He needed her to understand she was in no danger from him. Hell, furthest thing from it. If she let him, he’d shower her with riches she couldn’t understand and give her pleasure every night with willing and worshipful hands. She only had to let him in.

It was that state of reverie that left him oblivious to his brother coming down the hall. Munir tripped into Kashif and cursed as he pulled both of them up from the floor.

“I apologize, brother, I was distracted.”

“With plans for manipulating the senator, I hope,” his brother groused, and it was then that Munir noticed how his brother limped and also the nasty bite bruised purple on his hand.

“What happened?” he asked, gesturing toward Kashif’s hand.

“That American bitch. She’s marginally tougher than I’d have thought. I expected a marshmallow, literally, with her. Father says ‘indulgent.’”

“Believe me, I know what Father says,” Munir said, his tone dropping low. He didn’t have to brook anything with Kashif. His brother had to answer to
him
.

“She got the drop on me,” Kashif continued, cradling his injured hand. “Believe me, it won’t happen again.”

“Well since she’s been remanded to the harem quarters and is under my watch from now on, you won’t have to interact with her. Naseem and Basheera are more than capable of keeping their attention on Emma.”

“Don’t you mean our hostage, brother?”

“I mean Emma. I know exactly what I’m saying.”

His brother leaned up to look at him and Munir had to step back a few inches, not out of fear or frustration, but because the fetid stench of his brother’s breath was obnoxious. Some things, like oral hygiene, the Western world definitely had right.

Okay, maybe not Merry Olde England, but everywhere else.

Actually, glancing down at his brother’s dirty and tangled beard, he wondered when his sibling had even last had a shower. There was something to be said for the thrill of battle or, in Kashif’s case, what he assumed were his father’s wet works, but there was no excuse to do it without a damn bath.

“You’re interesting,
brother
,” Kashif said, relishing the words like a curse. “The senator’s daughter is bait, nothing more. When we’re done with the deal, we don’t even have to keep our end.” Holding out his hand, he forced Munir to look at the mottled and scarred mess it had become. “In fact, I can think of a few things I’d like to do to her before the end.”

That was enough.

Munir had his hands around his brother’s throat and was pushing him up against a wall before the other man could move. Kashif gasped for air under his grasp and, eyes bugging out, blinked stupidly back at him. Finally, he was able to croak out a few words:

“Such hostility.”

“You’d do well to remember your place and who is actually sheikh.”

Understanding crept into his brother’s gaze and the other man tried to chuckle. “I see; you’re infatuated with that American cow.”

Munir pushed him harder up against the wall. “I feel no such thing, but we’re keeping our promises with the treaty. We hold her, we ransom, and then she goes home. I swear to Allah that you won’t touch a hair on her damn head.”

His brother grinned and there was a sharp pain in his solar plexus where Kashif brought his knee into his side. Munir hissed and dropped the other man. In a flash, strong arms were around his throat.

“Let me go!”

“In due time. I just think it’s interesting, how sweet you are on her, how you had to whisk her away to your private suite the minute she landed. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had plans for our American captive.”

“Then you don’t know anything. I’m just not a barbarian like you.”

Another stabbing pain, this time in his knee, and Munir collapsed to the ground.

“And I, dear brother, am not a weakling like you. I’d remember that.”

***

Emma blinked at the cavalcade of colors and fabrics surrounding her. The harem room felt exactly like it had come from
Aladdin
. The main space for the palace’s kept women was a high arched room easily three hundred square feet. She’d been in smaller ballrooms at various functions around D.C. There were a bunch of beds, mostly simple but covered with bright satin sheets of every color from the deepest purple to the most brilliant yellows.

At the center were a series of vanity tables where many of the women were brushing their hair or adjusting the kohl rimming their eyes. Even in the corners were soft silk pillows where the girls sat and sewed, played musical instruments, or read from tablets. It was that final juxtaposition of modern comfort and accessibility contrasted with the ancient scene before her that snapped Emma back into reality.

This wasn’t some fairy story, after all.

She was property of Sheikh Munir Yassin, and this was the harem she was destined to live with now that she was destined to become his queen.

Unbidden, tears came to her eyes. She might have been bored with her old life and the path laid out for her by her father, but she didn’t want this. Not truly. Yes, the sheikh was gorgeous and called to some part of her soul deep down that she didn’t know was yearning for so much. Yes, there was something exciting about being in the kingdom of Yoman, a variety and spice she hadn’t been afforded while studying so hard. But to never see her family again? To never see Parker or Alexis, either?

No, she wanted to go home, and instead she was trapped in some Princess Jasmine-inspired nightmare.

She hovered there at the corner of the room until an older woman approached her. No, older was an unkind term. This woman had some graying at her temples and her skin was sun aged, but she was still gorgeous with huge almond shaped eyes and a thick braid of mostly black hair down her back. She wore a kaftan cut closely to her body in the brightest scarlet accentuated by a silver belt of coins around her waist.

And she stood a good six inches taller than Emma, towering over her with a regal grace that she could never hope to mimic.

The woman bowed to her, which shocked Emma completely. Frankly, after the manhandling from Kashif and One-Eye, she expected to be kept in a dungeon and beaten regularly until her father arranged her release. Instead, she was in the most beautiful dressing and living quarters she’d ever seen being treated like she was already the full sheikha.

Trying to repay the respect – she needed as many allies here as she could muster if she were to figure out any plan of escape – Emma bowed back. “Hello, it’s nice to meet you.”

The woman laughed and her voice was rich, yet soft like velvet. “Sheikha Emma, you don’t have to do anything for me. It is I who was offering you proper salutation. I am Basheera, your main handmaiden. Anything you need, I will be able to procure for you.”

She blinked back at the other woman. Surely she’d misheard. “Handmaiden?”

“Yes,” she explained coming closer and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Sheikh Yassin told me everything, about his plans to make you his queen. My goal is to help make anything and everything the harem has to offer yours. We will prepare you for tonight’s dinner.”