The Sheikh's Captive Mistress (7 page)

Still, no matter how the view of her enticed him and made his cock throb with pleasure, there was no way he was going to lose a race. After all, he hadn’t since he was a child.

Digging in harder, he slapped his crop against his horse’s flank, “Yah, on Madeira.”

The horse kicked up fast into a gallop that made his teeth chatter as they bounded together over the sands. They were coming into the final stretch on the third circle and Emma clicked her tongue loudly and curled in tightly against the wind. Jabir, the star of his father’s stable, poured on his speed, leaving him and Madeira both in the dust.

His beloved was already smirking at him, her blue eyes twinkling impishly when he stopped and dismantled next to her. Both of their horses were tied to the nearest posts, and he followed her, unsure of what she was going to ask him. Scared, too. He was trying to be as honest as he could with her and, while he’d read her deeply, seen so much of her through his files and surveillance, Munir was scared to let her see him. Did she see what Father did? Would she recognize the scared boy he felt he was, pretending at being sheikh?

Oh, Allah, let her never see through him, down to the fraud he must be as he tried to assume his father’s throne.

“You got so quiet,” Emma said, her voice calm and kind. “I think I beat you by a couple seconds at best. Besides, I’ve never ridden a horse like Jabir. He’s the fastest I’ve been on by far, it's like being glued onto a rocket.”

He grinned, proud of his steed’s accomplishments. He’d ridden Jabir in the last race he’d ever done for his family and cleaned the clock of the best riders of Omai doing it. “That’s true, but I’m happy for you. You are a revelation when you ride.”

“Then what’s wrong?” she asked, biting her lower lip.

“What’s wrong is that I don’t know if I should trust you to ask me anything.”

“Well you already know so much about me. I bet your surveillance knows my favorite breakfast cereal and what brand of socks I like.”

“We do, but that doesn’t tell me anything about you. It was only hints about your fiery soul, a glimpse into your past or a shade of your ambition,” he replied, helping her slide off her helmet. Reaching up, he stroked her hair. It was so beautiful, like spun gold. It was the first thing about her he’d fallen for. She was just so different from the harem, from any woman he’d ever met, really. “A person just isn’t facts.”

“But there are things that shape all of us,” she countered, taking his hand in hers. “I know we’ve just met and, even now, I’m not sure where all of this is going.”

“You’re to be my queen.”

“One day I have to go home. You know the treaty won’t work if I stay; my father will call for war. Besides, even if…we have now, at least, and I can enjoy that. Hell, I enjoyed last night a whole damn lot.”

Her accent changed a bit when she got excited, mad or extremely, ahem,
enthusiastic
. He’d noticed it when he’d gone down on her last night. When she screamed his name, it came out with that southern twang like those cowboys on television. That was the North Carolina in her, he assumed, peeking out.

“Then I assume I was most adequate.”

“You know you’re a god. You’re handsome, and I’ve never had a lover work so hard to make me happy,” she added, kissing his cheek, lingering a bit on his sideburn – she was a bit of a fetishist with them. “But I wish I’d known about your mom.”

He stilled then and tried to push the wound away. He’d been only a boy when his mother died, taken by a fever she’d contracted while on a diplomatic mission to another nation. By the time she’d come home, it had progressed too far and even the best doctors flown in from the U.S. hadn’t been able to save her.

If he thought about her too much, the pain bit into his heart fresh and left him reeling.

“There’s not much to say.”

“There’s everything to say. Is that why you seem to insist on just me, give me my own room. Will you have just one wife if we even make a go of this?” she asked, taking her hand away.

Munir felt burned by the loss of contact.

“I loved her, and she got sick, then she was gone and it was me and Kashif only with father. He stopped having sons after that, or trying at all. And Kashif was always the perfect one, the cold one who could command others. The fighter. But he wasn’t legitimate and I was-”

“Disappointing?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he replied, biting back the bile rising in his throat. So his sheikha’s pretty words were only that. She didn’t really see him as anything, either.

“You know that it’s hard to ever feel we are what our fathers want. Between you and me, I think I’d be a shitty lawyer.”

Munir blinked back out of his morose thoughts. “Excuse me?”

“I was sorry your dad’s not like you, not kind and gentle or can’t appreciate you are,” she added.

“Maybe I’m too soft. The old ways have merit, and they’ve served my people for a millennia.”

“And maybe there’s a way to mix the best of the Middle East and of the West to grow and honor,” she replied, heading back to unwind her horse’s reins. “I just wish your mother could see you now. I think she’d be so proud.”

He beamed back at her, his heart pounding in his chest. Just when he thought he couldn’t love his
habbibi
any more, she did something to truly shock him yet touch his soul. “I would hope you are right. I try to hope that on days when my problems have no clear correct answers. Emma?”

“Yes?” she asked as she mounted Jabir.

“What would you do? Say I hadn’t taken you and that your father said you no longer had to go to law school? What would make you happy?”

She grinned back at him. “Well I didn’t lose that race, Munir, so I don’t have to answer.”

“Fine, then I don’t have to tell you how we’re going skiing in the desert.”

Emma’s eyes grew large as she struggled to close her opened mouth, to rein control in over her slack jaw. “What?”

“Oh, my princess, you have so much left to learn.”

“My god!” Emma cried, spinning around as she walked through the entry gates into Ski Dubai at the Mall of the Emirates.

Nothing made sense about the mall. It was the biggest place she’d ever been to. She couldn’t imagine how many days, hell months, she and her friends could spend there and never go to the same shop twice. It had everything she could have wanted and more with seven hundred stores, and, everywhere, people bustled about carrying brightly-colored shopping bags. Mothers held tight to children’s hands, and women’s exotic headscarves and sometimes hijabs caught her attention among the crowd. The complex itself was centered right in the mall’s center. One just walked through a glass wall separating it from the rest of the shopping hub and it was a different world. There were fake edifices of stone chalets and pine trees that towered over the people milling about.

As she drew closer to the area to pick up their skis, she let out a surprised yelp. A penguin was just hopping out of a large snow-covered pool. It landed at the feet of its trainer and gave three sharp calls before being rewarded with a fish.

She turned to her lover, eyes wide. “There’s a penguin here.”

“There’s a few, actually. I’ve heard children love them.”

“I’m not a kid, but wow, I never thought it could be like this.” Above, she watched as people rode ski lifts up to tackle the four different mountains and, bizarre as it was, beside one lift was a zip line. Men and women both, robes flowing from under their harnesses, screamed as they flew down the wire in tandem. “This isn’t even real!”

“It is, but I suppose you assumed I was flying us to the Alps when I suggested skiing?”

She nodded and accepted her skis and poles from the attendant. Of course, Munir had brought his own with him. Selfishly, she wished he’d chosen a sport where he was more exposed. While she could still see his mesmerizing green eyes flecked with gold through his ski goggles, she couldn’t see his amazing body. His coat was the nicest and sleekest of ski wear, but still, did nothing for his physique.

Couldn’t Munir have suggested anything that required a Speedo instead?

Of course, she was far from a bikini girl, so maybe this was for the best. Everyone looked fat in down-filled parkas. But it was all so much. She’d walked out from the plane into the bustling metropolis of Dubai, but now found herself in a knock-off Alpine wonderland. Frankly, Emma wouldn’t be surprised if elves or talking snowmen were next up.

They’d had penguins, after all.

After they were done being suited up, Emma struggled a bit and toddled on her skis as they were taken up on the lift. That part she didn’t mind at all. Now, as a novice skier, she was terrified she’d find a way to hit a fake tree or another skier going down a mountain (well, a falsified one). The part of the day where she could lean up against Munir’s strong chest and relish the feel of his arms around her shoulders? Well,
that
she could do all day.

When they reached the top, she was surprised that they came off on a flat surface, a bit of a mesa on the slope.

“The hell?”

“It’s the bunny slope,
habbibi
. Unless you can ski and that bit of my intel was wrong, as well?” he asked, smirking back at her.

She blushed and fought back the warring emotions within her. On one hand, it distressed her every time he mentioned his team, of the tough men including Kashif who had come to abduct her from her home. It felt like Munir believed if he made light of it, then those jests could somehow make light of what had happened. Part of her was starting to be grateful that it had, to love that such a sexy, domineering yet gentle man had made her his lover. His prize. But a huge part of her still missed her family and ached at the thought that she might never go home again.

“
Habbibi
, did I misspeak?”

“No…I…this is just so overwhelming,” she fudged. “I’ve never skied, no, but I’m not a little kid.”

Emma gestured to the boy no older than five who managed to ski a full six feet before he crashed into his mother. Even now, Emma couldn’t understand how the Arabian women could ski with their scarves on. Wasn’t it distracting? Or dangerous? She was glad for so many reasons then, that Munir was accepting of Western ways and hadn’t dictated how she should dress. He certainly had the power to do so.

He shook his head and, turning, shot down the modest slope with incredible speed. Using his poles and swishing his hips side to side with skill that made her wonder if that agility applied to in the bedroom, as well, Munir was done the run in no time and already back on the lift and coming up towards her.

Arriving back beside her, his grin was at neon levels. Oh, she got it.

She doubled over, breaking into peals of laughter. “I barely beat you in horseback riding, so you pick a new sport where I suck. I see how it is.”

“No, I wanted to show you the ingenuity of the world I come from. So many Americans think as your father does. That we’re savages or all living in tents with camels. My world is beautiful and this is the tip of the iceberg.”

“It’s certainly cold enough,” she said, rubbing her hands together. They were frosty despite her mittens. “Besides, I wouldn’t completely think that of you or of these countries. I just wish you hadn’t kidnapped me.”

“We all wish things were different,” he said noncommittally. “Now let me teach you how to run the slopes. You’ll love it.”

“How do you know? What if I hit someone face first?”

He stepped behind her, his hips coming to grind into hers. Emma flushed, thinking of a few nights prior, of the love they’d made, of his tongue deep inside of her. There was clearly another reason he’d picked this particular sport to teach her.

“Now,
habbibi
, the right motions are all in the hips…”

If he kept grinding into her like that, then Emma would have to agree.

***

Munir had to confess he was worried about what was taking Emma so long in her dressing room as part of their suite at the Grosvenor House. That had been one of the clinchers for him in deciding among the myriad of luxury resorts available to him. In the four days since they’d first made love, well,
more accurately
, since he pleasured her, they’d been growing closer, both of their walls coming down, but she was still skittish. There was the entire chance that he could say the wrong thing, make the wrong move, and erase all the progress they’d made. So having a suite that allowed them private quarters – a shared bed, of course – but for some of her own space, was key. He wanted her to feel she could have some breathing room for herself and some rest. Yes, they’d come together in an unconventional way, but the way he adored her was real, the way he felt called to her was the truest thing he’d ever known.

Emma just needed to see it, too.

Still, it had been over an hour since they’d come back from dinner, and he was worried. Either he’d said something to upset her or she was sick. Perhaps the escargot hadn’t been to her taste. Steeling himself, he stood up and knocked on Emma’s door.

“
Habbibi
, are you alright?”

“Don’t come in here!” she called.

He blinked back at the door, now worrying he’d embarrassed her. “Do you need help? Was dinner not agreeable?”

She huffed on the other side of the door. “It’s not…it’s silly.”

Munir twisted the knob and strode in. If his beloved was sick, then he needed to help her deal with it. Instead, what he saw made his mouth water. Before him, Emma was dressed in the traditional veils of the harem. There were a variety of colored cloths that teased over her body, sheer in deep violets, corals, and turquoises. The foremost veil was also the sheerest, draped completely over her face and covering the rest, as well as the bangles he could just barely discern peeking out around her waist as well as the jingling bells on her ankles.

There were seven veils.

Seven brightly colored swatches that were each different, but no less composed of delicate silk.

Even her eyes were enhanced as they peered out of him through a slit in the veil. They’d been made up heavily with dark kohl and her lashes were well defined by careful application of mascara. The whole look served to make her eyes seem even bluer, like the most gorgeous sapphires shining in the desert night.