The Sheikh's Captive Mistress (9 page)

“Father, what is it?”

“You have our hostage vacationing in Dubai?”

“She’s not our hostage,” he hissed, holding up a finger to the concierge and stepping into a quiet corner.

“Son, you’ve gone soft. No, I correct that,” his father continued. “You’ve always
been
soft. You don’t know anything about real politics or power. You fell in love with our bargaining chip. Perhaps I always should have let Kashif negotiate this treaty. You were never made for it, never competent enough.”

“I’m coming home in a few days. We’ll discuss it then and how to approach negotiations with Senator James, I promise.”

“Your promises are hollow. Son, I take no joy in what I’m doing, only sadness in your failures.”

There was a click that sent Munir’s heart pounding. He called out something noncommittal to the concierge, promising he’d be back. Hurrying to the elevator and jamming the top floor button, he cursed it for being slow, for taking so long to appear and even longer to climb its way back to his penthouse suite. When he got there, everything he feared had happened.

The door was ajar and the room had been trashed.

And his
habbibi
was gone.

Emma woke and stretched out. Unfortunately, she found her hand running up against the cool expanse of the sheets where her lover had been. Sitting up, she blinked back the early morning sun. Gazing out the window, she saw the beautiful orange light spilling over the sands of the desert. Mixing in with the vast skyscrapers and hotels, the sunrise fostered to make her even more aware of how far from home she was. It was beautiful, alien, and overwhelming, but it wasn’t her home. One day, it might be home, though, and that thought no longer curled in her stomach as horror. Instead, she felt calm. This desert land was beautiful and the expanse of sands and spires that made up Munir's palace in Yoman was more amazing still.

For the first time, Emma truly could see herself running away from everything and living happily with Munir. Last night, she hadn’t been able to tell him that she loved him, but she was beginning to feel it welling so deeply in her bones that she could no longer lie to herself.

Smiling to herself, Emma stood and dressed. While she’d been adorned in veils and Middle Eastern finery last night, that was for a special vacation. Instead, she slipped on a pair of jeans and a loose peasant top in a light coral. Munir would be back from wherever he’d escaped to soon, after all, and she was curious to see what next he had planned for her. Besides, she hadn’t seen close to all of what Dubai had to offer. Not at all.

There was noise outside their door not more than twenty minutes later, and, confused, she hopped up from the sofa and walked to the peep hole.

“Did you forget your key, my sheikh?” she asked.

There was a bang then and she backed away. Three more and the door beat against its hinges so hard she was scared it would snap. Screaming, she ran for her cell and had it in her hands, about to call Munir for help when the door gave way. Before her stood four men dressed in balaclavas and dark clothes, each armed with automatic rifles. The fifth one, behind them, was dressed only in fatigues and grinned back at her with familiar malice.

“Kashif!” she shouted, backing herself into the corner and brandishing her phone as if she could do anything to stop him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Father’s orders. You’ve been given far too comfortable accommodations, American bitch.” He waved his hand in front of her, still purpled from her bite. “Believe me, the pleasure will be all mine. I don’t suppose you think you’re funny now, bitch.”

Emma shook her head and screamed as the men advanced on her. She tried to kick at them, but couldn’t quite connect with their legs or arms. They darted easily out of her grasp and rounded on her, two large men ended up pinning both arms behind her back. Bucking against their grasp, she screamed out a flood of curses, but it was hopeless. The penthouse suite was secluded and on its own floor. There would be no neighbors or early morning cleaning staff to overhear.

Kashif marched menacingly toward her and then took his rifle and slammed the butt hard against her jaw. She blinked back at the pain, a hundred times worse than last time since her jaw was still sore from before. Trying to stay awake and desperately fighting against being dragged off, Emma felt unconsciousness swirling within her.

“You won’t get away with this!”

Kashif grinned, his lips pulling back and exposing yellowed and missing teeth. He was every bit as heinous as his half-brother was desirable. “We already have.”

With that, she passed out.

***

When she awoke, she was chained to a wall by a huge manacle that chafed and cut against the skin of her left ankle. The dungeon she was in – that was the only word for it – was nothing more than cold stone walls, a huge set of iron bars for one side, and the few rats and lizards that slithered around in the edges of the darkness. There was one high window cut in the stone that allowed for light to pour through, but even with the sun high in the Yomani sky, it was dim in her holdings.

Tears flowed down her cheeks, and Emma felt her heart racing under her breast bone. Goosebumps were erupting all over her flesh, and she curled up on herself as shivers wracked her body.

“God, Munir where are you?”

“He won’t find you. This is an old citadel of our army’s. I wouldn’t be foolish enough to keep you at the castle.”

She blinked up in the darkness and back to Kashif. “Why do you torment me? I know you can’t kill me. You need me as that precious ‘bargaining chip’ with the U.S. congress. If anything happens to me, my father will bring total war to Yoman, level it with every damn warhead he has. Frankly, outside of Munir and Basheera? Good fucking riddance to all of you.”

Kashif laughed from outside the bars and stroked his beard. It was so unruly and overgrown that Emma wouldn’t be surprised to see bugs falling from it as he stroked. How had the same gene pool, even half of it through Sheikh Shadid, created such different men? One was like an avenging angel and the other was little more than a monster.

“That won’t happen. You’ll play the part we need, American bitch, and be shipped back to the States where you belong.”

“I got in one lucky shot to the groin and bit you. I don’t understand why you hate me so much.”

He shook his head, but she noticed he hid his hand behind his back anyway. “I hate everything about your country, your people, and what you stand for. You’re frivolous and lazy. Look at the fat curling up over you, choking at your heart even now. You’re a symptom of your own country’s pathology. Americans like you, bitch, grow fat and overfed while my people starve under and suffer under the weight of your land’s bombings. I don’t hate you, Emma. No, I hate far more than that.”

She frowned back at him. He’d never used her real name before. It came out different that she thought it would from his lips, his lips quirking as he said it and everything sounding like it was a cruel joke.

“What do you hate, then?” she asked, her voice croaking.

“I don’t hate you as a person, I don’t know you. No, I hate everything you stand for, everything you come from. You don’t deserve the luxury my brother mistakenly gifted you with and you never deserve to even
think
that you might become sheikha. I’ll kill you myself before I let an infidel on my country’s throne.”

“I don’t want the throne. Part of me wants Munir, wishes we were just two normal people in love, but I have no interest in being Yoman’s queen.”

“Good,” he said, pacing back away. “Because the best you’ll ever be is Yoman’s most precious prisoner.”

He stalked off after that, but turned back to eye her hungrily. Emma shivered and wrapped her arms tighter around her shoulders. There was something wrong in his look, something too feral to comprehend. She feared what would happen to her should Kashif return, should he ever decide to come behind the iron bars.

It would not be good.

Tears fell more freely down her cheeks and, even though she tried not to, Emma keened a little. “Oh, Munir, where are you?”

***

“Father, we have to talk. Now!” he demanded as he stormed into his father’s quarters.

The older man was sitting up in bed with his oxygen tank’s tubes trailing over his face. Despite his frailty, he seemed more regal today than he had in years. He sat high against the bed’s head board, his chin jutting forward with authority. Easily, Munir could see the huge, broad shouldered giant who had beaten him when he’d disobeyed as a child. He’d become the cruel despot who’d organized Emma’s abduction, but this time Munir wouldn’t let it stand. He was the ruler now.

No longer a child.

And he would save his
habbibi
.

“My son, you seem upset.”

“You damn well know I’m pissed. I flew home as fast as I could when I found out Kashif had clearly taken Emma.”

“You plan to have a Western bride.”

“I plan to make the woman I love my wife and my sheikha!”

His father pulled the tubes from his nose and shook his head. “And I have explained that all she needs do is serve her purpose. Her father signs the right treaties, and we will have our Yoman protected. Then she’s on the next plane out of our home.”

“I love her.”

“You’re soft, and if Kashif were legitimate, I would make him the true ruler. I may yet defer to that. It was a mistake to put you on the throne. I have strength in me yet.”

Munir’s gut blazed with fury, and he stormed over to his father, not pausing politely. The time for courtesy or respect had long since burned out. Wrapping his left hand around his father’s throat, he relished the way the old man’s eyes bulged. His skin adapted a gray pallor, and he began to flail. The guards in the room advanced, but Munir shook his head.

“I won’t kill him; it’s not worth it. Besides, I
am
the sheikh of Yoman. That choice has long since been made. This man here is nothing more than a dried husk.”

“Son-” his father gurgled.

Munir squeezed a bit tighter and, for once, his father was blessedly silent. “No, I’ve been lectured to for over thirty years. I’m done with it. Now you listen to
me
.” His father just nodded, happy to placate him. Too little, too late. “You have twelve hours to deliver her to me, or I will sign any deal the Americans present to me, even if it makes us a colony for them, dismantles this very palace.”

His father's eyes went wide with horror, but still Munir continued.

“If you don’t have her to me within twenty-four hours, well, I won’t kill you. I am not like you or Kashif, and not wanting to murder isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength. But I don’t have to kill you to make you miserable. I’ll just lock you in a room and cut off the luxury you revel in. You’ll just be a lonely old man on oxygen as if you were trapped in any old folks’ home in the United States. Do you understand? You will waste away in isolation as surely as you planned for Emma if you don’t bring her to me.”

His father nodded and took in feeble gasps when Munir released his grip.

“You’ll have her soon.”

“I better or I’ll burn this country to the ground.”

***

Basheera shook her head when Munir entered into the dining room. He hadn’t eaten in the ten hours since he’d found Emma missing in Dubai and, although his stomach roiled with anxiety, he still dug into the sweet bread and dates readily. He couldn’t think if his blood sugar tanked. His old friend still regarded him with disdain.

“You’re a fool, Munir.”

“I wasn’t going to kill him, and I let him go. Basheera, I know you favor Father still, but what he’s done is cruel.”

She shook her head. “Shadid has overstepped this time, and I love him enough to know when he’s acting like an even bigger fool than his son. That’s not what I mean.”

“So you knew I wouldn’t kill him, too?”

“I hoped when the rumors started sweeping across the palace about what was happening. I always knew there was something better in you than your forbearers, that you had a regal nobility that Yoman hadn’t seen in decades. I hope still that this will equip you to be the sheikh who brings our troubled land peace.”

“So why do you shake your head at me?” he asked, quirking his head at her.

“Because you could maneuver things better. Shadid needed to realize that he is no longer king. He is no longer in control and for that, child, I am proud of you,” she continued, hugging him tightly.

He squeezed her shoulders back. His mother had been dead for a very long time, and he’d been lucky that Basheera had taken it upon herself to help raise him. Harem women were not always so kind. Often the jealousy and the high run emotions in the women jockeying for position made them only focus on the sheikh himself. After all, Kashif’s mother hated Munir as much as Kashif seemed to, always going out of her way to find excuses to beat him as a child or to make his father do it. Basheera – poor childless Basheera – had never been like that. She was the surrogate mother he’d so desperately needed in his floundering youth, and he’d be forever grateful for that.

“Thank you, Basheera. That means so very much to me.”

“Then I’m disappointed that I didn’t teach you well enough. There’s always finesse in victory.”

“Meaning?”

“You don’t have to wait for twelve hours. You can do something more even now.”

“What’s that?”

Basheera grinned and gave a shrill whistle. Naseem walked into the dining room, ostensibly in order to bring in the lamb kabobs for the main course, but Munir knew Basheera well enough to know that nothing with her was ever what it seemed. The woman was always planning one step ahead and, had fate been different, would have made an excellent mother for a sheikh. Perhaps, as close as she and Munir were, she already was.

The old man looked back at him through both eyes, the normal and the milky scarred one, and smiled.

“My liege, you must never discount the advantages of having spies everywhere.”

He blinked back at both of them, confused. “But I don’t, not really. My team was my father’s old one, headed by Kashif. We can see now how easily they have all betrayed me.”