The Sheikh's Offer (5 page)

Kelly rolled her eyes. “I know your style, Asam, so do most of the tabloids in the Western world
and
the Middle East. Your idea of ‘worthwhile’ means you’re going to sleep through half the models at a fashion show.”

“Maybe I’m not as into that as I used to be,” he added, gratified for just an instant when she stilled and regarded him with wide, hopeful eyes. They glittered like emeralds and haunted his dreams. Her eyes stirred something desperate within him.

“Yes, you have a new and entrepreneurial side. I’m positive that doesn’t mean you’re a choirboy. Hell, you couldn’t be further from that, Asam.”

“Maybe that’s true. But if I have a new passion and you have a boss driving you nuts… It just seems you’re deeply unhappy, and it’s more than the vegan decree or the loss of Alana in your day-to-day life. Do you care to share?” he asked, shoving another combo of chicken and waffle in his mouth. Now that she had him hooked on it, the combination was quite appealing. Maybe he could give Omar, the palace chef, this recipe.

“See, I knew you’d like it,” she said, puffing up her chest.

Kelly always had such gorgeous assets, an ample cleavage he could bury his face in for days if he got the chance. If only he hadn’t given in to his wandering eyes the day they’d first met... He had to focus. He might yet be able to bring home a bride up to his father’s stipulations. All Asam needed was to be there as a shoulder for her to cry on. Marriage edict or not, he’d have done that for her gladly. He’d rarely seen someone so broken up as Kelly in the parking lot just an hour ago.

Asam waited for her to order yet another bourbon before trying to prod at her more. “Seriously, what do you really want? I can’t imagine why you’d want to stay here where you’re so lonely and cook a style of food I’m sure you could adapt to but have no passion for.”

“I’d rather be picking out floor swatches for the tile patterns to lure in Gucci and Prada for your mini-mall.”

“First, it’s a luxury shopping experience.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Second, it’s a lot more interesting than going over troop arrangements or oil well mechanics. I think it’ll be fun, but that doesn’t answer my question. What do you really want in life?”

She sighed and her shoulders hunched over. For all her bluster and her fiery tornado of a personality, Kelly was fairly small height-wise. She was a delicate woman who had been trampled on far too much lately, and Asam was only one of the guilty people in that lineup.

“I’ve always wanted my own place. I love working with my staff, and I’m proud of the reputation I built with the Paradiso before Miss Dictator went all rabbit food, but there’s nothing in the world like having your own name on the marquee and being your own boss. I wouldn’t have to jump through hoops anymore or ever worry about things like a complete menu change with no notice. I could just be me.”

“That sounds like a good ambition.”

“Sure, of course!” she enthused, maybe a little too loudly, but both of them were pretty damn drunk by then. “But you need capital. My plans for going to New York are less about finding out good takes on vegan cuisine and more about putting feelers out there if any of my old culinary school friends need a sous-chef.”

“A what?” he asked, frowning back at her, twitching his mustache just a little as he did.

“A second in command. I’d take the demotion to be away from Monique’s temper and ever-changing line of bullshit.”

He reached out and took her hands. “You should never settle for second best. Why not open a place of your own?”

“I’ve done well enough, but not enough to end up with the kind of capital I’d need for the Big Apple. Even if I sold the apartment Alana and I used to share… No way. I’d never make it. The best I can do is see if anything’s available and learn to love tofu.”

“I can’t help but feel that there has to be something else.”

“Nope, nada. I’m lonely and screwed but not in the good way. Ooh! Unless,” she said, hiccupping again before breaking into a riot of giggles. “I could at least be screwed in the best possible way.”

“Come again?” he asked, feeling his member harden and the strain it put on his trousers. Certainly after almost two years of hating him, Kelly wasn’t being serious.

“Take me back to whichever fabulous penthouse suite you’re staying in tonight, Asam. I’m sick of being lonely, and I’ve never had a guy come all the way across a damn ocean for me. Even if this is the bourbon talking.”

“And the liquor in the mint julep, that’s probably helping too.”

She nodded; her gorgeous green eyes went almost impossibly wide. “I know it is. I’m not asking for a choir of angels or forever, Asam. I just want to feel less crappy for one night. You’re not sober or a saint either.”

But I want you for more than just a night, and I don’t want to be someone you regret when you sober up
.

He didn’t say that out loud. He’d learned from his father that sheikhs didn’t speak their true feelings. After all, their will was law as it had been for thousands of years among their tribes. There was no need to express yourself when your subjects had to comply with your every command. Asam didn’t take it to that extreme, but he’d always hidden any doubts he might have behind sarcasm and his own bombastic presence.

If this was the only chance he had with Kelly, he’d take it. If she came back to his place, he might be able to convince her further and explain his brilliant marriage plans. Screw it. If she were too resistant, he could always do as his older brother did and conscript her. It wasn’t his preference, but his father was forcing his hand, and he wanted no one but the fiery blonde next to him.

The first step was spending more time with her.

He stood and reached out his hand, grabbing her smaller one. “Come with me,
mon amie
, and you’ll see everything I can offer you.”

***

“You know,” she said, pulling out one of chairs in the kitchen.

The suite had a massive dining room with Chippendale furniture in it, items that looked like they were inspired colonial monstrosities—massive and covered in silk fabric on the seats. The kitchen was more humble with a small table and chairs.

Kelly sat on one of those. No, sitting was too polite a word. She spun it around so she could straddle it suggestively. Asam loathed that she was wearing those puffy chef’s pants festooned with cartoon red peppers. Had she been wearing a skirt, then it would’ve been a party.

As if she were reading his mind or, perhaps, his body language, she arched her back and let her hair fall farther down her back. “I did do one thing to try and get in better shape.”

“You’re perfect as you are,” he said, licking his lips and shifting from foot to foot. Hopefully, she didn’t notice the massive erection he sported under his slacks, but actually, he hoped she did. He’d never made it a secret of how much he wanted her, and now as she toyed with him in the ultimate cat and mouse game, he wanted her even more. “You don’t need to change a thing.”

“My boss implies I’m fat all the time.”

“Your boss is a twat,” he said, circling the chair and reaching out to cup the sumptuous mounds of her rear. “You’re a vision. Trust me.”

“You date models!”

“But I’ve always appreciated those with a little extra curves for my comfort,” he whispered in her ear before he leaned closer to nibble at her neck. She shivered as he did it, her body shuddering under those gentle ministrations, and he decided to up the ante by running his beard scruff against the smooth skin of her throat.

She shuddered again and started to grind her hips into the seat of the chair. His erection was so hard that it was difficult to think straight. Maybe that’s exactly what this minx of his had planned all along.

If it was, she was more than welcome to her plots. He was one hundred percent supportive of them, after all.

“It’s funny.”

“How so?” he purred, continuing to caress her cheeks as she writhed for him.

“Well, Alana said she’d taken up belly dancing and was even—and don’t tell Dharr since it’s a surprise for their anniversary—learning the Dance of the Seven Veils.”

His length twitched under the Italian silk of his pants, and he instantly felt jealous of his older brother. What a thoughtful wife Dharr had, how kind of her to think of something that would make her husband so joyous for their anniversary. Maybe both friends were surprisingly daring under the surface and that was why Kelly and Alana hit it off in the first place.

A man could dream.

“And?”

“And I was taking an exercise class in chair dancing. If you put on some music, I’d love to show you my pathetic, out-of-date moves.”

He walked around to her front. If Kelly was offering to seduce him, who was he to complain? Pulling out his phone, he skimmed through his Pandora stations quick enough to select some vintage Britney Spears. It was far from his chosen style, but few singers fit the chair dancing aesthetic as well as the former Mousketeer.

The booming bass filled the suite, dulled only by the phone’s small speakers. Then the singer started her usual deep-voiced moan. As this momentum started to build, Kelly stood up. He groaned at that. His own lust rushed through his veins even as he feared this might all be a come-on. His heart pounded in his chest, sending blood to harden his member as she began to circle the chair with a slow, sultry strut.

With every step she took, Kelly sashayed her hips in invitation. His eyes focused on her rear, on the interplay of taut muscles and luscious curves working as she moved deliberately. Then she put one foot up quickly and in time with the music on the chair seat. There was a shout from Britney on the soundtrack, and Kelly arched her back, this time pushing up her breasts into the air, the pert mounds stretching against the fabric of her cotton T-shirt. He was glad she’d worn white today. It gave him a glimpse of her black bra underneath.

She put her leg down again and stepped maybe a foot away from the chair. As the music continued to boom out, she bent low and slipped off her pants with a practiced flourish, revealing her pale, creamy legs underneath and matching ebony panties riding low on her hips.

Kelly sauntered around the chair, letting him glimpse her rear through the slats of the chair. She shocked him by grabbing the chair’s high back and thrusting her hips against it, letting out a moan as she did. If it were possible to be jealous of an inanimate object, then Asam was. She thrust again and pushed the soft mounds of her breasts against the chair’s back as well. Kelly straddled the seat, arching her back and exposing the sweet expanse of her pale throat to the light.

Asam took that as his cue and stepped forward, leaning down to kiss her throat. She shivered beneath him and mewled. He was so hard that it was almost criminal. He continued his ministrations, teasing her with the scruff of his beard, grazing it against the soft flesh there. Then he trailed his mouth to her lips and kissed her firmly, his lips and tongue tangling with her own, teasing and tantalizing her. His hands caressed lower, cupping the soft curves of her breasts.

She moaned again, and he gently pulled on her shoulders.

“Come, I have so much I want to do with you.”

She snorted. “I’m drunk, but I’m not…not all the way. I’ll regret this tomorrow when the bourbon and mint juleps wear off.”

“No, I was thinking of nothing more than pleasing you and giving you everything you deserve,
mon amie
.”

Her gorgeous emerald eyes lit up like the neon strip of Vegas itself, and she sauntered to the bed before him. Asam relished the view of her pert ass as she wiggled it before sliding into bed.

“I’ll need your panties off.”

Kelly smirked back at him, and he loved that look daring him to go forward. She might not be up for everything tonight, and neither was he. However, she was game to play, and it had probably been too long for both of them. If Dharr’s words were true, Kelly was lonely of late and so was he. Asam might have had other women to explore, but they left him cold and wanting. The passion warmed him now, that blaze of lust, hadn’t burned brightly since the last time he had Kelly at his mercy.

Kelly lifted her hips and slipped off her panties, tossing them to the floor. He licked his lips in anticipation at the sight of the soft curls at the apex of her thighs. They were as light as her hair, and it was an even bigger turn-on for him to realize she was a natural blonde. He’d always loved the look of Western women, that pale complexion, so like a china doll. Not that his spitfire was fragile or doll-like, but she was enticing.

Leaning down, he inhaled her scent—smooth and alluring, like cinnamon and her own aroma. With his fingers, he pushed her most sensitive lips apart and stuck out his tongue, slowly tasting her pleasure nub. She shuddered and cried out his name followed by a quick curse. It encouraged him to continue. He slid his finger inside her, while his tongue flicked quickly over her clit. She screamed and arched her back as he continued his pleasuring her. Her sweet dew seeped from her core, and it was all encouragement—her shuddering body, her wetness, and her desperate cries. All of it was a sign of how much he could affect her, of the heights he could send her to.

She climaxed with a scream and her hips bucked. “Asam, oh my God!” She reached her hand out to him.

He grinned as he pulled away, then went to the suite’s bathroom to wipe off his mouth and beard. As he strode back in, his smile widened. Leaning against the doorframe, Asam regarded his goddess, taking in the way she panted and how it left her breasts bobbing up and down before him.

She was everything he’d ever wanted, and he was so damn sorry he’d wandered off with that dancer and set them back for two years. He was even sorrier that once she couldn’t blame everything on alcohol, Kelly would run again. That was the last thing he wanted. Hell, it was why even above his father’s edicts he’d come to America again.

He needed her, and he
would
have her.

“What?” she said when she finally seemed capable of rational thought. “What’s going on?”

“Why do you ask?”