Captured Boxed Set: 9 Alpha Bad-Boys Who Will Capture Your Heart (38 page)

Handcuffed to the Sheikh

Teresa Morgan

The last thing Maxine
Foss ever expected was to be handcuffed to a sexy, but crazy, guy who claims
he's an Arabian prince... and is determined to seduce her. Best. Abduction.
Ever.

Copyright 2014 Teresa Morgan

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Epilogue

About The Author

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of Contents

Chapter
One

If she hadn't been so bone-deep
jetlagged, Max Foss might have paid more attention to the ominous profile on
the other side of her front door. She might have reasoned that it was pretty
late for a natural gas scam artist to prowl around her Newark, Delaware
neighborhood, looking for someone to fall for the old "I can save you so
much money if you'll just give me your credit card number" trick.

As it was, she was too exhausted to
realize how stupid it was to open her door to a stranger so late at night—even
if the stranger had a clipboard. She'd just come home to find the contents of
her fridge seemed to have aged months in the week she'd been at a five star all
inclusive in the Dominican Republic. All her plants had died... not just died,
but mummified. She'd never had a green thumb, but she'd tried so hard to keep
this batch alive. It wasn't fair to a bunch of plants that didn't have much of
a chance under her care in the first place. Dust swirled up out of the carpet
whenever she took a step, sending her into sneezing spasms. She'd won the
ticket in a radio contest and had gone away to relax. Now all she could see was
the work ahead of her.

Her irritation and her
overdeveloped sense of justice sent her crashing down the stairs to her sunken
foyer as soon as the bell rang, determined to take a chunk out of anyone who
tried to take advantage of her or her friends who lived in the neighborhood.

As soon as she had the door open,
and he turned to face her, caution came crashing back. The guy lounging against
the door frame like he owned it had sixty pounds on her, and all that was solid
muscle. He also wore a fierce expression, as if she'd pissed him off just by
opening the door. The way he looked down at her without lowering his set jaw
spoke of a controlled rage that made her stomach clench.

All of this was probably good,
since he also radiated a mysterious sexuality that might just have gotten a
credit card out of her if those sensual Michelangelo lips hadn't been turned
down at the corners. And those eyes. If they had contained a shred of decency
in them instead of angry fire, would have been as tempting as any dark
chocolate truffle.

Some instinct made her grab at the
throat of her hoodie and zip it up another couple inches.

His hand tightened on the clipboard
as his smoky, narrow-eyed gaze scraped over her body, bunching as if trying to
make a fist. That was all it took to set her temper ablaze. Unreasoning fury
sparked behind her eyes.

"Nobody wants you here."
She lifted her nose in the air. "Take your con game someplace else."

"Con. Game," he repeated,
a not-quite-British accent tingeing his deep caramel voice. Disbelief and rage
dripped from those two words.

She slammed the door on him. Or at
least meant to. Really meant to. But the clipboard was in the way, jammed in
the doorframe. Then, without warning, he was inside, filling up her little
foyer. His big form was just inches away, and coming closer.

An instant of shock passed over
her. Had that just happened? He'd forced his way inside? He paused, seeming
almost as stunned as her.

"Well, that was easy," he
said, sounding confused.

Her surprise broke, replaced by
terror. Oh God, this was a nightmare. A surge of adrenaline sent her scrambling
up the stairs... Her phone was on the table. Could she keep him off until she
dialed 911? Probably not. What else could she do? Her heart thudded an insane
beat as she raced up the steps.

She didn't get far. A merciless arm
banded her waist, pulling her back against a chest built like a brick wall. She
inhaled to scream, but the fabric he held to her mouth muffled the sound. When
she tried to breathe, the air tasted like bitter chemicals and she almost
retched. Oh God, she was being drugged. He was going to drug her and kill her.
And who knew what else.

Panicked blood hammered in her
ears. She had to think. What could she do? Kicking and flailing seemed
hopeless, but it was her only option—Or maybe... She forced herself to calm.
She held her breath and let all her muscles go limp. Maybe he would relax his
iron grip too early and let her go. Then she could kick him in the 'nads.

Fighting every defensive instinct,
she let her eyelids flicker shut. She willed her heartbeat to slow, praying she
wasn't succumbing too quickly.

His breath tickled her ear. "Ah."
If his voice hadn't been terrifying, his exotic accent would have sent her to
her knees. "She's not so strong as I imagined. I'd hoped you'd put up more
of a fight."

You'll find out how strong I am
as soon as you let me go
, she promised silently.
Brave words, but doubts crept in. Starved of oxygen, her lungs began to burn.

He didn't loosen his grip one inch.
Through her shirt, she felt a deep bass chuckle reverberate in his chest. "What
a terrible liar you are. Did you think I would fall for that one, Max?"

He knew her name? She gasped in
surprise, and took in a lungful of chemical air that stung going down. What
stung more was how stupid she'd just been.

Idiot
, she cursed herself, as the drugs leeched into her system.

Before
she passed out, the last thing she saw was those wicked lips, smiling in
triumph as he locked her left wrist in one side of a pair of handcuffs.

* * *

In her dream, Max was falling.
Wind rushed past her ears at a crazed speed. She was panicked, out of control,
plunging down a tunnel that closed in on all sides. Her world was a rush of
sounds and colors that seemed to be a cryptic message she couldn't decipher.

Out of the madness came a single
point of calm. A spot of shining gold, a ball the diameter of a silver dollar.
It grew and glowed in front of her eyes. She reached out and closed her hand
around it.

Everything stopped. She stood on
her feet again, the earth beneath her. The rays of the moon bathed her in a glowing
light as she walked along the high ridge of a shifting sand dune. A deep sense
of peace and serenity enveloped her soul. The sand was cool between her toes.

A man stepped out from nowhere, and
yet it seemed as if he'd always been there. She knew him for what he was. Her
lover. Her other self. But she couldn't see his face. When she tried to
concentrate on him, she saw only blank space. When he spoke, she heard garbled
static.

Or... wait... There was a voice in
her ear, pulling her out of the dream. She looked down at the golden sphere in
her palm. It faded and she was falling again.

"-ke up,
hayati
. Come,
open those pretty blue eyes for me."

She saw a wall of black. She
blinked a few times, wishing she could wipe the fuzz from her vision, but her
hands wouldn't seem to move for her. The black wall cleared up. She was looking
at a... leather jacket? She was falling, sitting up, with her arms around a
leather jacket? And her head seemed to be encased in plastic.

"I feel you moving back there,"
a caramel voice dripped in her ear.

She whipped her head around to see
the speaker who seemed to be whispering directly in her ear. The plastic moved
with her, like it was molded to her skull.

Wait. She wasn't falling... She
looked down. The dotted centre line of a highway buzzed by, a foot from her
toes. She gasped in shock and clung to... whatever it was she was clinging to more
tightly. The driver, she guessed.

A motorcycle. She'd been kidnapped
and taken on a motorcycle. Every second was taking her away from her home, from
safety.

She couldn’t see much of the bike
with the helmet blocking her, but tried to memorize what she could. Instead of
being sleek, it was made of choppy angles and had all the aerodynamics of a
praying mantis. She couldn’t see the brand from where she sat, but there
couldn't be many bikes like that, right? Maybe if she could learn to hum the
particular note of the engine, the CSI people could identify it from that.

Ah, hell, who was she kidding?
There was no way she could point out the bike. It was too dark to even see the
color. What was she going to say?
Detective, it looked like it would morph
into an armed robot at any second
? She sighed, letting her frustration out.

"Awake now, then?" her
abductor asked, seemingly inside her head. The driver of the motorcycle looked
at her over his shoulder.

She put two and two together. "You
have microphones in your helmets?"

"So that I may have the
pleasure of speaking to you,
hayati
."

"My name's not
Hayati
,"
she said, with venom, despite—or maybe because of—feeling so freaked out about
the situation. She pulled on her hands, but they refused to budge. Something
seemed to shackle them together. She felt around with her fingers to figure out
what was holding her.

"I suggest you not do that,
hayati
,"
her captor said.

"Why not?"
Will I find
out how to escape?
She rooted around blindly, and felt something hard under
her fingers. She poked it. It seemed to get a bit harder.

Fire rose in her cheeks as she
realized she'd just been groping a strange man in his crotch. She pulled her
hands back into the sleeves of her hoodie.

"That," he told her. "Is
why not."

For an instant, she thought about
squeezing his man parts as hard as she could and forcing him off the road. As
much as she liked the idea, he might crash the bike. Even if she managed to get
him to pull over, what would she do then? Her arms seemed stuck around him. Plus
she hadn't seen a car on this stretch of road, just thick stands of pine
swishing past. She had no clue how to drive a motorcycle, so the only other way
back was to walk, which wouldn't work because he would just come after her on
the bike.

He was in control here. For now.
Until she found her opportunity.

With her hands in her sleeves, she
felt the cold steel around her wrists. The memory of the handcuffs he put on
her came dashing back into her mind. He'd cuffed her hands together, but
shackled them around his waist like a belt, forcing her to embrace him from
behind. Clever. It held her to him and let him keep her on the bike at the same
time. How was she supposed to get out of it?

"Would you mind not doing that
either?" he asked.

"Doing—"

Before she could complete the
question, he broke in. "Bashing your head against my back. It's very
distracting."

She realized he was right. She'd
been hitting her head against him in frustration. Of course the helmet meant
she didn't feel it. But did he? Hope swelled inside her. Could she use it to
escape?

"Ah,"
he said, before she finished the thought. "We're at our destination."

* * *

She felt the bike slow just
before they turned into a thin laneway anyone would miss if they weren't
looking for it. Her gut clenched as he maneuvered the bike down a track that
seemed more like a rut than an actual road. Twenty-foot tall trees bracketed
them on either side, looming over her like nasty sentinels protecting the
criminal who'd just taken her from her home. No one would ever find her here,
she knew on instinct. Even the moon's light was hidden behind clouds. She'd
probably never see it again. He'd brought her here to rape and murder her and
bury her corpse in the woods where she would lie alone under the dirt forever.

She felt a single drop of moisture
seep from one of her eyes. More than anything, she wanted to wipe it away, to
hide her weakness from her torturer. But her arms were bound around his waist,
keeping her from masking her humiliating emotion. She could only hope, as they
bumped along the track, that the tear would dry before he took off her helmet.

"You are very quiet," he
said, in a casual tone, steering the bike even more casually. "Have you
thought about apologizing to me? Offering an explanation? Perhaps some begging?
I do enjoy your begging, under other circumstances."

She seesawed between rage and
disbelief. Why should she apologize to him? He was the one who'd just committed
a crime and he wanted to blame her for it? Acid growled in her gut at the
injustice of it. But his words made her brain skip in confusion, like a CD with
a scratch. He spoke like he knew her.

Well, of course he did. If he knew
exactly when she was coming home from her vacation, he must have been stalking
her for months. Didn't stalkers create elaborate fictitious relationships with
their victims in their deluded minds? She knew she should probably play along,
try to get him to relax his guard, but she couldn't. The injustice of the whole
thing dug under her skin, even worse because he was blaming his victim for his own
actions, like a man who raped a woman and then said she wanted it because of her
low-cut shirt.

"I will never apologize to
you," she spewed at him, as if the words were poisonous.

He slammed the brakes so hard the bike
jerked. On instinct, she grabbed him for support.

With her hands clamped to his chest,
she felt his heart beating a furious tempo, even through his jacket. He'd
handled the bike... hell, he'd committed the act of abduction with such calm,
but underneath the outward signs, he hid some great emotion. Excitement at his
upcoming torture session? Or maybe something else?