Never Resist a Sheikh (International Bad Boys) (10 page)

And then there was no more time to think because he was drawing her through the doors, a massive, vaulted room ahead of her. After the narrow, medieval corridors of the rest of the palace, it was almost a shock.

The
ceiling was so high it was almost dizzying and inlaid with all kinds of beautiful mosaics. Even the walls glittered, bright with colored tiles and shards of mirrored glass. It was like being in a room covered in jewels.

She stared at the walls because it was easier to look at them than it was to look at the rest of the room. Especially when it was absolutely jam packed full of people.

And they
were all staring directly at her.

Her heartbeat thudded in her head, the warmth of Zakir’s skin on hers making her dizzy. There were calluses on his fingers; she could feel the slight roughness of them against her. Was that from sword fighting? Or something else?

More puzzles. More mysteries.

Jamal was talking, his voice carrying over the crowd gathered to watch them, but she didn’t understand
what he was saying. It was easier to concentrate on the feel of Zakir’s hand or the mosaics on the walls. Anything so she didn’t have to look at all the faces turned toward her.

The crowd began to part, opening up a clear path through to a massive, gilded throne. In front of the throne was a large cushion covered in white silk.

Zakir strode forward and she had no choice but to go with him. People
murmured as they went past, whispers like wind in the trees. She didn’t understand what was being said, but she’d seen the expression on the faces of the people watching her before.

Her father had looked at her the same way when she’d tried to tell him why she wanted to study computer science at college instead of law. Her mother fluttered around, placating. But nothing had been able to mask
his scorn or disapproval.

And nothing had kept her mother from complaining to her in private, guilting her, and making her feel as if she was being heartless for making her own choices and not doing what her father wanted her to.

Anger roiled inside her, an instinctive response. But she kept her eyes on the floor. These people weren’t her parents and this had nothing to do with her past. And
anyway, she couldn’t afford an emotional outburst, not now.

As they approached the throne, Zakir guided her to the cushion at the foot of it. Then he leaned in, his mouth near her ear. “This is your place,” he murmured. “You are my bride prize and as such will be on display to my court. People will come to pay their respects and leave you gifts as is the custom, but you will not be required to
speak. You only need to nod your head.”

His breath was warm against her neck, she could feel it even through the silk of her robes. She shivered helplessly and that really didn’t help. “O-Okay. What about you?”

“I will need to mingle with my court.”

She blinked. “You mean, all I do is sit here?”

His fingers firmed around hers, directing her to the cushion. “Yes. Remember what you promised
me, Felicity.”

The use of her first name jolted her enough that she forgot to protest as she sank down onto the white silk cushion, folding her legs beneath her.

Felicity. Why had he called her that?

He also called you “little one”.

So he had. But she’d kind of blanked that one out because it had felt…intimate in some way that she wasn’t ready to acknowledge. It was also bossy and possessive
and all sorts of wrong.

You liked that, too.

No way. Of course she hadn’t.

She scowled after him as he strode into the crowds of people. He was nearly half a head taller than most of them, standing out in his black and midnight blue robes, with his circlet of gold. Most of the rest of the people of his court wore robes of white, like her own. But there were numerous different colors of head
covering, though none of them wore the deep, intense blue of the sheikh. Was that a royal color here?

And then, as she watched his dark, massive figure surrounded by crowds, she realized something.

There were hardly any women present.

She frowned, scanning around the rest of the huge room. There were long tables set up at either end, all heaped with food. And in one corner a group of people
played instruments, though the music was pretty much drowned out by the roar of conversation that had started up.

But she only spotted around twenty women in the room, out of a crowd of a couple of hundred at least.

How weird was that?

She could understand the sexes being segregated at an occasion like this, since that’s what she’d heard happened in the stricter countries of the Middle East.
But that obviously wasn’t the case here since there were some women present.

They wore brightly colored robes and they were, without exception, mostly in their fifties or sixties. The fact that they were dripping with heavy, gold jewelry, not to mention numerous gems, seemed to indicate that they were aristocracy of some kind.

Too busy staring and puzzling out the reasons for the lack of women,
she didn’t notice a group of men approach her cushion until they were almost standing over her.

Startled, she looked up at them, trying a nervous smile.

But they didn’t smile back. In fact, there was no expression at all on their faces. One of them, an older man with a graying beard, bent and put something down on the silk carpet that her cushion sat on. A coin. The rest of them followed suit
until she had a little pile of copper-colored coins in front of her. Then, without a word, they turned their backs and disappeared back into the crowd.

Felicity frowned after them then glanced down at the coins. These were gifts? They were rather pretty. She wondered if she should touch them, then thought better of it, folding her hands in her robes.

It wasn’t the most interesting evening she’d
ever had, but sitting on a cushion and not interacting with anyone was a lot better than many other parties she’d been forced to attend, so she didn’t mind too much.

Another group of men stopped in front of her and this time the looks on their faces were easy enough to read. Disapproval. Contempt.

One of them put something down in front of her, but it wasn’t a coin this time. It was a stone,
rough cut and gray and clearly just picked up from the roadside.

Felicity swallowed, a wave of hot anger washing over her skin as she began to realize what was happening. More stones joined the coins in front of her, and she knew they weren’t gifts. They were insults.

She bit her lip and looked away as another stone hit the ground in front of her, fighting to keep still and not leap to her feet
and demand to know why she was being insulted.

Okay, so they didn’t like her. What did she care? She wasn’t going to marry Zakir anyway; in fact, she’d been forced into it. She should be
pleased
they weren’t happy with their sheikh’s choice. She should be ecstatic. Because if they didn’t like her, then perhaps he’d set her free.

Yet she found herself burning with humiliation all the same.

She tried to ignore it, tried to see where Zakir was, but for some reason she couldn’t find him anywhere in the room. It was like he’d gone, leaving her here, sitting like an idiot on her cushion while the people of his court showered her with rocks.

More people approached her, some of them saying things to her that she didn’t understand and didn’t want to, because whatever it was they were saying
would be insulting.

The pile in front of her began to grow, full of rocks and copper coins, and lumps of dirt.

People were staring now.

She compressed her lips together, refusing to let them see her anger or show any hint of vulnerability. So this is what Zakir had brought her to. Drugged, kidnapped, and now ritually humiliated. And she couldn’t even defend herself because she’d promised him
she’d sit here and behave. Was a lousy phone call really worth this?

Yes, it was. Because then someway, somehow she’d alert every damn authority there was to get her out of here.

Her throat felt dry, a vague nausea sitting in her stomach. She wished she had something to drink, but she didn’t dare move in case moving was somehow insulting.

And then she spotted a familiar figure moving toward
her. Jamal. She forced herself to give him a tentative smile as he approached, his brows drawing down as he noticed the pile of rocks and dirt in front of her.

“I’m not sure those are gifts,” she murmured, her voice thickened with anger. She had to get up, get out of here. At least for a moment. “Do you think I could stretch my legs? Get a drink of water? I think my feet have gone to sleep.”

The look on Jamal’s face was thunderous, his head turning as if scanning the immediate vicinity for enemies. There were none, except the last group of men who’d given her the so-called “gifts”, another generous helping of rocks with an added lump of dirt. They were standing near the cushion, talking amongst themselves.

Jamal’s dark eyes narrowed as he stared at them. Without taking his eyes off
them, he reached a hand down to her and she gratefully took it, getting painfully up off the cushion.

But she’d been sitting too long and as she tried to stand on her numb feet, someone jogged her elbow, making her stumble. There was an exclamation and from out of nowhere a shower of something wet and cold splashed in her face and soaked the pristine white silk of her robes, the sound of smashing
glass following it.

For a second she could only stand there blinking as the attention of over two hundred people descended on her.

And she realized what had happened. Someone had thrown red wine all over her and now it was all down the front of her robes, staining them and the cushion behind her red. Staining the carpet she stood on and the floor.

Felicity looked up at the man who’d done it.
There was a scornful smile on his face, obviously pleased with his handiwork.

Humiliated, a red rage descended over her vision.

And she took a step toward him.

*     *     *

Zakir was listening
to the concerns of yet another of his ministers, another litany of complaints about salaries that he was tired of hearing. They wanted more money because he’d
come down hard on the corruption, a leftover from his father’s reign that Farid had been trying to stamp out. He’d made it plain on a number of occasions that they wouldn’t be getting any and yet still they complained.

The sound of breaking glass stopped the man in mid-tirade.

Zakir turned toward the sound, his hand reaching instinctively for the sword at his hip. But a hush was rapidly spreading,
which didn’t indicate assassins or any other hostilities he might have to respond to.

A hush that had its origin in the space before his throne. Which could only mean one thing. Felicity.

He brushed aside his complaining minister, moving swiftly through the crowd, anger coiling in his gut. What had she done? Hadn’t he told her what she was supposed to do? And hadn’t she promised that yes, she
would do it?

The crowds parted for him all of a sudden to reveal her advancing on Faisal, one of his most vociferous critics, a look of fury on her face, her robes stained and dripping red. The color of blood. The color of Maysan’s blood on the white sheets of her wedding bed.

A rush of adrenaline filled him, his body already responding before his mind caught up and it wasn’t until his sword
was already naked in his hand that he realized it wasn’t blood that was staining her robes but wine.

Old Faisal was with his cronies, shouting about how it wasn’t his fault, she’d rudely knocked into him and spilled his wine. Faisal, who’d made it very clear he did not approve of Zakir’s choice of bride, and who was only one of a large group of them who also didn’t approve.

And Felicity was
approaching him, shaking with fury, her mouth opening to say something that would absolutely not help the situation.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded before she could speak, his voice making everyone in the vicinity freeze.

“She rudely spilled my wine,” Faisal said in heavily accented English, his mouth drawn up in a sneer.

Felicity’s eyes widened. “I did not—”

“Silence,” Zakir ordered
harshly, noticing as he did so the dark pile in front of the cushion. Not gifts. They were rocks. And worthless copper coins. And…dirt.

And the red staining her robes. It was a reminder to everyone in the stone hall of what happened to the last sheikha to wed an Al-Nazari. A bad omen and one deliberately caused by Faisal, of that Zakir had no doubt. Just like the pile in front of her was deliberate.

It wasn’t just a mark of their disapproval. It was an insult. To her.

It was also an insult to him.

Faisal fell silent as he realized his sheikh was staring at him, but he didn’t look away, the arrogant dog. Nearby was Jamal, looking furious, but he was supposed to be watching out for and protecting Felicity. How had he not noticed the pile of insults in front of her? And why had Jamal not come
to get him?

He does not approve, you know this.

Anger, dark and intense, flared inside him.