Sheikh's Revenge (7 page)

She loved that.

Still, she’d had more sake than she meant to, making her tipsy. She’d been craving him since that night on the rooftop garden at Club Rouge, and now she’d had him all over again.

Zahir set the tray beside her bed even as she struggled for levity, for some sense of sanity in the things she’d done.

“You have people for that. Hell, I’m sure you have legions upon legions of people to do that. Like if one person fails then there’s a line eight-people deep to help him out.”

“I wanted to do it. Sometimes, I do like the hands-on touch,” he said, pushing her hair back from her face. It was a bit of a tangled mess, and she hated that he saw her with actual bedhead hair. “Besides, I wasn’t sure how you’d be feeling today. I asked you so many times last night if you were sure, but even I wasn’t sure quite how drunk you were. You fell asleep before we got to your apartment. I decided to bring you here and put you in one of the endless guest quarters.”

“I think I…oh I must have made a mistake,” she said, hating herself all the more, especially when she saw the way Zahir stiffened.

“If you feel that way about it,” he said, handing her the water and the Advil, “then I’ll have my servants help you dress. I didn’t feel comfortable doing more than letting you sleep everything off in your dress, but I have some other options for you if you need something more comfortable to wear home. After that, you can go home and I’ll see you back at the office. As I promised beforehand, I want to keep working with you as my assistant. Nothing can ever change that.”

“Even if I give you oral pleasures? God, I had too much sake but that’s not even the excuse because I
knew
what I was doing. I was being bold and daring and doing something new, and I just messed everything up. You must think I’m the biggest slut out there for doing this to my boss just two weeks in…or, uh, at all.”

Zahir considered her, those gold eyes simmering before her. “No. I doubt you’d ever touch a loathsome toad like Clayton McDermott. What I see is a woman who has chafed under a thick collar and leash for almost a year and who is both trying to be happy
and,
I hope, is feeling something new with me. I know I feel something powerful with you, something so familiar and attractive but also amazing. I like what we have, and frankly, I’d like to explore it further.”

Swallowing hard, Addison pulled at her cuticles. Maybe now was the time to tell him that she was the kitty from the rooftop, but she was scared to. He’d called her to interview and seemed not to have made the connection, but maybe it would make her look like some weird stalker if she said anything. That was the last thing she wanted. She was finding her footing here in Dubai. She was happy.

That last thing she wanted was to be sent away. Zahir did make her feel things that she’d never felt before. He lit a passion deep in her belly and made her core clench and quiver.

She wanted him, and she wanted to explore so much more with him.

Addison just wasn’t sure he’d still respect her, if she hadn’t already lost that privilege when she’d been lost in the throes of passion last night.

Yeah, big, big “if.”

“How?”

“It’s a weekend and a bank holiday abroad in the States. We won’t even be back in session until Tuesday. That gives me three full days to show you the parts of Dubai you said you hadn’t yet seen. Would you like to see the Al Ain?”

“Is it pretty?”

“Gorgeous, and it has so many interesting places to see. It’s on the outskirts of the city, far from the tourist claptrap or the high-rises and malls. We could do that, too, but I thought you might want to see all the nuances my proud country has to offer.”

“And you’re not…I was so forward, Zahir.”

He set everything on his lap aside and reached up to cup both of her cheeks. His hands were so large that they seemed to swallow her face almost whole. This close, her nose was tickled by the scent of him—both that raw maleness mixed with the spicy aroma of turmeric. That was so very much Zahir, the exotic and the raw power. It was one of the myriad of things drawing her to him, making her weak even now.

“It’s more than fine. I care about you, and you care about me, and maybe this is moving fast.”

You have no idea how fast…

“But let me show you all the sights you haven’t had a chance to see this weekend. I promise you, that we’ll only do what you want. Let my driver take you home, you think about it for a few hours, and at noon I’ll come to pick you up if you would like. Then I’ll show you all of my world.”

“I can think about it?”

“Yes, and I don’t think that the dress would be practical in the more rugged parts of Al Ain,” he said, winking back at her. “Listen, Addy, I truly see a woman who is struggling and desperate to come into her own. Let me help you do that, please.”

“I…”

“Just think it over, and I’ll hopefully see you at noon.”

She nodded, her throat dry despite the water she’d drunk. After all, she wasn’t sure what to do. But now Zahir would be eager to have her answer and soon.

***

“Brother, you have an interesting way of getting information from employees, I admit that,” Fairuza said. She’d come to his office in the palace and was taking an emery board to her nails. Her sleek, dark hair was pulled up into braids and she looked sharply dressed at six on Saturday morning, already in a suit. He wasn’t surprised. Fairuza wouldn’t know a weekend if it bit her on the ass. “In fact, I wanted you to hire Miss Morgan because of how closely she’d worked under McDermott and her level of obvious discontent. The spectacular firing of hers. It’s quite the story and everyone in the Boston CEO set has heard it. But I didn’t expect you to seduce it out of her. That’s not fair.”

“I’m not.”

“She’s in our guest room and she’s clearly been busy last night. It’s one thing to give her a job and security for everything she’ll be unaware she’s giving you. I think that’s overall a fair swap, but you can’t just use her and seduce her for what you need. That’s not just drinks and a relaxed dinner. That’s something appalling.”

“It’s not like that at all. I…she’s special, and I know this sounds insane, but there’s something so familiar about her, something that touches me deeply. I can’t help that I’m falling for her
and
that she has information that I need. I swear that this weekend away—”

“What?” she asked, arching a skeptical eyebrow. “You’re going away with her? How is this not about seducing an innocent to nefarious gains?”

“It’s not. I just…this weekend will be about us, and I won’t be trying to take information from her. There’s something between us, and I have to explore it.”

“And what if she ever finds out why you hired her in the first place?”

“I won’t ever let her know. None of this is what it looks like. I can’t help who I’m attracted to or the way she makes me feel, but I’m also not a fool. I know this looks terrible, and I just want to have a good weekend. She deserves that.”

“If in bed she happens to confess some dark secret of a certain steelworks, then that’s fine too. You’ll crush her if she finds out.”

“Then,” he said, storming back out of his office, “she’ll never know. I’ll protect her from everything. I can do it.”

***

She wasn’t sure how any of this had happened. Three weeks ago, she’d been working her ass off at a dead-end job and trying to guess her boss’s cryptic coffee orders every morning at the local Starbucks. Now she was working for a company halfway across the world and being swept away by its CEO and the resident sheikh of Dubai. That didn’t seem possible. She wasn’t the woman who had been whisked away in a Land Rover to a hotel at the outskirts of the Al Ain. They’d had to take the SUV because of the rough terrain, the harsh desert sands in boulders creating quite an obstacle in their way. But now they’d spent the day seeing the sights of the Al Ain, including the beautiful palace of the former Sheikh Zayed. She wondered if that man, who’d been so influential to Dubai’s growth, was related to Zahir.

She was out on a date with a head of state. He came from a long line of sheikhs. People in his family could have been shaping politics and government in the Middle East for decades or centuries for all she knew. It was so overwhelming, all of it, and it made her keenly aware of how different they were from one another, how very much their experiences were night versus day.

Still, they’d done a tour of the big palace and museum and had a traditional dinner of spiced lamb and dates. What they were doing next was something she never would have expected of a CEO. The fancier things like dinner, sure, but here she was at the Al Ain Camel Market. Addison was glad that he’d told her to put on more normal clothes, nothing fancy. Not that the camels had spit at her (although she’d been told they were likely to do that and often). However, it was quite a sight to behold. It was only six in the evening so the sun was low in the sky, the orange light spreading out through the burgeoning evening.

Everywhere she looked, there were stalls made like little bodegas, maybe no more than twelve-foot squares, and each one had at least half a dozen camels or more. As she passed one stall with its high gates, she had to smile at the matching white and pink woven blankets draped over the four animals’ humps. They were woven with rose patterns and the camels almost stuck out for her as more elite than some of the others. It was a funny, quirky thought, the idea of a designer camel.

In the distance, the next round of races was about to start, but she hadn’t been interested in that. No, she just was following Zahir, seeing what he loved here.

“You brought me to a camel bazaar?”

“The market is years old and one of the most respected sales markets of any kind in Dubai. Besides, you asked me what I loved in life. Did you really doubt when I said animals?”

“So if you didn’t have billions of dollars, a company of employees depending on you, and a country to run, then you’d be a camel rancher or breeder or whatever they’re called,” she said, scrunching her face up a bit at her inability to find the right camel-wrangling term.

They passed a stall where only a mother and her baby stood. The little one’s fur was so light that it was almost white and it stood no more than four feet high. His head was tiny in proportion to the rest of his body, and Addison chuckled at his gangly appearance once she realized how much he’d have to grow to be as big as his mother, who was easily twice as tall as he was, or at least it seemed like it with her hump.

“He’s so adorable,” she said.

Zahir nodded beside her and pulled a few juicy dates from his pocket. “Would you like to feed him? The market won’t object.”

“It would be bad to disagree with the wishes of your sheikh, wouldn’t it?” she asked, winking at him.

Addison knew that she had a tendency to put her foot in her mouth, and she knew she’d wounded him at first when she’d woken up at the palace. She just wanted him to understand that none of this was because he was sheikh or she wanted or (conversely) disdained his wealth. No, all of this between them was because they had shared such passion on that roof, and she’d never felt anything like it in her life. Part of her was scared she never would again if she ran from it.

“Yes,” he replied drolly. “I’ll make heads roll, have no doubt of that. I must have prime ability to carouse with camels at all times.”

“Well, at least you admit your monomaniacal dromedary tendencies,” she added, holding out her date, cupped in her palm. “That’s the first step to recovery.”

Zahir affected a deep, rousing bass and shook his head. “Being megalomaniacal is the best part of being a sheikh, don’t ask me to give up on the perks. And you need to hold your palm flat. It’s the best way to avoid being bitten by an overeager baby camel.”

“Well I would like to keep my fingers.”

He leaned forward and kissed her neck, teasing her pulse point as well with a quick flick of his tongue. Damn him. That tricky man was already stoking the fires within her belly, leaving her core aching for him. “They’re very talented. I have to admit that it would be a shame to lose them. I’d be rather devastated.”

“Good to know,” she said, holding out her palm and laughing at the camel’s soft and moist tongue lapping at her palm until he slurped up the date. “Aww, thanks for the kiss, little fella.”

“You’ll say that to him but not to me? Should I be offended?” he asked, this time kissing her neck and suckling hickies into her flesh. Addison blushed to think of the love bites that would be visible on her skin, marking her as the sheikh’s. “I should be thanked for my kisses as well.”

She turned and kissed him back, her tongue playing with his. “Then thank you for the perfect day and for such an adorable finish to the date so far. How did you get into animals? You said you had a falcon, right?”

He nodded and crooked his arm so that she could walk with him. “Maybe it would be more respectable to be a veterinarian than a breeder, but what I want to do more than anything else is to be free, to feel just that wilderness. Maybe I’m someone who’d fall off the grid and become a mountain man or a desert hermit if I didn’t have any other obligations, but I’d need a good steed with me, and in the desert, a camel’s a terrific companion.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I haven’t even ridden a horse before, let alone a camel.”

“Well, I’d like to fix that last part at least. For horses, of course we have Arabians back at the palace. We’ll have to set you up with that one day as well,” he admitted. Then he stopped in front of a camel held by a man in long white robes. The camel had a makeshift saddle, bumpy under a woven blue blanket. “Would you like a ride, my lady?”

Zahir punctuated his question by kissing the back of her hand. The cur.

She nodded as he helped her onto the camel first. Addison sat back on the seat and watched as Zahir effortlessly jumped in front of her. That was a relief. If she’d been responsible for trying to steer the animal, then they’d wind up in a ditch somewhere; God knew she had no idea how to do it. To be fair, she was sure that just kicking at the camel’s side a bit and begging with a “pretty please” wouldn’t help her.