Sold to the Sheikh (18 page)

For him, Stella held the key to that release.

Obviously, he was already a madman. To walk away from her the previous night… He was actually still in awe that he had been able to do it. With every passing intimacy between them, every laugh, every erotic moment, every shared wound, his desire for her had grown. After her confession—and subsequent performance—at Rococo, it was now almost an intolerable, continuous torture. It reminded him a great deal of when he was a boy, when he had been caught spying on the serving women getting dressed, and his nanny had boxed his ears. He’d heard a high-pitched ringing for weeks. Nothing would soothe him.

Stella was worse.

The thought of having her, the way he knew he could, watching her voluntarily laying down every last defense, giving up each sensation, every thought, every scrap of will, to him…

He would settle for nothing less now, after all of this. That is, if he could hold out without going completely insane. Just the idea of what he’d planned for her made him instantly rock hard. Not so much execution of it as what it would represent for her, and, hopefully, for him.

It all made him feel slightly abuzz, on the edge of chaos, as though his skin were the only thing preventing the crazed, almost violent desire that swirled within him from leaking out into the world and causing havoc. Well, almost prevented it: he had
bought a restaurant
. Not a bad investment, actually, given the establishment, but not a particularly good one, either. It didn’t matter; money was immaterial.

Of course, he hadn’t bought it as an investment. He’d bought it, through his lawyer, on impulse—on impulse! Him!—at a cash price the owner chef simply could not refuse, just to take a jab at Stella’s ex-husband. Just to preserve the Rococo restaurant as a place that Stella Spencer could still call her own, a place she could enjoy whenever she felt like it.

No, he obviously had gone insane some time ago, and was only just now realizing it.

And what if she took the money he had promised and decided never to see him again? Wasn’t that the whole point of paying her, that she would not feel obligated? Or, he supposed, that her obligations would be very clear, very specific, very well delineated, and that he would know her motivations for a fact, and not have to rely solely on his training, on intuition, on the inconstancy of emotion? Didn’t he want her to take the money and go back to her life, so that he might go back to his?

Only a few days ago, that had seemed a very rational plan. Now it was a complication that clouded the situation rather than clarified it. Bashir could not help but smile at the irony.
What was the old saying? ‘When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.’

Indeed.

He wanted to soothe every one of her wounds with the ways he wanted to care for her. He wanted to prove to her that she was not just worthy of adulation and love, but that she was probably more worthy than anyone else he had ever met. He couldn’t necessarily have provided a cogent argument to this effect; it was just something he knew in his bones.

So
, he thought grudgingly, pacing now in his own luxury suite, awaiting the hour he had appointed for her to be ready for him,
perhaps this is love, in its way.

He stopped short. He’d thought it, the word.
Love
. The world had not come crashing down around him; his universe had not changed. And neither had his options.

Mark would have laughed until he cried, and then told him to go elope.

But those were larger questions, not necessarily suited to the moment, and Bashir would not let anything ruin this moment for her, or for himself. He made the executive decision that he would not think about it until absolutely necessary; it represented a dark thing on the horizon that he would eventually deal with, but he wouldn’t let it impede upon this night. This night, when he would know if Stella Spencer—wounded, beautiful, sensitive, loving Stella Spencer—could trust him enough to inspire his own trust in her. It was all he could think about. All he cared about, to tell the truth.

Which, of course, led back to the conclusion that he had completely lost his mind. Bashir sighed.

Everything was ready. He would know, soon, if Stella fully trusted him. In fact, everyone would know. Roman and Lola had confirmed the arrangements; the equipment would be available, and arranged as he’d requested.

As would the audience.

All that was left was Stella.

C
HAPTER 23

This had easily,
easily
been the longest day of Stella’s life.

She’d slept terribly, obviously, after the Sheikh had left her like that, warning her about “tomorrow.” First, he hadn’t…well, after all that, after everything she’d told him, and after she’d done everything he’d told her to do, it still wasn’t enough? What did a girl have to
do
to get a billionaire Sheikh Dom to make love to her?

Even when he was paying her for the privilege?

She cringed. Well, theoretically, as far as he knew, he was paying her. She would
not
be accepting any money, she had decided on that. It would taint everything he had done for her if she did, and what he had given her was priceless, even if he didn’t know it.

These past few days, she’d finally felt like she understood what people meant when they talked about coming out of their shell. Or that cheesy butterfly metaphor, with the cocoon. Stella wanted to run around—admittedly, like a crazy person—and announce to all those people, no, you don’t really know what it’s like to emerge from a shell, to break free of a cocoon, to find yourself completely changed into someone you’d always hoped you could be, but
I do. Let me tell you about it!

Stella hadn’t ever thought of herself as the sort of person who could be confident of her place in the world, and, even more so, of what she might expect to get
back
from the world. She’d just sort of accepted that people wouldn’t treat her well, and her job was to still be the best person she could be, under the circumstances. It wasn’t really something she’d thought about consciously—she wasn’t the self-pitying type, or at least tried not to be—but, looking back, it was clear her expectations were totally warped by that feeling of inevitable suckitude. When Robert had left, it had been completely heartbreaking, and, on some level, shocking, like a sucker punch to the gut. And yet, on another level, something deep and pitiful inside Stella had thought,
of course
.

The Sheikh had, somehow, miraculously, succeeded in getting that deep and pitiful thing to shut up. He’d sucker punched it right back, and Stella firmly believed that, no matter what happened, that deep and pitiful thing would stay dead. It was gone. She was free, forever.

Even if the Sheikh never wanted to see her again.

Maybe.

She had pretty much been unable to think about anything else, all day. What could he possibly have in store for her that she hadn’t already done? And what if she failed? What if he decided that she wasn’t really…

Well, what did he want from her, anyway? If it was just sex, well, he could have had that. He could have a
lot
of that, frankly. But the plain fact was that he hadn’t had sex with her. So what else did he want?

Stella knew what she wanted the answer to that to be, but she didn’t want to say it, not even to herself. It would be just like her, to screw herself over by falling for a man as unattainable in real life as Sheikh Bashir was. This was a fantasy weekend, not life. What did a Sheikh’s life even consist of? The kind of man who bought a fancy restaurant on a freaking whim and thought nothing of it? She imagined his office with a giant map of the world, on which he’d manipulate little pieces, like a great game of Risk or something. It probably wasn’t that far off.

How could she ever hope to fit into a life like that?

It was silly to even think about. And yet she was clearly doing just that, waiting for the usual dress delivery to arrive. She did have to wonder where they were going, and what fabulous dress he would have picked out for her to wear. She didn’t mind getting a new designer dress every night, either, even if the Sheikh kept ruining them in ever more creative ways.

By the time the package and accompanying note did arrive—left, like all the others, at the foot of the door to her suite; she never did figure out who he’d hired to leave them—Stella had worked herself up into a state of nervous excitement. She felt buoyant and yet delicate, like whipped peaks of sugared cream.

It was a small parcel, actually. Much smaller than any of the others.

She opened it to find a note that said only “8pm, the Black Ball.” And a collar.

Just
a collar.

For the Black Ball.

Stella had to sit down for a while.

The Black Ball was the start of Volare NY’s fall season, a massive costume party to welcome back the club’s wealthy members from their summers in the Hamptons, timed for the very last night of the Labor Day weekend. Stella had never been. She hadn’t worked at Volare NY that long, but she’d heard stories. This was the party where the BDSM elements of the club took precedence, and when even the most vanilla of Volare’s members sometimes dipped into more exotic flavors.

She’d been nervous about the Black Ball back when she’d thought she’d just have to host. Now she was apparently attending.

In only a collar.

She’d taken all of her clothes off, somehow not any more accustomed to nudity than she’d been before all of this, and put the thin, soft, leather collar on. It snapped easily in the back, and there was an ominous metal ring in the front. She knew what that was for. She remembered the Black Brunch.

But maybe she’d misunderstood? She’d wrapped herself in one of the impossibly plush bathrobes that were in never-ending supply in the suite’s bathroom, and waited for eight o’clock to arrive. She’d been naked at the brunch, it was true, but that was a punishment. Maybe he had something else in mind?

There was the telltale beep of the key code at the door. She was about to find out.

Sheikh Bashir strode into the room, looking, as he always did, incredible. Gone was the casual but impeccably tailored suit; in its place was a fine, loose white linen shirt, open nearly to the waist, and fitted black trousers. A man like Sheikh Bashir did not have to dress up for any occasion, if he didn’t feel like it. And his choice of clothing seemed suited for…athleticism. Or ease of access.

Stella felt her heart jump at the thought. The sight of his tan skin, smoothed out over a well-developed chest and a hard range of abdominal muscles, did not help. She hadn’t yet seen his body, had only felt it against her, through his clothes. It looked even better than she imagined. She felt weak.

Sheikh Bashir glowered at her. “Stand up,” he commanded. “Why are you wearing that robe?”

“I—”

“Take it off.”

That voice
. Stella had an immediate, involuntary reaction to it now: her belly tightened, she got a little wet, even her nipples perked up.
He really has trained me
, she thought, and, marveling at the whole thing, happily did what she was told.

She
loved
being naked when he was clothed now. It made her feel nervous, and powerless, and yet so turned on.

Sheikh Bashir stepped close, close enough to almost touch the length of her. Stella sighed, and he held her face as he had the previous night, tilting it up toward his.

He said, “You trusted me with your innermost thoughts and feelings last night, Stella. Tonight, I ask you to trust me completely with your body. If you do…”

“…and then beg…” she whispered.

He smiled darkly. “Yes. And then beg.”

He leaned down and kissed her, the heat of him burning through the last of her resistance and fear, stoking the fire in her core and spreading the warmth to every last, aching part of her. When he pulled away, she felt cold, and knew instinctively she’d do anything to get that warmth back.

She heard a
click
. Stella looked down, and saw that he’d attached the leash to her collar.

“Do you trust me?” he said, very quietly. She nodded. She did. Somehow, even though she was afraid, and nervous, she trusted him above all else.

“We shall see,” he said. “You will have a special safeword for tonight, for this event. ‘Rococo.’”

The name of the restaurant he’d bought. It seemed somehow fitting. Again, she nodded, and then leaned slightly into him, wanting to feel his body against her nakedness once more.

He allowed her this for just a moment. Then he turned on his heel, and led her toward the door.

C
HAPTER 24

Stella wanted to laugh out loud, but from nervousness or absurdity, she couldn’t tell. There definitely was something funny about waiting for an elevator while stark naked, with a leash and collar around her neck. Especially when they weren’t alone.

Stella had balked a bit when Sheikh Bashir led her into the hotel corridor, until the Sheikh reminded her that Volare NY rented out the entire floor for the exclusive use of club members during the Black Ball. It still set her on edge, to stand and wait for an elevator in the nude. And then, of course, the others had arrived.

Another couple, the man dressed head to toe in black leathers, the woman wearing a very fine, very see-through mesh dress, waited with them for the elevator. The Sheikh had greeted them politely, calling the man “Henry.” Stella had no idea how she was supposed to act, so she ignored them. Or tried to. Henry had been staring at her naked body with obvious appreciation.