Sold to the Sheikh (20 page)

“I remember,” she said, and her voice already seemed strained.

She heard more laughter, and felt the Sheikh’s hand on the underside of her left thigh.

“Very good, Stella,” he said.

The hands on her breasts became more playful, rolling her nipples, massaging the flesh, pushing her ever higher. She already felt like she might pop. And yet the idea of coming in front of all those people…

She honestly didn’t know if she could do it. Some part of her clung to the idea that she would be safe, if only she refused to fully let go. It might feel terrible not to come, but at least it wouldn’t be frightening.

Did she really believe that if they saw…?

She felt more of the cold lube fall onto the entrance of her vagina, and immediately her mind was right back in the present. Both at once? Could she?

“Stella,” the Sheikh said, “relax.”

And the bulbous tip of something large pressed against the entrance of her vagina. Reflexively, her muscles clenched, bearing down on the thing that was already inside her asshole, and she moaned. The hands and the oil on her chest never let up, straining the nerves of her nipples until they felt frayed and overheated, until she felt like they might actually be glowing. And each time she squirmed, the thing inside her moved against virgin nerves, filling her further. She was starting to feel sort of funny all over, as though the tingling mint oil was spreading, slowly, up the skin of her neck, towards her face and lips.

And she was so, so hot.

Two fingers pinched her clit, suddenly, briefly, and she yelped. And then Sheikh Bashir pushed something into her vagina with one long, hard stroke.

“Sheikh!”

Her lower body convulsed, shuddering and banging against the metal table. She felt a hand—his hand, she was sure, large and familiar—on the flat of her lower belly, exerting a gentle but firm pressure, as though reining in her pleasure.

“Stay focused, Stella.”

She did. She tried. She imagined it as a growing ball of light, all of the warring sensations around her body, all the different stimulus, gathering there, just behind her pulsing, aching clit. The feeling of fullness left little room for the rest of her, for any remaining anxieties or thoughts. It felt like if she stayed perfectly still, that growing ball of light would expand to envelope her entire body, and she might just float away into that nothingness of orgasm.

And then the thing in her ass began to vibrate.

Stella arched her back suddenly and violently; the hand on her stomach pushed her back down. There were calming voices coming from somewhere, but she barely heard them above the buzz of her own body.

The thing in her vagina began to vibrate, too, in an opposing rhythm, and though her body jerked back and forth, she was kept in place by the restraints and the hand on her stomach. She couldn’t hold back any longer, hadn’t realized until then that she was holding back. A frightening, animal moan started somewhere deep in her belly and tore out of her throat, until she was wailing unknown words.

The vibrator in her vagina began to fuck her. Someone moved it—in, out, in, out—in ever deepening strokes, angling it up until it hit her g-spot and sent her soaring. The glowing ball contracted rapidly, as though all of her being had gathered into a single point of infinite depth and density, and then, slowly, but with increasing speed, and with the inexorable, thundering pace of a not-to-be-messed-with force of nature, it blew her apart.

She screamed. Maybe she screamed. She wouldn’t really know. She was pulled apart and outside of herself somehow, every particle of her spinning about in furious circles, dancing, fizzing, sparkling, until they came together again, somehow…rearranged. Different.

She reassembled, slowly, on that table, into a new, better version of Stella Spencer. She had come—come mightily—in public. Her body still shook, and her heart thudding in her chest was the loudest thing she could hear, and when she tried to speak, she found that her lips and tongue were somehow numb.

There was the sound of applause somewhere off in the distance. It didn’t matter. Nothing in the world felt important anymore—not her worries, not her insecurities, not her fears—except for one thing: the Sheikh.

She tried to say his name, but couldn’t. She felt hands releasing the restraints around her ankles and wrists and running up and down her limbs, warming them, working the soreness out of her joints. As soon as she could, she tried to sit up, only to find him already there, scooping her up in his arms from where he’d stood between her spread legs.

“I cannot wait any longer,” he said into her ear, his voice choked and hoarse. “You are mine.”

And he slipped his hands beneath her naked thighs, wrapping her legs around his waist, and lifted her effortlessly. She clung to his neck with all that remained of her strength, still blind, not caring to remove the blindfold, not caring to see. She only wanted to feel him against her, to smell his spicy sent, to hear those words, again and again and again: ‘
You are mine.’

Her arms shook as he walked, still weak from that orgasm.

“Not long now, Stella,” he said. He sounded so different. His voice was usually so smooth, so controlled—a precise instrument. Now it sound ragged and rough, unthinking and raw. She burrowed her face into his neck and felt him growl.

She heard the keycode, heard him kick open the door. So close.

He bent, lowered her onto the bed. She tried to rise, to help him, but his hand on her chest kept her down. She heard the rapid sound of a zipper, the rustle of clothing. Was he naked? She would need to see this, even if it meant delaying what she wanted most. Her hands moved to her blindfold, but his hands came down upon hers.

“Let me, Stella,” he said, still with that catching voice.

She let her hands drop, sitting over the edge of the bed, blind and naked. He was still the Sheikh. She wouldn’t want him any other way.

The blindfold fell away, and she blinked.

Oh God, there he is
.

He stood before her, as naked as she was, dark skin shining in the soft light, muscles hard and yet fluid, rippling under that gorgeous, smooth skin. His cock was just as massive as she’d thought, the silken skin pulled taut over his swollen erection. It was nearly purple with pressure, with desire.

For her.

She looked up and saw those dark eyes burning bright in his face. Suddenly, ridiculously, she was nervous all over again.

“Lie back, Stella,” he said softly. “And spread your legs for me.”

Her limbs still trembling—from aftershocks or nervousness, she couldn’t tell—she did as she was told, and looked up to find him studying her again. Somehow she felt more exposed than she had been in the Black Room, where an entire room of people that she knew had watched her come to the manipulations of double vibrators and unknown hands. And it was because he
saw
her. Saw how afraid she could get, saw the secret things she wanted, saw how hard she worked to protect herself. He had cared to look, and he truly saw her.

You cannot love until you can truly see…

She’d read that somewhere, years ago, and it had stuck with her, but she hadn’t fully understood it until this moment.

He came forward and positioned himself between her legs, his hair falling forward over his forehead. She wanted him so badly, and yet, there was one thing…

“Wait,” she said, hating herself. Hating this.

His head jerked up with a start. “Something is wrong?”

She closed her eyes, then forced herself to open them. She would be open as she did this, even if it frightened him away. Honest. Unafraid. She looked into his black eyes, and took one last leap.

“I don’t want your money,” she said. “I never…I don’t…It was fun, it was a game, that’s why I agreed. But now I could never take your money. I never want your money. I want—”

His eyes went soft, and he silenced her with his lips over hers, a claiming kiss that he sealed with one, solid, full stroke, plunging the entire length of himself into her.

She cried out as he filled her completely. Her back arched into him, her legs wrapped around him, and together they rocked until he’d built her back up to that impossible peak, flying high above everything she’d ever known. He planted his hand by her head, lifting himself for leverage, and pulled out.

“Look at me,” he said.

And he drove into her, hard and long and fast, again and again, stoking the burning heat that swirled around her center until it engulfed them both. She spasmed in shuddering contractions around his cock, drawing his own orgasm out, and he came, screaming her name.

Stella fell asleep with Sheikh Bashir still inside her. She felt loved, and cared for, and good enough that a man might choose to never leave her.

In the morning she woke up to an empty bed, and a check on the nightstand for fifty thousand dollars.

C
HAPTER 25

Sheikh Bashir al Aziz bin Said awoke on the third morning of his incarceration, and grief filled his heart. He preferred anger. On the first morning, when he’d been tricked into leaving Stella asleep in the bed they had shared, he’d been arrested and brought to a supposedly fearsome jail called the Tombs, and there he had succumbed to anger. As his disbelief at his circumstances gave way, bit by bit, to towering rage, the police officers who had arrested and taunted him about the Tombs—saying that he might be big but he was pretty, and they’d just love him in the Tombs—had slowly fallen silent. By the time he was booked and processed, no one was making jokes.

That first day, he didn’t speak after he’d been led out of the hotel in handcuffs, except to demand to see his lawyer and the Ambassador, afraid of what might happen if he let the anger surface. The response to his controlled inquiries was always the same. ‘
We called.’ ‘There’s some kind of mix up.’ ‘Delays.’

Bashir knew what this was all about. It was Creighton, furious about his humiliation at the Alexandria Club, calling in favors with an unsuspecting police captain. Creighton knew as well as Bashir did that nothing would stick, that nothing
could
stick: Bashir had diplomatic immunity. Even if he had done anything wrong, which of course he had not, it would be of no consequence. It was a privilege Bashir would never think to abuse, but after the first day had passed and it had become clear that Creighton was pulling in more than one favor, he had felt morally obligated to warn every officer that he came into contact with.
You will come to regret this. It will not go well for you. I tell you now, call the embassy, and do what you can to save your career.

His pleas went unheeded. He did not envy any of these men when the Ambassador was informed. Worse, Creighton knew this. He knew he was sacrificing these men, and for what purpose? To annoy Bashir for a few days?

The bastard had guessed that the only way to lure him downstairs was to tell the police to say that the warrant was for Stella. That galled him more than the incarceration itself.

But what filled Bashir’s heart with the deepest grief was the knowledge that he had left Stella to wake, alone, and find the check he had made out the night before.

Why had he silenced her at that crucial moment? Did he think it had been romantic? No, he had thought he had all the time in the world to tell her he loved her. That, as improbable as it was, he believed he had loved her at first sight, but only now did he have the wisdom to stop fighting it.

Instead, he’d probably broken her heart. He’d implied she was a common whore. He hadn’t even let her make her own confession.

He had been so certain of what she would say. Now…now he wasn’t certain of anything. Had he ever known a man to make mistake like this, even if it wasn’t his fault, and recover? Had there ever been such a hurtful, spiteful, pointless gesture? Had anyone ever wounded him as deeply as he had wounded Stella?

And after everything she had told him about her past. About the many men who had abandoned her. Well, he had bested them all.

He had worried about Grandma Kincaid, as well, and for one delirious moment, he thought,
well, if anything happens, Stella can look after her
. And then he remembered that Stella did not know where he was, that Stella probably hated his very soul, and that no one at Carthage House would know how to contact Stella, because no one in Sheikh Bashir’s life knew that she had become so important to him so quickly.

He’d punched the crumbling stone wall , then, in a stupid fit of rage. He hadn’t broken his hand, but his knuckles looked well the worse for wear. It was just as well. No one—not any of the hardened criminals around him—had dared to bother him. Bashir guessed that the sheer malevolence and animal frustration he felt radiating from him in thick, dangerous waves. No sane man provoked even a tiny weakling in that state, let alone a man of Bashir’s size and strength.

It was on the third day that an extremely worried looking corrections officer came to collect him.

Bashir sighed. Finally. “I am being released?”

“Yes, sir.” The officer wouldn’t even look at him. He wasn’t one of the ones who’d tried to frighten him, but even this poor fat little man might feel the sting of the repercussions, simply for being in the vicinity.

“Tell me your name,” Bashir said to him, “and I’ll mention that you were kind.”

The fat little man had stayed silent, debating whether to speak, until the last gate had been opened and Bashir could see the enraged face of the Ambassador on the other side of some bulletproof glass.

“Granger, sir,” the fat little man said hurriedly. “My name’s Granger. They didn’t mean it, honestly. You didn’t have your identification, and…” He swallowed, seemingly with a distaste for excuses. Finally he simply explained. “They were just doing what they thought they had to do, sir.”

In spite of himself, Sheikh Bashir laughed. “That is my problem, too, Officer Granger. That is my problem, too.”