The Sheik's Furious Bride (Love By Accident) (4 page)

The man put his hands on his hips and stood there staring at her for a long moment.
  Finally, he waved her closer and Isla was stunned that he could have so much movement with the knife still sticking out of his shoulder. 

When she was closer, she realized that she knew this man!  He was the one who had been at the wedding, the one who had noticed her shoes! 

He smiled as soon as she recognized him and her body s
tarted tingling with excitement,
and something she couldn’t
easily
define. 

“At least you’re wearing the same shoes this time,” his deep, husky voice said as she got closer. 

She took a deep breath, forcing herself to think only about the wound and making sure he didn’t lose too much blood. 
“You disappeared
earlier
today.  I guess you had more important things to do than sit around and eat delicious food?” she quipped, smiling
nervously
up at him while she tried to get a better look at his knife wound.  “Will you let me tend to that?  You’ll still need to get to a doctor, but I can at least stop the bleeding.”

Sheik
Hussan
El-Hamin
watched as the beautiful woman dressed from head to toe in black approached.  His
soldiers were wary of this woman, but
Hussan
had been looking for this team for months, wondering how they got into the center of all the
crises
so easily.  He’d had no idea that a woman was part of the team.  And a
woman who was royalty at that!

He’d first gotten word of her benevolent team about a yea
r ago but they were so stealthy
and aware of every movement the police were going to do.  He was impressed by their work and didn’t mean them harm. 
Just the opposite in fact.
  He wanted to hire them on full time, to give them the government protec
tion they deserved.  People who
could organize like this and make such a difference, create so much good will with the local populations, they could be a huge asset to his country and help everyone get back to where they were a decade ago, before
this ridiculous war
tore the country apart. 

“What are you going to do?” he asked as he looked down at her
, seeing the fear in her lovely eyes and trying to figure out how to dissipate that nervousness
.  She was definitely a tiny little thing, barely reaching his shoulder although he knew that he was tall for a man. 
She smelled good too, he thought ridiculously.  Not like perfume though.  She just smelled…..
good
.  He couldn’t really put a
definition to the scent but it turned him on, making his body react. 

Isla looked up at him and suddenly she was
more than nervous.  A
flash of
terror washed over her and she was stunned by its intensity
.  She didn’t understand why
or what had caused it
though.  She’d helped dozens of others, male and female who were in need of emergency medical attention.  Why was this man’s knife wound so intimidating? 

He recognized the increased fear and wasn’t sure what had caused it.  Nothing really had changed, but he sensed that something inside of her had shifted. 
“Are you okay?” he asked
softly, ignoring the soldiers that were efficiently moving around the area.

Isla looked up into his dark eyes, then back down again.  “Yes,” she whispered. “Would you mind sitting down?  You’re a bit taller than I’m used to.”

Hussan
almost smiled, but he complied by moving over to one of the chairs set up on a patio dining area.  This brought the knife wound to her eye level and, to his
benefit,
it brought his eyes
closer
to her breast level.  She had a lus
h figure and
he would enjoy exploring
those soft, luscious curves
.  Leisurely, he thought.  He’d like to enjoy her with no distractions.  No interruptions.  Except her soft sighs, just like the one she let escape as her shaking hands moved up to grasp the knife.

He raised an eyebrow at her shaking fingers as she gripped the hilt of the knife. 
“Want me to do that?” he offered, mildly concerned that her nervousness might create more problems with the knife than he already had. 

She smiled wanly, but shook her head. 
She didn’t want him to pull it
out,
afraid the angle at which he pulled could cause additional damage. 
“Actually, if you could sit very still, I’ll get this out in jiffy.”  She grasped the rough handle,
then
looked into his eyes a moment before she tugged the blade out of his muscle.  With deft fingers, she tossed the blade to the side, reached into her bag and pulled out antiseptic, cleaning the wound as thoroughly as possible.  She tore more of the black tee shirt so she could see the wound better, then efficiently started to bandage him up. 
Once she was moving, her nervousness was gone.  She was completely absorbed in the task of helping the wound to stop bleeding and eliminating as much of a possible threat of infection as she could while doing field work. 

She was cleaning the
surrounding skin
with gauze and iodine as she examined the wound and the torn muscle. 
“You’re going to need stitches
,” she said as she pulled the edges closer before applying the bandage. 

“Y
ou can do that here, can’t you?”
He didn’t know why he said that.  He could be flown by helicopter to his personal physician and be sewn up by a doctor in less than an hour.  There was just something about this woman.  He didn’t want to lose her closeness.  If she stitched him up, he could spend a few more
minutes in her company, looking at her soft skin, her breasts that his palms itched to hold and feel and smell her soft, tempting scent. 

She started to shake her head,
about to explain that a doctor could do a much better job
but he stopped her.  “You have the supplies right there.  Go ahead.  I don’t want it infected.  And since you’re here and my doctor isn’t, wouldn’t it be better to stitch it up before anything happens?’

“But I’m not a doctor,” she replied.  “I only stitch things up when a doctor isn’t available.”

He shrugged, ignoring the pain it caused in his shoulder. 
“
You’re
the best I’
ve got right now.  I trust you,”
he said, looking directly at her. 

Isla took a deep breath and picked up her materials.  She started to give him something to ease the pain, but he shook his head. “I’m not done tonight.  I can’t have my muscles frozen.  Just go ahead.  I’ll get something for the pain tomorrow.”

She hated the idea of sewing his skin closed with no anesthetic.  “Are you sure?
  Pulling stitches is a bit more painful that you might think.
”

“Yes. 
I’ve experienced the lovely pleasure before so consider me forewarned. 
You’ll do fine.”

She couldn’t believe that the man was trying to reassure her.  That was normally her job when someone was bleeding.  But this man just sat there watching her, occasionally glancing at the wound but completely unconcerned about the blood that was soaking up his shirt
and seemed to be oblivious to the pain the knife would must have caused
. 

“Fine,” she replied and cleaned the wound once more to get rid of some of the blood.  She carefully pinched the sides of the wound closed and applied the needle, pulling the thread through carefully and glancing at his face to see if this was affecting him at all.  Thankfully the knife had gone in straight and clean so the edges were easily closed, but she still worried that something might be inside the wound that would
become infected
.  He really needed to get to a doctor to do this and make sure that it was done correctly.  She didn’t have enough light and anything could go wrong. 

Instead of focusing on the negative, she worked
quickly
to sew things up.  She wanted to get away from this man.  At the wedding, he’d been several feet away which
was
completely different than
being this close to him.  His skin was warm with little give because of all the muscles.  No fat on this man, she thought, impressed despite
herself
.  And boy did he smell good!  Wasn’t he supposed to be all hot and sweaty? 
Stinky?
  Well, he was sweaty, but the scent wasn’t bad.  It was very good.  Too good! 

She had the crazy thought that she’d like to rip away more of his tee shirt and find out what was underneath. 

When he reached up and tore more of the fabric, Isla gasped and couldn’t look away.  “Why did you do that?” she
asked,
her mouth suddenly dry and her eyes transfixed on the gorgeous chest covered with muscles and tanned
, incredibly glorious
skin. 

He looked into her eyes, watching her reaction carefully and he knew that she was just as interested in him as he was in her.  He could see it in the way her eyes kept straying to his chest, and the fact that she glanced into his eyes, then quickly away again.  In better light, he suspected that she might even be blushing and he wanted to smile at the thought.  Instead of stating that he wanted her soft, delicate fingers to touch his chest, to move along his skin and set him on fire with her gentle
,
teasing touch, he said simply,
“There’s blood all over the shirt.  Can you clean up the rest?” he asked
, wondering if she noticed that his voice was deeper as the lust for her increased with each passing moment
. 

Rashid watched as the beautiful woman glanced down at his chest.  He couldn’t believe that he was getting turned on while she was sewing up his wound but now that her heated gaze was looking down at his skin, the feeling was intensifying.  Damn, he wanted this woman. 

He was already devising a plan to have her too.  He knew her brother
well and had contacted him throughout the war.  They had collaborated against Hussan’s uncle, neither of them believing that the older man should be allowed to rape Silaria simply because he was
had the right bloodlines
.  A few years ago, Rashid had even suggested that Isla would be a good wife
, offering her up as his bride to help support Hussan’s claim to rule. 
At the time, he’d turned Rashid down, not sure what the future of his country
might be
.  But now that things had stabilized, he was ready to take on a bride.  Well, more specifically, he was ready to take this one on.  He’d never really thought about his future until he’d seen her at
his friend’s
wedding yesterday.  Now that she was close, he wanted all of her. 

And she wanted him too. He could feel it, sense it in the way she was standing.  It might be just his imagination, but he thought he could actually smell her arousal and that thought sent his body into overdrive. 

Yes, it was definitely time to get back with Rashid and take him up on the offer.  There was always the possibility that Rashid had selected another husband for his sister.  If that was the case, he’d have to do some negotiating.  He wasn’t even above stealing her out from under his friend’s back but he
was suddenly
determined that Isla would be his and his alone. 

Isla took a deep breath
as she pulled the needle through for the last time
, relieved that the task was over and she was even proud of the
neat
stitches she’d done to hold his wound. 
“There.  That should stop the bleeding until you can get to a real doctor.”  She stepped back and kept her eyes only on his wound.  She took another step back when he stood up, having trouble breathing with him so tall and male right there in front of her. 

When he eliminated the distance between them, she gasped and looked away.  “I need to get out of here,” she said softly and turned to leave but he caught her hand and captured it in his strong one. 

“What’s your name?” he asked softly, even though he already knew her name.  Rashid had been trying to convince him to take this little lady for his wife for the past two years. 
Hussan
wondered how long she’d been slipping out of the palace to do things like this. 

It occurred to him that he could stop
her whole team
right now and bring them back to his palace but something
held him back this time
. 
It wasn’t just the way the team moved so efficiently, or the fact that they were doing good things for his people and his conscience wouldn’t allow him to kidnap people who were trying to help.  It was more the fact that c
apturing Princess Isla was probably not the smoothest way to start off their relationship. 

He’d contact Rashid in the morning.  Or in the next hour, he thought as he noticed the sun rising over the horizon.