Sheikh's Forbidden Conquest

Kadir recalled that the phone had rung as he’d been on his way out of the door to go to the gym, but he hadn’t bothered to answer it. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t receive any message,’ he murmured.

How could his smile be so wickedly sexy? Lexi jerked her eyes from the sensual curve of his mouth and tried to ignore the fact that Sultan Kadir Al Sulaimar was half naked and had obviously just taken a shower. Droplets of water clung to the whorls of black hairs that grew thickly on his chest.

When she had rescued him, his body had been hidden beneath a bulky waterproof sailing suit. But now Lexi was faced with rippling muscles, gleaming olive-gold skin, broad, satin-smooth shoulders and his tight-as-a-drum abdomen.

Her eyes were drawn to the fuzz of black hairs that arrowed down from his navel and disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers, which sat low on his hips. Her mouth suddenly felt dry. She lifted her gaze back to his face and her stomach swooped when she discovered that he was even more gorgeous than she remembered from their first meeting.

The combination of his lean, chiselled features and deep-set dark eyes was mesmerising. His mouth was full-lipped, and curved into a sultry smile that sent a tingle through Lexi’s body. Her breath seemed to be trapped somewhere between her lungs and her throat. She needed to say something, anything to break the prickling silence that became more intense with every passing second so that she was sure he must be able to hear the loud thud of her heart.

She said the first thing that came into her head. ‘You’re bleeding...on your chin. No, closer to your lip...’ She pointed, trying to direct him as he lifted the towel he was holding and pressed it against his face.

‘I started shaving when I was fourteen. You’d think I’d be better at it by now,’ he said ruefully. He thrust the towel at her. ‘Will you play nurse?’

His voice was as sexy as his smile—deep and rich, caressing her senses and conjuring up images in her mind that were shockingly inappropriate.

‘I should go,’ she muttered. ‘This is obviously not a convenient time...’ Not when her heart was beating painfully fast. Lexi did not understand why he affected her so strongly. For ten years she had worked in a predominantly male environment and had met her fair share of good-looking men. But none like him, whispered a voice inside her head. Even his title—Sultan of Zenhab—was exotic and made her think of a desert oasis beneath a starry sky, a tent draped with silks, and him, naked, his bronzed, muscular body sprawled on satin cushions and his dark eyes gleaming as he beckoned to her to come to him.

Lexi swallowed. What on earth was the matter with her? She felt as though her body was on fire.

‘You’re not bothered by the sight of blood, are you?’

The amusement in his voice pulled her back from her erotic fantasy. Thank goodness he couldn’t possibly have known what she had been thinking. His question jolted her mind back to her experiences of a real desert—the dry, unforgiving landscape, clouds of choking sand stirred up by the downdraught of the Chinook’s rotor blades, the screams of wounded men, the smell of blood and dust and vomit.

‘No, blood doesn’t worry me,’ she told him calmly, in control once more. The cut near to his bottom lip was still bleeding. She pressed the corner of the towel against his face and somehow, without her being aware that either of them had moved, she found herself inside his suite and he shut the door.

She immediately became conscious of how close they were standing. His warm breath whispered across her cheek and the mingled scents of soap, his spicy cologne and something more subtle—the sensual musk of maleness—stirred her senses. Her breasts brushed against his bare chest and the contact with his body sent a ripple of awareness through her.

Panic was an unfamiliar emotion for Lexi, but she was shaken by her reaction to the Sultan. She lifted the towel to see if the cut had stopped bleeding and saw that her hand was trembling. In Afghanistan, when she had flown behind enemy lines to pick up casualties, her nerves had been as steady as her hands on the helicopter’s control stick. Why did this pampered playboy prince who had probably never done a day’s work in his life disturb her?

Thankfully, the cut on his chin had closed up. She handed him the towel and stepped back from him. ‘You’ll live. I’m sure legions of women will be relieved,’ she said drily.

His smile remained fixed, but Lexi sensed a sudden stillness in him that made her think of a panther about to pounce on its hapless prey. She reminded herself that the playboy was also a powerful Sultan who had kept peace in Zenhab despite the often volatile situation in other parts of the Middle East.

‘Your sailing accident was widely reported in the press, Your Highness,’ she murmured. In fact the tabloids had only carried a paragraph or two about his capsized yacht and had been more interested in reporting stories of his affairs with supermodels and actresses.

It wasn’t as if she was in the least bit interested in a promiscuous womaniser, Lexi thought. She had only agreed to meet the Sultan because Roger Norris had asked her to.

‘I understand that your yacht has been retrieved from where it sank in the Solent and it was discovered that the keel had been ripped from the hull.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m afraid I was rather hasty the other night when I jumped to the conclusion that you had ignored the reports of an approaching storm. I...apologise if my attitude was less than professional.’

Kadir just managed to stop himself from laughing out loud at Lexi Howard’s grudging apology. She had spoken politely, but he sensed her reluctance to be here. It was obvious that she had been sent to see him, and it was easy to guess the real reason for her visit. Her next words confirmed his suspicion.

‘Roger Norris explained that you have made a very generous offer to finance a second rescue helicopter.’

Kadir idly wondered if the coastguard commander had told Lexi to dress up for their meeting and perhaps try to persuade him to donate even more funds. Catching the cool expression in her eyes, he dismissed the idea. No one would dare tell Lexi Howard what to do—which made her choice of outfit interesting.

He ran his eyes over her, noting how the stretchy fabric of her dress moulded her toned figure and emphasised the shape of her firm breasts. The dress stopped at mid-thigh-level and below the hemline her slender legs, sheathed in sheer black hose, looked even longer with the addition of three-inch stiletto heels. Recalling his erotic fantasies about her while he’d been in the shower, Kadir felt the simmering heat in his gut burn hotter.

‘The least I can do is to make a contribution to the rescue agency responsible for saving my life and the lives of my crew,’ he said abruptly. ‘I must also apologise, Captain Howard, for not thanking you for your skill and bravery after the rescue the other night. I am conscious that I owe you a huge debt of gratitude.’

‘I was simply doing my job,’ she muttered.

‘I understand from Roger Norris that you no longer work for the coastguard agency.’

‘My contract was only for a year. Although, if there is to be a second rescue helicopter, I might get my job back.’

‘But you don’t have another job to go to at the moment?’ Kadir knew he was staring at Lexi but he could not help himself. She was so damned beautiful! He cleared his throat. ‘I asked you to meet me because I have a proposition I want to discuss with you.’

‘What kind of proposition?’ The gleam of sexual interest in his eyes, and memories of the stories in the newspapers about his playboy lifestyle, sent Lexi’s imagination into overdrive.

Kadir was irritated that Lexi obviously believed the garbage which had been written about him in the tabloids. But she was not nearly as composed as she would like him to think. Her breathing was shallow and the downwards sweep of her long eyelashes was too late to hide her dilated pupils. He roamed his eyes over her in a slow, deliberate appraisal, and was rewarded when the hard points of her nipples became clearly discernible beneath her clingy dress.

Suddenly he understood, and a feeling of satisfaction swept through him. He had seen her scornful expression when she’d referred to the reports of his alleged playboy lifestyle. Most of the stories about his private life, which had been printed alongside the news of his yachting accident, were either rehashed from years ago or greatly exaggerated. Kadir had felt no inclination to defend himself to Lexi, but he’d been annoyed by her readiness to judge him.

Now, as he watched her cross her arms defensively over her breasts, he realised that the waves of antagonism she had been sending out were a frantic attempt to disguise the fact that she was attracted to him. Perhaps she hoped that her frosty attitude disguised her sexual awareness of him, but Kadir knew—just as he always knew when a woman was interested in him. He had played the game of chasing women who wanted to be caught too often, he thought cynically.

But this time the rules were different. When he returned to Zenhab he would honour the promise he had made to his father and marry the bride who had been chosen for him. Although he desired the Flight Captain, he had no intention of actually catching her. But Lexi did not know that!

‘Why don’t we sit down,’ he murmured, ‘and make ourselves comfortable?’

Lexi swallowed as she watched the Sultan lower himself onto the sofa. He stretched his arms along the back, drawing her attention to his bare torso. His broad shoulders gleamed like burnished copper in the golden autumn sunshine slanting through the window, and his chest and forearms were covered in a fine mat of silky black hairs that accentuated his raw masculinity.

Conscious that her heart was thudding uncomfortably fast, she made a show of checking her watch. ‘I really must be going. I expect you want to finish getting dressed,’ she said pointedly, ‘and I have to be somewhere at seven-thirty, and I want to hit the motorway before the evening traffic builds up.’

‘Do you have a date this evening? And there I was thinking you had worn that very sexy dress especially to meet me,’ Kadir drawled.

Lexi flushed. ‘It is not a sexy dress,’ she said tightly. ‘It’s a cocktail dress suitable for a cocktail party to celebrate my sister’s engagement.’ The idea that the Sultan assumed she’d dressed up for him was infuriating but, to her shame, she felt a frisson of awareness shoot through her when his dark eyes gleamed with a hard brilliance.

‘Surely you don’t have to leave just yet if the party doesn’t start for another two hours?’ To Lexi’s consternation, he sprang up from the sofa and walked over to her, moving with the speed and grace of a jungle cat. He was too close and towered over her so that she had to tilt her head to meet his intent gaze. Heat radiated from his body, or maybe the heat came from her, making her feel flushed and flustered and acutely aware of her femininity.

Desperate to hide the effect he had on her, she launched into an explanation. ‘The journey to Henley-on-Thames, which is where my sister’s fiancé’s parents live, will take over an hour, and I daren’t risk being late and upsetting Lady Fairfax.’

Lexi frowned as she recalled how tense her sister had sounded on the phone. Athena had confided her worry that Charles’s parents did not approve of their son’s choice of bride because they had hoped he would marry someone with a similar aristocratic pedigree to the Fairfaxes. ‘The engagement party is my chance to prove that I can be a good wife to Charlie and a sophisticated hostess when he invites business clients to dinner,’ Athena had said earnestly.

Lexi had struggled to picture her accident-prone sister as a sophisticated hostess, but she had kept her doubts that Charles Fairfax was the right man for Athena to herself.

Her thoughts scattered when Sultan Kadir spoke. His deep, dark voice curled around her like a lover’s caress. She caught her breath as he lifted his hand and brushed the back of his knuckles oh-so-lightly down her cheek. It was a blatant invasion of her personal space but her feet seemed to be rooted to the floor and she could not step away from him.

‘I am disappointed that you must rush away before we’ve had a chance to discuss my proposal. Perhaps we can arrange to meet again at a more convenient time?’

She licked her dry lips and told herself she was imagining the predatory gleam in his eyes. ‘Your Highness...’ Her voice sounded strangely breathless.

‘Please call me Kadir, Lexi.’

The way he said her name, with that soft huskiness in his voice, was too intimate, as if he had stroked each syllable with his tongue.

Lexi felt as though she was drowning in his molten gaze, but a tiny part of her sanity remained and asked why she was letting him get to her. He was a notorious womaniser, and in the past when other men like him had tried to come on to her she’d had no trouble shooting them down.

Of course she would not allow herself to be seduced by the Sultan, she assured herself. But she could not deny that his interest was flattering and a salve to her wounded pride after Steven’s betrayal. Without conscious thought, she swayed towards Kadir, bringing her mouth even closer to his. Her heart pounded and her eyelashes swept down as she waited, tense with anticipation, for him to brush his lips over hers.