The Sheik Retold Read online

  "By Allah! I brought you into this camp. Let the penalty be mine!" He yanked my robe back onto my shoulders and tore the thawb from his own body.

  "Gaston!" he hissed for his valet.

  Understanding was instant, and the wide-eyed servant paled before my eyes. "But your wound, Monsiegneur! It is barely healed!"

  Ahmed gave a careless shrug. "Then the blood debt will be quickly satisfied."

  Stripped to the torso and wearing only his sirwal, the sheik retrieved the implement of torture and thrust it into Gaston's hands and presented his own back. "Eleven lashes. Yusef shall bear witness."

  Gaston stared dumbly and helplessly at the flogger.

  "Alons! You heard me, Gaston! Will you carry out my wishes, or perhaps you would rather beat mademoiselle?" He jerked his head toward me, knowing as well as I that the gallant little Frenchman would impale himself on a sword before ever striking me.

  Gaston looked first to the sheik and then to me, his eyes filled with abject revulsion. With a slow shake of his head, he raised the flogger. I covered my eyes and turned away.

  "No! You will watch this!" Ahmed commanded. "As your penance, you will watch and count every stroke."

  The moment I uncovered my eyes, he barked to Gaston, "Allez! On with it!"

  I was horror-struck by every strike of leather on flesh, cringing and wincing at each bloody stripe produced by the flogger. Gaston could not even look, but held one hand over his own eyes as he blindly wielded this merciless tool of discipline.

  Ahmed held my gaze as only he was able to, refusing to let me look away, refusing even to blink in response to the thrashing whip. The scene had unfolded precisely as it had in my dream—the whip tearing into his flesh, shredding the skin and sinew before my eyes. My mind whirled at what he had done. He had taken my punishment—Ahmed the Protector had risen to the fore.

  My teeth sank deeper into my lip, and my nails made crescents in my palms. So lost was I in his sacrifice that I had forgotten my own pain. He, however, appeared almost unfazed by the lashes, aside from the sweat beading his deeply furrowed brow and the hiss that issued from between his teeth each time the flogger connected with his naked back.

  "How many?" he demanded when I had stopped counting.

  "Eight." I licked my bloody lip. "Three more to go."

  Gaston cried out, "S'il vous plait, Monsiegneur, may I desist?"

  "Continuez!" the sheik commanded.

  I counted three more lashes in a barely audible voice, after which Gaston flung down the flogger with a cry of revulsion and fled the room. Yusef made to follow him, but the sheik arrested him. "Yusef! You will say nothing of what transpired here, beyond 'the penalty is paid.’ Do you understand? If you breathe a word of what has passed in this room, I will kill you."

  Yusef was visibly terrified. He gave a jerk of his head and looked away.

  "Now go!" Ahmed commanded him with an imperious gesture.

  The moment his lieutenant had passed through the curtains, Ahmed slumped to his knees. His chest heaved, and rivulets of sweat and blood ran down his back to trickle onto the carpet. I rushed to him with a cry, but he pushed me away with a snarl. "Save your pity for yourself, ma belle. The debt to my tribe is paid—but you have yet to satisfy me."

  ***

  "What do you mean?" I could barely keep the quiver from my voice. "I already gave you the chance to exact your payment from my flesh! What more can you want from me? Why can't you just let this be over now? Why can't you let me go?"

  I was near hysteria, but he remained wooden and unfazed.

  "You know why. I am not yet finished with you."

  "Finished with me?" I repeated. "You have achieved your goal to make me suffer. What more do you need to be finished with me?"

  He came slowly toward me with a dangerous look, one that reminded me all too much of the night he had first brought me into his camp. The fire in his eyes would have incited the same blinding fear had I not already known him as a lover.

  "I promised myself when I brought you here that I would have you in every possible way. I will never let you go until I have made good on that promise."

  My heart skipped a beat. It was the very first time he had ever alluded to any consideration of releasing me. Only days ago when Raoul had done his best to convince him, he had remained intractable. I didn't know his reasons for softening and didn't care.

  "What do you mean?" I asked, grasping tightly on to any hope of gaining my freedom. "Please," I beseeched. "Whatever you want from me, I will do it. Anything, if you will only let me go."

  "Perhaps you speak too soon, my dove. You may not wish to pay my price."

  "I am not afraid of you or anything you would do to me," I lied. I was afraid, but I wanted him too. Beneath my fear was exhilaration, and I found desire mixed with trepidation made a heady cocktail.

  "No, ma belle?" he taunted in a deceptively silky tone. His raw desire was evident in the dilation of his pupils, in the huskiness of his voice, in the ragged rise and fall of his powerful chest, in the harsh line of his mouth.

  Although I resented that my desire for him still smoldered, I could not suppress it. The air between us was so thick and heavy with want that I could barely breathe.

  He drew me closer. I couldn't look away, but it was not the formidable strength of his hands that held me, but his fascinating gaze of fathomless indigo. He slid one hand to the small of my back while his other hand palmed my nape. He dipped his head and murmured hotly in my ear, "Perhaps you should be."

  I tried to remain passive and indifferent when he ran his tongue over the shell of my ear, but the moist heat incited an involuntary shiver down my spine. I was prepared for brutality, but his slow and deliberate actions seemed completely at odds with his threatening words.

  I had experienced his exquisite tenderness and I had known his bruising passion. They were the two sides of Ahmed my lover. Just as the Punisher and the Protector together formed his character, his tenderness could not exist without the brutality, and I wanted them both.

  Perhaps this is why he had not tired of me. He had not grown bored because I had never held back, had never shrank from him, and I refused to shrink now. I had never stopped wanting him and he had never stopped wanting me. As before, he would give and I would take—regardless of the punitive tone he chose.

  "I told you I would have you as many ways as I desired before I ever released you."

  "But what else—" I could sense that the devil in him was perilously close to emerging, but even as I knew this, a pool of moisture grew between my thighs.

  I shut my eyes on a gasp as his teeth clamped none-too-gently onto my earlobe. He released my lobe to lick and suck my neck. My mind blurred to sensation and heightening desire until I barely heard his answer through the miasma of lust that enveloped me. Fighting the impulse to touch him, I clenched my hands by my sides.

  "You will understand soon enough, my dove," he murmured and then kissed me, a long lingering and devouring kiss—finally the lover's kiss that I had so desperately craved. I met him eagerly, holding nothing back. Our tongues tangled and moans mingled. I thought I would lose my mind in the sultry heat and exquisite taste of his kiss. His breath was hot against my skin as he plied fevered kisses to my neck and shoulder and peeled my robe away.

  I became aware of his hands, stroking, lightly skirting over my naked body and scorching my skin until both rested on my bottom where he conducted a leisurely exploration, each squeeze and caress rousing rapturous ripples of lust. Unable to restrain myself any longer, I tangled my fingers in his hair, urging him to my breasts. He complied, suckling each in turn, blinding me with such sublime sensation that I thought I would go mad with my want.

  "I have still one desire that remains unfulfilled, ma belle." The heat of his gaze seared me, but he said nothing more, letting his actions speak instead. He drew back a few inches to regard me with his heavy-lidded, lust-filled gaze while his fingers lightly caressed the crevice of my buttocks. I sucke
d in a sharp breath when his middle finger delved inside. My breathing quickened, and my heart galloped wildly as my consciousness awakened to what he had in mind. I suddenly recalled a remark he had made the very first night—a remark that had filled me with horror. Know that if you persist in this pretense, I will only be more compelled to use you as a boy. Of course it is no great difference to me. I will have you either way— and in any way that I choose.

  He had never made any further mention of it, had never even hinted at his wish to use me in such a way—until now.

  "How can you expect such a thing?" I asked with barely disguised horror.

  He responded with a blithe shrug. "I am but a beast, a devil, a savage, after all. If you want your freedom, you will pay the price. "

  I regarded him blankly as my mind struggled to process what he had said. I shook with apprehension but took courage in the promise of freedom. "You will let me go?"

  "Please me as you did before, ma belle," he stroked a thumb over my mouth, "and I may well be predisposed to do so."

  "I don't care what you do to me. It is nothing to me anymore," I lied once more. Inwardly I steeled myself against the terror of facing the ultimate degradation.

  "That is not the attitude of compliance I seek, my dove."

  "What do you want from me? Do you expect me to beg you to sodomize me?" In the end, I would accept his coercion in return for my freedom, but I still refused to give him the satisfaction he sought.

  "You must agree not to fight me, my dove. There will be pain if you do. It is your choice, but you must make it now. I am a man of caprice. Who knows if I may ever again be taken with such an indulgent whim."

  "Do what you wish," I said.

  "Kiss me," he commanded. "It will seal this bargain."

  "I hate you. I loathe you," I spat. "I will never forgive you."

  "But there is such a fine line between love and hate…agony and ecstasy…pleasure and pain. Kiss me," he repeated.

  I complied with mutiny in my eyes and a desire for murder in my heart—until his mouth met mine again and resurrected a roaring maelstrom of mixed emotions. I had initiated the kiss, but he quickly commanded it. Savaging me with his lips, teeth, and tongue, he drew me dizzily and inexorably down into the dark oblivion of desire—to the mindless place where lust leads and sensation reigns over reason.

  I was barely aware that he had shed my robe until his mouth broke from mine and he came behind to guide me to the bed. My body trembled with equal parts arousal and apprehension as he bent me at the waist to press me face down onto the mattress. With a sudden panic of suffocation, I turned my head to the side. I stole a breath, reminding myself that had Ahmed intended to hurt me, he would not have sacrificed the chance to whip me, but even this was little consolation. On every prior encounter with him, I had told myself that I was really in control, that I was as free as he to take my pleasure, but I could not deceive myself this time. The moment he came behind me, I was utterly at his mercy. Just like the first night when he had bound and blindfolded me, I was exposed, vulnerable, and helpless.

  He wedged his thighs between mine, urging them apart and then his body came over me, hard and unyielding. His chest hair lightly abraded my back, and the length of his verge nestled between my buttocks. His hot breath brushed my ear. "Don't fight me, ma belle. It will be most unpleasant if you do."

  Even as he spoke, my every instinct rebelled, urging me to react, to buck and thrash and break free. But then I suddenly recalled the young horse who had lain helplessly pinned to the ground with Ahmed's full weight on his neck. I remembered the wild-eyed panic that had ensued and the frantic thrashing that had left the animal exhausted, defeated, powerless, and panting. Contrary to what I had expected, Ahmed had not brutalized the horse. He had stroked and soothed continuously until the fight was gone. He would not hurt me, but if I fought him, the result would be the same. In the end I would surrender to his superior will and dominating power.

  I squeezed my eyes shut for his desecration of me only to feel leisurely kisses down my spine, kisses that teased and tormented. It was not what I expected. Against my will, I was becoming strangely aroused. I knew what he intended, and it disgusted me, but beneath my thinning layer of genteel disgust was my incessantly aberrant curiosity and an acute awareness of increasing sexual excitement.

  I didn't actually want this, did I?

  Even as I asked myself, his hot mouth moved over my buttocks with an homage-like concentration—kissing, licking, and scoring with his teeth. I gasped at the sharp piercing sensation of his teeth deep in my flesh. Every kiss and touch ramped my lust and escalated the ferocity of my need to be filled. My breathing became shorter and my arousal almost unbearable as I imagined what he was doing to me—and what he still had planned. These mad thoughts careened beneath the sublime sensation of his mouth.

  He stepped away only to reach for the bottle of almond oil still present on the bedside table. I looked over my shoulder and watched him pouring it onto his hands and then his erection. I could not prevent the rush of my pulse or the wave of wet heat between my thighs as I watched him stroke himself to full size. I bit my lip against the flare of desire upon seeing his tumescent verge glistening with oil.

  He positioned himself once more, sliding his oil-slickened sheath between my buttocks, slowly and deliberately gliding it up and down, then repositioning himself between my labia, moving inside my slickened folds while his masterful hands joined the fray, his slick thumbs and finessing fingers stroking, circling, and coaxing my exceedingly reluctant orifice.

  "Doucement, doucement," he crooned in the low and soothing tone he used to pacify his most refractory horses. "Relax, ma belle."

  I sucked in a sharp breath at the sudden invasion of his finger in my virgin entrance. I had steeled myself for pain and humiliation, but experienced only a strange fullness. He continued to stimulate my more familiar places, using his verge to massage and stroke the folds of my chatte, even as he plunged his slick finger in and out of my arse in a rhythm that made my inner flesh contract and convulse in immense and intense pleasure.

  "Please, Ahmed." The moan escaped before I could contain it.

  He froze. "You have pain? You wish me to desist?"

  "God no! Don't stop."

  "Do you mean you want more, ma belle?" he asked in a tone of surprise.

  "Yes," I hissed. I was nearly writhing beneath him.

  "As you wish, my dove." I could detect the smug smile in his voice and almost wished I could slap it off his face, but that would end my pleasure. In the next moment he gripped my hips and withdrew from my chatte to reposition himself again. He circled and teased his penile head against my opening, I arched into him with an eagerness I didn't care to dwell on but sucked in an instant breath of remorse at the sudden and overpowering pressure and the almost-nausea-inducing feeling of fullness.

  "Please. No more," I whimpered.

  He didn't listen. He didn't stop but continued to surge steadily into me inch by agonizing inch, against my body's most vociferous protest. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. Panic raced in my veins. Sweat beaded my brow. I was helplessly impaled. My fingers clenched and unclenched the bed covers. I closed my eyes on a muffled sob.

  Then he stopped. He was buried to the hilt inside me, hot and hard and pulsing.

  "Breathe. Slowly. Deeply," he soothed. "It will soon pass, ma chère."

  He did not move again but waited, stroking my back and crooning soft words, until my breathing calmed and I began relaxing by slow degrees—and just like the horse, my panic was supplanted by a tranquil trust and absolute acceptance of his authority. I was utterly under his control.

  Once I stilled, he tenderly kissed my neck and then gripped my hips and began to move inside me. Slowly and deliberate in a steady ebb and flow, his movement produced a point counterpoint of pleasure and pain, seconds of agony and intervals of ecstasy, until the difference between them blurred, drowning my senses in pulsating waves of profound pleasur
e.

  I reached desperately for it as my climax coiled tighter and tighter inside me, until my mind was numb to all but my frantic need for release, but this time I could not take it for myself. Ruthlessly, he continued his slow torture of thrust and retreat, pushing me ever closer to the edge of euphoria only to ease back again. My body burned and shone with sweat. My limbs shook like jelly in my all-consuming need, but still he denied me satisfaction— until at last a keening sob erupted from my lungs.

  "I shall give you what you want, my dove, but I must ask if it is your release or your freedom that you crave most."

  I couldn't answer. I could barely breathe. Coherent speech was lost in my frenzy of frustration and the uncontainable sobs that racked my body. I could barely comprehend his next words for the roaring pulse in my ears. My need for release had become the very sum of my existence.

  "Alors. Since I am the very embodiment of compassion, I shall give you what you need."

  His grip on my hips tightened, and then his thrusts increased to a fierce and vigorous pumping. I whimpered and strained as my world spun out of control, but within seconds, the cry of someone dying a thousand terrible deaths tore from my throat. A primal roar pierced the air, joining in the chorus, as countless spurts of scalding heat exploded inside me, bursting my every nerve ending into a blinding, mind-melting orgasmic eruption.

  ***

  I still cannot recall the minutes that followed as I floated in a mindless daze of total depletion. When I opened my eyes I thought I was alone, but then I heard movement. It was Ahmed returning from the salle de bain. My limbs were still too heavy to move, so I lay quietly and covertly studying him. He had a jar in his hand that he set on the bedside table.

  Aware of my return to consciousness, he came to me with heavy-lidded eyes and a mouth relaxed in supreme self-satisfaction. "Alors?" He glanced down at me with a sardonic half smile. "You have come back from the dead at last?"

  "More like seventh heaven," I replied with a smile of repletion.

  "Once more you have surprised me, my dove, and I am not easily surprised." He dipped his head and claimed my mouth in a devouring kiss that left me breathless, bewildered, and wanting more. I still couldn't comprehend what had happened between us in the last hour.