Bella and the Merciless Sheikh

She was going to change.

She’d promised herself that if fate ever threw him in her path again, she wasn’t going to just follow her instincts, she was going to use her brain.

If he’d wanted her for anything other than sex, then it would have been different, but now she was here, she was under no illusions about what was on offer. ‘I can’t wait.’ His hand came behind her neck and his mouth came down on hers, his kiss dark, for bid den and meltingly sexy, and a bolt of heat shot through her from mouth to toes. Only the memory of the emotional agony she’d suffered over the past few weeks gave her the strength to do what she had to do.

‘No! This isn’t— I can’t!’ She pushed against his chest. ‘I don’t want to be the one you have fun with while you’re finalising plans to choose your bride and do your duty.’

‘You’re saying you don’t want this?’

‘Of course I want this.’ Bella groaned. ‘I just don’t want what’s coming afterwards. I don’t want to have to drag myself out of bed every morning feeling as though the world has ended. I don’t want that awful ache in my chest. I felt bruised, Zafiq, like you’d gouged part of me away with a blunt instrument—it was worse than falling off Batal. I just don’t want to feel that way again.’

‘You’re saying no?’ Under different circumstances the disbelief in his tone would have made her laugh.

‘I know that isn’t a word you’ve heard very often, but if you look it up in the dictionary, it’s the opposite of yes. And I’m not saying no because I want to challenge your authority or be generally annoying, or do any of those things likely to make you want to overrule me on principle. I’m just trying to keep us both sane.’

‘Saying no keeps you sane?’

‘Yes…no.’ Bella groaned and dug her fingers in her hair, gritting her teeth with frustration. ‘I can’t have an on-off relationship. It’s like rubbing your self over the teeth of a saw! It hurts too much.’

The breath hissed through his teeth. ‘Staying away from you has been driving me mad.’

‘So why did you stay away from me, Zafiq? Was it because of your father?’ She was taking a huge risk, but she had to ask the question. ‘Are you trying not to be like him? Is that why you’re denying what we have?’

‘What do you know about my father?’

‘I know you’re afraid to be like him. I know you’ll marry someone you’ve chosen with your head, not your heart. And—’ it took a supreme effort to force the words past her lips ‘—I don’t want what you’re offering. I don’t want to be the Sheikh’s mistress!’ Wrestling her self-control back into some sort of shape, she stepped back from him.

His hands moved and, for a moment, she thought he was going to reach for her and haul her against him, but then he stepped back too, his eyes wary.

‘You’re saying that you don’t want what we had in the desert?’

‘That was different,’ Bella whispered, pressing her fingers to her throat. ‘We were a million miles from our real lives. For a time we both escaped from who we really are. It was just the two of us.’

‘It is still just the two of us.’

‘No. You’re still the ruler of Al-Rafid, Zafiq. Do you think I don’t know how hard you’ve been struggling not to renew our relationship? That night when you came down to the stables to accuse me of sleeping with Rachid—’

‘That was not my finest hour.’

‘Don’t apologise. Honestly, we’re past that. I don’t even blame you for thinking it, given everything the newspapers have written about me. But that night taught me that, to you, I’m a temptation that has to be resisted at all costs.’