To Tame a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 1)

No wonder he’d felt he’d known her forever. He had. He had recognized her with that first look, even if not consciously.

And no wonder. She looked nothing like the fourteen-year-old she’d been when he’d last seen her. Skinny with glasses and braces, with no ability to wield her femininity the way girls in Zohayd learned to from a very early age. She hadn’t only realized her potential, she’d become the total opposite of her former self.

He’d thought he’d seen every brand of beauty this world had to offer. But she was something he’d never thought would be gathered in one woman, all his tastes and fantasies come to life. And that was just on the surface. Deeper, where it counted most, little Johara, as Harres had called her, had become the woman who’d seduced Shaheen on sight, had possessed him in a single night.

He rocked on his feet with the mushrooming realization. Only Harres’s hand on his arm steadied him.

Among the storm tossing him about, he managed to answer Harres’s worried question. “No, I don’t need air. I’m fine.”

But he was so far from fine he could be on another planet. He might never be fine again.

He’d taken Johara to his bed.

He’d taken her, in every way, repeatedly.

Just as he thought shock couldn’t engulf him any further, his eyes captured her incredible dark ones again. And the final piece of the puzzle crashed down in place. It should have been the first thing he understood the moment he realized who she really was.

He might not have recognized her, but she had known who he was from the first moment. She’d given him enough clues. Her first word to him had been a gasp of his name. She’d later told him all about herself, which had amounted to what he did know of her family history, without the names, dates and places.

And when he hadn’t clued in, so bowled over by her he hadn’t even connected the sun-size dots, she’d chosen to leave him in the dark. The apprehension he felt from her must be her anxiety about his reaction now that she knew he’d finally wised up.

“Now that you’ve met your potential brides, how is your stomach holding up?”

“Can we give you tips who not to choose?”

Shaheen dazedly turned toward the two warm, musical female voices. Aliyah and Laylah flowed to him, hugging him on both sides, reaching up to kiss a cheek each, their exquisite faces brimming with vitality and joie de vivre.

He automatically hugged and kissed them back as the ramifications of what had happened between him and Gemma…Johara expanded inside him, squeezing all his vitals.

“The beauty in emerald over there, the one with the incredible black hair down to her feet?” Laylah pinched his cheek playfully as she turned his head in the direction of the woman she was describing, before turning his face back to her quickly. “Don’t even look at her again. Her unbelievable locks will turn to serpents at the first opportune moment.”

“And the redhead over there.” Aliyah directed his gaze toward the woman she was mentioning with more discreet taps on his cheek. “Run if you ever see her again. She grows scales and blowtorches anyone within a mile radius.”

Harres laughed. “If you’re trying to make Shaheen feel better about this, you’re going about it in bizarro fashion.”

Laylah poked a teasing elbow into Harres’s abdomen. “Hey, we’re saving him from settling on the prettiest flower and being devoured alive.”

“So now that you’ve eliminated the most beautiful flowers, do I surmise you think he should go for the ugliest one?”

Aliyah gave a horrified shudder. “Oh, no, that one is just as monstrous, without the advantage of being nice to look at. What’s inside is on the outside in her case. In fact, we’ve narrowed down his choices to two.”

Harres huffed a sound of pure sarcasm. “Don’t tell me. The candidates with the least monstrous qualities.”

“Actually they’re both pretty decent. One is not as accomplished or worldly as Shaheen would prefer, but we believe she would become so as his wife. The other one is really nice, but doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. Again, with Shaheen for a husband, she’ll definitely develop one.”

Shaheen felt as if he’d fallen into the twilight zone, expected to hear a laughter track burst into the background any moment now.

He cleared his throat. “Shaheen is right here.” The two women squeezed him again, sheepishness coating their expressions. “Thank you, my dears, for vetting my bridal nightmares as only you two discerning ladies could. Write down your choices and hand them to Father. But if he decides one of the monsters is more beneficial to the negotiations, that is who I’ll end up with. Anyway, my life as I know and want it is over. So, as I told Father earlier, one catastrophe with which to meet my end is as good as another.”

A pall fell on the duo in the wake of his words.

Horror dawned in Aliyah’s and Laylah’s eyes, contrition twisting their features. They really hadn’t realized how much Shaheen hated this, were now mortified that they’d been oblivious to his own distress and teased him about it.

“Oh, Shaheen, I didn’t know you were…”

“Oh, Shaheen, I didn’t realize…”

Aliyah’s and Laylah’s apologies stumbled over each other. They fell silent, Aliyah biting her lip, Laylah’s eyes filling with tears.

His focus flowed back to its captor, to Gem—to Johara. Her eyes darted away the moment his fell on her. She’d been watching him.

A bubble of agitation and elation expanded inside him.

She might be avoiding him, but she wanted to look at him and did so the moment she could.

Harres’s phone rang.

He answered. After a few terse sentences, he turned his eyes to Shaheen. “I’m sorry to leave you. But something’s brewing at our borders. It may take hours or even days to defuse.”

Shaheen nodded, accepted Harres’s bolstering hug, watched him hug the women and stride away.

Shaheen looked back at the fidgeting Aliyah and Laylah, a calculating smile spreading his lips even as his heart twisted inside his chest. “How about you atone for your sins by granting this doomed man a last request?”

They both jumped, voices intertwining with promises of anything at all if it would make him feel better.

He looked back at Johara, who again turned her eyes away and bestowed a brittle smile on the group surrounding her.

“Remember Johara Nazaryan?”

Both women looked to Johara.