The Sheikh Surgeon's Proposal

She stepped out of the car, her anger bubbling over.

“Had fun waving your guns at an unarmed woman and an unconscious man?” she snarled. “Now, I demand that you get back in your cars and lead the way to the nearest hospital. And before you do, I need your first-aid kits. I’m sure limos like yours have comprehensive ones!”

Eight pairs of astonished dark eyes stared at her, then at each other. She saw the imperceptible nods they exchanged, then two of them advanced on her and subjected her to a thorough frisking, to her spluttering chagrin.

When they were satisfied she wasn’t carrying anything untoward, the one who looked like the leader murmured something into his walkie-talkie. The middle car, which had stopped two hundred feet away, reversed. The guy with the walkie-talkie rushed towards it, and with a great show of deference he opened the passenger door and bowed down to confer with whomever was inside. He straightened with another deep bow and rushed back to her.

“Ta’ee ma’ee,” he ordered.

This she also understood. Come with me.

“I’m going nowhere with you, and I again demand—”

The man latched onto her arm, cutting her tirade short. She knew her own resistance would make his grip inflict bruises, yet she still struggled and sputtered her indignation all the way to the car. He opened the passenger door, tried to manhandle her in. She snatched herself away, only managing to plop in an unceremonious heap inside. Into what felt like another dimension.

The transition from Damhoor’s glaring morning sun into what felt like one of its moonless nights blinded her. And after the intense heat, landing on cool leather had a jolt of goose-bumps storming over her skin. The next thing she noticed was that scent. Pervasive, potent. Pleasurable … It was on account of all those stimuli assaulting her senses that she shook. She was too outraged for alarm to register just yet.

Still blind, she snarled her displeasure. “Is this how you feel like men around here? By ganging up on women after you drive them off the road? But if you think you can get away with anything, I’m telling you I’m—”

Her tirade came to a choking halt. For there they were, materializing out of the blindness. A foot away from her. Eyes, the color of gold and the translucency of pure honey.

They captured hers, forbade her to see or sense anything else, even the person they belonged to. It was only when they finally released her in a sweep of thick black lashes to pour confusion over her that she was freed to take in everything about this man in one unmanageable gulp.

In her haste, she got glimpses of hair the deep gloss of a raven’s wing and the relaxed waves of a tranquil sea, skin of polished bronze, slashes and planes and hollows that were all assembled in a composition of—of … Wow.

If she’d ever had any concept of beauty, it had been before she’d seen this—this … man?

Was he a man? Or a being right out of fable?

This would explain that face—a face befitting a higher being. And so was that body. Even an obscuring black suit and shirt did nothing to disguise the daunting breadth and hardness of chest and shoulders, the spareness of waist and hips, the virile power of thighs and the endlessness of legs. Then came that presence that could bend the masses to his merest whim.

And she was being ridiculously fanciful here!

That was, she thought so until her eyes were dragged back to his and she knew they’d been commanded to.

His gaze was even more hard-hitting the second time around, with what she now realized was sleepiness, which he seemed to be having trouble shedding. The sight of the contradictory vulnerability intensified his effect by a factor of a thousand.

But it was the wonder in those eyes that enervated her. The explicit confession that her sight was having an equal impact on him. That the jolt of attraction was mutual.

“Ya Ullah—aish entee?”

His groan reverberated in her bones. God, what are you?

And, oh, why wasn’t his voice the one thing to shatter the perfection? Like it usually did with beautiful men? It, and what he did with it, was by far his most potent asset. And that was saying way too much.

But what it did shatter was the surreal feeling of being with him in a bubble where time and the rest of the world didn’t exist. And her fury rose as if it had never abated.

“What I am,” she seethed, “is a very annoyed guest in your country, sir, and I demand that you live up to the legendary chivalry that you advertise as your most prominent quality. The man you drove off the road is suffocating on his blood back in that taxi while you keep me here playing the power games you Damhoorian men seem to revel in!”

Every word lashing out of her mouth wiped the bemusement from his expression, shook off his disorientation. Suddenly clear eyes released hers and he turned away, opened the door and leapt out of the car.

She jumped out of the car right after him. And his men detained her. Frustration exploded out of her in another tirade.

“Sayebooha!” The lash of the man’s imperious order made them let her go at once. She hurried after him, found him already examining her unconscious driver.

She leaned over him. “Now you’ve seen how gravely injured this man is, if you’ll please provide me with your first-aid kit …”

His only response was a fierce look over her head, a terse command she didn’t get which seemed to magically produce a suitcase-sized emergency bag. Then he took her elbow and moved her away as more abrupt words had his men converging. She understood he’d ordered them to get the driver out of the car.

“No! He has a possible neck injury. You can’t move him—not before I stabilize his cervical spine.”

Her frantic words died. The man had opened the bag and was producing a semi-rigid cervical collar. Before she made a grab for it, he turned to her slumped driver, removed her improvised collar and in seconds, and with perfect technique, had his fitted around the man’s neck. Then under his continuous orders, his men got the driver out. Specialized EMS personnel wouldn’t have done a better job. There was no doubt it was their boss’s guidance that made them achieve this result.

Just who was this man?

But no matter who he was, or that he seemed versed in the basics of managing a car accident casualty, he couldn’t be as experienced as her. She had to take over.

She stood back until the men, still following the constant flow of their boss’s precise orders, spread blankets on the hood of one of their limos and placed their casualty there. He had them maneuver the other limo to make its hood a surface for the emergency bag then came to stand at the driver’s head.