Taken by the Sheikh

‘And this, of course, is the main dealing room.’

Sadie nodded her head in acknowledgement as they completed their tour of the building. As yet the vast room did not reek of male hormones and the sharp scent of bullish aggression, like the dealing rooms she was used to, but no doubt they soon would.

‘That young man you were talking to earlier,’ Drax demanded abruptly. ‘What exactly is your relationship?’

If the question had come from anyone else, Sadie knew she would have refused to answer it. But she was becoming used to Drax’s autocratic belief that he had a right to have even his most intimate questions answered. Either that or her emotions were becoming so entrapped by him that she wanted him to know everything about her and her past. Though of course she wasn’t silly enough to let herself get emotionally involved with a man who had shown no signs of wanting an involvement, was she?

‘As I’ve already told you, we worked together.’

‘His body language suggested that his relationship with you was more than that of a mere work colleague,’ Drax said.

Sadie shook her head. ‘The young men from the trading floor always behave like that. It’s part of their macho image; it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘So you weren’t involved in a sexual relationship with him?’ Drax persisted.

He wasn’t asking these questions on his own account, he assured himself. Why should he be? After all it was of no interest to him how many men had taken her to bed. No, he was thinking of his brother.

He knew Vere would never accept as his wife a woman whose ex-lover was the kind of man he had seen talking to Sadie—even as his temporary wife. It was unrealistic, of course, to expect her not to have had a sexual partner—even more than one—but the people of Dhurahn would have certain expectations about the wives of their rulers, and those expectations would have to be met—even if its rulers knew the marriage was only going to be temporary.

‘No, I wasn’t,’ Sadie reaffirmed, almost fiercely. Was her face burning as much as she thought? Betraying how uncomfortable she felt? It wasn’t that she had anything to hide, or at least not the kind of thing that her employer seemed to think she might have to hide, but she was acutely sensitive about the fact that for a woman of her age and situation she was lacking the kind of sexual experience she might be expected to have. There probably never had been an age when a woman in her twenties was proud to say openly that she was still a virgin; in earlier times, when female virginity had been prized, girls had been married in their teens, and unmarried virgins past that age would probably have been looked upon as objects of pity—rejects, unable to find a husband and bringing shame on her family.

Now, while it was laughable that any woman should feel rejected because she wasn’t married, there was a certain stigma—a certain sniggering kind of unkindness, especially from men—attached to a woman who remained a virgin.

Sadie could well imagine how someone like Jack Logan would react if he knew the truth about her. Which was, of course, why she had made sure that no one did know, keeping her secret to herself.

It wasn’t as if she had made some kind of vow to cling to celibacy—far from it. It was just that the right partner had never come along at the right time, and then, when she had begun to realise that she might have left it later than normal to lose her virginity, she had started to worry about how any potential partner might react to the knowledge that he was to be her first lover. That in turn had caused her to keep the men she did date at arm’s length, so that the whole situation had grown steadily more burdensome—rather like compound interest, she told herself with grim humour.

Drax watched her, wondering what it was causing the defensive and almost secretive look to darken her eyes, and what it was she was so obviously withholding from him. There could, of course, be only one thing. She was lying to him about her

relationship with the man he had seen talking to her. Normally the knowledge that a woman was lying to him about her sexual past would have caused him to feel merely cynically amused. But, as he was slowly being forced to recognise, nothing that had happened to him since he had first set eyes on Sadie came anywhere near being close to his ‘normal’ reaction. That alone was enough to infuriate him, without the added thought of Sadie with another man. He could see her now, giving herself to that man with wanton abandon, inciting him with her soft full mouth and her sweetly curved body to take them to the savage erotic heights he himself so ached to show her.

Drax fought desperately to ignore what he was feeling and thinking. But it was too late. As surely as any genie let loose from its imprisoning bottle, the reality of his desire for her had been exposed.

‘We need to return to the palace,’ he told her curtly. ‘I have a meeting I need to attend.’

There wasn’t any meeting, but he didn’t trust himself to remain alone with her in his present mood, and at least if they returned to the palace he could distance himself from her.

Sadie was too relieved that he had stopped questioning her about her non-existent sex-life to worry about his brusque manner.

They were waiting for the lift when the man who had been escorting Jack Logan’s group came hurrying towards them, salaaming to Drax and then saying something urgently to him in Arabic.

‘Go downstairs and wait for me in the foyer,’ Drax told Sadie after he had listened to the older man. ‘There is something I have to attend to. I won’t be very long.’

Nodding her head, Sadie got in the lift.

The foyer really was magnificent, she acknowledged, as she stepped out of the lift on the ground floor. Drax and his brother were bound to make a success of their venture, and she admitted that she hoped there might be a real future for her here.

Although Dhurahn, like Zuran, was a modern city, there was still that awareness of the proximity of the desert and its mystery, and she had learned while she was in Zuran that there was something about it that enthralled her. She had taken a couple of organised trips out to the wadis, and had marvelled at everything she had seen, gaining respect for the strength and pride of those who had lived for so many centuries in this hostile but strangely beautiful environment. If she were allowed to stay on she would try to explore the desert a little more, get to know more about it, she told herself, letting her thoughts drift as she waited patiently for Drax.

When she at last heard the hum of the descending lift she waited expectantly for the doors to open—only to stiffen with shock when it wasn’t Drax who got out, but Jack Logan. He was grinning wolfishly at her in the almost obscenely vain way he had that she had always found so threatening.

‘I saw you get in the lift, so I thought I’d come down and keep you company,’ he said mockingly. ‘How did you manage to get involved with the top man, by the way? Not via his bed, I’ll bet…You wouldn’t have lasted two seconds there once he’d sussed out how sexless you are…’

Sadie swung round, turning her back on him, praying that Drax would appear and unwittingly rescue her from her tormentor.

‘Sadie, Sadie…’ Jack Logan was singing softly. ‘Who won’t open her legs for anyone. What’s it like being so uptight? Tell you what I’ll do, seeing as I’m feeling generous, I’ll show you what it’s like to have a man…’

If she just ignored him he’d get tired of harassing her and leave her alone, Sadie reasoned. If she just stood here and avoided eye contact—She gave a shocked protest when Jack suddenly grabbed hold of her and swung her round. He was considered good-looking, she knew, but he had mean eyes, and the cruel look in them made her shudder.