Never Resist a Sheikh (International Bad Boys) Read online

  Never Resist a Sheikh

  An International Bad Boys Romance

  Jackie Ashenden

  Never Resist a Sheikh

  Copyright © 2015 Jackie Ashenden

  EPUB Edition

  The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-943963-09-6

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Excerpt from Never Seduce a Sheikh

  More by Jackie Ashenden

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Felicity Cartwright didn’t take her eyes from her phone screen as the large, black SUV ferrying her through the narrow, twisting back alleys of Shara began to slow yet again. They’d had to go slow so many times already on the trip from Al-Harah’s international airport to the palace that she just didn’t bother looking to see what the problem was this time.

  First, there had been road repairs. Second, a major traffic jam on the freeway into the city. Third, they’d had to pull over for an ambulance. Fourth? Well, she didn’t much care right now. The trip from New York to Al-Harah had been long and she hated flying, and, now that she was on the ground, she felt nothing but exhausted. She wanted familiarity, a bed, and some sleep. Not particularly in that order, but definitely not until she’d finished answering her emails.

  And speaking of… She frowned at the screen as her email app timed out for the umpteenth time. Damn patchy 3G coverage. Good thing she was here. Looked like Al-Harah needed her and Red Star, the tech company that was her pride and joy. The country’s telecommunications industry was still fledgling, the government particularly interested in a piece of software she’d created that helped developing nations get cheap and easy Internet access.

  The Al-Harahan government was a little suspicious of her—Red Star was new and she was young. But on the upside, she was a certified genius. Twenty-four, with a PhD from MIT, and a brand new tech start-up. She was also ambitious, fierce, a woman with something to prove in the male-dominated tech industry. And she wanted to put Red Star on the map.

  Once she had decent Wi-Fi, at least.

  She scowled as her signal disappeared completely. Great, just great. How was she was supposed to be ambitious and fierce when she couldn’t even get her damn emails?

  Lowering her phone, she looked up, belatedly realizing the car had come to a stop in a very narrow street. There were blank stone walls of buildings on either side of her, very old buildings from the looks of things, while the street itself was laid with dusty cobblestones. Clearly they were in the old part of the city.

  She leaned forward, trying to peer through the front windshield to see what was holding them up. In front of them was an ancient and very dirty-looking truck that seemed to be parked right in the middle of the street, completely blocking the way.

  Her driver muttered something in Arabic that didn’t sound very polite, then slammed his hand down on the car’s horn.

  Felicity pulled a face at the noise, sitting back in her seat again and looking down once more at her phone. Looked like they were going to be here a while so she might as well do something productive, such as going over her presentation once again.

  She’d been led to believe that Sheikh Altair himself might attend the presentation, a fact she thought unlikely since the sheikh was due to be getting married in the next few days.

  A pity. There were few things she’d learned from her distant lawyer father, but if she wanted something, going to straight to the top to get it had been one of them.

  The driver sounded the horn again, and Felicity lifted her head to suggest that perhaps he might want to not honk the horn so loudly when there were jet-lagged geniuses in the back of the car. But the words died in her throat.

  Because the street ahead of them was no longer empty of anyone but the truck. It now appeared to be full of a veritable crowd of very tall men, all of them in dusty desert robes and carrying…holy crap. Were those…guns?

  Felicity blinked. Because no, surely there were no guns anywhere near here. Or men who looked like they’d escaped from a Lawrence of Arabia movie shoot. And they definitely weren’t coming over toward the car. No, most definitely not.

  The driver said something sharply and put his foot down on the accelerator. At least she thought that’s what he was trying to do because just then one of those very tall men reached for the door and jerked it open. He grabbed her driver and pulled him out.

  Shock held Felicity rigid. The driver was babbling something incoherently, his voice abruptly cut off as the man who’d pulled him out of the car suddenly hit him over the head with the butt of his gun. The driver collapsed onto the stones of the street, unconscious.

  A deep shiver of fear went through her.

  Oh, God. What was happening? There had apparently been some unrest in Al-Harah, but since the sheikh had gotten engaged things had settled down. At least, that’s what she’d been told. But maybe it hadn’t settled down. Maybe these men were sent to…do something awful to her.

  She looked down at her phone, suddenly frantic to find a signal, alert the authorities, whichever authorities there were. Her fingers had gone cold and she fumbled on the buttons.

  But before she could even punch in a number, a very large, very warm, blunt-fingered hand closed completely over hers. She let out a squeak of panic and jerked her head up.

  And went still as a prey animal before a tiger.

  A massively built man had leaned over the front seat to grab her phone, seemingly filling the entire front of the SUV. He had a dusty, white head covering pulled over his hair and partially obscuring his nose and mouth, leaving only his eyes uncovered, black as a midnight sky and sharp as shattered obsidian.

  Her mouth dropped open, a scream of pure terror building in her throat. Because there was death in those eyes, violence and raging fires, a howling storm. The end of the world.

  He leaned forward, a surprisingly fluid movement given the awkwardness of him having to reach into the back seat, and one of those large, warm hands was over her mouth, stopping her scream dead, while he pulled her phone away with the other.

  He said something in Arabic, his voice deep and harsh, rumbling like an avalanche, words she didn’t understand. But it definitely sounded like an order.

  She was trembling all over, shaking with fear and also, strangely, anger. Because she was exhausted, she had no damn signal for her phone, she was in a strange country, and this was supposed to be the start of something big for her and her company.

  It was not supposed to be the day she was attacked by strange men in robes.

  She had no idea what came over her, where she’d gotten her courage from, since by rights she should have been catatonic with fear. But she’d always had a temper when she was really pushed and all she knew was that she was royally pissed and she did not like having this guy�
�s hand over her mouth.

  So she bit him hard in the fleshy part of his palm.

  It was a stupid idea, she knew that as soon as her teeth closed down on him, as soon as those terrifying dark eyes widened in surprise. Only for the surprise to be swiftly replaced by something else. Anger.

  That’s right, bite the hand of the scary, veiled man who’s just knocked your driver unconscious. That’s a really good move.

  The man took his hand away so suddenly she almost gasped. Then he lunged forward, his fingers closing around her throat instead.

  Felicity’s mouth opened again, but this time absolutely nothing came out.

  There was no pressure behind the grip, but his fingers were firm, his palm heavy. And she didn’t need to meet that frightening black gaze to know what he was trying to tell her, but she looked anyway. He was giving her a warning. All he needed to do was close his hand and she would literally be gasping for air.

  Dimly, in the far recesses of her mind, something was screaming that she should be panicking, collapsing on the seat in floods of frightened tears or fainting, or something along those lines.

  But like a threatened animal, she found herself sitting very, very still instead. Not wanting to draw the attention of the man-eating tiger that was looking at her as if he was deciding whether she was worth the bother of killing or not.

  She stared back, her ragged, frantic breathing loud in the interior of the car. And she realized, with an almost detached kind of surprise, that the veil around his face had fallen away. It must have done so when he’d reached forward to grab her.

  He was younger than she’d initially thought, his features unexpectedly and brutally handsome, compelling as those dense black eyes. A strong, hard jaw shadowed with the dark stubble of a beard. High, aristocratic cheekbones. A crooked nose that looked as if it had been broken at some point, with thick, slightly winged, black brows on either side of it. The face of some primitive, warrior god of old.

  It made something deep inside her shudder inexplicably.

  His gaze narrowed and she found herself looking down in instinctive acquiescence. Perhaps if she just sat here and didn’t say a word, stayed quiet as a mouse and didn’t cause a fuss, they’d go away.

  Her heartbeat was loud in her head, panicked and fast, all her awareness concentrated on the strong hand around her throat. Weirdly, the only thing she could seem to think about was how warm his skin was.

  You’re crazy. Jet-lagged and insane.

  Yeah, clearly. Here she was, being ambushed, with a scary man’s hand around her throat, and all she could think about was the warmth of his skin.

  After a moment, he released her and she could tell by the sudden change in the atmosphere inside the car that he’d gotten out.

  She looked up slowly and, indeed, he was now striding toward the group of men standing in the street in front of the car, her cell phone in his hand.

  Shivers of reaction had begun to set in and for some reason that, too, fueled her weird anger. She didn’t like feeling helpless and she didn’t like feeling afraid, and she felt enough of both those emotions to last her for life.

  Swallowing, she fumbled for her seatbelt and pressed the button, keeping an eye on the men in front of the car. Perhaps if she was quick enough and quiet enough, she could get out of the car and get away without them even noticing.

  The seatbelt clicked and she pushed it aside, reaching for the car door handle and pulling slowly, hoping like hell the door wouldn’t make a noise as it opened.

  She was already halfway out when abruptly the door was pulled wide and one of the men placed himself in front of her.

  Crap. Not fast enough.

  Felicity’s heart sank all the way down to into her Converses. “Hey, look,” she began, “I’m not—”

  But the man only reached out and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her out of the car, shutting the door then dragging her stumbling around to the front of the SUV where the rest of the men were, including that black-eyed mountain who’d had his hand around her throat.

  The man pulling her stopped, his grip hard on her arm, and he said something in Arabic to the black-eyed, bearded man who was staring at Felicity with such intensity she wanted to curl up and die on the spot.

  Weird that him putting a hand over her mouth hadn’t put the fear of God into her, but him staring at her? Her palms were getting sweaty and she wanted to be sick.

  She looked away, unable to meet his gaze, glancing furtively to see if the driver was okay instead. They’d dragged him over to the side of the street, sitting him up against the wall. He was still unconscious but seemed to breathing.

  At least that was something. They hadn’t killed him so maybe they wouldn’t kill her. Pity her Arabic was limited to “hello” and “thank you”. She hadn’t thought “Please don’t kill me” might be useful.

  The black-eyed man was speaking in that rough avalanche of a voice, full of stones and ice and a dark, dangerous rumble. He hadn’t taken his gaze off her, making her mouth go dry with fear and yet, at the same time, sending another hot spear of anger through her.

  Men. They thought they could rule the world. Well, she wasn’t going to cower. No freaking way. She wasn’t going to be bullied either, not when she’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.

  This isn’t the Upper East Side, idiot. This is life or death.

  No, it wasn’t New York City. But who was it who’d said it was better to die on your feet than to live on your knees? Whoever it was, they were right.

  Felicity lifted her chin, meeting the man’s gaze, preparing to stare him down if necessary.

  There was a whole world of secrets in those dense, black eyes. Deep shadows and mysteries and a darkness that for some reason was as mesmerizing as it was terrifying.

  A man totally outside of her experience. Which made him suddenly and completely fascinating.

  She opened her mouth to say something, but for the second time that day, someone put a hand over her mouth and nose. There was a cloth and it smelled…weird.

  Her vision blurred. Oh, hell. What was happening now? She struggled feebly against the hands holding her, but it was no use.

  The black-eyed man kept watching her.

  And he was the last thing she saw as the darkness reached up and grabbed her, pulling her under.

  * * *

  Zakir ibn Rashiq Al-Nazari, ruling sheikh of Al-Shakhra, looked down at the small, crumpled form of the woman lying not far away on the ancient cobblestones of Shara and cursed. Viciously.

  This raid was not supposed to go this way. His intelligence had led him to believe the black SUV had been carrying Princess Safira, fiancée of the sheikh Al-Harah, not some ill-mannered, little American woman.

  “I am sorry, sire,” Jamal, his head of security, said as he put the cloth soaked in a powerful sedative back in his robes. “I was sure that—”

  “I do not care what you were sure of,” Zakir snapped. “You were wrong and so was the intelligence we were given, and now we are left with…this…” He made a gesture to the pathetic creature curled up unconscious on the street.

  Holy God, she was definitely not what he’d crossed the border into Al-Harah for. He’d come for the sleek, beautiful lioness that was Princess Safira, hoping to take her back to Al-Shakhra and make her his sheikha. And, instead, in place of a lioness, he’d gotten a…chihuahua.

  He glared at the unconscious girl. Not only had she not been Safira, she’d then had the gall to bite him like a little animal. With surprising force. Then, as if the situation hadn’t been bad enough, in his efforts to quell her, his keffiyeh had dropped to reveal his face. Definitely a problem.

  No one could know he was here, not until the princess had been secured and they were both safely back in Al-Shakra where Altair couldn’t get her.

  Except now, not only had they not secured the princess, they also had a witness.

  Jamal was stony-faced. “This car was supposed to be carrying Princess Safira, si
re.”

  “And yet do you see the princess, Safira, anywhere?” Zakir demanded. “No, you do not. And now I am left with this girl, whoever she is, who has seen my face.”

  The rest of his men were silent. Just as well. He was in the kind of mood that could involve sending certain people on long runs in the deep desert with rucksacks full of rocks on their backs.

  Jamal, clearly thinking along those lines too, said quickly, “Leave her to me, sire. I can—”

  “There will be no killing.” He interrupted before the other man could utter another word. “That is not what we came here to do.”

  Jamal always did what needed to be done, but Zakir would not be responsible for killing or hurting any woman, neither would he tolerate it from any of his subjects. Yes, he was sheikh of a country recovering from the depredations of his dictator of a father, a country who still held to the old ways, medieval in many respects, including its treatment of women. But he would set a new example; even if he didn’t quite know what that example would be other than he had to be better somehow. He’d been brought up a warrior, not a sheikh.

  “Then what do you wish us to do?” Jamal asked, clearly wanting to make up for his error.

  Zakir narrowed his gaze at the woman. He couldn’t think of any other way around it. If he left her here she would alert the authorities, and even if she didn’t know who he was, she’d gotten a good enough look at him that those authorities would soon find out who had attacked her. And Sheikh Altair would not hesitate to retaliate.

  And taking the princess would not have made him retaliate?

  Well, that had always been a risk. But bride games were still played here in Al-Harah and definitely in Zakir’s country. And that was how Altair had claimed his princess for himself, was it not? Still, the woman was only a bride if she consented after a day of feasting with the family of the man who’d taken her. And if the rumors were true, Princess Safira had refused Altair. Which meant she was fair game for a claiming.

  The aristocratic families had long since fled Al-Shakhra, taking their daughters with them, which had left him no option but to seek a bride farther afield. And Safira had been the perfect choice. A warrior queen, because strength was what his people respected, with an old and noble lineage. A woman who knew the old ways.