The Sheikh's Reluctant Queen: The Sheikh's Destiny

She hurried after him, stumbling on legs that felt mismatched as his scent, even over the overpowering hospital smells, filled her lungs. “You thought I would?”

He spared her a sideways glance from his prodigious height. “You should have.”

“Yeah, right.” Her gaze flitted to the pristine white bandage peeking below what now looked like viscous ink on his sweater. She felt nauseated that his flesh had been torn, again, this time for her.

“Are you all right?” she asked. Her breathlessness had nothing to do with almost running to match his endless strides.

He gave her a look that pointed out that she was the one having trouble keeping up. “I don’t look it?”

You look more than all right. You look divine.

She barely bit back the words. “Looks can be deceiving. Especially yours.”

Both eyebrows rose this time. “I wish I’d known I had chameleonlike powers before. That would have come in handy during my black ops days.”

So after being a war hero he’d veered into ultimate warrior territory. A natural progression, really. Only the most formidable soldiers made it and survived in that utmost-skill, maximum-peril world.

Had that been what had shaped him into this force of darkness? He’d always been complex, but his current depths must have been forged in experiences she couldn’t even imagine. The brutal demands and dangers of a black ops life fit the bill.

She cleared her tightening throat. “I meant your skin. It’s so…” Polished and bronzed and tough, so touchable… so lickable… She clamped down on the overheating thoughts. “Tanned. Anyone less… opaque would be pale as a ghost from blood loss by now.”

His eyes moved dismissively away. “It’s clear you’ve never seen what blood loss looks like.”

She quickened her steps to capture his fixed-ahead gaze. “I do now. I was a volunteer paramedic through college in Zohayd.”

Had she managed to stun him again? That she could decipher a flicker in his eyes meant that she had. And then some.

Did it surprise him that much that she’d volunteered, and in such an occupation? Was he surprised to discover she wasn’t what her mother had tried so hard to make her—a pampered pawn?

“Then you must know all this blood only looks dramatic. I’ve got liters still circulating about, doing its job, and the loss is merely an incentive for my body to produce a replacement, something I’ve always found revitalizing.”

Her jaw dropped. “You find blood loss revitalizing?”

“It does jog my body out of a rut. Before you wonder, I don’t have proclivities for inflicting it on myself for kicks, but when it does happen, I look at the bright side.”

She and Nurse McGregor had been right. There was something more than human about him.

“You’re still not convinced, even when your paramedical experience is telling you I’m right.”

He was. But…”I—I just can’t stop thinking how much worse it could have been…”

“But it wasn’t. You can stop guilt-tripping.”

He was wrong about that. It wasn’t guilt. It was this… fear for him, even when she knew that danger had been averted.

He sighed. “What will convince you that I won’t keel over? I assure you I don’t intend to for roughly the next fifty years.”

The out-of-nowhere flashes of his dry-as-tinder sense of humor amazed her.

Her lips quivered. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Another sideways glance, longer this time, and even more unsettling. But he said nothing more as he navigated out of the hospital and into the freezing night.

She fought the urge to take his hand as they crossed the road. Driving him here and escorting him inside were two things he’d grudgingly consented to. Literally holding his hand was another level of infringement altogether. And she’d rather not be exposed to more eyebrow action.

But she was, in response to her rushing to take the wheel.

He reinforced that eyebrow’s censure by remaining outside, his bulk blocking the passenger-side window.

A button wound it down. “Get in already.”

He only stood there, uncaring of the icy wind as his coat flowed around him like a magician’s cape. “You’d rather drive yourself home instead of giving me directions?”

She thought of saying yes, just so he’d get in from the cold. But even if she didn’t suffer from advanced candor, she wouldn’t bargain with him with anything less than the full truth.

She looked up at him with her unequivocal intention. “I’m driving you home.”

Widening his stance, he shoved his hands in his pants’ pockets, evidently having no problem with haggling over this all night. “Our deal wasn’t open-ended. It ended when you heard with your own ears that my injury was trivial.”

“So the injury wasn’t as bad as you’re used to, and the blood loss turned out to be a kick. But the stitches must be hurting like hell, especially since you went all Rambo and refused anesthesia and painkillers. Even if you have an inhuman pain threshold and feel nothing, bottom line is, I’m still driving. And I won’t just drop you home and leave. I’m coming in with you.”

That silenced him. For at least thirty seconds.

Then he leaned down, looked straight into her eyes, the night of his own eyes deep enough to engulf her whole.

Slowly, distinctly, he said, “I’ve been in three wars, princess. I forget how many other lesser scale, if sometimes even more vicious, armed conflicts. Not to mention all those missions I undertook with one-way tickets because coming back at all, let alone in one piece, was a one in a hundred shot at best. I’ve seen and done and had done to me some of the absolute worst things imaginable. Two-dozen stitches actually feels nostalgic now that I’ve left the battlefield behind for the boardroom. I assure you, I can tuck myself into bed.”

That image filled her with heat. How many women had fought for that privilege, had had that pleasure…?

She bit her lip at the disconcerting projections. “I’m sure you can also lug the whole world on your back, Sheikh Atlas. But that doesn’t mean that you have to, or that you have to do it alone. No matter what, you’re not alone tonight. You got those stitches in my defense, so that makes them mine, too, and I have an equal right in deciding how to view them. You think they’re negligible or nostalgic, I think they’re premium grounds for fussing. You evidently find being fussed over an alien concept, but you’ll have to suck it up, since fuss over you I will. So you might as well give in, get in and let me take you home.”

Judging by the infinitesimal widening of his eyes, she’d definitely flabbergasted him. She’d bet no one had ever dared talk to him like that.

When he finally spoke, his voice was an octave deeper, if that was possible, “I really don’t need—”

“I know you need nothing from anyone.” Now that she had him miraculously off-balance, she had to strike the red-hot iron of his indecision and get the obdurate man in from the cold. “It’s a given you can take care of yourself at the absolute worst of times, having done so all your life. But you won’t tonight. Tonight, I take care of you.”

Three (#ulink_155393b7-9327-5791-b8be-25cb40804313)

She’d pushed her luck too far.

From the way Rashid was looking at her, as if she were an alien life form, she feared she’d done worse. Instead of persuading him to get into the car, she might have convinced him to walk home on foot.

What the hell. Might as well go all the way.

She leaned farther so she could look up at him. “If you’re thinking of calling a cab, I’ll follow it. If you decide to walk, I’ll cruise along beside you. Or I’ll get out and walk with you and you’ll have my hypothermia on your hands and your conscience.”

He clearly couldn’t believe his ears.