Sheikh Protector

Shadows stretched across his back. She couldn’t tell from this distance whether they were scars or some sort of tribal markings.

Another person might have looked vulnerable naked, but not the Dark Sheik. Strength radiated off him, and danger.

He reached to the side and turned off the water with one sinuous movement.

Okay, so Mr. I’m-Lord-of-All-I-Survey was sexy. Very.

She couldn’t care less. She was leaving. Now.

He wrapped a black towel around his waist then turned, his dark gaze finding hers unerringly in the mirror. He didn’t show surprise. Somehow he’d known she’d be there, staring.

How humiliating.

“Is there anything you wanted from me, Julia?” His voice was low and measured, full of innuendo and contempt.

She wanted to turn and run, but his gaze wouldn’t release her. When he strode closer, she backed away without looking where she was going, hoping she was backing out the door. Instead, in a few steps, her back bumped against the wall.

He was a short foot from her, looming dangerous in the semidarkness of the room, his wide shoulders outlined in the light that came from the bathroom. Drops of water glistened on his dark skin. He smelled like soap and sandalwood. He was the most erotic and intimidating sight she’d ever seen.

“Looking for a substitute sheik for your plan?” He put his right hand to the wall next to her head. His hand being higher than his shoulder, droplets of water ran backward, along his carved granite biceps.

Her heart jumped to her throat. He thought she’d come here to seduce him. She moved the other way, but that arm came down, too, and boxed her in. She didn’t feel panicked as much as mesmerized. Blinked her eyes. Snap out of it. How dare he?

“Don’t touch me.” She shoved with her free hand, indignation giving her strength. She tried not to notice the hard muscles of his warm—and still wet—chest under her fingers. Her limbs were shaky. From exhaustion, no doubt. She was likely still jet-lagged, too.

He didn’t budge a millimeter, but a dark eyebrow slid up his forehead. “Changed your mind? Scare you, do I?”

Maybe. Okay, more so with every passing moment. He was large and powerful and utterly overwhelming after a hellish day. She was well aware that he could kill her, and with his title and station in the country, there probably wouldn’t even be a questioning.

Tears threatened to fill her eyes. She gritted her teeth and held them back. This was not the time for a hormonal moment. “Go to hell.” She lifted her head and stuck her chin out. “You want to intimidate me? Congratulations, you succeeded. That’s what turns people like you on, isn’t it? Scared women.”

A muscle jumped in his face, just beneath the four-inch scar on the right side that started above the eye socket and ran straight down. And then she realized the eye didn’t move along with the other one. He was blind on that side. Not that his left eye wasn’t lethal enough on its own.

He took his time to look her over from her bare feet to the top of her head, returning to linger on her breasts, which had grown already during the pregnancy and were stupidly sensitive to smoldering looks from half-naked men. More misery to blame on hormones.

“The same things turn me on as any other healthy man, I suppose,” he said, his voice a notch lower than before.

The space between them was insanely small. Without warning, the adrenaline that had been pumping through her already was metamorphosing into primal heat, making her fingertips tingle.

He had masculine lips, what some old-fashioned novels might have defined as cruel. Heathcliff lips. Incredibly sexy. She got a little woozy from looking at them this close.

The sharp sense of desire was insane, but perhaps understandable, considering that her body was hormonally unbalanced and out of her control.

His voice was a soft whisper when he spoke. “Why are you here, Julia? Why are you in my bedroom in the middle of the night?” He lowered his head as if wanting to carefully listen to her response.

If he came any closer, he was going to feel the banana she’d hid down the front of her shirt.

Her pulse sped, and not just from the danger of being discovered as a fruit thief. “Looking for a glass of water,” she croaked out with effort. Her mouth did feel extraordinarily dry. She looked into his good eye.

His Heathcliff mouth tightened, but he didn’t back away an inch. “Excuses?” He examined her. “Interesting. You’re bold enough to come to me like this, yet you feel the need to come up with a pretext for seeking my bed.”

Outrage quickly overcame awakening desire. Of all the conceited—“You know what I’m doing?” she asked sharply, and ducked to the right from the circle of his arms. “I was trying to get out of this stupid place. You have no right to keep me here. This is kidnapping.” She darted toward the door.

If she thought the lack of sight in the right eye was a weakness, she was quickly disabused of the notion. He caught her easily.

“You will stay for as long as I see necessary,” he said. “If I catch you trying to run—I’ve given you some freedom, Julia. Freedom that can be taken away.”

What freedom? Her room? Meaning he could be keeping her closer to him? How close? His bed sprawled imposingly in her peripheral vision. She didn’t want to know. Or maybe he’d meant he had some dungeons in the basement. That would be more likely. Nothing would have surprised her at this point.

Fear spiked her pulse. “I was wrong,” she told him with all the contempt she felt. “You are nothing like your brother.”

“And what do you know about Aziz?” His gaze slid to her abdomen. “My brother wasn’t an irresponsible man.”

A moment passed before she understood what he meant.

“He wasn’t.” And that was all she was prepared to say on the subject of birth control, which obviously was not as reliable as she’d thought.

His gaze journeyed back up, slowly, to her face.

The warning system in her brain was screaming that she should run for her life. “This baby has nothing to do with you and your family.” She was desperate to escape his palace.

He didn’t respond.

“You don’t believe me.”

More silence, just his dark gaze searching her face.

“And if I said the child was Aziz’s? Would you believe that?” she said, testing him.

“No.”

“So you’re determined to think me a liar.” Which, God help her, she was quickly becoming. But yes, she would do even that. She would lie, cheat and very possibly kill for her unborn child.

The question was, how far was Karim Abdullah willing to go for his niece or nephew?

“I’m just questioning your motives,” he said.

“Is that what you call it?” She braved a sneer. “In my country this would be called kidnapping.”

His masculine lips pressed into a tight line.

Her heart drummed against her rib cage. She tugged her arm. “You have to let me go.”

And this time, he released her at last. “Get some sleep. I made an appointment for you for tomorrow morning. You’ll get the full workup. You had a fall today. I arranged for an ultrasound.”

Not one for minding his own business, was he?

Her initial instinct was to protest, but she hadn’t had an ultrasound yet. Her first was scheduled for the week after her planned return to the States. She desperately wanted to see her baby. And she was no longer sure when exactly she would be back in Baltimore. Or if she could afford even the most basic medical care.