The Sheik's Beautiful Intruder (The Friendship Series) (13 page)

Of course, when she became his wife and went out in public with him, he wouldn’t want anything as low cut as this shirt.  But it was certainly enjoyable in private. 

“Much better,” he replied.  “Why were you trying to escape?”

Nikki rolled her eyes.  “I’m a prisoner.  Escaping is what prisoners do, right?”

His hand lifted off of the back of the sofa and captured one of the curls that had escaped the band holding the other tresses off of her neck. “You have a special status as a prisoner.” 

Her eyes widened.  “What would that special status give me?” she asked and as soon as the words left her mouth, she knew she’d walked into a trap.

“Me, of course,” he replied with a seductive grin.

She’d known he was going to say that and was actually relieved that he hadn’t let her down.  Laughing, she shook her head.  “And if I don’t want the prize?”

He chuckled.  “Oh, you want me, Nikki.  You just won’t give in to your needs.  It begs the question of why you won’t give in.”  His finger continued to twirl, one of them “accidentally” touching the sensitive skin on her neck.  “Why is that?”

She was starting to have trouble breathing and tried to pull her hair out of his fingers but he only captured her hand during the attempt.  “I think you know why.”

“You think you don’t trust me,” he stated, not even asking.  “But I don’t believe that’s the case any longer.  Or perhaps it isn’t the whole truth.”  He paused, his eyes moving over her lovely features as he mulled something through in his mind.  “You don’t trust yourself.”

She pulled back suddenly, not liking his words at all.  “Besides Brianna and Rachel, I’m the only person I trust.”

“You know your friends will be there for you, I understand and respect that.  But this has nothing to do with being able to rely on a helping hand or someone to meet you at the appointed time.  You don’t trust your feelings for me, do you?”  His eyes narrowed.  “What happened in the past Nikki?  Why don’t you believe in what we can share together?”

His words had come too close to the truth.  She didn’t dare look at him, staring down at her hands instead.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said stiffly and tried to move away.  But his hand grasped her neck, holding her in place.  “Let me go.”

He shook his head.  “I can’t, Nikki.  So you’re going to have to be honest with me.”  He saw the worry in her eyes but knew that this subject was too important to leave alone.  “Who hurt you?  Who wasn’t there for you?”

She pulled back as much as she could.  “The world isn’t a warm, fuzzy place where everyone gets a good home, Nazar.  You are insulated from the harsh world out there.”

He read between the lines.  “You didn’t have a home?” he asked, moving closer. 

She shifted uncomfortably.  “I always had a place to sleep.” 

Again, he understood what she wasn’t telling him.  Now the non-existent answers in her file made sense.  His security chief was still trying to get someone to open her childhood files, many of his guards thinking she had a criminal past.  Nazar was starting to think it wasn’t anything so disgraceful.  “But not a home.  Is that what you’re telling me?”

She shrugged a shoulder and looked across the room, trying to pretend that her past wasn’t the problem.  That she was okay with how cruelly fate had treated her childhood.  “My parents died in a car crash when I was younger.  Since both of my parents were only children, I didn’t have any aunts or uncles to go to.  My grandparents had died long before I was even born.”

He waited a moment for her to continue, but when he realized that was all she was going to tell him, he prompted her gently.  “And you were put into foster care, weren’t you?” he asked. 

Nikki sucked in a breath, needing the clean air to fill her lungs.  She always felt like that whenever she thought back to those first few nights in her foster home.  “Yes.  It was crowded with lots of other kids.”

“All of them orphans?” he prodded, wanting to know the whole story. 

She shrugged, trying to appear casual.  But her memories were anything but casual.  They were painful.  The other kids had been having just as many problems as her and many of them acted out, often in cruel, imaginative and painful ways.  “Some had lost their parents.  Others, their parents had abandoned them or couldn’t take care of them because of a drug habit.”  She forced a smile to her face.  “As bad as it sounds, I was actually one of the lucky ones.”

“How so?” he asked, thinking of the wrenching pain he’d felt when his mother and father had died.  He hadn’t felt very luck either of those days and he’d had family to help him through the emotional turmoil. 

She smiled weakly which was a failed attempt at humor.  “Even in the foster homes, there was a hierarchy.  The kids with druggy parents had it the hardest.  Their parents kept fighting for them, but some of the chemicals are harder to kick.  So those kids were in and out of the foster homes over the years.  Sometimes they came back to the same house.  Other times, they would go to a new home.  Asserting one’s place in a home was a difficult endeavor.”

“And the other levels in the home?” he asked. 

“The kids who were just abandoned had some serious psychological issues to deal with.”  She thought about Brianna, whose father had killed himself after her mother had died of cancer.  Brianna had always felt inadequate because her father had chosen death over love for his daughter. 

“So are you saying you were at the top?  Simply because you’d lost your parents to an accident?”  When he saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes, he said something in Arabic a moment before pulling her into his arms.  He didn’t kiss her, didn’t have any sexual motivation.  He just wanted to comfort her.  As soon as Nikki understood his intentions, she melted into his arms, feeling his strength and power encircle her.  And then the words started flowing.  “I never felt abandoned, but that didn’t make living in a foster home with ten or fifteen other kids any easier.  There was always chaos, always someone in trouble or kids coming and going.”

And with those words, he finally understood what she was dealing with.  She was afraid of him leaving her, of feeling like her world was a revolving door like it must have been in her foster home.  “You’ve mentioned Brianna and Rachel before.  Were they in your foster home as well?”

Nikki curled up closer to him, uncaring about how dangerously wonderful he felt.  She’d pull back in a moment.  Right now, she just wanted to feel him, absorb his comfort.  “Brianna was in my foster home.  She came a day after I arrived so it was natural for the two of us to connect.  She was so frightened at first.  So despondent over what had happened to her family.  In one year, her mother had died of a horrible disease and then her father took a gun and just….”

She felt the trembling start and willed it away.  But then she also felt Nazar’s arms tighten around her, felt his lips on the top of her head and sighed with relief.  The trembling stopped and she snuggled up against him again, feeling safer than she ever had in her life. 

“Thank you,” she whispered after several minutes of just enjoying his heat and the wonderful scent of the man. 

“Thank you for what?” he asked, wishing he could take away all of her pain, show her that not every man was irresponsible and assure her that he wasn’t going away.  But she wouldn’t believe that of him yet.  She had to learn to trust him.  How he could show her that she could trust him, he had no idea.  She was such a mystery, all wound up in a sexy package that he wanted to keep forever and unravel all of her secrets, know everything she was thinking.  And he wanted to make love to her until she wasn’t thinking about the parents that had died on her when they should have lived or her friend’s father who was too much of a coward to take care of his child. 

“What about Rachel?  I understand that you and Brianna were connected through your foster home.  Was she there as well?”

Nikki wiped a tear away as surreptitiously as possible.  “Rachel’s parents are still living.  But they never made enough money.”  She sighed and pressed her nose against his neck.  “In fact, they’d lose their house if it weren’t for Rachel sending them money every month.  She was the poorest kid in the school when we were younger.  She was the girl that I knew wouldn’t…” she was about to say reject, but that wasn’t exactly it.  “I guess I just knew what Rachel was going through and we could help each other out.”

“You were kindred souls, eh?” he suggested.

She sighed, grateful for his understanding.  “Yes.  Definitely.  The three of us did as much as possible together, but Rachel lived out in the country and she didn’t always have a car that could get her into town.”

His mind again sifted through the issues.  “I bet you and Brianna went out to her place several times, didn’t you?”

“Of course.  Whenever she needed a friend.  And besides, her house was out in the country where a creek ran through her property with lots of woods.  It was fun out at her place, although she didn’t always think so.  So Bri and I walked out there almost every weekend.”

He understood more about her now than he had after reading all the information his security team had compiled on her.  “How far out did she live?”

Nikki shrugged.  “About five miles outside of town.  It was only about four and a half miles from our house though.”

He cringed, thinking about little girls walking along a country road, alone and vulnerable.  He made a mental note to personally go through all the orphanages and sporadically check the foster homes in his country.  He wanted all of the kids under his rule to be safe and have a future. 

He felt her body start to settle and knew that she was falling asleep.  He glanced at the clock on the wall and realized it was past midnight.  He should probably take her back to her room and put her in her bed where she would be more comfortable.   But he didn’t want to move her.  She felt too good in his arms and, while she was sleeping, she trusted him.  Her subconscious knew that he wouldn’t hurt her.  How did he get her conscious to accept that as well?  He had no idea how, but he knew he was going to move heaven and earth to make that happen.

He thought about calling Rocco, to get a status on what was going on with the project and Nikki’s friend.  He wanted to push all this mess aside so he and Nikki could move forward.  Something told him that Rocco and Brianna were having some of the same issues he was going through.  Not that Rocco would admit anything.  Rocco held everything very close and he would never kiss and tell, just as Nazar would keep his feelings for Nikki to himself until he could announce something more significant to the world.  But that didn’t mean that Rocco wasn’t letting small things out.  Nazar could hear something different in his friend’s voice, something significant.  And he knew Rocco too well, had been through too much with him, to not recognize what was going on.  Nazar suspected Rocco was falling hard for Nikki’s friend.

He looked down and wondered if he should tell Nikki about that.  Would she worry more?  Or would it put her mind at ease?  He found that he didn’t want her to worry about staying here.  He wanted her to like being with him in the palace.  In fact, he wanted her to like being wherever he was.  He’d known this slender, fiery beauty for such a short time, but he couldn’t imagine not seeing her every day now. 

Trust.  He had to get her to trust him.  It was a fragile course, but one he was willing to travel. 

Kicking off his shoes, he stretched his legs out in front of him, scooting back so his head was resting against the back of the sofa.  He’d just sit here with her for a few more minutes before bringing her back to her bed.  But for now, he was enjoying her gentle weight on him too much to end this. 

Hours later, Nikki stirred, feeling warm and secure but not sure where she was.  The lights had dimmed and she knew that she wasn’t in her bed.  Looking up, she realized that she was using Nazar as a mattress.  What time was it?  She had no watch on, no clock that she could see.  She watched him in silence for several moments, wondering why he hadn’t just dumped her off of him and gone off to his own bed.  Surely she was too heavy for him.  She was literally laying on top of him!  His legs were stretched out along the sofa and her whole body was resting on top of him with his chest as her pillow. 

She started to move onto the couch, intending to slip out of the room but as soon as she moved, his hands reached out to stop her, as if he were trying to steady her somehow while still sleeping. 

With his hands on her back like that, she was too sleepy to do much more.  So instead, she laid her head back down on his chest and let her exhaustion take over once more.  She didn’t mind this at all, just as long as she got up before he did and she could slip away before he realized what a dead weight she was. 

Chapter 8

Nikki sighed wearily as she walked Nella to the stables, handing her off to Yousef, her trainer.  “Thank you, Yousef.  That was wonderful,” she said quietly, trying to hide the pain in her legs. 

Yousef looked at the pretty brunette with concern.  “Your legs are going to be very sore.  You’re doing well, learning things much faster than even I could have believed, but you’re pushing yourself too hard.”

Nikki thought he might be right in this instance.  She smiled feebly, leaning against the fence pole because her legs were simply too weak to hold her up.  “Yeah.  I think I’ll just go take a warm bath and try to ease the muscles down there,” she said, indicating her legs but unable to even move her head because even her back muscles were weak from the strain of overuse. 

While riding, she didn’t feel the strain on her muscles, but as soon as she slid off of Nella’s back, they turned to mush. 

Nikki could feel Yousef’s eyes on her back, watching her as she walked in the direction of the palace. But in truth, she was faking a somewhat steady walk until she could get out of his sight.  She liked the man, thought he was an excellent trainer, but she couldn’t be sure that he would keep her muscle strain to himself.  Everyone here seemed to not just like Nazar.  They revered the man!  He was their hero.  So keeping secrets was almost impossible.  She was surprised that she'd been able to hide her additional riding lessons from him over the past several days.