The Sheik's Reluctant Lover (6 page)

“Rachel!” 
He stopped her with a word and she froze.  “
What happened?” he asked, calm
on the outside, but inside he was furious and confused, and in more pain from need than he’d ever experienced. 

She shuddered and started to turn around, but stopped and continued
walking
away from him. “This just isn’t right,
Rais
.  You’re experienced enough to get me to want you but it isn’t enough.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Rachel?” he demanded, striding around her so that he was in between her and her horse.  “You were right there with me so
don’t
even deny that.”

“You’re a very experienced lover,
Rais
.  Any woman would….
f
eel things when you do that with her.”

He smiled and crossed his arms over his chest arrogantly.  “Are you really going to stand there and tell me that the only reason you felt what you did was because I’m more experienced than your previous lovers?”

She wasn’t exactly sure how to answer that so she went with the truth.  “I can honestly say that you’re significantly more experienced than all of my past
lovers combined.”

That was such a stunning comment, he was actually
speechless
.  He watched, dumbstruck, as she walked over to her horse and lifted herself up.  With a last glance, she turned Dolce towards the stables and rode off, leaving him standing by the creek watching her, wanting her painfully.  But more importantly, wanting to understand what she’d meant. 

He’d bet large sums of money that, when he returned, she would have found an excuse to head back into the city.  With a self-satisfied grin, he reached for his own stallion and saddled up himself.  Giving her plenty of time to find her father and make her excuses, he rode the long way around the path, ending up in front of his own house and calling for his butler to take care of the horse.  He normally preferred to rub down his mounts and ensure that they were well fed after he’d ridden them, but in this instance, he had plans to make, calls to put through. 

The woman thought
s
he could get away after making a comment like that?  She didn’t know him very well. 

Rachel rode right back to the stables,
wanting to head back to her apartment.  But she couldn’t do that.  First of all, she hadn’t seen her father in several weeks and she knew he was lonely.  Secondly, if she ran back to the city,
Rais
would know that he’d gotten to her.  He might think her departure was proof that he had some sort of power over her.  She couldn’t let him think that way.  So she stayed, ready to keep her distance, but also wanting to show him that she wasn’t affected by him, that she didn’t
need
to run and hide about his statement. 

T
hinking that the safest place to avoid
Rais
would be hanging around the other stable help
, she unsaddled Dolce, rubbed her down and then sent her out to the pasture to have fun
.
  When she was finished, she looked around for her father, saw him working with one of the vets and gave him space. 
  “Hi Jim,” she said
to one of the other stable hands
as she patted
the horse he’d been working with
into the pasture
to follow Dolce
.  “Want some help?” she asked, taking one of the pitchforks off of the wall and moving into one of the other stalls, not waiting for an answer. 

It was a dirty job, but the horses needed a clean area in which they could sleep
and stay warm at night
so mucking out the stalls just had to be done. 
They stayed in the pasture as much as possible so they could get exercise and freedom, but they came into the stables overnight.  She enjoyed the work
e
d because it was hard and made her muscles sore. 
But more to the point,
Jim was a good guy with lots of funny quips about working with horse manure and pitchforks
and he made her laugh, forgetting for the time her conversation with
Rais
down by the creek
.
 

She was on her third stall when she heard an angry voice in the doorway.  “What the hell are you doing?”
Rais
demanded, hands on his hips as he watched her with furious eyes.

Rachel spun around to
look
ed
up
at him, trying to hide the shaking she instantly felt when he was close
not to mention that the man’s anger was more than a little intimidating
. 
Pretending that she wasn’
t
affected, she shrugged and turned away from him. 
“I’m making toast,” she replied
with a ridiculous sense of humor
.  She didn’t bother to answer him honestly because what she was doing was obvious.  “And you’re in my way,” she said as she bent to pick up a
dark
pile
of something unnamed
from the corner
before
turning to load it into the wheelbarrow, only to find him standing in front of it, looking like he might explode with
fury
at any moment. 

“You will not be doing this kind of labor,” he growled out.  He took the pitchfork from her hands and dropped it onto the dirt floor.  Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her out of the stall.  “You there!” he called out to Jim who was just pushing another wheelbarrow out of a stall several down from where they stood.  “Finish up in here and make sure this woman doesn’t do any kind of work like this again!”

Jim was in his twenties and had only been working on the farm for about two years.  So he didn’t have the kind of tenure that the other stable hands had with
Rais
and was terrified.  He nodded his head quickly then hurried into the stall and took over the pitchfork. 

She was so angry at
Rais
for scaring the younger employ
ee that she spun around to confr
ont him, yanking her wrist out of his grip. 
Or tried to.
  He wasn’t letting her go so she just glared up at him. 
“That was unnecessary and the work has to be done,
Rais
.  You’re being silly because I can do the work just as easily as he can.”

“Enough,” he snapped and pulled her along to one of the recently cleaned stalls.  He pulled her inside and slammed the door.  At least he released her hand and she rubbed the skin where he’d held her wrist while he paced back and forth in the small confines of the stall, running his hand over his face and hair.  “You won’t be doing that kind of work Rachel.  Don’t ever let me catch you doing that again.”

She leaned against the wall, crossing her arms over her stomach.  “Why shouldn’t I?  I’m no better than they are.”

“You are….” He stopped, his black eyes looking
down
at her accusingly before he said, “you!”

She laughed softly at his reply.  “Well, I’m certainly glad we cleared that up.”

He sighed heavily and came over to her.  Putting an arm on either side of her head, he bent down low.  “Rachel, you and I are going to….” He stopped and shook his head.  “You just can’t do that kind of work.  I won’t allow it.”

She rolled her eyes, trying to pretend that she wasn’t nervous with him this close.  “
Rais
, I need to go.”

He looked down at her lips and she panicked.  She certainly didn’t want a repeat of their embrace by the creek.  So in order to avoid that, to avoid kissing him like she wanted to do, to feel his lips move against hers once again, she quickly ducked and stepped out of his embrace.  It was only because the move was so unexpected that it actually worked. 

She skipped over to the opposite side of the stall and smiled over at him. “
Rais
, this has to stop.”

“What does?” he asked, stalking her slowly, but not relenting.

Rachel looked at the
shrinking
distance between them
, then towards the door.  “This…
kissing me and doing things to me.”

“You’re an active participant, Rachel.  I just initiate the…pleasantries.  You help me continue.”

“I do not!” she gasped.

He smiled briefly at her vehemence.  “Come closer and tell me that.”

He took two more steps and she kept calculating the distance between them.
Rachel shook her head. “I think I’m safer over here,” she countered.   She glanced towards the door one more time.

He knew what she was thinking and stopped her with a simple statement. 
“You won’t make it so don’t even try,” he said with that deep, sexy voice.

She was smiling and didn’t even realize it. 
Rais
in this kind of mood was different, somehow flirtatious and she had to ignore that voice in her head that told her to just rush into his arms and throw herself at him.  Instead, she said, “You don’t
understand
the depth of my desperation.  It makes people do crazy things.”

“And I
believe
that could be said right back at you my dear.  I’ve felt you in my arms a few too many times today.  I want to finish what we’ve started.”

“Here?  In the stables?” she asked, both horrified and amused.

Rais
stopped and looked around.  He had indeed forgotten where they were, his mind completely absorbed in trying to get this woman to give in to the things he knew she wanted from him.  Things he was more than willing to do with her if she’d just stop this silly pretense that she wasn’t interested. 

While he was distracted, she took the chance and darted around him.  She actually yelped in laughter when he reached out.  Thankfully, he missed her by mere centimeters and she was able to dart out of the stall.  She didn’t stop there but continued out of the stables, wanting to find a place where there were more people to keep her safe from his hands. 
And everything else about him.
 
Just looking at the man, which she did as she turned the corner and caught him watching her as she
hurried
away, made her heart skip a beat.
 

She walked out into the bright, autumn sunshine.  She took her sunglasses off of the top of her head and slipped them over her eyes as she walked to the
corral
.  Her father was working one of the new horses and she walked around to the opposite side so she could watch her dad and figure out where
Rais
would go next.  She was determined to avoid him as much as possible after their first two encounters today.  Well, three if she were to count seeing him in her father’s cottage when she first woke up. 

On the opposite side of the
corral
, she watched as
Rais
stepped out into the sunshine as well.  He was so startlingly handsome with those dark, dangerous eyes.  And he had muscles no world leader should have.  She wondered how he worked out and would love to talk to him about his days, find out
more what it was like to rule
Dunari
and all the problems he faced, but she didn’t think he would take her questions seriously.  At least not right now.

He sauntered over to lean against the
corral
fence as well.  He took a spot directly opposite where she was standing so she couldn’t really miss him as she watched the horse run through some exercises.  The horse seemed to be showing off a bit but Rachel didn’t see much of the show.  What she saw was
Rais
, without any sunglasses, staring back at her.  She knew the exact moment that his eyes dropped from her eyes to her mouth because his hand came up, one finger rubbing along his own mouth. 

The
corral
was wide, but not so wide that she didn’t realize that his eyes dropped once again, focusing on her breasts.  It was at that moment that she remembered that her shirt was too small and the gap showed off a little too much.  She gasped and reached down, tugging her shirt tails so that the gap wasn’t so apparent.  She glared at him when she caught him laughing at her movement.  And she thought she might actually hate him when his eyebrow went up.  Curse him!  There was no way he could tell that her nipples had hardened while he watched her.  He was too far
away,
there was no way he could know.  But they had
.  And she actually thought her breasts
had swelled slightly, as if he were caressing them, his mouth lowering to taste the peaks and…she shifted slightly and his grin widened once again.

Was he actually making love to her in his mind out here by the
corral
?  And how was it that she knew exactly what he was thinking? 

No, she gasped when his eyes went even lower.  She shuffled her legs in the dust, her breathing ragged as her body responded to the heat in his eyes as he looked lower, his gaze focusing on the juncture of her legs.