Desert Rogues Part 1. Susan Mallery
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you,” she murmured. Last night she’d been bold. Once he’d broken through her initial reserve, she’d attacked him, touching him, taking him in her hands and then in her mouth. She still remembered his shocked cries of pleasure.
The memory made her squirm against her seat. Her panties grew damp as her breasts swelled. “Khalil…”
He smiled, the slow, satisfied smile of a male who had won. “I knew you would come around. You want me. Admit it.”
Her passion fled as quickly as it had arrived. She straightened and stared at him with cold disinterest. “Just because I’m your wife doesn’t mean you have the right to sexually harass me, Khalil. While we’re in the office, I want to discuss business and nothing else.”
He straightened and glared at her. “How do you do that? How can you want me one minute and then freeze me out the next? Why won’t you give in on this? You know I will win in the end.”
“Will you?” She shrugged. “I happen to think I’m going to win. I can be very stubborn.”
“I know. It’s not your most attractive feature.”
“Would you like a list of your own faults?”
His look of surprise nearly made her smile. “I have no faults.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Honey, you have a list so long, I’d get a cramp in my hand if I tried to write it.”
“Not true,” he said. “I remind you that I am your husband, and I will be treated with respect.”
Well, it was an improvement to the “I’m Prince Khalil Khan, etc.” which he’d been throwing in her face since they first met. “Nine to five we work together. No chit-chat about sex. I mean it, Khalil.”
“What? Do you think you can take that tone with me and get your way?”
She thought for a moment, then smiled. “Absolutely.”
He glared. “You are an impossible woman.”
“Yes, but I’m your impossible woman. Now get back to work, and leave me alone.”
“We’re dining together at twelve-thirty,” he said as he headed for the door. “And I’m leaving because I have things to do, not because you told me to.”
“Of course. Just as long as you’re leaving.”
He paused to look at her. “Do not think you have more power than you do, my desert wildcat. I will still be the one you submit to this night.”
“I will never submit.”
He shrugged. “You may play your game of resisting at the beginning, but we both know that you will soon be in my arms, begging me to touch you and take you to paradise.”
Then he was gone. And Dora was left with the uncomfortable realization that he spoke the absolute truth.
Fatima accepted the cup of tea Khalil’s assistant offered, then waited until the young man had left them alone in his office. Khalil stretched out his legs in front of him and waited. His grandmother had requested this meeting, and she would get to her point in her own time.
She didn’t keep him in suspense long. “Your father has begun to speak of Dora in terms of grudging respect, which I assume means that she’s doing extremely well in her work.”
Khalil couldn’t help giving his grandmother a satisfied grin. “Right now she’s meeting with a computer manufacturing company and instead of walking in dictating terms, as they’d expected, they’re conceding on every point she’s brought up.”
“So you are pleased with her as well.”
Pleased didn’t begin to describe his feelings. At first Dora had been cautious and hadn’t expressed many opinions. He’d made the mistake of assuming she was going to be timid and not much use…as had the men she’d met with. But by the end of the first week, she’d been asking for more than they wanted to give and standing up to them when they refused. A major European bank had received a thumbs-down from her. Khalil had backed up her decision, even though he’d thought she’d gone too far. Three days later that bank’s competitor had come in with a package that would fund El Bahar’s budding computer chip manufacturing industry. Two hotels were bidding for property east of the city and there was talk of a cooperative venture between two American universities and the leading El Baharian hospital for several research projects. All this in less than a month.
“She is an asset to us all,” he said at last. “Despite her lack of formal training, she is a shrewd negotiator. I’ve watched her use American casualness to lull her opponents into trusting her, then turn into a royal princess to intimidate at exactly the right moment.”
“And the marriage progresses equally well?” Fatima asked, then took a sip of tea.
Her well-groomed hair was swept away from her face. Several rings decorated her long, elegant fingers. She looked like a well-dressed matron making a social call, but Khalil knew better. Unlike Dora’s opponents, he’d learned not to underestimate the power of a female in the royal family.
“Dora and I are very happy,” he said.
Fatima didn’t respond. First she nibbled on a shortbread cookie, then patted her mouth with a small, linen napkin.
Khalil wanted to stand up and start pacing, but he refused to let his grandmother intimidate him in his own office. He stayed silent. As did Fatima. The clock in the corner ticked off the seconds. Tension grew. He swore he wasn’t going to give in first.
Finally he couldn’t stand it anymore. He bounced to his feet and stalked to the window. “She’s stubborn and irritating,” he growled, his back to the room. He stared out at a view of the gardens, but didn’t see any of the lush plants. Instead he saw Dora turning away from him, as she had the previous night. Telling him silently that she didn’t want him, forcing him to reduce her to mindless pleading, until her body spoke a truth her lips refused to utter.
“At least she’s intelligent,” Fatima said calmly. “That’s something.”
“Not when the intelligence is used against me.” He turned to face his grandmother. “Her two weeks in the harem taught her nothing of being a good wife.”
“Oh, is that what we were supposed to be doing? How foolish of me. I arranged for her to learn El Baharian customs and history. Perhaps you should send her back to me. Then I can teach her all she needs to know about cleaning and cooking and mending. Would the young prince be more happy then?”
He glared at Queen Fatima and was reminded that his grandfather had always respected his wife…and with good reason. “I have no need for another servant. I want a wife.”
“Perhaps if you weren’t living in separate quarters,” she suggested.
Khalil stiffened. He hated that Dora refused to move into his suite. He was a married man, and it was damned humiliating to have to traipse halfway across the palace just to spend the night in his wife’s bed.
“She refuses to move in with me.”
“Really?” Fatima set down her cup and looked at him. “What did you do wrong?”
His hot temper flared. “Why do you assume that it’s my fault? She’s the one who won’t do as she’s told.”
“I see.”
Those two, short words spoke volumes. He hated the way Fatima could make him feel young and small again and had to resist the urge to remind her that he was Prince Khalil Khan of El Bahar. She’d never been much impressed by that.
“I thought you’d learned, Khalil,” Fatima said. She touched her left cheek, making him instantly aware of the faint scar on his own face. “I thought you would remember the lesson that some words come with a high price.”
“These