The Sheik Retold(66)

"No! You will watch this!" Ahmed commanded. "As your penance, you will watch and count every stroke."

The moment I uncovered my eyes, he barked to Gaston, "Allez! On with it!"

I was horror-struck by every strike of leather on flesh, cringing and wincing at each bloody stripe produced by the flogger. Gaston could not even look, but held one hand over his own eyes as he blindly wielded this merciless tool of discipline.

Ahmed held my gaze as only he was able to, refusing to let me look away, refusing even to blink in response to the thrashing whip. The scene had unfolded precisely as it had in my dream—the whip tearing into his flesh, shredding the skin and sinew before my eyes. My mind whirled at what he had done. He had taken my punishment—Ahmed the Protector had risen to the fore.

My teeth sank deeper into my lip, and my nails made crescents in my palms. So lost was I in his sacrifice that I had forgotten my own pain. He, however, appeared almost unfazed by the lashes, aside from the sweat beading his deeply furrowed brow and the hiss that issued from between his teeth each time the flogger connected with his naked back.

"How many?" he demanded when I had stopped counting.

"Eight." I licked my bloody lip. "Three more to go."

Gaston cried out, "S'il vous plait, Monsiegneur, may I desist?"

"Continuez!" the sheik commanded.

I counted three more lashes in a barely audible voice, after which Gaston flung down the flogger with a cry of revulsion and fled the room. Yusef made to follow him, but the sheik arrested him. "Yusef! You will say nothing of what transpired here, beyond 'the penalty is paid.’ Do you understand? If you breathe a word of what has passed in this room, I will kill you."

Yusef was visibly terrified. He gave a jerk of his head and looked away.

"Now go!" Ahmed commanded him with an imperious gesture.

The moment his lieutenant had passed through the curtains, Ahmed slumped to his knees. His chest heaved, and rivulets of sweat and blood ran down his back to trickle onto the carpet. I rushed to him with a cry, but he pushed me away with a snarl. "Save your pity for yourself, ma belle. The debt to my tribe is paid—but you have yet to satisfy me."

***

"What do you mean?" I could barely keep the quiver from my voice. "I already gave you the chance to exact your payment from my flesh! What more can you want from me? Why can't you just let this be over now? Why can't you let me go?"

I was near hysteria, but he remained wooden and unfazed.

"You know why. I am not yet finished with you."

"Finished with me?" I repeated. "You have achieved your goal to make me suffer. What more do you need to be finished with me?"

He came slowly toward me with a dangerous look, one that reminded me all too much of the night he had first brought me into his camp. The fire in his eyes would have incited the same blinding fear had I not already known him as a lover.

"I promised myself when I brought you here that I would have you in every possible way. I will never let you go until I have made good on that promise."

My heart skipped a beat. It was the very first time he had ever alluded to any consideration of releasing me. Only days ago when Raoul had done his best to convince him, he had remained intractable. I didn't know his reasons for softening and didn't care.

"What do you mean?" I asked, grasping tightly on to any hope of gaining my freedom. "Please," I beseeched. "Whatever you want from me, I will do it. Anything, if you will only let me go."

"Perhaps you speak too soon, my dove. You may not wish to pay my price."

"I am not afraid of you or anything you would do to me," I lied. I was afraid, but I wanted him too. Beneath my fear was exhilaration, and I found desire mixed with trepidation made a heady cocktail.

"No, ma belle?" he taunted in a deceptively silky tone. His raw desire was evident in the dilation of his pupils, in the huskiness of his voice, in the ragged rise and fall of his powerful chest, in the harsh line of his mouth.

Although I resented that my desire for him still smoldered, I could not suppress it. The air between us was so thick and heavy with want that I could barely breathe.

He drew me closer. I couldn't look away, but it was not the formidable strength of his hands that held me, but his fascinating gaze of fathomless indigo. He slid one hand to the small of my back while his other hand palmed my nape. He dipped his head and murmured hotly in my ear, "Perhaps you should be."

I tried to remain passive and indifferent when he ran his tongue over the shell of my ear, but the moist heat incited an involuntary shiver down my spine. I was prepared for brutality, but his slow and deliberate actions seemed completely at odds with his threatening words.

I had experienced his exquisite tenderness and I had known his bruising passion. They were the two sides of Ahmed my lover. Just as the Punisher and the Protector together formed his character, his tenderness could not exist without the brutality, and I wanted them both.

Perhaps this is why he had not tired of me. He had not grown bored because I had never held back, had never shrank from him, and I refused to shrink now. I had never stopped wanting him and he had never stopped wanting me. As before, he would give and I would take—regardless of the punitive tone he chose.

"I told you I would have you as many ways as I desired before I ever released you."