The Sheikh’s American Love - A Box Set Read online

  She moaned out, and Khaleel broke away from the kiss. Abruptly, with no warning, the limo fell away, and somehow, Aurora was in an alleyway, somewhere downtown—familiar, but foreign at the same time. “What just happened?” she murmured.

  She looked around, but the Sheikh was nowhere to be seen, and Aurora’s heart began to pound in her chest. “Khaleel?” She saw his face in the gloom, backlit with a cheap sodium light. “Oh thank God…I totally lost myself for a minute there.”

  Khaleel chuckled and started to move towards her, but then, just as abruptly as Aurora had found herself out of the limo and in the street, Khaleel’s face began to morph and change. In the span of a few heartbeats, the man in front of her wasn’t the elegantly clothed Sheikh, the wealthy man who’d been romancing her all night. Instead, a greasy-haired man in a too-tight suit began walking towards her, his face slowly resolving.

  “I told you I would find you.”

  Aurora gasped and staggered backwards, but there was nowhere for her to go. Before her eyes, the man completed his transformation, and suddenly it was Jon in front of her. The loan shark wore a grin that made his teeth look bizarrely sharp, and he rubbed his hands together as though he were anticipating putting them on her.

  She tried to back away from him, tried to find a way out of the alley, but Aurora felt as if she was frozen in place. There was nowhere to run, nothing she could do.

  “Of course, since you’re refusing to pay me, I’m going to have to make sure that no one ever makes that mistake again—I have to make an example out of you, you understand.”

  Aurora screamed, and the sound cut through the air. Everything around her—the light from the streetlamps, the walls of the buildings trapping her in the alley—disappeared, melting away. She screamed again, her heart pounding in her chest, her blood roaring in her ears, and all at once she wasn’t in Miami; she was sitting up in a darkened room, something tangled around her legs and arms, keeping her from running away from the fearsome sight of the loan shark.

  Aurora squirmed and struggled for a moment longer, trying to get away from the phantom that had ripped her out of her dream—and that was when reality flashed back into her mind. She wasn’t in Miami. She was hundreds of miles away, on a yacht, in the Caribbean.

  Aurora closed her eyes and breathed in slowly, details of her evening beginning to filter through her mind. She remembered meeting Khaleel, getting onto the yacht, being discovered as a stowaway, swimming to the beach. She opened her eyes again and looked around, briefly afraid that her adventure had been a dream and that her real life remained unchanged from what it had been that morning. But when she reached over to the bedside table and turned on the lamp, the sights of her opulent room soothed her eyes.

  “Jesus Christ,” Aurora murmured, scrubbing at her face with her hands. The sweat that had formed on her body cooled and she shivered in the slight chill of the room. “Okay. Note to self: do not eat lobster before bed. Apparently it gives you almost-sex dreams and nightmares.”

  Aurora disentangled her legs from the sheets and blankets and stepped across the room, stopping short of the bathroom. A small cabinet next to the doorway opened to reveal bottles of water. Aurora took one and cracked the seal on the top, swallowing down long gulps. She shook her head, remembering the details of the dream with a mixture of dread, arousal and fear. “Never again,” she told herself firmly, finishing the bottle of water in a few more gulps.

  As the adrenaline of her nightmare began to ebb out of her system, Aurora’s fatigue set in once more, and she threw the bottle into the wastebasket before padding back to the bed. She climbed onto it and sank down amid the blankets, shaking her head as she recovered from the intensity of her dream.

  She slithered down between the sheets and reached over to the bedside table once more, extinguishing the light. Aurora felt more than a little embarrassed at the possibility that someone might have heard her screaming, might wonder what it was the strange newcomer had been doing in her sleep to make her scream like that.

  “Think about something pleasant,” she told herself out loud, turning onto her side in the darkness. The parts of the dream with Khaleel had been pleasant, at least; but there was something about the romantic—almost erotic—intensity of that part of the dream that made Aurora’s cheeks burn. She knew better than to think that Khaleel would want anything to do with her once they were back on the mainland; he was too wealthy, too important, to ever trouble himself with a girl who was on the run from a loan shark.

  Aurora pushed aside the thought of having anything further to do with Khaleel when they returned to Florida. She would get through however long they were on the trip, then she and Khaleel would part ways, and that would be that. She certainly wasn’t going to kiss him, or try anything with someone whose life was so different from her own. It would only set her up for disappointment. I just wish the dream had been in reverse, Aurora thought wryly as fatigue began to settle in once more and her mind began to wander into the cozy warmth that came before she dropped off to sleep.

  NINE

  Hours later, Aurora woke up again; not because of another nightmare but because of the light coming in through the French doors leading out onto the balcony. She groaned and rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling, not wanting to get up just yet. She could feel the yacht moving underneath and around her, hear the ocean on the other side of the wall.

  She scrubbed at her face, trying to decide what to do with herself. Khaleel had told her to make herself at home; but it wasn’t as though his yacht were a cruise ship, and there were activities going on at all hours.

  She looked around the room as she sat up, looking for a source of entertainment. “So peaceful out at sea,” she murmured to herself, realizing that there really wasn’t very much for her to do in her quarters.

  She called down for breakfast, and went once more with what Khaleel had set as the menu; Aurora thought she could do worse than eat like a Sheikh. She changed into a pair of pants and a blouse that she found in the dresser; she had no panties to change into, but Aurora told herself it was the same premise as laundry day.

  The food arrived, and Aurora took the tray out onto her balcony, already tired of the four walls of her room. Khaleel’s selections were similar to the ones she'd delivered to him the previous day: she had a bowl of porridge, spicy and sweet, fresh fruit, yogurt with honey and nuts, and a small carafe of coffee with cream and sugar on the side.

  As she ate, Aurora contemplated her situation. She didn’t resent being confined to the yacht as much as she had initially; on the contrary, she recognized that, for the moment at least, it was probably the safest place for her.

  The dream she’d had of Khaleel, before it had turned into a nightmare, tugged at her mind, and she tried to decide what she would do if and when she got back to the mainland. Her job at the café was obviously a bust; she couldn’t go back to it, and she didn’t think she could safely get a job anywhere in Miami or Dade County without Jon eventually finding her. At that, anywhere in the state he’d probably find a way to track me down, she thought bleakly.

  Having finished her breakfast, Aurora set her tray outside of her cabin door and sat down on the plush couch her quarters boasted, looking through the window to the sea outside.

  “I could go back to medical school, I guess,” she said, frowning at the thought. She had left med school for good reasons, after realizing in the middle of a pathology class that the only reason she’d even gone was because her parents had expected it of her. They had wanted her to follow in their footsteps, and somehow, somewhere along the way, Aurora had been swept up in her parents’ quest for her security and happiness without even questioning whether the direction she was going in was something that she wanted.

  If she had known that she was going to come back to a massive debt owed to a man with a reputation for being less than squeamish about violence, Aurora would have just stayed in Asia. She might have gotten around to getting a student or a work visa t
here, and found something to do with herself; but Brandon had been so sweet and appealing in his emails, and she’d felt so indebted to him, that it had been easy for her to just finish up her trip. After three months of traveling, she had been happy to be returning to a country with mostly reliable transportation, ready access to drinkable tap water, and food that was always familiar.

  As the minutes and then hours flowed by, Aurora tried to think of the best way to handle the situation with Jon. Assuming Khaleel didn’t have her arrested as soon as they reached port—whenever that would be—she could just sneak aboard another ship. Aurora wasn't about to pick another yacht, but she thought she had heard of people sneaking onto cruise ships and managing to make it to another country. But she quickly discarded that idea, too; it would be testing fate to try the same tactic again, and she didn’t think that a cruise ship captain would be willing to see the humor in it, the way that Khaleel had. Instead of owing money to a loan shark, she could find herself in prison. “Not that he would be able to get to me there,” she muttered to herself. She slowly resigned herself to the truth that, no matter how bad the situation was with Jon, going to prison for trespassing would be worse.

  “So now I guess the only thing to do is actually face him,” Aurora said to herself in the quiet of her cabin. She couldn’t run away—she didn’t have enough money to get out of the country on her own, and she couldn’t keep evading the man forever. She would have to talk to him, figure something out.

  She didn’t know just how legal it was for Brandon to have “sold” the debt to Jon for Aurora to pay it—but she didn’t think it was the kind of thing she could call the cops about in any case. She would just have to take her chances and see what she could do for herself. There was no other way, even if she had the wherewithal to run away from her demons. “The sooner, the better,” Aurora murmured.

  TEN

  By noon, Aurora was tired of reflection, and decided to see what was going on in other parts of the ship. She left her quarters and followed the winding corridors up towards the main deck.

  Emerging from the interior of the yacht, her eyes landed on Khaleel, and she nearly stopped in her tracks. The Sheikh was standing on the deck, between the pool and the railing, laughing at something that one of the other crew members was saying. He was shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of swimming trunks that covered only about as much as his towel had the first time she had met him.

  For a moment, before he spotted her, Aurora took in the sight of Khaleel’s muscular back, his lean legs, and his strong body. She felt a jolt of heat work through her spine, and remembered the dream she’d had of him the night before—and how close they had gotten in her mind before her sensual thoughts had been interrupted by panic.

  Whether it’s genetics or money or both, it’s not fair that the rich guys tend to be hot so often, Aurora thought, glancing down at her slightly plain outfit. She knew she should be grateful for the fact that she had clothes at all, and that they were dry and clean—unlike her skirt and blouse from the day before, which were still buried somewhere in the ship’s laundry. She hadn’t even thought to pin her flower—set aside before she’d jumped into the ocean to follow Khaleel the night before—to her new ensemble.

  “Aurora! You’ve finally decided to come out of your ‘prison cell’ I see,” Khaleel called out, and Aurora rolled her eyes, smiling.

  “I had a lot to think about,” she told him, crossing her arms over her chest and walking the rest of the way to where he stood.

  “Well, there’s food on the buffet, plenty to drink, and a beautiful day to enjoy.”

  Aurora looked around and saw that the crew members were more relaxed than she had seen them the day before; the maid who’d originally sent her to get the Sheikh’s breakfast was even taking a moment to smoke a cigarette, talking with another member of the staff. Aurora saw the buffet under the awning: just as before, it was covered with delicacies, and she wondered at the fact that Khaleel was in such good shape when he constantly had a bounty of food around him.

  Aurora stepped up to the railing, admiring the view of the ocean and the private island that she and Khaleel had visited the night before. “It must be nice to just be able to run away whenever you want,” she said, glancing at Khaleel with a smile on her face.

  “There are downsides,” Khaleel said with a shrug. “You look good in that outfit, though. I’m glad I had it lying around.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know why you have spare women’s clothing on your yacht,” Aurora said, shaking her head.

  “Because you never know who's going to turn up,” Khaleel said, his expression mock-serious. “You swam pretty well yesterday.”

  “It was dark,” Aurora said, making a face. “How would you know about how well I swam?”

  “You didn’t drown, at any rate.” Khaleel’s face started to twitch with the start of a smile, and Aurora wondered what the gleam of mischief in his eyes portended for her. “Although I have to say I’m disappointed that you didn’t come out in appropriate clothing.”

  “What?” Aurora frowned in confusion.

  A moment later, Khaleel’s hands closed on her waist, and she felt her feet leaving the deck. She shrieked in surprise as he stepped closer to the railing, holding her body close to his. She felt the muscles rippling in his arms and chest, and no matter how she squirmed, she knew she wasn’t going to get free of Khaleel’s hold. He kicked the gate open and she felt him shove her from behind, sending her flying out through the gap in the railing, hurtling towards the ocean.

  The blue-green waters rose up in her vision and Aurora shrieked again as her body plunged downward. She instinctively straightened her body and dove, instead of hitting the water face-first, squeezing her eyes shut as she entered the water. As the ocean came up to surround her, Aurora changed her trajectory, kicking and paddling until she came back up to the surface.

  Spitting the salty water out of her mouth, Aurora looked up in the direction of Khaleel’s cheerful laughter and scowled at him. “You jerk!”

  “You’re on the water, my dear,” Khaleel called down. “You should expect at any time that you could end up in the ocean.”

  “That wasn’t me 'ending up' in the ocean,” Aurora protested, cutting through the water towards the ladder on the side of the yacht. “That was you throwing me in!”

  “Always be prepared,” Khaleel countered.

  Aurora began to climb up the side of the boat, shaking her head; in spite of her initial irritation, she couldn’t help but see the humor in it. The last of her annoyance began to ebb away as she thought of getting revenge on the Sheikh, and Aurora came to the top of the ladder smiling.

  “I hope you take that advice to heart,” she told him, raising an eyebrow significantly.

  Khaleel chuckled and handed her a towel. “I had clothes fit for a woman I didn’t even know was on my ship,” he pointed out. “I think that makes me fairly prepared.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Aurora said. She dried her hair and wrapped the thick, soft towel around herself firmly, shivering slightly in the breeze.

  “Well let’s get you a drink and something to wear,” Khaleel said, gesturing for Aurora to go with him across the deck to the shaded area near the buffet. “Katy—have we got anything for Miss Evans to wear that’s more weather appropriate?”

  “There’s a drawer full of clothes in my quarters,” Aurora pointed out.

  “But you’ll want to sunbathe,” Khaleel said.

  “How do you know?” Aurora fought back the urge to smile, trying to maintain her slightly peevish demeanor.

  “Why wouldn’t you? You’re on a beautiful yacht, parked next to a tropical island. The sun is shining, there’s a light breeze—and there’s not much else really to do.”

  In that moment, one of the crew members, a woman around Aurora’s age, appeared carrying an armful of bathing suits, all of them with the tags still on.

  “Just how many scenarios are you prepared for?” Aur
ora asked incredulously.

  Khaleel laughed out loud. “Take your pick of whichever suit you think is best for you,” he said. “Then you can eat and sunbathe and we can both enjoy this beautiful day.”

  Aurora took the pile of bathing suits from the crew member and looked them over for a moment; they were all two-pieces, some skimpier than others, and after a moment’s reflection she decided on one of the black ones, for the fact that it seemed to offer the most coverage.

  Khaleel pointed out a changing cabin off to the side of the shaded area on deck, and Aurora went into it, stripping off the sopping wet clothes and taking the tags off of the bathing suit before slipping it on. Checking out her reflection in the mirror, she had to admit that it looked good on her.

  She emerged from the changing cabin and struck a pose for Khaleel. “I thought I chose well,” she said, tilting her head slightly to the side.

  Khaleel stared at her for a long moment, and Aurora felt the blood rushing into her face, even with the little thrill that accompanied it at the Sheikh’s reaction. “You chose very well,” he said.