The Sheik

She shrank back, quivering, dragging the lapels of her riding jacket

together over her breast with clutching hands, obeying an impulse that

she hardly understood.

"Who are you?" she gasped hoarsely.

"I am the Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan."

The name conveyed nothing. She had never heard it before. She had

spoken without thinking in French, and in French he replied to her.

"Why have you brought me here?" she asked, fighting down the fear that

was growing more terrible every moment.

He repeated her words with a slow smile. "Why have I brought you here?

Bon Dieu! Are you not woman enough to know?"

She shrank back further, a wave of colour rushing into her face that

receded immediately, leaving her whiter than she had been before. Her

eyes fell under the kindling flame in his. "I don't know what you

mean," she whispered faintly, with shaking lips.

"I think you do." He laughed softly, and his laugh frightened her more

than anything he had said. He came towards her, and although she was

swaying on her feet, desperately she tried to evade him, but with a

quick movement he caught her in his arms.

Terror, agonising, soul-shaking terror such as she had never imagined,

took hold of her. The flaming light of desire burning in his eyes

turned her sick and faint. Her body throbbed with the consciousness of

a knowledge that appalled her. She understood his purpose with a horror

that made each separate nerve in her system shrink against the

understanding that had come to her under the consuming fire of his

ardent gaze, and in the fierce embrace that was drawing her shaking

limbs closer and closer against the man's own pulsating body. She

writhed in his arms as he crushed her to him in a sudden access of

possessive passion. His head bent slowly down to her, his eyes burned

deeper, and, held immovable, she endured the first kiss she had ever

received. And the touch of his scorching lips, the clasp of his arms,

the close union with his warm, strong body robbed her of all strength,

of all power of resistance.

With a great sob her eyes closed wearily, the hot mouth pressed on hers

was like a narcotic, drugging her almost into insensibility. Numbly she

felt him gather her high up into his arms, his lips still clinging

closely, and carry her across the tent through curtains into an

adjoining room. He laid her down on soft cushions. "Do not make me wait

too long," he whispered, and left her.