The Sheik Retold

"There will be inquiries." I choked out. "I am not such a nonentity that nothing will be done when I am missed. You will pay for what you have done." "Pay?" His amused look sent a cold feeling of dread through me. "I have already paid... in gold that matches your hair, my gazelle. Besides," he continued, "the French have no jurisdiction over me. There is no authority here above my own." My trepidation was growing by the minute. "Why have you done this? Why brought me here?" "Why?" He repeated with a slow and heated appraisal that made me acutely, almost painfully, conscious of my sex. "Bon Dieu! Are you not woman enough to know?"