The Playboy Sheikh's Virgin Stable-Girl Read Free Page B

what would that achieve? Because—as her father himself had boasted before he had been taken for a fool—Prince Kaliq Al’Farisi was one of the most powerful men in the whole of Calista. Why tempt the fury of a man like that?
    ‘Highness,’ she murmured as she sank briefly downwards.
    Kaliq ran his eyes over her. There was something in her attitude which perplexed him. Something which did not quite add up. Why was a mere female servant bothered about what happened to her master’s horse?
    ‘Explain yourself!’ he commanded.
    His voice cracked out like a whip and instinctively Eleni flinched. He was no different from her cruel father, she thought bitterly. No different from all men with their harsh and domineering ways. Did he really expect her to speak freely to him? He, who was a man and a stranger and a royal prince—especially when one of his bodyguards was hovering in the background?
    ‘What is it that you wish me to explain, Highness?’ Eleni questioned woodenly.
    Kaliq had seen those huge eyes darting over at his bodyguard. And he remembered their alluring colour, too…As bewitching a colour as he had ever seen. ‘Be gone,’ he said, dismissing his bodyguard peremptorily.
    ‘But, Highness—’
    Kaliq turned to the burly minder, a look of contempt curving his lips. ‘You think that I need your protection against this tiny lizard of a girl?’ he questioned, elevating his black brows in arrogant query. ‘Or perhaps you think that she needs mine?’
    ‘No, Highness!’
    ‘Quite right—for a sheikh does not concern himself with scruffy little urchins like this! So be gone,’ Kaliq repeated, with an edge of anger to his voice, and the man slipped out of the stables.
    Eleni stood there, waiting for the interrogation to begin, but the sheikh was nothing if not unpredictable. Completely ignoring her, he walked over to study the horse, running his experienced eyes over the animal’s gleaming flesh and lithe limbs. Kaliq gave a slow smile of satisfaction. Up close the creature was even more magnificent than when he had seen it from a distance on the racetrack last week.
    He took a step forwards but Nabat gave a nervous whinny and jerked back into the corner. Anxiously, Eleni watched and waited to see whether the prince would show the same dominance and aggression as he had exhibited at the poker table, but to her surprise he did not. Instead, he turned around and subjected her to a long, slow scrutiny which suddenly made her feel very peculiar indeed. No man had ever looked at her in such a way before. And no man should, she thought weakly, wondering what had caused her heart to pound so distractingly, or her skin to tingle and glow.
    ‘Stroke the horse,’ he instructed.
    ‘But—’
    ‘Do not question me,’ he cut in icily. ‘Never question the sheikh—did they not teach you that in school, girl?’
    Of course they did. Basic instruction in protocol was part of the Calistan history course and taught in every village school in the country. And these days even lowly servants went to school—by order of Queen Anya, who had overhauled the outdated system and insisted that every child in the land should have the opportunity to acquire a rudimentary education.
    But, unsurprisingly, Eleni’s history lessons had not included a section on how a lowly commoner should behave when she was alone in a stable with a sheikh! And not just any sheikh, either—but the arrogant playboy who was about to take from her the only thing in the world which she had ever truly loved.
    ‘Forgive me, Highness,’ she said unconvincingly.
    Kaliq’s eyes glinted. In his thirty-six years he had heard enough variations on deference to know that such respect was distinctly lacking in this girl’s attitude. In fact, her whole manner simmered with a kind of suppressed anger. How dared she? And what lay behind such intolerable insolence?
    ‘Stroke the horse,’ he repeated silkily.
    This time she could not refuse him. Eleni