To Touch a Sheikh Read Free Page A

unwanted present I’ve been cursed to receive has burst open in my face at once.”
    Relieved that he’d gotten back to searing sarcasm, she chuckled. “Oh, I love it when you try to be mean.”
    â€œI assure you, when I do try, you won’t love it that much.”
    â€œTake your best shot, Prince Abrad.”
    At her taunt, another pun meaning meanest or coldest, those obsidian pupils that seemed to respond to his whimsoverpowered the sun’s constriction, almost obliterating his irises. “You wouldn’t survive it…Princess Kalam.”
    She hooted. “I’d thrive on it. Go ahead, see if I’m ‘All Talk.’”
    â€œWhere’s the fun if you’re impervious, Princess Rokham?”
    She struggled with the urge to reach up to grab his raven mane, drag his witty venom-dripping lips down to hers.
    She sighed her frustration. “It won’t be because I’m made of marble that your barbs won’t penetrate me.”
    At her last two words, his pupils almost vanished, leaving his eyes blazing emerald.
    She hadn’t meant it that way! But she wasn’t babbling a qualification.
    â€œAnd the pathetic thing is, your tactics work spectacularly with men.” He shook his head. “I’m deeply ashamed of my gender.”
    â€œDon’t be a boor, Amjad,” she chided, fighting another urge to pinch his chiseled cheeks.
    â€œBut Mo- om! I am a boor.” His whiney-boy impersonation tickled her. “But chin up, no one has died of my boor-dom. Yet.”
    She couldn’t help it. She stuck her tongue out at him.
    That stopped him in his tracks.
    She pressed her advantage. “You’re delightful when you’re boor-ing, but I’m not as genetically equipped as you are to handle the desert.”
    He jerked one formidable shoulder. “You’re standing four paces away from a climate-controlled cocoon. Put one foot in front of the other and take your genetically deficient self into its protection.”
    She arched an eyebrow at him. “Okay, let’s try this again. Do pretend host-dom this time.”
    He tsked. “What? You expect me to carry you across the threshold?”
    â€œI drove two hundred miles to come here, after an hour’s flight. It would be the least you could do.”
    â€œFirst, I’m not this little do’s host, I’m its warden. Second, I don’t lug gate-crashers around.”
    â€œGod forbid your reputation be tarnished by an act of chivalry, eh?”
    â€œYou got it.”
    She grinned. “Oh, well, I guess I can take four more steps under my own power.”
    With that she brushed past him, opened the tent’s door and stepped into a shock of blessed dimness and fragrant coolness.
    She took in the twenty-foot-high interior with its sumptuous, bedouin-inspired decor and furnishings, heard the almost-inaudible burr of the AC and electricity generators. She swung around, afraid Amjad had let her enter alone. She breathed in relief to find him standing at the tent’s now-closed entrance, thumbs hooked at his waistband, eyes crackling a more intense emerald in the dimness.
    Her shiver had nothing to do with the drop in temperature.
    She couldn’t fight the urge to counter one of his previous statements/accusations. “By the way, I don’t have tactics.”
    His gaze didn’t waver on a change of expression. “You do. They are unique to you, making them even more dangerous—and devious.”
    â€œI’m the farthest thing from either,” she said patiently. “And what would I need tactics for? They don’t work on the only one of your ‘gender’ I’m interested in. You.”
    Her straightforwardness gained her a grimace. “And the only one of your gender I’m interested in is—wait! I’m not interested in any of you.”
    She nodded vigorously. “With good reason.”
    One eyebrow rose