To Touch a Sheikh Read Free Page B

in mockery. “Ah, so kind of you to sanction it. It is the best, isn’t it?”
    â€œIngeniously evil, yes.”
    â€œIndeed. But you don’t think I’m so pathetic that I’d hang on to my ‘complex’ for this long, hold one woman’s crimes against the whole sex, do you?”
    She advanced on him, secure that he wouldn’t step back to keep his distance. “No. You’re too penetr…uh…discerning, toocerebral to turn your deservedly atrocious opinion of one into a generalization you know is bound to be faulty.”
    He didn’t need to back off. The look in his eyes was enough to keep her paces away. “Problem is, I only stumble across women who reinforce my ‘deservedly atrocious opinion.’ Not that they’re cold-blooded criminals. Seems I’m not about to get that lucky twice in one nearly aborted lifetime. But I draw only those with a toxic level of self-serving cunning and hunger for power. So my generalization has yet to be proven faulty.”
    â€œYou mean women—other than me—were brave enough to come near you?”
    â€œSome, under the compulsion of my status and holdings, were as foolhardy. Very briefly, though. Their survival instinct kicked in, overwhelming even their avarice.”
    â€œDoesn’t one exception prove the generalization wrong?”
    He barked a denigrating laugh. “You being said exception?”
    She smiled into his eyes, unfazed by the expected ridicule. “I certainly don’t have a toxic level of anything, and I have levels in the negative when it comes to avarice and power hunger.”
    â€œSays the woman who married a ruling prince and then an heir to a shipping empire. Killed one off and divorced the other after getting him disinherited.”
    That made her smile falter. “Uh…we’re still in the zone of obnoxious one-upmanship, right?”
    â€œWe’re in the zone of stating facts.”
    She raised both eyebrows in answering challenge. “My killing off Uncle Ziad and getting Brad disinherited are ‘facts’? On the M-class Planet Paranoia, where you make up a population of one?”
    He put a hand to his left shoulder, gave a bow of mock contrition. “My apologies. You had nothing to do with either’s literal or financial demise. Both were stupid enough to marry you and cause their own destruction. An ill man older than your father, trying to keep up with a sexual ego-crushing bride, and a barely out-of-diapers babe who destroyed his future to impress a seductress a hundred years his senior in maturity.”
    Her mouth dropped open. She closed it. It dropped open again.
    Then she burst out laughing. “Oh, boy, you’re good. Do you even think of the things that stampede out of your lips, or do you just open your mouth and they lash out into existence?”
    He inclined his head. “Thanks for sparing me the hackneyed act of indignation and sanctioning the truth.”
    â€œYou’re so far from the truth you could be in another nebula. But you’re still so good, you’d be a global success in scripting satires, too. You entertain me to no end even while you try to insult me.”
    â€œMeaning I’m failing to? I must be losing my powers. Do you have arsenic on you?”
    Another chuckle burst out of her, even as the reminder of his ordeal sent empathy shearing through her. “Your kryptonite, eh? Nah. I’m as nontoxic as it gets. But insults are insulting only when they contain painful truth. Yours don’t have even a trace of it, are so far-fetched, they’re purely hilarious.”
    He suddenly took a step forward. She almost fell flat on her back in surprise.
    â€œYou know what’s hilarious?” His drawl was laced with danger. “Your calling your deceased husband ‘uncle.’ Was that his fetish?”
    She waited, not breathing, to see if he’d close the remaining gap