To Touch a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 3)

She shook her head, too, still chuckling. “You’re a surprise a second, not only a laugh.”

“Always thrilled to be of disservice.” He gave her a mock bow and turned back to coffee making.

He felt the caress of her eyes before she rose, headed to his computer. In seconds a spine-tingling sonata by Mozart surged, filling every inch of space with its majestic magic, seeming to annul the wrath of nature. His heart expanded as the timeless melody spread through him, one of his absolute favorites.

Before questions formed about why she’d chosen that specifically from his playlist, sensations unfurled through him as she joined him in preparing dinner—feelings besides the usual physical red alert from her nearness. Equanimity? Contentment?

Aih. As if he’d recognize those if they tap-danced on his forehead. Seemed he hadn’t estimated her powers highly enough.

During the evening, she again defied his expectations.

She didn’t prod him into pursuing his accusations so that she could offer counter-explanations. Instead, she played “Frozen.”

The dark electronic undertones, the Far Eastern strings, the hints of Middle Eastern percussion swept through the air, as if made for their refuge. He felt as if the lyrics became tailored to show him how she saw him, what she wished with him, for him. But that was as far as she communicated.

It was past midnight and he’d slammed on his brakes a dozen times so he wouldn’t reopen the subject. He could swear she felt him struggle, was serenely waiting for him to crack.

He didn’t. He finished tidying up and went to prepare the settee for another night in sleepless hell.

She stood at the verge of the corridor until he tossed her his best vacant glance. The enigmatic gleam in her eyes corkscrewed through his restraint. He continued working.

She didn’t move until he straightened, raised an eyebrow at her. What did this mistress of strategy and seduction want now?

She tucked her rainfall of gold-kissed strands behind one ear, before she gestured toward the bedroom. “Please reclaim your bed. I’ll be as comfortable on the settee with my size.”

“No. And before you breed any misconceptions, it isn’t an act of chivalry. I won’t let you quarantine me inside.”

“You don’t have to be quarantined. I’m…well-covered, and I’m a very sound sleeper.”

He could attest to that. She, damn her, slept deep and woke up fully charged. While his batteries weren’t just running low, they were reversing polarity.

He also wouldn’t be exposed to the sight of her as she slept even if she was in a sack from the neck down. And he wouldn’t sleep in his bed and feel her presence all around him again.

“No,” he said again, offering no more reasons, needing to end this endless day. “But I’ll take the bathroom first. Your activities there could be measured on a geological scale.”

He entered the bathroom to the sound of her chuckles, yet again cursing the absence of a door to slam and isolate himself.

He sought refuge in the shower cubicle. It offered none. He could swear he felt her thoughts, her desire trickling down his aching flesh like fondling hands and lips until his body reached critical mass. And it had nothing to do with long abstinence. Had it been any other woman, he wouldn’t have registered her presence. But Maram was setting aflame both his urges and his imagination.

He rested his forehead on the cool tiles, closed his eyes as the water pounded him, and silently sought relief.

Release came almost at once, another of the countless ones fueled by her image. More than ever, it made no difference to his aroused state. The expenditure of a measure of tension seemed to open floodgates to a hunger he’d never experienced, even on her account.

It had been one thing to fantasize about her while he avoided her, but another to surrender to the lust she’d stoked by coming closer to him than anyone had ever had.

Not that it mattered. As he always had, he would hold back.

By the fourth day, Amjad couldn’t hold back anymore.

Morning had started normally enough. If anything in their situation could be called “normal.” After lunch, he’d decided to clean, although between them, they’d kept the place spotless. He needed to do something physical. He’d already exercised, strenuously, which had only escalated his tension when she’d come to watch him, then joined him.

She’d joined him in cleaning, too, with her usual zeal, not questioning that the place didn’t need it. She’d initiated another debate as they finished the sitting area, and they were continuing it across the cabin, he from the bathroom, she from the kitchen.

Her voice carried over the storm’s hubbub and his racket. He now seemed to tune out anything not on her merry, modulated wavelengths.

“If all men, especially princely gods of finance, are doomed for avaricious, cold-blooded women with the wiles and witchcraft to land them, how do you explain your brothers?”

“You want to know how they came into existence?” he called back as he polished the mirror for the third time, trying to delay rejoining her. “Incidentally, they—and I of course—did spring forth from avaricious, cold-blooded women.”

He heard the clang of pots as she giggled. “Tut, tut. Is that any way to talk about your mother?”

“And my stepmother. Just stating facts. To check those, I’ll refer you to sources who can best back up my assessments.”

“Foremost among those sources would be your father, of course. But his testimony would be skewed in his favor and against theirs. I would have to hear more unbiased sources—and the women’s side—before sanctioning any ‘facts.’”

He rinsed and dried the sink again. “In my mother’s case, you need a séance, and a powerful witch to stop her from expelling your soul and commandeering your body. In my stepmother’s, you need a warding spell to keep her from ripping you open and feeding on your entrails.”

The beauty of her bwa-ha-ha lanced through him. He forced himself to rearrange his shaving kit again, glaring at himself in the mirror, trying to force the silly smile off his face.

When he was able to cloak himself in his usual venomous smirk, he walked back to the main area. He found her with her hair up in a high bun impaled with a pencil, tendrils escaping to rain over her flushed face, her sleeves and pants rolled up as she mopped the floor in her utilitarian desert-friendly sneakers. She could have been in five-inch stilettos, thong and push-up bra with the way the sight had hormones thundering through his system.