To Touch a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 3)

Salmah burst into tears. Her mother swooned. Her father begged his mercy in his righteousness.

Irony trembled on Amjad’s lips as he ignored their theatrics, turned his gaze to those whose power plays he’d almost died for. They weren’t here to show him support and regret, but to make sure their interests would be served, their convenience undisturbed.

He swept his hand in a wide arc, his forefinger pointing at all of them. “I will never forgive any of you. I will never forget. What you all did, what you all are. You’d better pray I don’t survive this. If I do, I’ll live to make you pay. And don’t bother trying to get rid of me. You had your chance and you blew it. No one’s ever getting another one.”

One

Eight years later

Maram Aal Waaked was finally getting her chance at the Mad Prince.

At least, Amjad Aal Shalaan was known that way to the world.

To her, he was the best thing since chocolate fudge.

He’d been tantalizing her with his dark, rich lusciousness for four years now and leaving her starving for more. But this time she had him cornered.

Yeah, right. Cornered among dozens of nosy male royals in the open desert. The man who was so slippery, he could pull a Houdini in a heavily guarded one-exit room.

He had once, during closed negotiations she’d attended representing her emirate. When others had begun to rant, he’d given that worthy-of-sonnets smirk of his, said, “Bored now.” Then he’d disappeared. Poof.

Her friends called her crazy for even thinking about him.

Sure, they said, he was a phenomenal male who made women within a one-mile radius swoon. But he also made them cringe, because he was a madman who would pulverize any woman in his power.

She said if he were, he would have collected women to abuse. Not letting anyone get close to him proved that he was actually merciful and sane.

They dismissed the reasons for his paranoia, said he should have gotten over his past already. She thought that no one could come back from something so terrible except through something equally wonderful. Or at least through someone who appreciated his ruthlessness, cared nothing for his wealth and power and saw the wounded soul, the noble, heroic man underneath.

She lived for the chance to prove she was that someone.

But before she could achieve such ambitious aspirations, she had to make him stay put long enough to have a real conversation.

Apart from one epic incident, he’d spared her nothing but a few acerbic-wit-filled moments before leaving her to deliver her volleys to his departing back.

But she was going to soothe that magnificent beast if it was the last thing she did. All the pleasures she’d experience when she could finally…pet him were worth any battle scars.

The first skirmish was about to begin.

Her GPS said she was minutes from the battleground, a five-mile solid-earth flat track among the dunes. Amjad’s location of choice for the region’s royal horse race. Zohayd hosted the race annually on the last day of fall. This year, due to unchangeable commitments, Amjad had brought the date forward.

Everyone had been horrified at his proposal to hold the race midsummer. In response, Amjad had sent taunting letters, something only he could get away with, considering the recipients were hard-hitting royals with egos to complement their lofty status.

She’d seen his letter to her father, could hear his lazy, lethal voice in her head as she’d read his elegant, forceful handwriting.

Was her father afraid of roughing it in the sun, outside his rarefied cocoon of luxury? Was the big, tough man afraid of some sweat, when he wasn’t even racing?

He must have tailored his missives to each recipient’s idiosyncrasies. Her father was too wary physically, too fastidious about his neatness. Not that anyone knew this. Her father recognized these characteristics as a potential source of ridicule, projected the opposite. But Amjad Aal Shalaan was infallible in deciphering people. That was just one among the endless weapons that made him unstoppable in the worlds of highest-level finance and politics.

Needless to say, everyone had succumbed to his wishes. He’d specified three o’clock for arrival.

It was noon. She’d just called her father to tell him she’d arrived. He’d exclaimed his anxiety that she’d gone alone, had left behind the entourage he’d tried to saddle her with. She’d told him they could catch up, that she had no problem going back with them. But she was getting some one-on-one time with Amjad first, before the desert became a forest of people for him to fade among.

She eased her foot off the accelerator to savor the last moments of approach. The sight warranted the most leisurely of zooms, to savor its every smidge of magnificence.

And no, she didn’t mean the majestic desert with its undulating dunes surrounding the naturally flat land. That and the canopy of bleached-blue sky, painted in wisps of incandescent white, were indeed glorious. But it was the sight of him that spread firecrackers of pleasure through her system, had flutters of anticipation accumulating in her rib cage.

He stood in front of one of the huge tents. Dozens of his men flitted around him. She saw only him. Standing half a foot taller than anyone else, broad, lean and loaded with inborn grace and inimitable power, uncaring of the mercilessness of the sun beating down on his raven head, indifferent to existence in its whole.

The man was so aptly named “most glorious.”

And that was before you took into account the difference in him today. She’d only ever seen him in hand-sculpted suits that looked to be made of living silk, designed and delighted to worship his body. She’d thought that nothing could look better than that.

He did now. All in white, his billowy shirt tucked into skin-tight pants and those into tan boots, he was…description-defying.

She parked beside the other cars, grabbed her bag and hat and hopped down from the steel behemoth her father had bequeathed her for the trip. She slung her bag across her torso and hid from the sun’s pummeling rays beneath the hat, willing the necessities to cool down her urge to run to him.

Not that Amjad was in any rush to acknowledge her. It was only when she slammed the door that he glanced sideways at her in that maddeningly delicious, delightfully nonchalant way of his.

From beneath the arch of world-famous eyebrows, legendary emerald eyes documented her approach with ponderous detachment. She felt them drilling into her recesses, taking her apart one cell at a time. His ruthlessly sensuous mouth was set, every hollow and slash of his masterpiece bone structure showcased by the almost-perpendicular sunrays. While the harsh shadows they cast turned others into grotesque caricatures of themselves, they made him into the god of vengeance that he was. The ultimate yum that he was.