Sheikh's Blackmailed Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

States,” Bailey snarled, and apparently, that was where Dario had had enough.
    Suddenly, she found herself pressed back against the wall, one large hand on her shoulder holding her still. He loomed above her, blocking the light from the window behind him and shrouding her in his shadow. For one delirious moment, she thought that she had pushed too far and that he was going to kill her then and there. It took her a few moments to realize he was talking very quietly.
    “You are an American, so I will give this to you,” he said, almost conversationally. “Things are different here. Jabal is a progressive land. We cherish justice and compassion. However, we are a land that has been hard done by in the last century. Before we found our own strength and our own wealth in the oil underneath the sands, we were easy pickings for the world—for Britain, France, even your own beloved United States.
    “These days, we trade and we smile and we give, but we are very, very careful about what is ours. It would have been better if you had fallen in with bank robbers, little American. It might even be better if you had fallen in with murderers. What Christensen did, and what you were a part of… there is no forgiveness for that. Not really.”
    Bailey started to speak, but Dario made a cutting motion with his hand, forbidding it.
    “Here it is. You will stay here. You will do the work that is assigned to you, and you will do it gratefully and competently. That is what is going to happen.”
    He smiled a little, and that smile was a cruel thing.
    “You are welcome to leave, if you can get across the desert yourself and to an airport. Feel free.”
    She stared at him, appalled. “I would die in the desert—there’s no way that I can cross that myself. That’s blackmail!”
    He shrugged easily. “If that is what you want to call it, of course. I consider it getting my country what it is due after collaborating with bandits.”
    Bailey ran over her options, frantically searching for an answer. After a moment, she knew that there was nothing else to be done. He had trapped her as effectively as Christensen had.
    “You can’t do this to me!” she cried, while being very aware that he could.
    “As you say. Defy me if you like. You will see that it has consequences that you couldn’t have dreamed of in the United States.”
    She acted without thinking. She reached her hand back and brought it crashing down against his face in a thunderous slap. The sound echoed throughout the trailer, and they both froze.
    Bailey’s heart was beating faster. She thought for a moment that he would strike her, or that she would explode from fury and fear.
    The air between them was charged with the electricity that occurs before a storm hits. She couldn’t breathe, but in that moment, she suddenly understood what this was between them, why she was angry, but why she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
    I want him…
    The thought was as brilliant and as unexpected as lightning from a clear sky. She had only a single moment to try to grasp and understand it, and then his mouth came down to cover hers, striking as swiftly and as brutally as an eagle would its prey.
    The kiss was overwhelming, more passionate and more savage than anything she had ever experienced before in her life. Her rage and her fear didn’t turn into something else; instead, it transmuted, twisting until it became a red-hot desire.
    Without thinking about what she was doing or what it meant, she wrapped her arms around his neck, dragging him closer. When his tongue parted her lips, she opened for him, drawing on it fiercely. This close, Bailey could smell him, no cologne, nothing artificial, only the clean scent of his skin, the wind of the desert, and something indefinably but absolutely male.
    It was only a kiss, but it sent her whole body clamoring for him. She was needy in a way that she hadn’t thought she could be. It woke her up, made her need so fierce and powerful that she