The sheikh's chosen wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

denunciation.
    Leona began to back away
because there was something seriously threatening about the sudden glow she
caught in his eyes. 'I left you, remember?'
    'Then sent me letters at
regular intervals to make sure I remembered you,' he drawled.
    'Letters to tell you I
want a divorce!' she cried.
    'The content of the
letters came second to their true purpose.' He smiled. 'One every two weeks
over the last two months. I found them most comforting.'
    'Gosh, you are so
conceited it's a wonder you didn't marry yourself!'
    'Such insults' He sighed.
    'Will you stop stalking
me as if I am a hunted animal?' she cried.
    'Stop backing away like
one.'
    'I do not want to stay
married to you.' She stated it bluntly.
    'And I am not prepared to
let you go. There,' he said. 'We have reached another impasse. Which one of us
is going to win the higher ground this time, do you think?'
    Looking at him standing
there, arrogant and proud yet so much her kind of man that he made her legs go
weak. Leona knew exactly which one of them possessed the higher ground. Which
was also why she had to keep him at arm's length at all costs. He could fell
her in seconds, because he was right; she didn't hate him, she adored him. And
that scared her so much that when his hand came up, long fingertips brushing
gently across her trembling mouth, she almost fainted on the sensation that
shot from her lips to toe tips.
    She pulled right away.
His eyebrow arched. It mocked and challenged as he responded by curling the
hand around her nape.
    'Stop it,' she said, and
lifted up her hand to use it as a brace against his chest.
    Beneath dark blue cotton
she discovered a silk-smooth, hard-packed body pulsing with heat and an
all-too-familiar masculine potency. Her mouth went dry; she tried to breathe
and found that she couldn't. Helplessly she lifted her eyes up to meet with
his.
    'Seeing me now, hmm?' he
softly taunted. 'Seeing this man with these eyes you like to drown in, and this
nose you like to call dreadful but usually have trouble from stopping your
fingers from stroking? And let us not forget this mouth you so like to feel
crushed hotly against your own delightful mouth.'
    'Don't you dare!' she
protested, seeing what was coming and already beginning to shake all over at
the terrifying prospect of him finding out what a weak-willed coward she was.
    'Why not?' he countered,
offering her one of his lazily sensual, knowing smiles that said he knew better
than she did what she really wanted—and he began to lower his dark head.
    'Tell me first.' Sheer
desperation made her fly into impulsive speech. 'If I am here on this
beautiful yacht that belongs to you—is there another yacht just like it out
there somewhere where your second wife awaits her turn?"
    In the sudden suffocating
silence that fell between them Leona found herself holding her breath as she
watched his face pale to a frightening stillness. For this was provocation of
the worst kind to an Arab and her heart began pounding madly because she just
didn't know how he was going to respond. Hassan possessed a shocking temper,
though he had never unleashed it on her. But now, as she stood here with her
fingers still pressed against his breastbone, she could feel the danger in
him—could almost taste her own fear as she waited to see how he was going to
respond.
    What he did was to take a
step back from her. Cold, aloof, he changed into the untouchable prince in the
single blink of an ebony eyelash. 'Are you daring to imply that I could be
guilty of treating my wives unequally?' he responded.
    In the interim wave of
silence that followed, Leona stared at him through eyes that had stopped seeing
anything as his reply rocked the very axis she stood upon. She knew she had
prompted it but she still had not expected it, and now she found she couldn't
breathe, couldn't even move as fine cracks began to appear in her defences.
    'You actually went and
did it, and married again,' she whispered, then completely