The Sheikh's Prize Read Online Free PDF Page A

does that mean?’
    ‘That the film was confiscated at the hotel where you and the crew were staying,’ Zahir advanced grimly.
    Saffy took a hasty step forward. ‘ Confiscated? ’ she repeated in horror. ‘You can’t do that!’
    ‘I can do anything I like when people break the law in Maraban,’ Zahir responded levelly. ‘Filming was not authorised.’
    ‘But you have the power to overlook it. I’m sure the company just made a mistake if they didn’t seek permission. The location was changed at the very last minute—there probably wasn’t time!’ she protested. ‘Is that why you’ve brought me here? To tell me this?’
    ‘No...I wanted to see you again,’ Zahir confided with shocking cool.
    And she remembered the shock of that honest streak of his, his ability to cut through all the rubbish people could spout and hit the bottom line without hesitation or embarrassment. ‘Why would you want to see me again?’ she prompted stiltedly.
    ‘You only have to look in the mirror to know why,’ he fielded without skipping a beat. ‘I want you. Just once I want what should have been mine when I married you and what you have since given to other men...’
    Shock engulfed Saffy in a tidal wave. She moved back from him again in dismay, disbelief and bewilderment. Her ex wanted her to have sex with him?
    ‘Unless, of course,’ Zahir murmured silkily, ‘you truly do find me physically repulsive...’
    Saffy backed away another step, thinking that there was surely not a woman alive who could find Zahir repulsive. She certainly didn’t; never had, in fact. Was that the impression she had left him with? Guilt rippled through her, for she was agonisingly aware that he could not possibly have overcome her problems for her five years earlier. It had taken years of therapy for Saffy to find the solution and to come to terms with what she had learned about herself during the process.
    ‘If you can convince me that you do, I will let you go,’ Zahir purred, literally stalking her across the room with fluid steps.
    Zahir wanted to sleep with her. So, tell me something new, a wry little voice said inside her head. It was like being plunged back into her marriage without warning, unable to give him what he wanted and needed. The most appalling sense of inadequacy gripped her afresh. She had failed him and not surprisingly he was bitter. But that was no excuse whatsoever for his current behaviour. ‘You virtually kidnapped me!’ she accused rawly.
    ‘I sent you flowers and an air-conditioned limo. How many kidnappers do that?’
    ‘You’ve got to be crazy... I mean, are you even thinking about what you’re doing?’ Saffy gasped, stepping back against a piece of furniture and sidling sideways to avoid it and to keep moving further out of his reach.
    ‘I don’t think around you,’ Zahir muttered flatly. ‘I never did.’
    Saffy was more than willing to kick his brain back into gear. ‘Zahir, you’re a king...royalty doesn’t do stuff like this!’
    Zahir flung back his darkly handsome head and laughed with rich appreciation, even white teeth flashing against his bronzed skin. ‘Sapphire...my father kept a harem of a hundred concubines in this palace. Until very recently indeed, royalty did indeed do things that were neither socially nor morally acceptable.’
    ‘Your father? Had a harem here?’ Saffy parroted in consternation, her heart beating so fast as he stalked closer that she was convinced it might burst right out of her chest. She refused even to think of that nasty old man, Fareed, having had a hundred unfortunate women locked up to fulfil his gruesome requirements. It wasn’t a surprise though: her father-in-law had been an out-and-out lech.
    ‘I have no harem...no wife,’ Zahir pointed out.
    ‘Those are the only positives you have to offer in your own favour?’ Her voice was careening up and down as if she were on a vocal seesaw. She was locked into his eyes, those amazingly beautiful amber eyes,