The Sultan's Choice Read Online Free PDF Page A

know
exactly
what to do and say. And if you’re out of practice you’ll learn again quickly enough.’
    Samia choked back her furious denial. She ran a hand through her hair impatiently, which was something she did when she was agitated. She forgot that it was tied back and felt it come loose but had to ignore it.
    She faced him fully. ‘You really don’t want me for your wife. I don’t like parties. I get tongue-tied when I’m faced with more than three people, I’m not sophisticated and polished.’
Like all your other women.
Samia just about managed not to let those words slip out.
    Sadiq was watching the woman in front of him with growing fascination. She
wasn’t
sophisticated and polished—and he suddenly relished that fact for its sheer uniqueness. She was literally coming apart in front of him, revealing someone very different from the woman she was describing. Heagreed with absolutely everything she was saying—apart from the bit about her not being a suitable wife.
    ‘And yet,’ he drawled, ‘you’ve been educated most of your life in a royal court, and your whole existence has held within it the potential for this moment. How can you say you’re not ready for this?’
    Samia could feel the unfashionably heavy length of her hair starting to unravel down her back. Her inner thermostat was about to explode. With the utmost reluctance she opened her jacket, afraid that if she didn’t she’d melt in a puddle or faint.
    Before she could stop him Sadiq was reaching out and plucking the coat from her body as easily as if she were a child, placing it on the chair she’d vacated. Too stunned to be chagrined, Samia continued, ‘You need someone who is used to sophisticated social gatherings. I’ve been in libraries for as long as I can remember.’
    The ancient library in the royal Burquat castle had always been her refuge from the constant taunting of her stepmother, Alesha. She started to pace again, disturbed by Sadiq’s innate cool.
    ‘You need someone who can stand up to you.’ She stopped and stood a few feet away, facing him. She
had
to make him see. ‘I had a chronic stutter until I was twelve. I’m pathologically shy. I’m so shy that I went to cognitive behavioural therapy when I was a teenager to try and counteract it.’ Which had precipitated another steady stream of taunts and insults from her stepmother, telling her that she would amount to nothing and never become a queen when she couldn’t even manage to hold a conversation without blushing or stuttering.
    Sadiq had stood up and come closer to Samia while she’d been talking. He was frowning down at her now, arms folded across that impressive chest. ‘You don’t have a stutter anymore, and I’d wager that your therapist, if he or she was any good, said that you were just going through a phase that any teenager might go through. And plenty of children suffer from stuttering. It’s usually related back to some minor incident in their childhood.’
    Samia blinked. She felt as if he could see inside her head to one of her first memories, when she had been trying to get her new stepmother’s attention and was stuttering in her anxiety to be heard. She would bet that
he’d
never gone through anything like that. But he’d repeated more or less exactly what her therapist had said. It was so unexpected to hear this from him of all people that any more words dried in her throat as he started to move around her.
    Sadiq was growing more intrigued by the second. Her hair had come completely undone by now, and it lay in a wavy coil down her back. His fingers itched to reach out and loosen it. It looked silky and fragrant … a little wild. It was at such odds with that uptight exterior.
    So close to her like this, for the first time he noticed the disparity in their heights. She was a lot smaller than the women he was used to, and he felt a surprising surge of something almost
protective
within him. With the jacket gone he could see that