The Sultan's Choice. ABBY GREEN

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СКАЧАТЬ to run a weary hand back and forth over his short hair. Something about this man was connecting with Samia on a very deep level, she felt his pain, empathised with his isolation. Without even thinking about what she was doing, responding to some impulse to do something, Samia was almost out of her chair when another person entered the room: a woman, tall and blonde and statuesque, and very, very beautiful.

      The man turned around and to Samia’s shock she realised it was the charismatic Sultan she’d met only hours before. The melancholy and sense of isolation disappeared. She watched as his blue eyes glittered, taking in the woman’s approach. In the place of the vulnerability she might have imagined was the hard shell of a supremely confident and sexual man, and she knew then that she had witnessed something incredibly private—something of himself that he would hate to know had been witnessed by anyone else.

      Samia watched the woman walk straight up to him. She twined herself around him and, perversely, Samia wanted the Sultan to push this woman away contemptuously. As if he was hers! But as she watched, mesmerised, he backed the blond beauty up against a wall and proceeded to kiss her so passionately that Samia made an inadvertent sound of dismay.

      Two faces turned towards her and Samia ran from the room, mortified to have been caught watching like a voyeur.

      And now she was looking up into those same blue eyes, and she felt as if a hole had opened up in her belly. All she could remember was that intense vulnerability she’d seen, or thought she’d seen, in the Sultan that night, and the connection she’d felt.

      She couldn’t block out that image of the secret side of this man even as she sensed his steely determination. He would not rest until she said yes, and that made a curious sense of calm settle over her. He was right: to fight this was to fight fate, her brother and him. She denied to herself that that evocative memory was a tipping point, because that would mean that Sadiq was connecting with her on an emotional level, and she would deny that with every cell in her body.

      This decision was about inevitability, logic and practicality, and the sheer weight of her lineage which put her in this position. She opened her mouth to speak and saw Sadiq’s jaw tense, as if warding off a blow. Immediately she felt the impulse to reach up and smooth his jaw. She clenched her hand.

      ‘I …’ Her voice sounded rusty. ‘Yes. I’ll marry you.’

      For a second there was no reaction. She wasn’t even sure if she’d spoken out loud. But then Sadiq slid the ring onto her finger, bent his head and pressed his lips to it. They were warm and slightly parted, and her belly tightened with a need that was becoming horribly familiar. His head was so close to her breast.

      He stood again and she saw that a shutter had come down over his expression, turning him aloof. He was the stern ruler again, and he had achieved his aim. No softness or charm now. Job done. Mission accomplished. Samia thought cynically of how he’d manipulated her emotions so beautifully. And yet she couldn’t turn back now. She’d sealed her fate and chosen the path she would take for the rest of her life.

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