Shamed in the Sands. Sharon Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ open and enjoy at his leisure. Another lavish gift, just like the others which had been arriving at his hotel suite all morning. It was said that, despite his relative youth, the Sultan was an old-fashioned man and this might be a very old-fashioned gesture on his part. Mightn’t the powerful potentate have decided to sweeten up Gabe with a woman? A submissive and beautiful woman who would cater to his every whim...

      ‘Who are you?’ he questioned coolly. ‘A hooker?’

      Her face showed no reaction to his crude question, but it seemed to take for ever before she spoke.

      ‘No, I’m not a hooker. My name is Leila,’ she said, and now her blue eyes were watchful.

      ‘Pretty name, but I’m still no wiser.’

      ‘Mr Steel—’

      Gabe shook his head in faint disbelief. ‘How come everyone in this city knows my name?’

      The woman smiled—her lips softening into cushioned and rosy curves. And even though he had never paid for sex in his life, in that moment he almost wished she were a hooker. What would he get her to do first? he wondered. Unzip him and take him in her delicious mouth, and suck him until he came? Or lower those narrow hips and bounce around on him until he cried out with pleasure?

      ‘People know who you are because you are the guest of the Sultan,’ she was saying. ‘Your name is Gabe Steel and you are an advertising genius who has come to Qurhah to improve our global image.’

      ‘That’s a very flattering summary,’ offered Gabe drily. ‘But I’m afraid that unsolicited flattery doesn’t really do it for me and it still doesn’t explain why you’re here. Why you burst into my hotel room uninvited and hid in my bathroom...Leila.’

      For a moment there was silence.

      Leila’s heart pounded against her ribcage as she heard the blatant challenge in his voice, which countered the silky way he emphasised her name. Her mind was in a muddle and her senses felt raw and exposed. She had taken a risk and she needed to follow it through, but it was proving more difficult than she’d anticipated. Everything so far was going according to plan but suddenly she was filled with a powerful rush of nerves. She wondered how she could have been so stupid. How she could have failed to take into account Gabe Steel himself and the effect he would have on her.

      She looked into his grey eyes. Strange, quicksilver eyes, which seemed to pierce her skin and see straight through to the bones beneath. She tried to find the right words to put her case to him, but everything she’d been planning to say flew clean out of her mind.

      She wasn’t used to being alone with strange men and she certainly wasn’t used to being in a hotel room with a foreigner. Especially one who looked like this.

      He was gorgeous.

      Unbelievably gorgeous.

      She’d read up about him on the internet, of course. She’d made it her business to do so once she’d discovered that her brother was going to employ him. She’d found out all the external things about Gabe Steel. She knew he owned Zeitgeist—one of the world’s biggest advertising agencies. That he’d been a millionaire by the age of twenty-four and had made it into multimillions by the time he reached thirty. At thirty-five, he remained unmarried—though not for the lack of women trying to get a wedding ring on their finger. Or at least, not according to reports from the rather more downmarket sources.

      She’d seen images of him, too. Crystal-clear images, which she’d gazed at with something approaching wonder as they’d flashed up onto her computer screen. Because Gabe Steel seemed to have it all—certainly in the physical sense. His golden-dark hair gave him the appearance of an ancient god, and his muscular body would have rivalled that of any Olympian athlete.

      She’d seen photos of him collecting awards, dressed in an immaculate tuxedo. There had been a snatched shot of him—paparazzi, she assumed—wearing faded jeans and an open shirt as he straddled a huge motorbike, minus a helmet. On one level she had known that he was the type of man who would take your breath away when you met him for real. And she hadn’t been wrong.

      She just hadn’t expected him to be so...charismatic.

      Leila was used to powerful men. She had grown up surrounded by them. All her life, she’d been bossed around and told to show respect towards them. Told that men knew best. She gave a wry smile because she had witnessed how cruel and cold they could be. She’d seen them treat women as if they didn’t matter. As if their opinions were simply to be tolerated rather than taken seriously. Which was one of the reasons why, deep down, she didn’t actually like the opposite sex.

      Oh, she deferred to them, as she had been taught, because that was the hand which fate had dealt her. To be born a princess into a fiercely male-dominated society didn’t leave you with much choice other than to defer. There hadn’t been a single major decision in her life which had been hers and hers alone. Her schooling had been decided without any consultation; her friends had been carefully picked. She had learnt to smile and accept—because she had also learnt that resistance was futile. People knew what was ‘best’ for her—and she had no alternative but to accept their judgement.

      Materially, of course, she had been spoiled. When you were the only sister of one of the richest men in the world, that was inevitable. Diamonds and pearls, rubies and emeralds lay heaped in jewellery boxes in her bedroom at the palace. Her late mother’s tiaras lay locked behind glass for Leila to wear whenever the mood took her.

      But Leila knew that all the riches in the world couldn’t make you feel good about yourself. Expensive jewels didn’t compensate for the limitations of your lifestyle, nor protect you from a future you viewed with apprehension.

      Within the confines of her palace home she usually dressed in traditional robes and veils, but today she was looking defiantly Western. She had never worn quite such figure-hugging jeans before and it was only by covering them up with her raincoat that she would have dared. She was aware of the way the thick seam of material rubbed between her legs. The way that the silky shirt felt oddly decadent as it brushed against her breasts. She felt liberated in these clothes, and while it was a good feeling, it was a little scary too— especially as Gabe Steel was looking at her in a way which was curiously...distracting.

      But her clothes were as irrelevant as his reaction to them. She had worn them in order to look modern and for no other reason. The most important thing to remember was that this man held the key to a different kind of future. And she was going to make him turn that key—whether he wanted to or not.

      Fighting another wave of anxiety, she opened the briefcase she’d been holding and pulled out a clutch of carefully chosen contents.

      ‘I’d like you to have a look at these,’ she said.

      He raised his eyebrows. ‘What are they?’

      She walked over towards a beautiful table and spread out the pictures on the gleaming inlaid surface. ‘Have a look for yourself.’

      He walked over to stand beside her, his dark shadow falling over her. She could detect the tang of lime and soap combined with the much more potent scent of masculinity. She remembered him wearing nothing but that tiny white towel and suddenly her mouth grew as dry as dust.

      ‘Photographs,’ he observed.

      Leila licked her lips. ‘That’s right.’

      She watched СКАЧАТЬ