The Sultan's Choice (17 page)

‘Just trust me, okay?’

Samia nodded and bit her lip. It was almost excruciating to remember that night, and the thought that he’d been here with all those other women.

The sun was setting and painting everything a gorgeous burnished gold as she followed Sadiq into the tent again. She gasped with shock when she saw that it had been completely redecorated. Nothing remained from that night.

He pulled her around in front of him and said carefully, ‘Samia, I’ve never brought any other woman here. Only you. This tent didn’t exist until I had it built for us when we were in the castle. But that night.’ He shook his head in disgust at himself. ‘I think that was the start of it. I’d brought you here and suddenly you were questioning me. I couldn’t believe how transparent I’d been.’

Joy was infusing every cell of Samia’s body. She smiled. ‘I thought I had to let you know straight away that I wasn’t seeing it as a romantic gesture, but all I wanted was to believe that you’d done this for
me.’

Sadiq pulled her close, where she could feel how badly he wanted her, and the last few nights of sleeplessness and aching and wanting rose up within Samia like a forest fire. Much like the last time, but in completely different circumstances,
they were on the bed, making love with an intensity that made Samia cry out over and over again.

Much later, when their bodies were just a tangle of limbs, dark against pale, Sadiq was trailing Samia’s hair through his hand and he said quietly, ‘Now I know why I was so freaked out when I saw Nadim and Salman get married.’

Samia lifted her heavy head and came up on one elbow to look at her husband. ‘What do you mean?’

Sadiq brushed her hair back over her shoulder, and the tender look on his face and in his eyes made Samia feel extraordinarily blessed. She caught his injured hand and kissed it.

‘Because I knew that I was terrified of being as emotionally exposed as they were in those moments. And then you came along, and any hope of protecting myself from a similar fate flew out the window.’

Samia grumbled good-naturedly, ‘You took long enough to come around to the idea …’

Sadiq flipped up to hover over her, covering her sensitised breasts with his chest, making her squirm against him deliciously. He smiled. ‘And I’m going to spend our lifetimes paying you back for taking so long to recognise what was in my own heart. It’ll be a long and slow and infinite process …’

Samia wound her arms around his neck and arched even closer, exulting in his rapidly recovering arousal. ‘I like the sound of long and slow, Sultan … so what are you waiting for?’

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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First published in Great Britain 2011
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

© Abby Green 2011

ISBN: 978-1-408-92605-5