Free The Ice Maiden's Sheikh by Alexandra Sellers

change the past. I can’t live by your rules.”
    The look on his star-shadowed face then she knew she would remember all her life long. His jaw clenched and, deft as a wild animal, he slipped away from her side and into the night.
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    She awoke to sunlight and the sound of cracking wood and turned her head to see Latif on his haunches, the long line of his naked back tucking down into lean hips and thighs as he tended the fire.
    He must have hamstrings like elastic bands: he sat easily on the flat of his feet, his butt resting down on his calves, as if the difficult posture were second nature to him.
    Watching him now she sensed something that surprised her, because he had always seemed at ease in the city and palace environment: here he was in his true element.
    Now she could understand what people meant when they said he was a mountain man. The Sultan had told her that during the long years of working for Ghasib’s overthrow, Latif had been his chief liaison with the mountain tribes. The nomadic mountain tribes could not be policed and respected no borders; Latif had slipped in and out of Ghasib’s Bagestan at will.
    Here she became aware of something she couldn’t have named before—his inner silence. He had a capacity for stillness, as if he had learned patience from the mountains. It was deeply attractive.
    He was quiet, concentrated, open, like an animal drinking at a spring—as if the mountains were a source of sustenance to him.
    And like an animal at a spring, he became aware of her regard, and turned his head. Their eyes met for the first time since he had gone off into the darkness last night. She had fallen asleep without hearing him return.
    â€œSabah al kheir,” he said, in the poetic greeting that was still used in the mountains. A morning of joy.
    â€œSabahan noor,” she replied with a smile. A morning of light.
    And it was. The air was fresh and clear and invigorating, and Jalia accepted the now-familiar jolt of longing for a simpler life, slithered out of her sleeping bag, got up to stretch and yawn luxuriously.
    When she recovered, he was watching her with unreadable eyes.
    â€œYes, you are very beautiful,” he said. His voice was a rough, possessive caress, and her flesh moved with that heavy awareness that seemed to be associated with him.
    She felt fully in her body now, felt how her breasts sat against her rib cage, felt the mobility of her hips, the length of her own legs. Her skin felt every spot where the cotton of her pyjamas brushed her, felt the elastic snug around her slim waist. How her bare feet were planted on the ground, as if she drew her aliveness from the rock, as much as from the air.
    She brought her arms across her breasts, her right hand clasping the opposite shoulder, the left hand under her chin, as she stood looking down at him. Unconsciously she stroked the opals with her thumb.
    â€œYes,” he said, taking the gesture as a protest, “and you are mine, and you do not know it. You do not wish me to say it, but I only tell the truth. You are mine. If you wear another man’s ring, even if you marry him, does it change the truth? If it is the truth, nothing can change it.
    â€œWe belong together. It is better to say it. My silence was not right. I should have told you in the first moment, when I knew it. Then there would not be this engagement. The fault is mine.”
    Jalia would have denied everything, if only she could have trusted herself to speak. Sensation was running over and through her, half indignation, half melting response. If she opened her mouth to speak, could she know which half would get the microphone?
    The mountain man turned back to his task with the fire, and Jalia picked up her toiletry bag, towel andclothes and slipped off up the slope to her morning scrub.
    So there were going to be no reproaches over what had happened last night. Latif was, apparently, a man not inclined to sulking when he