Free The Ice Maiden's Sheikh by Alexandra Sellers Page A

didn’t get what he wanted, and as she washed in the icy little mountain stream, gasping with the shock, she thought of how it would be to have such a man for a husband.
    Most of the men she dated sulked, one way or another, if they didn’t get their own way. As if they had never quite got over some disappointment with their mothers.
    Latif was a man who could, it seemed, accept setback as a part of life, not—as with so many of the men she knew, including Michael—as something someone had done to him.
    Her father had always said the mountain men of Bagestan were a breed apart. Maybe you had to come to the mountains to get a real man. If you wanted one. Jalia didn’t. Anyway, it was too late for her. To have a man like Latif as husband, she should have been here from birth, for how could she ever fit in to this culture and life, growing up the way she had in the bustle and freedom of a world-class city?
    She wasn’t sorry, not really. She belonged in another world, when if history had been different she might have belonged in this one, and that, too, was just life.
    But a part of her, she realized as she rubbed herself down with the rough towel, trying to get warm again after her chilly dip—a little part of her was sorry to think that she would never experience Latif’s real passion.
    And she did wonder if she would always remember Latif’s passionate proposal as the moment of wildest romantic thrill of her life. How could any Western man match it?
    She dressed and returned down the slope to the evocative smell of coffee and wood smoke.
    Latif had draped two round flat pieces of naan over the spit, and when he handed one to her it was toasted and deliciously flavoured with the fat of last night’s meat it had absorbed from the spit.
    She spread some goat’s cheese on the bread and rolled it up for a simple, succulent breakfast.
    â€œWhere to this morning?” she asked, for something to say.
    â€œI want to go down into the valley. It is a journey on foot, since the road has been washed out in many places. Do you want to come with me, or wait for me here?”
    Jalia hesitated. “How long will it take?”
    â€œIf I go alone, a few hours. If you come with me, longer.”
    Maybe it was his arrogant assumption that she would slow him down, or maybe just a reluctance to sit here doing nothing, she wasn’t sure. But with a little flick of her head that made him smile, Jalia opted to accompany him.

Nine
    A rrogant or not, he had been speaking nothing but the truth. Latif went over the deep gullies the rains had gouged into the road with an ease and a balance that terrified her, while Jalia could only inch her way with his help.
    When they came to a terrifying drop, an ugly, massive gouge in the road that fell away to nothing, he took her piggyback, and the sheer power and strength beneath her knees had a rhythmic, muscled beauty that carried to her animal brain a deep, pure erotic message, so that her legs’ sudden tightening around him caused him to lose his hold for a second, almost pulling them to their doom.
    On the road again her body was lazily reluctant to get down.
    Panting with the aftermath of sharp fear and suddendesire, Jalia straightened her clothes fussily, irritated with herself for that uncontrolled response. If she didn’t get a grip, she’d find herself married to the man, for no better reason than to experience his lovemaking.
    A truth suddenly dawned on her, as stunning as a clap of thunder—every time she had argued with Noor about her foolish attraction to Bari, she had been talking to herself. She might not have allowed the information into conscious awareness, but unconsciously she had recognized how wildly attracted she was to Latif.
    What a fool she had been, blind and smug: because if she had allowed herself to see the real problem, she could have taken much smarter action to avoid Latif.
    And she wouldn’t be where she