Free To Touch a Sheikh by Olivia Gates Page A

effect of her words—of her —seeping through his gray matter, altering the pathway of his beliefs. And he was damned if he’d let her change his mind that easily.
    She might have been innocent once, but she wasn’t now. She’d learned her father’s lessons well, was adding her own genius and irresistibility to become unstoppable.
    There was one way to stop her. Get out of her range.
    He rose as if he didn’t want to explode to his feet and storm away, until his muscles hurt with the tranquility he forced into them. He looked down at her, met a gaze tinged with hope, which he believed would have brought a weaker man to his knees proclaiming he’d believe anything she had to say.
    â€œI’ll have to get back to you on that,” he said, injecting his voice with the last dose of nonchalance he had in his arsenal.
    He cleared their dinner, cleaned the kitchen, willing the mechanical actions to defuse his disquiet.
    Before he went inside, he added, “Don’t hold your breath, though. Estimated response time ranges from a lifetime to never.”
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    After an endless night during which he felt as if he were sleeping on red-hot thorns, imagining he heard her breathing over the storm’s tumult, felt her body’s undulations transmitted to his every nerve, the next day was worse.
    She woke up minutes after he’d given up on sleep and risen, cheery and inviting to his aching and cranky. Not that she was intrusive. She engaged him when he let her, occupied herself in silence, at least in humming, when he didn’t.
    At the breakfast he prepared, he was back to full flaying mode. She met his game on the same level, her wit like lightning, blinding, electrifying, magnificent.
    Morning passed as if it were a week. Not because it dragged, but for being so full of incident and interaction. At noon, she began to prepare lunch, and he somehow found himself in the kitchen, sharing the preparations, engrossed in the experimentations, eyeball-deep in banter.
    He pulled back again while they ate, and she again let him take refuge in detachment, but wouldn’t let his pointed disregard fill the atmosphere with tension, her acceptance making even the tumult-accompanied silence companionable, communicative.
    Afterward he found himself about to slide back into a teasing match with her, used Dahabeyah’s care to get away.
    He returned from the stable to find her engrossed in a gameshe’d unearthed on his computer, shrieking in delight as she surpassed a personal best. As she turned to share her excitement, a moronic notion insisted it was only around him that she was this spontaneous.
    To compel hours to pass without Maram exposure, he headed inside for a nap. Big mistake.
    The sheets smelled— felt —of her. His body throbbed like an inflamed wound for the four hours he forced himself to remain there.
    Finally, a hairbreadth from blowing essential physical and mental fuses, he rose and joined her.
    He found her sitting on the settee, knees drawn up against her chest, head resting on them. Her face was turned to him, eyes glowing as if waiting to strike him to his core with their lucid beauty and power.
    He headed to the kitchen without slowing down. He thought that if he did, she’d drag him deeper into this…affinity he was finding more disturbing than anything he’d ever experienced.
    â€œThere is a part of the truth I didn’t tell you.”
    His hand spasmed over the coffeepot, almost smashed it.
    Her voice, her words penetrated between his shoulder blades, reached inside his rib cage to clutch his heart.
    He didn’t turn, threw over his shoulder, “Of course you didn’t, Shahrazad. Never telling the whole story is what you do.”
    â€œIt’s just one part. There won’t be more.”
    He wouldn’t. He shouldn’t.
    He turned to her.
    This was ridiculous. He was behaving like Shahrayar for real, unable to bear the