Never Seduce a Sheikh (International Bad Boys Book 2) by Jackie Ashenden

Author:Jackie Ashenden [Ashenden, Jackie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Bad Boys
ISBN: 9781940296876
Publisher: Tule Publishing Group
Published: 2014-09-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

At first, Lily barely understood what he’d said, her head still too full of that astonishing, incredible kiss. Her first kiss. The first she’d taken and not had forced on her.

And she’d wanted to take it. Take it for herself. Because there had been something in the way he’d twined his fingers in her hair, in the look in his eyes as he’d stared at her, in the stark desperation in his voice as he’d asked for the kiss, that had gotten to her. A need she hadn’t been able to deny him. A need she hadn’t been able to deny herself.

Lily sat back on the sand, a hot restlessness sweeping through her. “You nearly died?” she repeated blankly, struggling to make sense of the words.

His face may as well have been cast in bronze for all the expression he gave away. “I told you my father beat me hard enough to put me in hospital? Well, not long after I got out, I ran away from home. Into the desert. I thought dying of thirst was preferable to being killed by one’s own father.” There was a chilling detachment in the way he spoke. “I’m not sure how long I wandered around in the dunes. Long enough to collapse and get severely burned.”

Shock began to trickle through her. “How did you survive?”

“The desert people found me. They looked after me for a while, before taking me back to the palace.” He paused. “Yesterday you asked me why Khalid was so harsh to them? Well, that is the reason. Because of their treatment of me.”

No wonder he was so cautious with them. So respectful to their wishes. It wasn’t only because he wanted to mark himself out as being different from his father.

“You feel you owe them?”

“I do. What they did for me cannot ever be repaid.”

She didn’t want to ask her next question but she couldn’t stop herself. “What happened when you went back? Khalid didn’t—”

“No. That was the last time I was beaten. My father did not touch me again.”

She couldn’t tear her gaze away from his face. From the darkness she saw in his eyes. In the crystal heart of that startling blue, something black lurked.

Something that made a small, electric thrill go through her. She tried to ignore it. “I wondered why you were so tense in the car. Being here must be difficult.”

He looked away, out to the dunes. “More so than I expected.”

She stared at his perfect, stern profile. They must have been bad, those memories of his. She couldn’t imagine the strength it took to confront them. “You’re doing better than I am in that case. I haven’t been back to the pool since Dan.”

He glanced back at her. “Because of the memories?”

“Yes. He ruined swimming for me. He ruined a lot of things for me.”

The look in his blue eyes hardened. “Then, don’t let him, Lily.”

Instinctively, she opened her mouth to argue. But then stopped.

She’d been telling herself for years that she was over what Dan had done to her.

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