The Sheikh’s Bartered Bride by Lucy Monroe

Author:Lucy Monroe [Monroe, Lucy]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-04-10T01:52:15.734000+00:00

“Do you promise?” He always kept his promises.

He brushed the wetness from under her eyes with his thumbs. “I promise.”

“You’re big on keeping your promises. I remember you telling me that.”

“This is true.”

“Then promise me one more thing.”

He looked wary. “What?”

“That you will never lie to me again.”

He hesitated and she glared at him. “I don’t care if you think the truth will upset me. I can’t trust you if I believe you’ll lie to me, even if it is to protect my feelings.”

“Then I promise this also.”

She nodded, feeling a sense of relief that he had agreed so easily. If she couldn’t trust him, she could not stay with him, no matter how much she loved him. “I need to fix my makeup.”

He drew her forward and dropped a soft kiss on her lips. It felt like an apology and she took it as such.

He released her. “Be quick. The dinner will have started without the guests of honor.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Later, sitting between her husband and the wife of one of his cousins, she thought the dinner would go on forever. It wasn’t that the company was not entertaining. They were. Hakim’s cousin’s wife was sweet and everyone had been very kind to Catherine, but her husband was driving her crazy.

He seemed to have gotten it in his head that she needed reassurance regarding their marriage. Physical reassurance.

Since it was considered unseemly among his people for a husband and wife to touch in public, all of his touches were surreptitious. And dangerous. Under the cover of the table, he caressed her thigh through the black lace overlay of her dress.

He had told her to dress in Western style for the dinner. She’d been glad she’d followed his advice when she arrived to find the other women similarly attired, although the men wore traditional Arab costume.

However, when she felt Hakim’s foot brush the inside of her calf under her long skirt, she wished she was wearing more than a pair of sheer stockings. Her body was humming with the excitement only he could generate and no way to appease it. They could not leave the dinner until his uncle excused them.

She turned her head to tell him to stop it and found herself mesmerizing by a pair of obsidian eyes.

“Hakim.”

“Yes, aziz?” His foot moved and sensation arced right up her leg to the very core to her.

She gasped.

He smiled.

She was still smarting a little from their earlier argument, but he had promised never to lie to her again. “If you don’t stop it my foot is going to make contact with your leg as well, but it will still have a shoe on and its sharp toe will be the point of impact.”

He laughed and popped a grape into her mouth. “Your impact on my body is sharp indeed.”

She couldn’t help smiling at him.

He removed his foot and winked.

She sighed with exasperation and turned to her other dinner companion, Lila.

The other woman turned to her and smiled warmly. “You and Sheikh Hakim are well matched.

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