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His face flickered with a frown. “That I am selfish and spoiled?”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “No. That I want to tear your eyes out whenever I speak to you.” She sobered. “Though I suspect you’re a little selfish and spoiled as well.”
Sheikh Hakim didn’t do apologies. They were beneath him. So he was taken aback to hear himself say, “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I was grieving. It was wrong of me to take that out on you.”
“I can’t believe it. Are you actually admitting you were wrong?”
He grinned, and it was undoubtedly the sexiest thing Phoebe had ever seen. “No. Just that I shouldn’t have been so frank with you.”
Why was she smiling at him? He was being insulting and domineering, and yet, she felt happiness spread through her like lava.
Phoebe couldn’t have said if it was the way his grin had made her feel, or the way the sun was shining, or the sound of the pool water gently lapping against the tiles, but she felt emboldened. “So, sir, how am I going to convince you that I’m worthy of my inheritance?”
Hakim’s eyes held hers, as his stomach clenched with the force of his attraction to her. It was wrong. She was no longer a teenager, but she was still just twenty one years old, to his thirty three. He had no business feeling like he wanted to strip her naked and make love to her against the sun warmed tiles. “Let me show you around the palace. We will get to know one another a little better as we go.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Where do we start?” Phoebe asked, an hour later, after she’d showered and changed into a flowing caftan, and styled her hair in an elegant bun on top of her head.
“Well, you’ve already seen my harem,” he said with a teasing smile, making Phoebe’s heart flip over.
“It isn’t funny,” she chastised, straightening her smile away. “Women are not objects. It is a terrible thing that they are treated as such in many countries.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” he said, his voice deep. He’d changed too, into another outfit that looked traditional and expensive. White pants that were gathered in at the ankles, and a flowing grey shirt. He looke
d as devastating as ever. All the more so, in fact, because she could picture his body beneath it now.
“Then why not get rid of the evidence of that time in Mehran’s history?”
He put a hand lightly beneath her elbow, to guide her down the tiled corridor. She walked with him, trying to ignore the way her insides were sparking in response to the contact.
“Believe it or not, my country expressed outrage when I closed the palace harem.” His eyes met hers. “In Mehran, concubines have always held a place of honor and respect. Women were not sex-slaves, Phoebe, but highly valued royal courtesans.”
“Expected to have sex any time the Sheikh wanted,” she pointed out with a disbelieving lift of her brow.
“The relationships were sexual, yes. But royal concubines, at least in recent generations, were free to leave whenever they wanted. Usually with hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts.”
“Then why close the harem?”
He looked away. His uncle, his mother’s brother, through whom the lineage had passed, had not been a benevolent Sheikh. He had, in fact, been somewhat of a sexual sadist. Hakim had shut the harems as soon as he had taken over the rule of the country. “I had no need for a harem.” He said, protecting his uncle’s privacy despite his disapproval. “I do not need women to sit around in a room waiting for my attention. It depresses me.”
Phoebe turned her head sharply. “It does?”
“You are surprised.”
“Frankly, yes. That seems like a very enlightened point of view for someone like you to have, that’s all.”
Hakim’s grimace was honest. “My country is not yet where I wish it to be. We have a long way to go, and I must take us there gently, but I think you will find, Phoebe, that I am a reasonably civilized man.”
“Yes,” she drawled, cynically, “That’s just what I thought when you forced me to leave England and change schools at your behest.”
“You did not enjoy the academy?”
She had loved every minute of the pressurized academic environment, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of admitting it. “I’m just pointing out you’re not as civilized as you believe,” she demurred.
“Perhaps not.” He bared his teeth in a grin that made her pulse race. “Certainly, when it comes to women, the idea of pre-selected companions bores me. Where is the fun in such easy conquests?”
She lifted her eyes to his, and lost her footing. He reached a hand out and caught her waist, to steady her. The contact was over almost instantly, but Phoebe felt the thud of attraction increasing inside of her. She squared her shoulders and took a step away, struggling to return her breathing to normal. “You mean you like the thrill of the chase?”
