Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 50149 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 251(@200wpm)___ 201(@250wpm)___ 167(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50149 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 251(@200wpm)___ 201(@250wpm)___ 167(@300wpm)
Was he insane? Was he joking? Why would he want to marry me?
Some questions she could answer herself, other questions –
He only had to wait until she asked them of him.
Meanwhile, he would simply enjoy looking his fill of her. She would be dynamite in a bikini, the sheikh thought with a frown. That was a good thing, but only if she wore the bikini in his presence alone. Everywhere else would be forbidden.
The thought had him shifting in his seat, the sheikh grimacing when he realized that imagining a bikini-clad Harper was enough to have his penis growing hard under his trousers.
“Sheikh?” It took a moment before the sheikh turned to face her, and she frowned, thinking he looked a little flushed. “Are you okay?”
“Of course.” Now was not the time to tell her he was thinking of fucking her. “You have made up your mind?”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.” She would really thump him if he were serious about that.
His smile was faintly apologetic. “I am rushing you then.”
“No kidding.”
Her tone was extremely sarcastic, but her eyes showed faint panic. He was sorry for this, but not enough that it would dissuade him from his objective. She was what he wanted, and he would have her. It was only a matter of when. Studying her face, he asked slowly, “May I at least think you are not rejecting my proposal outright?”
“I should,” she muttered, “if I were smarter.”
The sheikh frowned. “Why do you say this? Would it be so bad to be married to me?”
“Will I be the only woman you’re marrying?”
Ah. So she was worried about that. “I respect the dictates of Islam, but I was also baptized Catholic.”
Oh! She had not known about that.
“Also, to have more than one wife is not actually a requirement of Islam.”
“But it’s allowed,” she said darkly.
“In a nutshell, yes. But you need not worry about that. When I take you as my wife—-”
“If you take me as your wife,” she corrected.
He ignored this. “It will only be you.”
Oh. He sounded so serious, so matter-of-fact, and her heart swayed just a little. Could she really believe that this was happening?
“Do you have other concerns?”
“Just one.” And she asked baldly, “Why me?”
“Because you are what my country and I need.”
Oh.
Okay.
Not.
Harper crossed her arms over her chest. “Sorry, sheikh.” Her tone was flat. “But I’m not buying it. How can I be what you and your country need?”
Khalil allowed himself a slight smile. “You do not think highly enough of yourself, qalifa.”
“I’m just being realistic.”
“What you are,” he countered mildly, “is being blind. Where do you wish me to start? Why I need you? To put it plainly, I need someone whose company I am certain to enjoy for a lifetime.”
She frowned. “Is that your way of saying you’d like to have someone you can bully for the rest of your life?”
He ignored that. “I also need someone who’s not a gold-digger.”
“How do you know I’m not?”
“You’d have jumped on my offer of marriage if you were.”
“What if I’m just pretending I’m not?”
“And you truly think I’d fall for such a ruse?”
Harper snorted. “You’re not that infallible, sheikh.”
“Perhaps. But rarely do I make the wrong call when judging people.”
She supposed she could accept that, knowing that his position as king had allowed him to meet all kinds of folks, and she highly doubted that all of them were nice and decent.
“Also—-” Her eyes flew back to the sheikh at the word, and as soon as their gazes met, he drawled lazily, “I want to fuck you.”
Oh.
“To be specific: I want to fuck you more than I’ve ever wanted to fuck any woman in my life.”
Harper coughed, and when that wasn’t enough for her to get over her toe-curling embarrassment and shameful excitement, she scowled. She scowled as hard as she could, so that she wouldn’t be tempted to swoon. “Is that supposed to flatter me?”
“Does it not flatter you?”
Yeah. It did. But she would never let him know that. “Anyway,” she said gruffly. “Moving on.”
The sheikh smirked, not at all fooled by her tone. He would have liked to tease her more, but because they were pressed for time, he reluctantly set his urges aside for another day. Anyway, once they were married, she would be his to tease for the rest of their lives.
“What else do you wish to know? The requirements of my kingdom for its queen?”
“Wouldn’t they want someone who’s local?”
“That would have been expected for most other Arab nations, but ours is different. We have had a more open culture compared to our neighbors, and more than sixty percent of our population consists of foreign settlers. My people wish for progress more than anything else. They wish to move away from the years of bigotry and tyranny they had to suffer under my late grandfather’s rule. I, too, wish for the same thing, and I want my marriage to be a symbol of that. I want my own life to be proof that different cultures – even different religions – may co-exist peacefully and work side-by-side for the betterment of this kingdom.”