The Sultan's Choice Read Online Free

short of breath and seriously overwhelmed. There was a point that came in everyone’s life when a person was called to make the starkest of choices, and she was facing hers right now. Not that she really had a choice. That was becoming clearer and clearer.
    But, desperate to cling on to some tiny measure of illusion,Samia turned around again and bit her lip before saying to the Sultan, ‘This is a lot to take in. Yesterday I was facing only the prospect of returning to Burquat to help oversee the refurbishment of our national library, and now … I’m being asked to become Queen of Al-Omar.’ She met his blue gaze. ‘I don’t even know you.’
    A flash of irritation crossed the Sultan’s face, shadowing those amazing eyes, and inwardly Samia flinched at this evidence of his dispassionate and clinical approach to something so momentous.
    ‘We have our lifetimes to get to know one another. What won’t wait, however, is the fact that I need to marry and have heirs. I have no doubt in my mind, Princess Samia, that you are the one who was born to take that position.’
    Samia tried not to look as affected by his words as she felt. He was only saying it like that because he’d decided she’d make him a good wife and wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer. At another time she might almost have smiled. He reminded her so much of her autocratic brother.
    She knew for a fact that there were many women who would gladly trample over her to hear him speak those words to them. And she wished right now that one of them was standing there instead of her—even though her belly did a curious little flip when she thought of it.
    ‘I just …’ She stopped ineffectually. ‘I need some time to think about this.’
    Sadiq’s face tightened ominously, and Samia had the feeling that she’d pushed him too far. With that came a sense of panic that … what? He’d choose her sister instead? That he’d send her away and tell her to have a nice life? And why was that making her feel panicky when it was exactly what she wanted?
    But an urbane mask closed off any expression on that hard-jawed face, and after an interminable moment he saidsoftly, ‘Very well. I will give you twenty-four hours. This time tomorrow evening I expect you to be back here in this room to tell me what you have decided.’
    Sadiq stood at the window of his private sitting room, three floors above the office where he’d just met Princess Samia. He looked out over the city of London bathed in dusky light. The scent of late-summer blossoms was heavy in the air. He suddenly missed the intense heat of his home—the sense of peace that he got only when he knew that the vast expanse of Al-Omari desert was within walking distance.
    Irritation snaked through him at the realisation that due to Samia’s patent reluctance he’d be forced to spend longer in Europe than he wanted to. He could see his discreet security men in front of his house—necessary trappings for a head of state—but he was oblivious to all that. For once he wasn’t consumed with thoughts of politics, or the economy, or women.
    He frowned. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. One woman
was
consuming his thoughts, and for the first time in his life it wasn’t accompanied with the enticing sense of expectation at the prospect of bedding her. And then he had to concede that it had been a long time since pure expectation had precipitated
any
liaison with a lover—it was more likely to be expectation mixed with a lot of cynicism.
    Sadiq’s frown became deeper, grooving lines into his smooth forehead. Since when had he acknowledged the fact that for him bedding women was accompanied by a feeling of ennui and ever deepening cynicism? He suspected uncomfortably that it was long before he’d witnessed his close friends’ weddings in Merkazad.
    Seeing his friends wearing their hearts on their sleeves had induced a feeling of panic and had pushed a button—a button that had been deeply buried and