Read Desert Orchid: The Desert Princes: Book 1 for Free Online

a bad tempered warrior.
    "How the hell can this be? How old are you?" he demanded.
    The deep American drawl had thrown her initially, and it did the same thing now.
    His question didn’t surprise her.
    "I am twenty-two. I have been married for six years."
    Silence.
    That dead on stare was making her nervous.
    He was making her nervous.
    To keep her hands busy Charisse took a sip of coffee.
    Those eyes went dark now and as cold as ice.
    She shivered at the look in them for her.
    "He bought you, didn’t he?"
    The clutch of fear in her belly was an old familiar foe.
    She hadn’t felt the presence of that foe for six years.
    Charisse straightened her spine, reminded herself that she was no longer broken.
    And she wouldn’t be intimidated by any man, and certainly not by the one sitting there looking at her as if she was a bad smell.
    Her chin lifted. "Excuse me?"
    Khalid sat back on the sofa with an arrogance that made her palm itch, looking all relaxed and in control. He didn't fool her. The way his eyes narrowed flicking over her body as if she was an object rather than a human being made the ache in her heart burn. It felt as if the organ was being squeezed in an iron fist. Fear. It rose up from her belly into her throat in a way that brought back hellish memories of a time when the world as she’d known it had ended. Of a time when powerful men had looked upon her as a commodity.
    She shuddered with a memory that had a cold sweat trickle down her back. A flashback of lying naked, bloody, freezing cold and in pain entered her mind. And it took everything she had not to tremble in front of Khalid.
    A Khalid who was now looking at her as if she was something he wanted to scrape from the sole of his Italian handmade shoe.
    "My accountants are very thorough. I’ve been through the bank accounts with them. Six years ago, my uncle Asim paid three and a half million Euros for you." The drawl was now filled with utter disdain. "And he’s left ten times that amount in Swiss bank accounts in your name. I hope he got his money’s worth."
    Heady relief that he had no idea of the awful truth of her past fought with a righteous outrage that he believed she would marry a man for his money. That she had no moral compass or cared nothing for her country or her people.
    How dare he?
    Bastard.
    "Do not look at me as if I am a piece of meat," Charisse warned in a tone of solid ice.
    She rose and found her legs far from steady. She stalked to the doors open to the balcony and back, all the while trying desperately to hang onto her temper. The dogs growled and she silenced them with a hand signal. Her eyes remained glued to the dark angel lounging on the sofa and staring at her in a way that made her hand hurt to smack him, hard.
    She didn’t attempt to hide her fury as she spoke,
    "How dare you of all people sit there in judgement of me? You know absolutely nothing about me."
    The sneer corrupting his beautiful mouth was an ugly thing. "Drop the contempt, baby. Right back at you. And you know nothing about me other than what you’ve read in your glossy magazines or listened to gossip while you’ve been holed up here in your ivory tower."
    Baby?
    The way her stomach was churning made the room spin, so she took deep breaths until the black spots in front of her eyes receded.
    Charisse counted to ten and prayed fervently for patience. "I do not, and have never, lived in an ivory tower. I care about the people of this country, this continent. I care..."
    His arrogant flick of his hand shocked her into silence.
    The need to pick up a giant fishbowl crammed with fresh roses and pour it over his dark head was so overwhelming she had to fist her hands.
    "Spare me," he drawled in a tone that she was coming to hate. "Unlike you, I’ve never been anything less than honest about how I live my life and what I choose to do with it. What do you think your loyal subjects would think if they knew you were bought and paid for by my dear uncle? What do