Read To Touch a Sheikh for Free Online

see into the depths she knew he kept hidden beneath his irreverence and indifference.
    Before she could probe, he turned away, went to the edge of the towering dune overlooking the whole area.
    She followed him on shaky legs, every wobbling step melting the fraught moment away. The view mesmerized her, a landscape that had been molded by the elements in the crucibleof time, powdering mountains into frozen-in-turbulence oceans of gold dust.
    â€œWow,” she breathed in wonder. “I’ve seen almost nothing but desert vistas since coming to the region. But this beats them all hands down. How did you discover this place?”
    â€œIt’s called exploring.”
    She smiled at his chiseled profile. “What a novel concept! Would you take me next time you’re scouting new territories?”
    He turned his eyes sideways to her, looked down the ten inches between them, his lips twisting. “I don’t do luxury tours. What you see today is for swooning princes’ benefit. When I go out on my own, I don’t lug mock palaces with me.”
    â€œYou’re talking to the girl who spent her first twelve years camping in temperatures in the minus, who picked her own food and washed her one change of clothes in freezing streams. I lived out of a backpack for months when I went back to the States, too.”
    Another enigmatic layer painted his eyes before he shrugged. “We’ll see how you fare on this mini-excursion before we talk big treks.”
    Her heart pirouetted in her chest.
    He was not turning her down flat.
    Next moment, her heart slowed its spin, wobbled as a sound she’d never heard… felt before, yawned from nonexistence into her ears, through her marrow.
    She swung around…and her heart crashed.
    On the horizon, a…a…a mountain was charging their way.
    It looked like what she imagined a nuclear shockwave would look like. A tidal wave of roiling, pulverized earth.
    At the rate it was advancing, it would reach them—bury them—in minutes.

Three
    â€œS andstorm!”
    Maram whirled around to Amjad, her heart bombarding her throat for a way out.
    She found him gazing at the horizon, looking tranquil.
    Tranquil? He must be frozen in alarm!
    She pounced on him. He let her drag him to Dahabeyah, only to start emptying what he’d packed in the horse’s saddlebags.
    â€œWhat are you doing? ” she exclaimed. “We have to rush back!”
    He shook his head, extracting folded cloth and goggles. “No. We’d only meet the storm and get blasted. If by some miracle we don’t, anything standing still on that low ground—aka our cars—will be buried in minutes, judging by the size and intensity of that haboob. The others won’t wait for us.”
    She looked around in panic. In the distance, everyone was sealing the horse trailers, leaping into their cars and flooring it out of the camp.
    They were leaving.
    â€œBut they…they can’t leave!”
    â€œThey have to.” He produced a sacklike thing, draped it overthe jittery Dahabeyah’s muzzle and eyes before securing it over her neck, which the mare surprisingly accepted. A similar cover for her body followed. “By the time they reach us, they’d have zero visibility and would probably get lost and be buried in the sand after their fuel runs out. They have to go back and hope the fuel lasts driving against eighty-mile-an-hour winds before they exit the storm.”
    â€œBut you’re their crown prince! They can’t leave you behind!”
    â€œComing after me would mean certain death for them.”
    â€œNot coming after you will mean certain death for you. For us .”
    â€œNo. They know I can handle myself.”
    â€œHow do you handle yourself against—” a bubble of hysteria expanded below her diaphragm as she flung her arms wide toward the cloud that had now consumed the horizon, like a planet-eating monster