Read To Touch a Sheikh for Free Online Page B

haboobs, you no longer need your SPF 50 sunscreen.”
    She pressed into him, her screaming tension easing gradually. Even if this felt like the end of the world, it couldn’t be too serious, could it? He couldn’t be so devil-may-care in the face of death, could he?
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    Apparently, Amjad could.
    Ride endlessly, endure the harrowing bombardment of the sand and wind, the suffocation of breathing scorching, dry-as-tinder air through cloth and intersperse it all with caustic comments on anything his brilliantly twisted mind could come up with, delivered into her ringing ear. Favorite targets in descending order were her father, Ossaylan, Zohayd, the region, women, men, politics, business and pretty much everything that made the world go round.
    Problem was, she couldn’t.
    She could only hold herself up, refusing to be the deadweight he invited her to be. She held herself up steadier every time he consulted his illuminated GPS and forged on with total assurance, thinking he believed their destination was drawing nearer.
    But their destination seemed to be receding.
    She’d weathered the first half-century of the ride relatively well. The next quarter started to take its toll. This last one was becoming unbearable. And she had no idea how many more centuries it would take before they reached his “nearby shelter.”
    Couldn’t she just faint? He was doing fine riding and holding her up all without her input. He had told her to nap, as if they were on a long, uneventful journey in the tranquil luxury of one of his limos. He might have had a point.
    Might as well let the rest of the ordeal fade away….
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    Maram came to with a jerk.
    Yellowish nothingness greeted her scratching-open eyes.
    She thought she was suspended in the limbo between sleep and wakefulness, where everything was a blank sheet waiting for awareness to fill it with the details and depth of perceptions.
    Then those flooded in. She hadn’t been caught in a nightmare. She had been in a sandstorm, with Amjad. Still was.
    So she’d fainted. Or surrendered to the exhausting-cum-lulling ride and taken the nap Amjad had advised her to. Amjad, who was forging through the brutality of the sandstorm, carrying her like a weightless rag doll as he ascended barely visible steps leading to a columned patio of what looked like a single-story construction. It might be the only visible part of a castle for all she knew. She couldn’t see beyond a few feet.
    Not that it mattered what it was. They’d made it.
    He had. Gotten them to safety. Like he’d promised.
    He was carrying her like she’d told him to ages ago, across the threshold of a refuge. In seconds he slammed a foot-thick door shut behind him, isolating them in the sudden safety and relative silence of a blessedly cool, dark interior.
    He held her with one arm for the moment it took to snatch off his goggles. Their shape was imprinted into his flesh, and he looked haggard. But as he hastily removed the coverings off her face, the sight of his eyes sent her sluggish heart revving. Although bloodshot, they glowed an eerie green, smoldered down at her with anxiety and…guilt?
    Why guilt, when he’d saved her? Perhaps he was blaming himself for not anticipating the storm and exposing her to the ordeal.
    Or maybe, moron, with you slumped like a dead fish in his arms, he thinks you’re dying or something.
    She savored his unguarded—and no doubt never to be repeated—expression a moment more before forcing life back into her muscles. She stirred, struggled to pull off her own goggles, half believing she’d tear her skin away with them. They left her face with a pop.
    She groaned at having air instead of a semi-vacuum around her eyes. Her sight blurred and adjusted like a lens struggling to find focus. She saw his expression shift back to that projection of indifference he wore like an impenetrable shield.
    Then a corner of his now-colorless