Read Online Gambling With the Crown by Lynn Raye Harris - Free Book Online Page A

armrest between them. His fingers dangled off the end, tapped some imaginary beat in the air. A slow, lazy beat. When she lifted her eyes to his, he was watching her with a hooded expression. Then he picked up that hand and slid his index finger across his lower lip, as if he was thinking.
    Didn’t matter why, since the effect of the gesture was currently what had her beginning to panic. Something bloomed deep inside her, in her core. Some hot, dark feeling that wanted very much to be allowed to blossom into a fuller, darker emotion.
    Emily bit the inside of her lip. After all these years, after how ruthless she’d been with herself, her mother was beginning to creep out. That carnal, needy woman who wanted fun and adventure and licentious couplings with incredibly hot men.
    She put her hands in her lap and clasped them together. She’d worked too hard. Too long. She was nothing like her mother. Sensuality might lurk within her, but she would not give in to that side of her nature ever again. It was under her control. Kadir al-Hassan was not going to reduce her to the kind of woman who would do absolutely anything for one night in his bed. Not ever.
    “Is it?” he finally asked.
    “Of course. I’m perfectly happy.” And yet she did miss human connection sometimes. Not that she would admit that to him. She would not give him fuel for the fire he was building.
    His expression grew sultry. “All those nights when I sent you away, when another woman joined me in my bed—did you think of me, Emily?”
    She gasped. “Of course not—”
    “Did you want to be the one beneath me?”
    “No!”
    He leaned toward her then, his eyes intense. “Did you lie in your lonely bed, touching yourself, pretending it was me?”
    She couldn’t speak as pain bloomed deep in her soul. Not because she’d done what he said—but a dark part of her had wanted to. And he knew it. Somehow, he knew it. The pain spread through her in waves, knotted her belly, clenched her throat tight. She was choking, choking on rage and hate and—and longing, damn him.
    Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes then. She turned her head and dashed them away. She’d known he was ruthless in business. She’d known he always won. She hadn’t known he was cruel. She hadn’t known the depths to which he could make her sink in despair, or the fathoms-deep hatred she could feel for him.
    She wanted to speak, wanted to metaphorically slap him down. Wanted to deflate his ego—and, yes, his penis—all in one well-timed verbal blow. She wanted to decimate him.
    And she couldn’t find the words. Nothing would dredge itself up from the recesses of her brain. Nothing happened. Nothing except a long, taut silence that seemed to stretch forever but was in reality only a few moments.
    The car came to a stop. Emily didn’t care if they’d reached their destination or if they were only stopped at a traffic light. She yanked the handle and the door swung open, spilling in light and hot air and the sounds of Milan.
    Kadir reached for her, but she slipped his grip and stumbled onto the street. Then she ran. She could hear Kadir shout at her, but she kept going, losing herself in the crowd, running blindly as the tears she’d been holding in finally spilled over and rushed down her cheeks.

CHAPTER SIX
    K ADIR CURSED HIMSELF as he ran down the crowded street after her. What the hell had he been thinking? Why had he been so needlessly vicious? Emily was his assistant, the closest thing he had to a friend in some respects, and she was doing him a favor.
    And he had ripped into her as though she was just another gold-digging social climber. Worse, as though he hated her. He’d shredded her as if it was nothing, and that shamed him. What kind of man was he? What kind of man attacked those weaker than himself?
    He couldn’t say why he’d done it, except that he’d been irritated when she’d asked him so plainly why he didn’t just tell his father what he wanted. As if