by Victoria Vane and E.M. Hull
ISBN-13:978-1492169956
ISBN-10:1492169951
The Desert Was Never Hotter!
Pride and passion vie for supremacy in this steamy retelling of E.M. Hull's romance classic.
A haughty young heiress for whom the world is a playground…
A savage son of the Sahara who knows no law but his own…
When pride and passion vie for supremacy...
Blistering desert days are nothing compared to sizzling Sahara nights…
"There will be inquiries." I choked out. "I am not such a nonentity that nothing will be done when I am missed. You will pay for what you have done."
"Pay?" His amused look sent a cold feeling of dread through me. "I have already paid… in gold that matches your hair, my gazelle. Besides," he continued, "the French Government has no jurisdiction over me. There is no authority here above my own."
My trepidation was growing every passing minute. "Why have you done this? Why brought me here?"
"Why?" He repeated with a slow and heated appraisal that made me acutely, almost painfully, conscious of my sex. "Bon Dieu! Are you not woman enough to know?"
Reviewed by Estella
This was a very intense book. It was nicely done and full of passion! I loved the characters. Diana Mayo is a very strong willed and she seems to think that money can get her everything she wants. She is very adventurous. Then we have our strong alpha male, Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. This story has been retold and unfortunately I have never read the original. So I can't compare the two. So for those who have not read the original this version is very delicious. For those who have read the original then I say give it a try and decide which you like best!
Look for Victoria's Contemporary Cowboy Series coming summer 2014 from Sourcebooks
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EXCERPTS
THE SHEIK RETOLD by Victoria Vane & E.M. Hull
"Look at me."
I shivered, my downcast gaze wavering only briefly before defying him
again.
"Look at me." An inflection had crept into his low tone that was unmistakably
commanding.
I lifted my gaze with great reluctance and met his in the mirror. Though I
wanted to, I could not look away from his handsome sun-bronzed face with those
inscrutable eyes. They were not black as I had thought, but the deepest indigo
blue. Dark and intense, they burned into me. I was fascinated. Mesmerized.
He swung me around to him, taking my chin in hand and tilting it upward.
"Bon Dieu! Do you know how beautiful you are?" His gaze dropped to my
clothing, and his eyes became fierce again, his stern mouth parting in a cruel
show of teeth. "Perhaps you are unaware that Zilah shall be severely punished
for your foolish rebellion?"
"No!" I cried, straining back as far as his grip allowed. "It wasn't her
fault. I sent her away."
"You sent her away before my wishes were carried out?"
"Will you kill her too? Like you did the horse?" I accused. "If you kill
everything that does not obey you, you might as well shoot me now!"
"I will deal with the girl as it suits me." His glower had broken, replaced
by a mixture of mild anger and patent amusement. "As to you, ma belle, it
appears I must be your valet, as well as your lover."
"Lover?" I gave a contemptuous laugh. "Is that how you perceive
yourself?"
He lifted a brow above his fathomless eyes. "You question my prowess?"
I remained stoically defiant, letting my silence speak.
His black brows met in a thunderous scowl. "There are many things you must
learn, ma chère. Of utmost import to your well-being is that, save only
for Allah, there is no will in this camp above my own." He continued
impassively, "I could have you now, you know. In this very moment, I could tear
your clothes, throw you down on that bed, and take you any way and as many times
as I wish." He paused, smiling at the flare of fear in my eyes. "Fortunately for
you, that is not my wish…at present."
He stroked the pad of his thumb over my lips. His expression grew almost
whimsical. "Shall I make you care, cherie? Shall I make it your deepest
desire, your only desire, to please me? I can make any woman love me when
I choose."
He was amusing himself at my expense. He did not care if I hated or loved
him, but was only enjoying a new form of torture, one that was even more
detestable than anything that had gone before it. The mere suggestion that I
could ever care for him, that I would ever look on him as anything but a brutal
savage, infuriated me. I felt degraded and soiled that he would class me with
the other women he spoke of. "I would rather you killed me," I replied
coldly.
"So would I." He chuckled drily. "If you loved me, you would bore me to
death.
Excerpt
379 words/ Steamy
He chuckled lowly, a smug and self-satisfied sound. "Say it now, ma
chère," he softly demanded. "Tell me you want this above all things. Tell me
you want me."
I did. Desperately, but it was only the fleeting lust of the flesh that I
craved—not him. Never him. "You have forced this upon me,"
I hissed in a rage of frustration. "This means nothing—proves nothing."
"As you will….I can be a patient man— when I choose to be."
His weight shifted away from me, and then it was gone from the bed. He
removed the blindfold and then gave a single tug on the silk cord binding me to
the bed. My arms instantly released from above my head, and then just as
suddenly, he freed my legs.
I instantly scrambled to my knees, dragging the silken coverings up around me
as if their thin shelter were a protection. "Are you finished with me now?" I
asked breathlessly.
"Finished?" His expression was mixed mockery and mirth. "Par bleu! I
have hardly even begun, but for now, I shall leave you in peace." He strode to
the curtained doorway only to turn back to me with a sardonic bow. "Bonne nuit et doux rêves, ma chérie."
He had left me alone. Alone in a state of dazed
bewilderment and intense sexual frustration—for I knew damned well what I was
feeling— and it made me want to screech and claw and rail.
The man was a mystery, an unfathomable enigma. My mind could not reconcile
his barbaric ways with the evidence of his education and refinement. I had
noticed a dozen incongruities in him—his cultured speech, the well-worn books in
the tent, the elegant and fastidious order of his appointments. His cruel words
and contradictory tender touch crowded my recollection until my head reeled, yet
I was too tired to puzzle it out, too spent in mind and body.
I did not know what would come on the morrow but gave in to my exhaustion and
sank into a cocoon of covers. In the course of a single day, my entire being
had irrevocably changed. At long last, and with the greatest possible
resistance, I was learning obedience and humility—at the hands of this
incomprehensible savage.