Mills & Boon New Voices: Foreword by Katie Fforde
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“I cannot believe you are here,” Zafir said in her ear, his breath tickling her and sending a shiver down her spine. “I had never thought to see you again.”
That his thoughts so eerily echoed hers only made her ache more.
“It would have been better that way,” she said.
“I disagree.” And then he kissed her, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to say no if he kept kissing her this way. So sweetly, as if she was a treasure he’d discovered. So tenderly, as if she meant the world to him.
Yet she knew she didn’t. This was physical and, yes, perhaps even a bit sentimental. She didn’t fool herself that it was anything else. Could she handle that?
“Do you remember how it was between us? How amazing?” he asked, his breath soft against her mouth.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I want that feeling again, Genie.”
His mouth fused to hers once more, and she melted away into a mass of nerve-endings that existed only to respond to his touch. Her body was on fire with remembered bliss, with the anticipation of more. It had been so long since she’d been with anyone—and now he was here, the man she’d never really stopped loving, and he wanted her.
And, God help her, she wanted him too. Just once. Just this once.
Because she didn’t have the strength to fight herself anymore.
She slid her arms around his neck, arched into him. He groaned his appreciation, squeezed her closer. One broad hand spread over her buttocks, kneaded her, pulling the cradle of her hips against his erection. He found her most sensitive spot, his body putting pressure against hers in just the right location.
Genie gasped as sensation shot through her. Zafir slid the jeweled straps from her shoulders, his mouth finding the sensitive area where her shoulder joined her neck. It had always driven her crazy, and no doubt he remembered it.
Though how he remembered after so long was something she couldn’t fathom at the moment. Not when desire and heat were tingling through her body like this.
“I need to know,” she gasped, “if there’s anyone else in your life right now.”
He pulled back to look down at her very solemnly. “There is no one.”
Genie closed her eyes as relief washed over her. If there had been a woman—a mistress, a fiancée—she could not go through with this no matter how much she ached for him. “Then touch me, Zafir.”
If he didn’t touch her she would die.
His voice was as warm and rich as melted honey. “I intend to, habiba. Most thoroughly.”
When his fingers slid to her zipper, she felt a stab of apprehension. “What if someone sees us?”
His laugh against the skin of her shoulder vibrated through her body. “No one would dare. We will not be disturbed.”
He spun her around and pulled her zipper all the way down. Then he slid the dress from her body. She stepped out of it, her heart hammering, her head telling her she was making a mistake, that this was too fast and too dangerous. That she was sinking into the quicksand of her need for this man, when she’d worked so hard to free herself from it the first time.
Behind her, Zafir groaned softly.
“You never wore this sort of underwear before,” he said, his fingers sliding along the top edge of her thong.
Before she’d realized what he was doing, his hot mouth was on her back. His tongue dipped into the hollow at the base of her spine before he placed a kiss on her bare buttocks, and then the curve beneath where her leg began. He turned her with his hands, gazing up at her with such heat and need in his eyes that she shivered anew.
“I am a king on his knees for you,” he said. “And I hardly know where to begin.”
“You’ll ruin your trousers.” It was an inane reply, but she couldn’t trust herself to say anything else.
“I do not care,” he replied, reaching for her. He quickly unsnapped the clasp of her strapless bra, which fell away and exposed her bare breasts to his gaze.
Her nipples were hard, tight points, begging for his touch. Goosebumps rose on her bare flesh, but not because she was cold. Zafir licked first one tip and then the other, before suckling them into even more sensitive buds than they already were.
Genie’s head fell back, her hands gripping his shoulders. She felt wanton, hot, restless, and so completely unsatisfied. Not that his mouth wasn’t magical, not that she didn’t love what he was doing, but she ached to feel him inside her again.
When he left her breasts and trailed hot kisses down her abdomen she sucked in her breath, knowing what he planned and dying for it all at once. Her panties fell away as he pushed them down her hips, and then he was cupping her buttocks, pulling her to him, his tongue sliding into her secret recesses, finding the bud of her desire.
She cried out as he circled her clitoris, sucked it between his lips, then circled and sucked again and again. Her legs were jelly, but his strong grip on her kept her upright while he drove her to completion with his lips and tongue.
When she shattered, she didn’t care who heard her as she rode wave after wave of blinding sensation.
But still it wasn’t enough. And Zafir knew it too. He climbed to his feet while she sagged against the table. Shrugging out of his jacket and shirt, he dropped them to the ground. A moment later he’d lifted her onto the stone table and stepped between her legs. As she leaned back on her hands he unfastened his trousers and rolled on a condom. She didn’t even bother to wonder how he’d known to be prepared.
Then he was hooking his arms behind her knees and drawing her forward until the tip of his penis slid into her entrance.
Genie drew in a sharp breath. Zafir closed his eyes, swallowed. And then he plunged forward, their bodies joining so deeply and thoroughly that they both cried out.
He grew utterly still, though she could feel him throbbing in the heart of her. “Did I hurt you?”
Genie shook her head, tears building behind her eyelids. It hurt, but not the way he meant. Physically, yes, he was big, and it had been a long time, but her body accommodated him the way it always had.
No, the pain was in her heart, her soul.
“Don’t stop,” she said, and then he was moving, plunging into her while she wrapped her legs around him and braced herself on the table.
She hadn’t known her body could be so responsive, that she could be on fire so quickly after he’d taken her over the edge. But she gripped him hard, her hips working in time with his, her body catching the wave and riding it higher and higher.
Zafir must have sensed when she was close, because he lifted her against him, angled his thrusts so they were deeper and more intense—
And that was when she exploded, when her body dissolved into a mass of fire and sound and sensation that reached into her fingertips, her toes, her scalp. Everything sizzled, and she cried out with the intensity of it, the utter bliss.
She hadn’t even realized that Zafir tumbled over the edge with her until he set her carefully back down and withdrew from her body. His skin gleamed in the candlelight, his chest rising and falling more quickly than before.
He was magnificent, exotic, and her body still craved his like a drug—though she was exhausted and, at least temporarily, sated. He turned away from her, and she felt as if she’d been basking in the sun’s rays only to have a black cloud block their warmth.
What had she done?
Genie couldn’t move, though she had a sudden urge to do so. It was as if her good sense had come trickling back, but too late. She wanted to snatch up the dress and cover herself.
She felt too raw, too exposed. She’d just had amazingly hot sex with a king.
On a table. In a garden.
But that wasn’t what made her want to cover up. She felt as if her heart was as exposed as her body, as if he could see that it beat only for him. That it had always beat only for him.
Because this was Zafir—her prince, her lover, the man who’d once been everything to her.
And that made her angry. Angry with him for being here, for being so unrelenting, and with herself for being unable to hold fast to her vow not to have sex with him ever again. What in the hell was wrong with her?
“Will you let me excavate the temples now?” she threw into the air between them. Because he’d won, hadn’t he? Because she was an idiot, and because she still loved him in spite of everything, and because she was suddenly so insecure that she had to lash out to protect herself.
His shoulders stiffened, and she wished with all her heart she could take it back. But words once spoken were out there, hanging in the air, and she could no more call them back than she could undo what they’d just done together.
Zafir turned, his trousers zipped again, his gaze as hard and cold as marble. He let his eyes wander over her lazily, insultingly. She pushed herself to a sitting position and wrapped her arms around herself.
“You were good, Genie. But not that good.”
Chapter Six
HE’D lied. Zafir lay in bed, staring up at the ornately carved wooden canopy, and listened to the soft breathing of the woman beside him. He’d told her she wasn’t that good, but the truth was he’d been so hot for her that he’d been unable to make the trek to the bedroom the first time.
He’d wanted her so much that having her then and there, in the courtyard, had seemed the only way to assuage the heat boiling inside him.
Except that it hadn’t. It had only made the need worse.
She might have had sex with him for the temples, but he’d done it because he could not do otherwise.
But Genie Gray had certainly not lost sight of what she wanted, and that made him angry.
He had no right to be angry with her. He was the one, after all, who’d suggested that the only way to win the commission was to sleep with him. He’d wanted to punish her, and he’d ended up punishing himself.
She’d pretended to be insulted, but she hadn’t resisted when he’d carried her into the bedroom and made love to her again. No, she’d melted beneath him, her body as soft and welcoming as it had always been. Her body was paradise, and he lost himself in it.
They’d fallen asleep much later, exhausted, but now that he’d awakened again he couldn’t get back to sleep.
What was it about her that made him so crazy? That made him feel as if he’d come home after a very long time away?
It had to be the connection to the past, to a simpler life. But this need was only temporary. Though he wanted Genie more than he could remember wanting any woman he’d ever been with, there was no future in it.
Soon he would have to let her go.
The light slanting through the curtains and across the bed was not the light of early morning. Genie blinked and sat up. Muscles she’d forgotten she had ached. Zafir had been intense last night, making love to her as if it was the first and last night he would ever do so.
The thought gave her a chill. She’d loved every moment of it, even if he had told her she wasn’t that good. She’d been hurt at first, but she’d quickly recognized that he was lashing out at her. Just as she’d done when she’d asked if he would now give her the commission.
They’d gotten past that very quickly—at least physically. But now Zafir was gone and she wasn’t certain what to do. Even if she did manage to find the dress and put it back on, she wasn’t sure she would remember how to find the harem. And she definitely didn’t want to run into anyone in the passageways.
“As-saalamu ’alaykum, madam.”
Genie’s head snapped up to find Yusuf patiently standing in the entry. He didn’t seem at all flustered by her appearance in his king’s bed, though she could feel the heat of a blush all the way to the roots of her hair. The problem with being a fair-skinned redhead was the ease with which she turned pink, she thought.
She returned the ritual greeting and waited.
“His Majesty bade me bring you clothing, madam. You will find a selection of items in His Majesty’s bath chamber. If you would care to dress, I will bring you something to eat in half an hour.”
“Thank you,” Genie said, and the old man bowed and disappeared again. She waited a full five minutes before she got out of bed—stark naked—and raced into the bathroom.
When she emerged again, showered and dressed in a silk pantsuit and ballet flats, she didn’t expect to find Zafir waiting for her. Her heart did a little flip at the sight of him. He was once again dressed in traditional robes and headdress, and the sight of him literally took her breath away.
“You slept well?” he asked.
“Yes. And you?”
His grin was sudden. Wicked. “I was quite exhausted, I assure you. Thank you for a most pleasurable evening.”
A most pleasurable evening.
She didn’t like the way that sounded—as if she were someone who got paid to provide a service. But then, here in this place Zafir was far more formal than she remembered him ever being when they were at university.
Perhaps that was all it was.
“And how are your negotiations with the Sheikhs going?” she asked, wanting to change the subject before she mentally undressed Zafir and climbed on top of him.
“Eager to leave?” he said, his eyes growing shadowed.
“You know I want to go back to my dig, but that’s not why I asked.”
“Isn’t it?” He shrugged and walked toward the small table that she only now noticed was set with plates and food. “Come, eat. And after this I will take you to the temples.”
She joined him at the table, keeping her gaze from his while he once more dished out food for her. “I asked about the Sheikhs because I wanted to know,” she said when he’d finished. “It seems a dangerous situation, and I hope you are able to end the hostility.”
He sighed. His eyes, she noted, were troubled.
“I am working on it. In the old days I could have had them both executed. But times have fortunately progressed—even if I have often missed having that kind of absolute power while dealing with these two old fools. They grumble, but they will fall in line.”
She had the distinct feeling there was something he wasn’t telling her. “This isn’t at all what you wanted to do, is it? Be a king, I mean?”
“It was not my choice to make.”
“But if it had been?”
His dark gaze was sharp, assessing. “I would still be a Prince of Bah’shar, Genie. And I would still have duties to my nation.”
And she would still be Geneva Gray, a girl who’d had to work hard for every opportunity she’d ever had. She speared a piece of mango with her fork. “I guess we can’t ever change who we really are.”
“No.” He looked thoughtful. “But who are you inside, Genie? What can’t you change?”
She swallowed. Who was she inside? She’d thought about it a lot lately, especially since coming here. “I suppose the greatest constant in my life was uncertainty.”
Uncertainty over whether her father would come visit, whether her mother would make it to her school play or drop everything to be with the man she loved. Would Genie have to stand on the school steps long after the other kids had gone home and wait because her mother had forgotten again?
“I need control of my life. I get nervous when I’m not in control.”
“Your parents were divorced,” Zafir said, as if it explained everything.
Genie gritted her teeth. Why not tell him the truth? Why not let him see how devastating his revelation about an arranged marriage had been to her?
“That was a lie,” she said, lifting her chin. “A fiction I made up in order to keep from telling anyone the awful truth.”
“And what was the truth?”
She glared at him. “My mother had a decade-long affair with my father, a married man. He set her up in an apartment and came to visit us whenever he could get away from his real family.”
Zafir looked stunned. “You never told me this before.”
“Would it have made a difference?” she tossed at him, the old anger of her childhood and the disappointment of her relationship with Zafir mingling into an acid stew inside her. “When my father tired of us he had no problem walking away. My mother was too depressed to go after him for child support. She took odd jobs to make ends meet, and there were times we went without heat or groceries because she barely had enough to pay the rent.”
“I am sorry—”
“Yes, well, you can certainly understand why I wasn’t prepared to put myself in the same position.”
“I would have never abandoned you, habiba,” he said fiercely.
“I imagine that’s what my father said too.”
Zafir came and sank onto a chair close by, tossing one end of his headdress over his shoulder with a practiced movement that was too sexy for words.
Sexy? Genie looked away, studied the food on her plate. How on earth could she find him sexy at a time like this?
“I would change the past if I could,” he said, “but what I asked of you was not an insult in my world. I would not have forced you to stay with me once the marriage finally took place.”
Genie tossed her fork aside. Now, why did that knowledge sting? “Very noble of you, Zafir.”
She shoved to her feet before she lost her mind. She’d have never agreed to be a mistress, no matter what. But isn’t that what you were, Genie, considering he always intended to marry another?
She pressed two fingers on either side of her forehead to stem the rising headache. “Look, can we just stop talking about this and get to the temples?”
“We will go soon. You need to finish eating.”
“I’m not hungry. And I don’t need your pity,” she practically growled.
Zafir stood, his tall form suddenly towering over her. He was all formality once more, his robe draped over one arm, his eyes glittering dark and hot as he stared at her.
“As you wish, habiba.”
Chapter Seven
THE Temples of Al-Shahar were millennia old. The foundations were ancient, though the temples in their current form were only about a thousand years old. The one temple still standing bore the soaring arches and mosaic work typical of the early Islamic period. The others were in various states of ruin, but they were all an archaeologist’s dream. At the very least her team would be busy here for months. In truth, they could stay for years.
Genie walked through the structure, hands in pockets, her mind not quite as engaged as it should be for something so exciting.
Zafir was somewhere behind her, his footfalls distinct in the shadowy interior. His ever-present bodyguards had fanned out to guard the perimeter while they came inside alone. It seemed to her he’d gathered more security since yesterday. She’d asked about it, but he had shrugged the question off.
They’d hardly spoken since lunch. What was there to say?
She’d told him one of the darkest, most painful secrets of her life, and now she regretted it. Because he felt sorry for her. In Bah’shar, it seemed as if a man could have more than one family and no one thought anything of it. Not the women, not the children, and certainly not the men.
But her father had mostly ignored her existence, except for the occasional inquiry into her grades, or the awkward acceptance of a childish drawing that she’d used to believe he took home and put on the refrigerator. Now she realized he must have thrown them all out. His wife wouldn’t have wanted to know anything about the woman and child he kept across town.
One day he’d finally walked out for good. She’d never known why.
Zafir passed her line of sight and she studied him from beneath the brim of her hat. She should be studying the temple, but she couldn’t stop thinking about their lives together before. She replayed the kisses, the caresses, the early-morning walks, the late-night lovemaking, the look in his eyes when they’d been together—everything she could think of. How had she not realized it was only temporary?
Because it had felt like so much more. She wasn’t wrong about that. She couldn’t be.
But was that what her mother had thought too? Was that what had made her stay with a man who could never be hers, who’d kept her in a cage and expected her to be available whenever he wanted her?
She’d done this before, after they’d broken it off, and she was angry that she was suddenly being forced to reexamine the past after all this time. He’d accused her of needing her work more than she needed him, but it was so much more than that. Perhaps he finally realized it too.
Zafir was standing in the middle of a room, gazing down at the ruins of a mosaic on the floor. “There is much to be done here, yes?” he said, looking up and catching her staring at him.
Genie refused to look away. To do so would be to admit she’d been thinking of him and not of her work. That he’d caught her in an unguarded moment. Clearly he wasn’t as tormented by thoughts of the past as she was. He’d been thinking about the temple.
“It’s an extraordinary place,” she said, all business. “I believe the work could take a very long time. But I also think it’s a good decision to allow excavation here, even if you choose someone else to do it. This is an important site, and it should not be forgotten.”
He speared her with a determined look. “I do not intend to choose someone else.”
“I won’t let you down if you give this to me.”
“I know. It is why I made the deal in the first place.”
Genie bit her lip. Whether he believed her or not, she had to say it. “I slept with you because I wanted to, not for the temples.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “It matters not. The commission is yours.”
She resisted the urge to stomp her foot. She’d been feeling wounded and hurt, and now he’d managed to put her on the defensive. How did he do that? “Zafir, do you believe me or not?”
He strode toward her, stopping in a swirl of robes and dust. He looked suddenly angry. “Does it matter? You have got what you want.”
She swallowed as she gazed up at him, all six-foot-something of hard, arrogant male. He made her body ache just looking at him. Ridiculous the way her heart pounded. “I have never been dishonest with you, Zafir.”
“Outright? No. But omission is still a form of dishonesty. You never told me what happened between your parents.”
How dared he turn this around? He was the one at fault, not her. “What good would it have done? Besides, you were dishonest with me first.”
“We were dishonest with each other.”
The thought stung, and yet it wasn’t the same thing at all. “Why do we keep rehashing the past? It changes nothing. You still intended to marry a woman your father chose.”
“I was obligated, Genie.”
She slashed a hand through the air. “I know that, and I’m done talking about it.”
He caught her close, gripping her upper arms hard. “You were important to me, whether you believe it or not. And you have no idea what it is like not getting to make your own choices in life. No one has ever told you that you are required to give up everything you want for the greater good of your country.”
Genie jerked free from his grip. She didn’t fool herself that she was what he’d had to give up. “Maybe not, but do you think my life was any easier? You were born into privilege and accustomed to having the world at your fingertips. I had to work hard for every opportunity I ever got.” She took a step backward, putting distance between them, her body shaking with adrenaline and fury. “What would you know about sacrifice? You wanted me to sacrifice everything to be with you, yet you weren’t prepared to sacrifice a thing!”
The words echoed through the empty temple. Zafir’s gaze was hard, his nostrils flaring as they stared each other down. His voice, when he finally answered, was deadly cold. “You will never know what I’ve sacrificed. Do not presume to tell me I have no idea what the word means.”